ISO mounting and Blu-Ray, HD-DVD

[dennit]

I'd like to be able to play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD's stored as an iso and mounted with daemon from inside GB-PVR. Right now, what I do is the following:

Using Video Library, I select the iso file. This causes it to be mounted, but since GB-PVR expects it to be a DVD, it doesn't play. I then exit the black screen, and go to the main menu where I execute a custom task that plays a batch file to play PowerDVD. Since the iso I want remained mounted from the failed attempt to play it as a DVD, PowerDVD plays it as the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD it really is.

The custom task is a bat file that I found here:

@echo off
Rem PowerDVD.bat
taskkill /F /IM "pvrx2.exe"
C:\PowerDVD\PowerDVD.exe X:
start C:\gbpvr\pvrx2.exe
exit

My question is if there is an easier/single step way to do this. Can I get PowerDVD to run instead of the internal DVD player? Can I associate a bat file with the iso file so that selecting an iso runs the batch file to both mount the iso and run PowerDVD? I've done a lot of searching and saw one post saying someone had figured out how to do something like this, but he didn't say how.

Thanks!

[sub]

Sorry there is nothing built-in that would help with this. Hopefully I'll be add something to run an external bluray player in the future though.

[dennit]

Sorry there is nothing built-in that would help with this. Hopefully I'll be add something to run an external bluray player in the future though.

Would this work? ....

Can I replace daemon.exe in config.xml with a daemon.bat file? I'm guessing that pvrx2 would issue an unmount command to the batch file (instead of daemon.exe) then a mount command for the iso (I think that's the order).

The batch file could be written to run daemon.exe and do the unmount, then exit when the passed parameter is unmount and do the mount when passed the mount parameter and the iso name. Presumably after it issues the mount command pvrx2 waits for the mount to succeed. (Is that the <DaemonToolsPrePlayDelay>4500</DaemonToolsPrePlayDelay> parameter?)

But during that delay time I could have the batch file immediately kill the pvrx2 task with:

taskkill /F /IM "pvrx2.exe"

the batch file could then proceed as described above to play the DVD, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray iso that is mounted on its default drive.

Feasible?

I'd test it without asking, but I'm reluctant to try something that might mess up the db or cause other problems by killing the task if pvrx2 is engaged in something fancy during a DVD iso mount attempt.

[sub]

I dont know. You could always try it. The app is still going to try playing it as a DVD, but if that is in the background behind PowerDVD then you might not see anything funny.

[dennit]

Would this work? ....
Can I replace daemon.exe in config.xml with a daemon.bat file?

The answer is yes. It works nicely. Here's my setup:
Make a daemon.bat file in gbpvr home dir. Make a shortcut to it called daemon.bat.lnk (the .lnk part is hidden by Windows) and set the properties of the shortcut to "Start Minimized" (You can't otherwise start a bat file minimized and this looks better).

In config.xml change:
<DaemonToolsExe>c:\gbpvr\daemon.exe</DaemonToolsExe>
to:
<DaemonToolsExe>c:\gbpvr\daemon.bat.lnk</DaemonToolsExe>

the daemon.bat file for my setup (daemon mounts on X: ) is:

Code:

@echo off

if %1==-unmount goto unmount
if %1==-mount goto mount
@echo daemon.bat called with invalid parameter>>Log.txt
goto end

:unmount
"C:\UTIL\DAEMON Tools Lite\daemon.exe" -unmount 0
goto end

:mount
"C:\UTIL\DAEMON Tools Lite\daemon.exe" -mount 0, %3
rem Exit if this is a standard DVD and play with PVRX2 internal player
rem Otherwise play with PDVD
if exist x:\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO goto end
C:\Graf\PowerDVD\PowerDVD.exe X:

:end

The originally proposed setup with taskkill works too, but this method, although it leaves PVRX2 hopelessly trying to play BD or HD files in the background is cleaner and makes the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback look more like the DVD playback. After exit, you see a black screen, but right click or back/exit on the remote brings you directly back into PVRX2.

EDIT: BTW, New Daemon installs need to turn off the Secure Mode option in Daemon's config for the mount and unmount to work.

[LAGuy]

Hmm, cool idea. May have to tinker with it!

[whurlston]

For playing straight from disk, I simply added a custom task that will launch the Arcsoft player. I actually launch uMCEDVDplayer.exe which is the one that is launched from Media Center. Minimal OSD and pressing [Backspace] closes it and returns to GBPVR.

[dennit]

For playing straight from disk, I simply added a custom task that will launch the Arcsoft player. I actually launch uMCEDVDplayer.exe which is the one that is launched from Media Center. Minimal OSD and pressing [Backspace] closes it and returns to GBPVR.

That's how I started - with a custom task for PowerDVD. It plays fine for straight from disk, but I wanted to play some iso's from the hard drive without having to find/load the original disc. (Mostly just to quickly launch favorite discs to show to friends.) The custom task method also worked if I loaded the iso first via GB-PVR's built in daemon iso launcher for DVDs. I was just looking for something a bit cleaner than the 2-step process.

[frankmcg]

What is everyone else doing as a solution for this? Whurlston I saw your post on AVS alluding to a plugin you're working on?

At the moment I've set up a custom task to exit GB-PVR and run PDVD, then reload GB-PVR when PDVD is closed. But it's slightly clumsy and I'm wondering if a neater solution could be created using the MPC HC filters?

[BigMoose]

How do you close PDVD from the remote to get back to pvrx2? I managed to setup a custom task that plays PDVD in full screen and the remote does have limited functionality so I can play the disk, but I'm stuffed at the end for getting back to PDVD without plugging a mouse in!