Blu-ray

Media Center supports playback and ripping of Blu-ray.

Requirements

MC supports unencrypted Blu-Ray playback. To playback encrypted Blu-ray discs, which includes most commercially released discs, a 3rd-party Blu-Ray decrypter is required. AnyDVD HD is a good option.

Playback

Insert a disc and the program will offer to play it. If you have a ripped copy of the Blu-Ray disc, you can Import it and Media Center will play them.

Media Center supports title selection, chapters, audio stream selection, subtitle selection, and a variety of other playback options.

Ripping and collecting Meta Data including Coverart

Media Center is able to rip any unencrypted BD and will automatically look up cover art, descriptions, directors, actors, genres and other metadata using the Automatic Metadata Lookup system.

You can rip Blu-Ray using Action Window > Rip Disc inside the program or MC will prompt you if you insert a new BD in the drive after scanning the disc.

Once you press "Rip" - MC will give the the opportunity to change the Title as the one automatically read from BD may not be that user friendly, then - MC will commence copying the BD Folder Structure from the BD to your HDD - While the BD is being copied (it can take up to an hour as most discs are around 40GB), the "Get Movie & TV Info" feature will appear and allow you to search using the Title on line databases for Movie Info and Cover-art. If it doesn't find the "correct" movie, just modify this title in the search box. Once you have selected the best option press "Use This Data" and the MC Database will be populated.

If you have more than one BD Drive, you can rip multiple discs at the same time.

As a default, BDs will be imported with a Media Subtype set to "Movie". If you have a TV Series, or Music Video disc you will want to change this so that it appears in the correct view in MC. You may also want to use the Particles Feature to be able to see, play, and tag each Episode or Music Track as a separate entry in the data base.

See also: Blu-ray Ripping

Managing Multi-Part Discs

If your disc consists of multiple titles, such as alternative endings, TV episodes, or music videos, you can manage this within Media Center using Particles.

HD Audio

Media Center is capable decoding the full range of audio codecs used on commercial Blu-ray Discs itself, while preserving their full bitrate and audio bit depth. This includes HD audio codecs such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, which MC can read and decompress losslessly.

We recommend that you use Media Center to decode HD audio because this gives you access to the full power of MC's audio engine, including VideoClock, DSPs, and MC's powerful Volume system.

Please Note: Versions of MC prior to 20.0.100 did not include the LAV DTS decoder capable of decoding DTS-HD Master Audio. For older versions of MC, please see the Arcsoft DTS Decoder article.

You can check that TrueHD or DTS-HD is being decoded properly using Audio Path.

Bitstreaming

If you prefer Media Center also supports bitstreaming. You can enable bitstreaming via HDMI connection in:

• Tools > Options > Audio > Settings > Bitstreaming.
• Note: SPDIF connections cannot carry HD Audio formats.

Bitstreaming bypasses the entire Media Center audio engine, including things like the Volume controls, and the decoder on the far end of the HDMI cable is responsible for decoding the audio.

Menus

MC uses its own OSD to provide access the to the content on Blu-Ray discs such as:

• titles
• chapters
• audio, video, and subtitle stream selection

However, MC does not support the Java or BDMV menus included with many commercial discs, as there is no currently available open decoder required for this support. To watch your movies in the highest quality, you don't need them, though! To access the menu press the Up/Down arrow keys or right click on the playing video.

Forced Subtitles

MC will automatically display any subtitle track that is was marked as "forced" when the disk was authored. Forced subtitles are often used for bits of non-native language which audience isn't be expected to understand, in a movie that is otherwise in their native tongue (elven or alien speech, a little Spanish in an English language movie, etc). Unfortunately, many disks are authored with these subtitles in a separate track and in these cases the user will need to select the correct track (normally towards the bottom of the subtitle list). MC will remember this selection for the next time the BD is played.

3D BD

Most commercial 3D BD disks use a version of AVC encoding called "multiview video coding (MVC)". MC does not support MVC and all such 3D BD disks will play as 2D. For more information on how to use a 3rd party player for these disks refer to this thread on Interact.

More

• Refer to Audio Setup for information on configuring your sound output.
• Please see Matt's description of Blu-ray support in MC16. MC 16 and later can play Blu-ray discs or rips.
• Blu-ray support of encrypted discs requires AnyDVD HD or equivalent to read the disc.
• For older versions, please read these threads on Interact:
  • Blu-ray Dolby, DTS, TrueHD
  • Blu-ray -- just works?
  • Importing Blu-ray (BDMV) Folders

• Mojave on audio mixing for Blu-ray: "JRiver does anything AC3Filter does, but better. JRiver does everything in its 64-bit audio path and makes sure that the highest quality is maintained. I removed AC3Filter a long time ago."

• You can also Extract Audio from Video Files.