Nero Digital and Media Center
on 10.20.04, 01:54pm in home theater • comments (10)
I love Nero Digital - it’s an MP4 based video codec that comes as part of the superb Nero Ultra package. Basically, using Nero Recode, I can convert video into an extremely compressed format that has excellent quality.
On my Windows Media Center box though, I didn’t really want to have the entire Nero Ultra suite installed (and I couldn’t figure out how to get the Nero codec installed ’standalone’), so I ended up buying a copy (for $6.95) of the 3ivx Mp4 decoders, which work fine with the files that Nero Digital produce.
Since this is a DirectShow component, you can actually get content to show up in Media Center by adding the following value to your MCE registry:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp4\PerceivedType of type REG_SZ. Set this to “video”.
Sean McLeod (October 22, 2004 @ 8:32 am)
How does the quality/size compare to WMV9?
Kevin (October 22, 2004 @ 5:31 pm)
Have you tried xvid or divx ? You can get these codecs for free and can encode your movies with tools like autogk (maturing nicely) or just regualar GK.
Both a just based on mpeg4 and have the advnatage of being support by many new hardware players (now even the main stream manufactures are getting in on divx/xvid).
I use xvid for my movies - and you can encode full 5.1 sound and multiple audio streams (so you can have the file include both the directors voice over and the standard audio track).
The first thing I did was to encode all my childs dvds and put them out of reach of little fingers [Tyler will be getting interested in the small plastic disk any day now
]. The movies or on a server and available from my network dvd player (kiss).
Steve (October 22, 2004 @ 8:15 pm)
I’ve tried Divx - I thought Nero’s tools were easier - just point, click and go.
My GoVideo networked DVD player supports divx (supposedly), but I’ve never been able to get it to stream properly.
The Nero Digital codec is mpeg4 aswell.
shaun (May 8, 2005 @ 6:04 am)
Do you have any issues with low volume on 5.1 audio encoded with Nero Digital?
Also, my media center PC is connected to my home theater audio with optical s/pdif. The digital indicator lights up while playing DVD’s and other uncompressed 5.1 formats but not with the Nero MP4 files at all. I also tried to use Nero Showtime just to test audio. When S/PDIF is selected, the audio is non-existent and the video is slow motion in playback. Any experiency with this?
Randy (March 3, 2006 @ 2:01 am)
I really have liked nero for a long time But for some reason the Nero recoder is not working properly. So I hope some one can help me get it set up correctly.
Randy
Jim (March 8, 2006 @ 11:10 pm)
Are you using the Nero Digital AVC codec? The one that uses H.264? Ive heard great things about its quality vs file size. But it needs alot of processing power to play. I’m not sure an xbox could play it without dropping frames.
Steve (May 13, 2006 @ 1:46 pm)
Someone mentioned on here that Nero Digital has low audio while encoding audio 5.1. What I’m seeing (or hearing to be precise) is normal volume apart from dialogue. Music and SFX sounds are fine but speech is too quiet to hear and turning the volume up is bound to wake up next doors granny when a bomb goes off. Anyone found a way out? Nero showtime plays it perfectly but media center can’t. ?????
Steve (May 15, 2006 @ 2:07 am)
Noticed that Windows Media Player Classic plays the files spot on, but windows media player doesn’t. I’ve downloaded new codecs but still WMP does play the dialogue. WMP is getting it, with a swift boot up the jacksy, then all I have to do is get MCE to call Medai Player Classic when it runs it’s video files. Easy, right??
Brad (January 7, 2007 @ 11:44 pm)
This worked beautifully
Ondrej (January 11, 2007 @ 1:28 am)
Hi, it Nero Digital MP4s work fine for me in MCE, I tried both ways, installing 3ivx or just Nero Showtime. The only thing I did not get working is changing audio / subtitles in MCE. In Nero Recode, you can choose to recode your DVD into MP4 with alternate audio stream and also two subtitles. However non of these is working on MCE, but works fine when played using Showtime. Any clue? Plug-in for MCE?