Installed MMC now cannot play my ISO files

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Darren Blake

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Installed MMC now cannot play my ISO files

#1

Post by Darren Blake » Mon Jul 04, 2016 9:05 pm

New MMC user here.

I have a large library of ISO rips which until now I have been mounting and playing using Virtual Clone Drive and Mikinho's Media Centre Mount Image. This worked when I had all the ISO files in a single folder and also still worked after I used File2Folder to put each ISO in a seperate folder (with the same name), but prior to installing MMC.

Now, however, I have DVD cover artwork and metedata but I cannot play the ISO files. :( When I click on the film icon in the library I get the following error messages:

CANNOT PLAY VIDEO
Windows Media Centre cannot find the specified file. Be sure the path is typed correctly
(and so on).

Shortly after I get:
INVALID APPLICATION
Unable to launch "MountImage"

With the option to disable it.

Finally, if I dismiss this error, I get:
INVALID APPLICATION
Unable to launch "Ceton Otay"

With the option to disable it.

At first I thought that it might be the fact that there was now more than just a single ISO file in each folder, so MountImage did was trying to mount the wrong file. I deleted all but the ISO file from one of the movie folders and tried to play it, but no joy.

Then I tried to mount the image by right clicking on it in file explorer and selecting "Mount (Virtual Clonedrive)" from the context menu. This worked. I was then able to go into WMC and play the movie by going to "Play DVD".

...so either MMC cannot handle ISO files, or something in MMC and something in Mountimage or Virtual Clonerive don't play well together.

Anyone know of a fix?

Darren Blake

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#2

Post by Darren Blake » Tue Jul 05, 2016 8:38 pm

So, tonight I uninstalled MMC leaving the JPGs and metadata in place. Still no joy. So I put the folder structure back to "flat" with all my ISOs under a single folder and deleted the other stuff and it all started working again. I re-installed MMC but switched off the metadata download, and it still works.

So, it seems to be something in the MMC folder structure and/or metadata that breaks Mountimage - which is a bit of a pain because today I also learned that Mountimage and YAMMM are by the same guy. Seems odd that they don't work together...

I am now going to gradually re-instate the metadata options over the next few days to see exactly which one screws things up...

Darren Blake

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#3

Post by Darren Blake » Wed Jul 06, 2016 7:55 am

I get the feeling I am talking to myself but anyway.... :)

Turns out the answer to this is to not use ISO files and Mountimage at all. I am now in the process of batch-extracting all my ISO's into subfolders containing VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS, which WMC interprets as a normal DVD without any additional jiggery-pokery. It will take a while to extract nearly 150 ISO files, but this looks like the solution. Luckily WinRAR makes the extraction process pretty much single-click.

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mcewinter

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#4

Post by mcewinter » Wed Jul 06, 2016 1:08 pm

I have no problem playing ISO files. You probably just need to rebuild your libraries after you change the folder structure, it sounds like maybe you didn't do that and MC couldn't actually find the files.

Darren Blake

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#5

Post by Darren Blake » Wed Jul 06, 2016 8:06 pm

mcewinter wrote:I have no problem playing ISO files. You probably just need to rebuild your libraries after you change the folder structure, it sounds like maybe you didn't do that and MC couldn't actually find the files.
I did it with and without rebuilding the libraries. If I simply moved the ISOs into subfolders then WMC could still play them fine (once it had re-scanned the folder). It was only after MMC / Yammm had done its thing and added the dvdid.xml and artwork that things went screwy. I did delete the folder from WMC and then re-attach it which forced WMC to rebuild the index, but the end result was still the same. After deleting the extra files, the ISOs would play again just fine.

After doing a LOT of trials last night I found that maybe 1 in 8 or 1 in 10 attempts to play an ISO would succeed, but mounting the disc image took a lot longer than usual and if you didn't eject it afterwards then it was not possible to mount another (Mountimage usually automatically unmounts the old image first).


Can I ask which software you use to mount your ISO images?


I should probably point out that I am specifically talking about the 7MC Movies library here. It did occur to me that ISO files might work from within the video library, but I didn't bother to try it out.

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mcewinter

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#6

Post by mcewinter » Wed Jul 06, 2016 9:13 pm

I used the native library for a long time without issue. I moved to MyMovies interface along the way just because it's a much faster interface but always used MyMovies for a backend, never YAMM so I can't be certain if that's the culprit or not. I don't see how metadata would muck things up.

What are you using as a virtual ROM drive?

Mount image and Virtual Clone Drive have been staples in my setup and very reliable.

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#7

Post by Darren Blake » Thu Jul 07, 2016 7:49 am

I use Mountimage and Virtual Clone Drive too. Both worked flawlessley until I started using My Media Centre / Yammm to grab metadata.

I only installed MMC because the one thing I always missed on WMC was the ability to schedule recordings remotely, and MMC gives me that capability. The metadata / artwork for my movies library is more of a "nice to have", really.

Still pressing on with extracting my ISO's...! :)

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mcewinter

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#8

Post by mcewinter » Thu Jul 07, 2016 11:46 am

MMC is great app. You can use other software to gather metadata and toggle YAMM from scanning your collection.

Darren Blake

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#9

Post by Darren Blake » Mon Jul 11, 2016 8:41 am

I just spent days extracting all my ISO files to VideoTS. These launch fine from WMC and also my bedroom media player (Mede8er 600) and I have folder art and metadata working on both. I can also see my libraries on my phone and tablet.

However...

Although the files play fine from WMC on my PC, they will not play when I launch from my phone or tablet. I get the "Playback will commence" message on the device but then I get a "Windows cannot play the file" error on the actual WMC machine. Playback of recorded TV works fine when launched from either device.

I guess this is something to do with VideoTS not being an "officially supported" movie format for WMC? Very annoying. :( At least the remote function and artwork / metedata all work now, though.

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