MKV Movie Playback

[EmoXXXKid]

Hey guys! So I got my HTC Vive today and it's pretty rad. I'm a big movie person and heard good things about Virtual Desktop so I bought it to watch movies with. All my movies are 1080p MKV files (some being SBS 3D) and I'm getting an error message and won't launch any of my files. I read somewhere to just open the file in VLC and maximize the screen, but I get really bad audio sync issues with the video and I'm sure it's because it's running through a 3rd party player instead of direct through the Virtual Desktop app. Is there anyone that can recommend anything to help resolve this? Or maybe I just wasted my money and I should just go buy Cinevia. Thanks in advance!

[ggodin]

You have to play SBS movies with your regular video player (VLC, Windows Media Player, MPC-HC, etc.) the included player is for 360 videos only.

With the Vive, Virtual Desktop doesn't do any processing so the issue is most likely related to VLC. I would play them with Windows Media Player if I were you. What OS and GPU do you have?

[EmoXXXKid]

Originally posted by ggodin:

You have to play SBS movies with your regular video player (VLC, Windows Media Player, MPC-HC, etc.) the included player is for 360 videos only.

With the Vive, Virtual Desktop doesn't do any processing so the issue is most likely related to VLC. I would play them with Windows Media Player if I were you. What OS and GPU do you have?

The thing is on the store page, it says that it supports 3D videos with Side-By-Side. I see you're the developer so you might want to change your wording cause it's misleading that Virtual Desktop will actually play the 3D SBS videos.

I don't normally have any issues with VLC and the movies that I watch. It actually handles everything I throw at it a significant amount better than WMP.

As for your question, I run Windows 10 (x64) with SLI 980ti OC'd. As for my other hardware, I have a 5960k with the Rampage V Extreme x99 board and 32gb of ram. My system can handle far more than anything that this is throwing at it. So it's not a hardware issue.

I guess I had a misconception of the use of your application, which is extremely disappointing. Your video on the store page makes it sound like you can watch your videos perfectly, but unfortunately that's not the case. Like I said, I would reword a lot of information on your page and not make it so misleading to others like it has been to myself.

[ggodin]

What I meant is you play them through VLC or WMP then toggle the SBS option in Virtual Desktop (with F6 or F7) to see them in 3D in the headset. That's exactly what I show in the trailer; I play SBS videos from YouTube. I think this is the best approach as these players have a lot of features people like (subtitles, SVP, etc.) there's no point in re-implementing the same thing.

[EmoXXXKid]

What you meant isn't what you wrote in your description of the application and it's very misleading. With more consumers getting these devices, you want to make sure you're clear in what your application does because you'll get more and more people like myself. The thing is, since I have the HTC Vive, I have absolutely no need for an application like yours since SteamVR implements a virtual desktop already so I've essentially just wasted $14.99, but it is what it is.

As far as there's no point in re-implementing the same thing, there is complete reason to. It's always better to have a first party client handling things compared to a third party client. Essentially what you're doing is emulating the desktop. Video playback, which you advertise, would be far better handled if it was native within your application instead of being emulated across a virtual space. It's like streaming a movie compared to actually having the blu-ray or DVD. You lose a certain quality between the translation. VLC, since you bring it up, is an open source application and can therefore be implemented into your Virtual Desktop application and be improved upon greatly for the VR market. You have an opportunity here to make a great product, it's just if you want to do it or not.

But regardless, I'm just extremely disappointed in the application and the lack of effort to make an excellent application that has great potential. Especially since you're asking a little more of a premium price of $14.99 for an emulation application.

[ggodin]

You're the first who thinks this is misleading. In any case, feel free to refund the app if you don't think it's useful.

[EmoXXXKid]

Originally posted by ggodin:

You're the first who thinks this is misleading. In any case, feel free to refund the app if you don't think it's useful.

I'm trying to get a refund, but the application apparently didn't close when I "exited" the application in SteamVR and ran over night. I didn't realize this until I tried to submit a request to get a refund and I noticed that the playtime was at 19 hours. Steam is declining my request. Is there anyway that you can contact them as the developer and let them know of our discussion? I've tried making a note of the issue in the "notes" section of the request, but they disregard that and I can't find any other way of contacting Steam about this issue.

[chemicalvamp]

I frustrated with that too at first. Just click SBS half and go fullscreen with your media player

[AtomicWoodchuck]

Originally posted by ggodin:

You're the first who thinks this is misleading. In any case, feel free to refund the app if you don't think it's useful.

I found this misleading too, initially. That said, a bit of Googling sorted things, and now everything is working nicely, even in my "unsupported" OS (Windows 7)!!

Nice piece of software, devs