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benareeno
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1614
Location: ottawa, canada
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| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:03 pm Post subject: I think HTPC is finally here.... |
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I have configure and built many htpc's over the years...and the usual result is somewhat ok at best. Being somewhat of a perfectionist (at least with respect to jerky playback), I would eventually give up and move on.
My last HTPC build is by far the cheapest and by far the best HTPC I've built.
The kicker...I think mkv's are the bee's knee's. After some tweaking of Media Player Classic, I can play all mkv's and they are perfectly smooth. No dropped frames and no jitter etc...I am using both the built in decoder in MPC and the PowerDVD decoder. Sometimes with dxva and somtimes without plus reclock and ffdshow audio decoder. Smooth goodness! Add in the benefits of resolution tweaks and gamma and it's an ideal solution for me.
Now...I will soon try an actual Blu-Ray disc...and I'm sure there will be a hiccup or two. But if it also plays smooth, then I'm in business! And if not, I'll just make it into an mkv which I know will work properly!
For resolution I have tried 1080i 72/96 which is nice...but I still think my pref is for 1280x720p at 47.952Hz. Slight flicker (which I actually like) which you get used to quickly and only appears on the brightest scenes. Plus, I find the 720p mkv's actually look cleaner. Now I will use powerstip to come up with a custom res that doesn't paint the black bars so I can run the projector as efficiently as possible.
Just my 2 cents on the current state of htpc.
Ben
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:16 am Post subject: |
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mkv files are great but I can't seem to get the forced subs to work on them. Have you had any sucess?
Chris.
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benareeno
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1614
Location: ottawa, canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:20 am Post subject: |
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what do you mean...subtitles? I can't think of a situation where I'd need 'em.
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:38 am Post subject: |
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Forced subs are subtitles that come up automatically when someone is not speaking english in an english movie. There are some movies where these are required.
Chris.
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:47 am Post subject: |
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| nuttall_chris wrote: | mkv files are great but I can't seem to get the forced subs to work on them. Have you had any sucess?
Chris. |
Most are burned in.
But for subs, they need conversion to .srt format - it's quite involved. It's easiest to download the .srt file - they are on the web.
Then you mux in the .srt file with mkvmerge. You need the latest version of DirectVobSub installed for playback.
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:06 am Post subject: |
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| Mark_A_W wrote: | | nuttall_chris wrote: | mkv files are great but I can't seem to get the forced subs to work on them. Have you had any sucess?
Chris. |
Most are burned in.
But for subs, they need conversion to .srt format - it's quite involved. It's easiest to download the .srt file - they are on the web.
Then you mux in the .srt file with mkvmerge. You need the latest version of DirectVobSub installed for playback. |
I've had no problems making the mkv file with the subs I just can't get them to play back. When using media player classic how do you toggle subs on/off?
Chris.
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benareeno
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1614
Location: ottawa, canada
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:17 am Post subject: |
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are there subs in Indiana Jones? The latest one?
Mark,
is it a huge process to re-encode Blu-Rays to 720p and make them 4gig? I know most will scoff at the mere suggestion, but I find the video looks really good from some of the 720p mkv's I have. There seems to be less noise than some of the 1080p mkv's...but this could be wrong.
I'd like to take one of my Blu-Ray discs and run a bunch of tests...1080p vs compressed 720p. Lossless audio vs high bitrate DTS core...etc.
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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I think it takes a couple of days to reencode.
It's against my religion anyway. Just because your current display doesn't reveal the difference, doesn't mean the next display won't.
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2009 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Mark_A_W wrote: | I think it takes a couple of days to reencode.
It's against my religion anyway. Just because your current display doesn't reveal the difference, doesn't mean the next display won't. |
I 100% agree with Mark, I don't want to loose any quality. Also hard drive space is cheap and re-encoding takes way to long.
I still can't get my forced subs to work properly???? I either have complete sub titles or no subtitles???? Also still can't figure out how to toggle on/off subtitles in MPC.
Chris.
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yonexsp
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 311
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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| nuttall_chris wrote: | | Mark_A_W wrote: | I think it takes a couple of days to reencode.
It's against my religion anyway. Just because your current display doesn't reveal the difference, doesn't mean the next display won't. |
I 100% agree with Mark, I don't want to loose any quality. Also hard drive space is cheap and re-encoding takes way to long.
I still can't get my forced subs to work properly???? I either have complete sub titles or no subtitles???? Also still can't figure out how to toggle on/off subtitles in MPC.
Chris. |
I challange both of you o try BD Rebuilder and encode for DVD9 not DVD5, as DVD5 will lose quality. DVD9, on my XG at 110" shows no loss of picture detail, though you will lose HD Audio and get a 640k DD file instead.
I have re-encoded a couple of movies (Dark Knight was one 2.5hrs, movie only no menus) into DVD9 and the results are stunnning, even the engineers at ATI could find little to no difference in the image. Try it, it'll astound you.
1 caveat, on a quad-core PC expect TDK to take about 18hrs to re-encode. Check Doom9 for a list of Standalone players that will playback the discs.
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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I don't want to loose HD audio and I have almost 200 bluray movies on my server. It would take 5 months to convert my current collection it I was converting 24x7. I think it would be cheaper to just buy more hard drive space than it would be to run my quad core computer hard for 5 months.
Chris.
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:35 am Post subject: |
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| nuttall_chris wrote: | | Mark_A_W wrote: | I think it takes a couple of days to reencode.
It's against my religion anyway. Just because your current display doesn't reveal the difference, doesn't mean the next display won't. |
I 100% agree with Mark, I don't want to loose any quality. Also hard drive space is cheap and re-encoding takes way to long.
I still can't get my forced subs to work properly???? I either have complete sub titles or no subtitles???? Also still can't figure out how to toggle on/off subtitles in MPC.
Chris. |
I've been thinking about forced subtitles - it hasn't been an issue for me.
Can you list a few movies where you know they are meant to be there?
All I can think of is to demux all the English subtitles and OCR (suprip? supread?) the smallest file to text (fun fun fun) and then check if that is what you want, then mux it in.
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benareeno
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1614
Location: ottawa, canada
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:58 am Post subject: |
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I think most would have trouble seeing the difference with the dvd5 720p mkv's that I've downloaded...they look great.
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stgdz
Joined: 07 Dec 2008
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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I used to use Autogk for compressing my DVD's into xvid files. This made me loose the menu's and other extra's with DVD's. I am currenlty ripping the DVD's as IFO's and I would like to compress them but I also want to keep the menus and extras.
Is there anautomated program that allows compressed dvd's with menus? i really don't want to drop in quality but I understand there are better codecs then mpeg2.
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benareeno
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1614
Location: ottawa, canada
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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I would check over at doom9...I'll bet re-encoding to mpeg4 would shrink them and keep the quality...but I really don't know.
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Mark_A_W wrote: | | nuttall_chris wrote: | | Mark_A_W wrote: | I think it takes a couple of days to reencode.
It's against my religion anyway. Just because your current display doesn't reveal the difference, doesn't mean the next display won't. |
I 100% agree with Mark, I don't want to loose any quality. Also hard drive space is cheap and re-encoding takes way to long.
I still can't get my forced subs to work properly???? I either have complete sub titles or no subtitles???? Also still can't figure out how to toggle on/off subtitles in MPC.
Chris. |
I've been thinking about forced subtitles - it hasn't been an issue for me.
Can you list a few movies where you know they are meant to be there?
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Here is a list that someone else compiled of a few movies that contain forced subs.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pPHEQXreaojFzWEoVbULwQA&hl=en
Chris.
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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| nuttall_chris wrote: | | Mark_A_W wrote: | | nuttall_chris wrote: | | Mark_A_W wrote: | I think it takes a couple of days to reencode.
It's against my religion anyway. Just because your current display doesn't reveal the difference, doesn't mean the next display won't. |
I 100% agree with Mark, I don't want to loose any quality. Also hard drive space is cheap and re-encoding takes way to long.
I still can't get my forced subs to work properly???? I either have complete sub titles or no subtitles???? Also still can't figure out how to toggle on/off subtitles in MPC.
Chris. |
I've been thinking about forced subtitles - it hasn't been an issue for me.
Can you list a few movies where you know they are meant to be there?
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Here is a list that someone else compiled of a few movies that contain forced subs.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pPHEQXreaojFzWEoVbULwQA&hl=en
Chris. |
Vantage Point is a good example of a movie with quite a few forced subs.
Chris.
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benareeno
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1614
Location: ottawa, canada
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| Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 5:22 am Post subject: |
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there's a thread over at abhdtv.net which is saying that the latest eac3to.exe will do forced subs...among other cool things.
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