What is the problem in making a direct audio/video stream copy from the MKV to an AVI? Because it's a direct stream copy, the end result (ie. video and audio) will be identical to the original, but now it's just inside an AVI instead of an MKV. Unless I'm mistaken, you can do this rather easily with VirtualDubMod, mencoder and other similar software.
Stop complaining and do that.
I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out things. I thought I made that clear. As I said, I can watch those movies anyway by setting up all the emulators and all the roms, so the format of your choice doesn't affect me.
That said, I can't be bothered to convert MKVs to AVIs and mirror them just because "I want to help the occasional visitor to watch the movies". If the official policy is to not give a fuck about newcomers, I'll just sit here, eat popcorn, and wait for more people like that marioguy. After all this is not my website.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
nineko wrote:
That said, I can't be bothered to convert MKVs to AVIs and mirror them
You've tediously uploaded many, MANY avis to the mirror archive yet you can't be bothered to let VirtualDub take 10 seconds to remux the MKVs? Please. Sounds to me like you just want your own way and you want everyone to cater to it.
These are my criteria for making an MKV. if any one of these are satisfied, I'll make the encode an MKV.
Length > ~16minutes
B-frames used in encode
Better audio codec used, as mp3 caused too much loss
Multiple audio tracks
Multiple video tracks
Chapters requested
I'm in the mood for some Matroska
Otherwise, I usually use traditional AVI to ensure compatibility with troublesome media players. In future I will move completely to MKV, but I haven't really set a date..
For marioguy:
Try making sure the "Matroska" checkbox is unchecked. Or... if it is unchecked, check it. This will switch between the built-in MKV demuxer and any CCCP has installed (or other codec packs)
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
I have to retract a bit what I have said. I can't play the newest snes lemmings video even with the all-powerful mplayer because the video apparently requires some DirectShow filter which mplayer does not support (not even with the official codec pack from mplayer's website).
I have to agree that this trend of using less and less generic formats and codecs is getting out of hand. When you can't play a video in Linux, I think it's time to set some ground rules to the encoding process.
Oops! Scratch all I said. I'm such an idiot.
The video has not, in fact, finished downloading. I didn't notice that, and instead tried to play it when it was incomplete. It seems mplayer got confused about the format because all the data is not there.
Now I'm embarrassed.
I, too, have to do a step backwards.
Apparently my problem (and I guess marioguy's too) isn't with MKVs per se, but rather with the codecs used inside them.
My Media Player Classic is perfectly able to play the MKV for the latest Lemmings TAS, without the need for any additional codecs or weird stuff. I have problems instead with other videos, like the MKV for ShinyDoofy's Lucky Dime Caper.
I guess it's a matter of the codecs used, and I'd like to hear more from our experienced encoders to know if this is possible. And I'd like to hear from marioguy if he can play the Lemmings run just like I do.
I know this isn't going to change the codecs chosen by the encoders, because if someone can't replay a movie the usual answer is "update your codecs/change your player/you fail at computers", but at least I would be happy to know what the problem is rather than thinking that it's all MKV's fault.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
marioguy wrote:
I don't want to download an entire new player just to run mkvs.
Does it make more sense to continue with this current path you're taking, or try a couple different free video players? Yes, change isn't fun sometimes, but they're free. If we were promoting some proprietary format that required payment of some kind, you'd have a valid complaint. But it would probably be more time efficient to just try and download something new.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
nineko wrote:
I know this isn't going to change the codecs chosen by the encoders, because if someone can't replay a movie the usual answer is "update your codecs/change your player/you fail at computers", but at least I would be happy to know what the problem is rather than thinking that it's all MKV's fault.
I checked both of those movies. Difference? One was encoded by ShinyDoofy (the problematic one) and one was encoded by Bisqwit (the one that works for you).
For Lucky Dime Caper, extensive use of b-frames is used to the point that it seems to be almost 80% b-frames in certain sections. This is incorrect usage of b-frames. I don't care how much space it saves, using more than 2-3 in a row is going to cause problems for many people. It's giving me full cpu usage on a core, for heaven's sake. I don't know how many more of ShinyDoofy's encodes are like this, but I can imagine it'll be a decent amount.
Lemmings instead uses decimate, which is incompatible with using b-frames. As such, the problems do not exist.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
For Lucky Dime Caper, extensive use of b-frames is used to the point that it seems to be almost 80% b-frames in certain sections. This is incorrect usage of b-frames. I don't care how much space it saves, using more than 2-3 in a row is going to cause problems for many people. It's giving me full cpu usage on a core, for heaven's sake. I don't know how many more of ShinyDoofy's encodes are like this, but I can imagine it'll be a decent amount.
I can't say how much cpu power it takes (not at home atm), but here's a little grepping to give you a list of potentially hungry encodes:
Allowing more b-frames in a row does not increase CPU usage. B-frames usage increases CPU usage, and b_pyramid increases CPU usage further, but allowing more b-frames in a row does not.
All this talk about encodes with b-frames being CPU hungry sounds like decoding issues to me. The Lucky Dime Caper encode takes 12% CPU in full screen on my 2 years old computer with MPC + ffdshow.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
ShinyDoofy wrote:
Raiscan wrote:
For Lucky Dime Caper, extensive use of b-frames is used to the point that it seems to be almost 80% b-frames in certain sections. This is incorrect usage of b-frames. I don't care how much space it saves, using more than 2-3 in a row is going to cause problems for many people. It's giving me full cpu usage on a core, for heaven's sake. I don't know how many more of ShinyDoofy's encodes are like this, but I can imagine it'll be a decent amount.
I can't say how much cpu power it takes (not at home atm), but here's a little grepping to give you a list of potentially hungry encodes:
what about reference frames in those? excessive b-frames on it's own probably won't cause the problem, but it will if combined with excessive reference frames.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
For Lucky Dime Caper, extensive use of b-frames is used to the point that it seems to be almost 80% b-frames in certain sections. This is incorrect usage of b-frames. I don't care how much space it saves, using more than 2-3 in a row is going to cause problems for many people. It's giving me full cpu usage on a core, for heaven's sake. I don't know how many more of ShinyDoofy's encodes are like this, but I can imagine it'll be a decent amount.
I can't say how much cpu power it takes (not at home atm), but here's a little grepping to give you a list of potentially hungry encodes:
what about reference frames in those? excessive b-frames on it's own probably won't cause the problem, but it will if combined with excessive reference frames.
No allowed number of reference frames is excessive in video games.
I don't think it's a problem of b-frames or cpu load, the problem is that those movies won't play at all for me. Media Player Classic just plain dies after the logo, so it's probably something with the codecs used.
Maybe I'm just being a noob here, but that Lucky Dime Caper video appears to use a codec called "AVC1" and not h264, maybe it's because of that?
To be fair, b-frames can be used with AVI, but stable output is not guaranteed.
Although what I suppose marioguy actually wants to say is that we should offer encodes in two flavors: highly compressed H.264/Vorbis/MKV and hardware device-compatible… uhh… XviD/MP3/AVI (I mean, if we were to offer more-compatible versions of a video, why not alleviate other problems people have asked about before)? Or something. There's no way to please both parties with a single option.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'd just like to say:
Everything is now switching over more and more to H264 + MP4/MKV. If you can't cope with this, then you need to get on with the times. because H264 SHOULD NOT be embedded into avi containers. Avi containers simply were not built for this purpose! It's simply too old!
And as mentioned before, ffdshow + Haali = play on any dshow based media players (including WMP).
You will all be doing yourselves a favor by getting "MKV compatible." Simply because it's the future, and not just on this site.
Don't blame the format; blame the players!
As noted in the "recent encodings and VLC" thread, there isn't always a player available that can handle recent encodings. Is it reasonable to expect all of our Mac users to upgrade their operating systems just so they can use a newer version of VLC?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
We are having enough problems getting people to do encoding work as is. Two encodes per movie? Who is going to do this extra work?
Jeez. Be thankful for what we get. There is also always the option of watching on an emulator.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
As noted in the "recent encodings and VLC" thread, there isn't always a player available that can handle recent encodings. Is it reasonable to expect all of our Mac users to upgrade their operating systems just so they can use a newer version of VLC?
Well, we expect them to be able to decode H.264 video. What exactly would they use for that?
CCFreak2k: the older version of VLC's been entirely adequate up until the last month or so. And in fact it continues to more or less work for the latest publications; it just gets very ugly from time to time. Depending on the movie, this may make a significant portion unwatchable.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Try making sure the "Matroska" checkbox is unchecked. Or... if it is unchecked, check it. This will switch between the built-in MKV demuxer and any CCCP has installed (or other codec packs)
