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Star Wars OT & 1997 Special Edition - Various Projects Info (Released) — Page 57

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Harmy said:

Well, yeah, that's the thing though, I for one am trying to fit it on a disc, so, the bitrate and the size aren't really the variable quantity here, it's the resulting video quality, because ideally, the final mkv file will be 4.37 GB (or maybe 2.18 to fit 2 films on a DVD5 or 2.6 to fit 3 films on one DVD9 but the file size should always be fixed) and if the resolution is higher, you'll get more compression artefacts at the same file size.

But I totally see your point, it's just that I don't take x264 mkv as a way to not need discs, it's a way to have better quality on the disc of the same size.

Don't take this bad but I think most people who watch x264 mkv files stream them from their computer or media tank and store them on a big ass hard drive or even a hard drive stack.... burning mkv to disc just isn't that common...at least from what I've seen...

Try looking at the multitude of mkv releases of movies on usenet, and while they are encodes of BD the releases are not concerned about final output size as far as trying to fit to a dvd9. UNLESS you are talking about AVCHD releases. AVCHD are meant to fit to a DVD9.

 

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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Yeah, the loss in detail is very minimal, nowhere near as bad as the 2004 DVDs.  I still think the tweaks look better than the untouched version.

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I like the tweaked shots way better and personally I don't see any difference worth mentioning in those background details. And I think that the subtitles do need a little blur but as English is not my first language, so I'm used to watching films with all kinds of subs, I'm not really bothered about that too much.

Btw. are you going to do the MKV with the full batch of audios? It is incredibly easy to remux audio in an MKV using this freeware tool, so you could just release it with one audiomix and then make the other mixes available separately, so that everyone can mux in the mixes that they want. Because 4 or 5 audiomixes are going to increase the file size of the MKV quite considerably.

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I have not decided yet on the MKV file, no one has told me how to encode yet so for right now looks like only DVD's.

I think I remember from the PM from ChainsawAsh a while back he recommended Handbrake, but not sure.

Here is an update on the Jedi audio, it is almost finished, damn I can't wait, I am SOOOO sick of doing this audio it is not even funny.

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vbangle said:

Harmy said:

Well, yeah, that's the thing though, I for one am trying to fit it on a disc, so, the bitrate and the size aren't really the variable quantity here, it's the resulting video quality, because ideally, the final mkv file will be 4.37 GB (or maybe 2.18 to fit 2 films on a DVD5 or 2.6 to fit 3 films on one DVD9 but the file size should always be fixed) and if the resolution is higher, you'll get more compression artefacts at the same file size.

But I totally see your point, it's just that I don't take x264 mkv as a way to not need discs, it's a way to have better quality on the disc of the same size.

Don't take this bad but I think most people who watch x264 mkv files stream them from their computer or media tank and store them on a big ass hard drive or even a hard drive stack.... burning mkv to disc just isn't that common...at least from what I've seen...

Try looking at the multitude of mkv releases of movies on usenet, and while they are encodes of BD the releases are not concerned about final output size as far as trying to fit to a dvd9. UNLESS you are talking about AVCHD releases. AVCHD are meant to fit to a DVD9.

 

Yeah, I personally play my mkv files on my WDTV media player from my hard drive. But whichever d_j decides to do, mkv or not, the DVD ISO will be played through my media player just like his previous GOUT release, so either way I'm good - I don't bother putting anything to disc anymore. 8)

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As for DVD vs. MKV, I like both.   I can take DVDs with me to friend's and family's houses, or let them borrow them, and share the love.   But for my own house, MKVs don't have to be burdened by size limitations which means my HTPC can send better data (higher res, higher bitrates, etc) to my TV and stereo.

I suspect that I'll end up with V3 in both formats, if both formats are created.

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So NO ONE here knows how to encode a lossless avi using x264 LOL?

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Definitely prefer the tweaked version of SW. Just my $0.02.

Every 27th customer will get a ball-peen hammer, free!

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I thought the whole point of making an MKV version was to be able to do it at the best possible quality without being forced into disc space requirements.  It really bugs me when I see people upload 1080p MKVs ... that are 4.3 GB.  They invariably look like shit, but hey, it can fit on a DVD-5, right?

I know it's not exactly the same thing with this (being that this won't be HD), but it would sadden me to think that the MKV's video quality was compromised just because some people burn their MKVs to DVD.

In fact, that seems especially pointless to me in this case.  If you're doing that, why not just download the DVD?!

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DJ, I don't know about a lossless AVI.  I always use HandBrake myself, but I don't think I've ever encoded an MKV from a lossless codec before.

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Oh, sorry vbangle you must have posted while I was typing my previous post, so I didn't notice yours.

Yeah, I totally get it and I wouldn't really mind whatever size they'd be, it's just that I like to put films I care about on disc because I like to be able to put them in nice boxes and stuff, otherwise I also have the majority of my MKVs on my HDD. But I don't know about usenet, but the majority of 720p releases I see on like rapidshare and torrent are usually either 2.18GB, 4.3GB, 6.5GB or 7.9GB to fit on DVDs, I guess it's kind of an established standard more than anything else.

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DJ,

I don't really know a lot about converting file formats and video stuff, but google sent me to this link: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/325012-Tool-or-command-line-to-batch-remux-x264-acc-mp4-in-flv   Gargalash's first post explains a workflow he uses to go from AVI to x264.  That's the best I can do on short notice.  I'll be glad to keep looking if you like.

Though, if I were to take a stab at something like this, I'd probably use ffmpeg and force myself to learn the command line arguments.  From what I understand, ffmpeg is a video/audio alchemist's dream.

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ChainsawAsh said:

In fact, that seems especially pointless to me in this case.  If you're doing that, why not just download the DVD?!

Because, thanks to the better codec, it will have less compression artefacts at the same size. But like I said, I don't mind what size they'd be.

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dark_jedi said:

So NO ONE here knows how to encode a lossless avi using x264 LOL?

You write an Avisynth script pointing to the AVI:

Avisource("whatever.avi")

and feed that to a GUI.  I would recommend something like ASX or XviD4PSP to start off.  They are both fairly straight forward and have features for resizing and cropping.  Personally, I perform my own calculations for resizing and cropping and add them to the Avisynth script.

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dark_jedi said:

So NO ONE here knows how to encode a lossless avi using x264 LOL?

I've PM'ed Adywan, I bet you he knows exactly how to do it. Maybe if he can, he'll come in here and point you in the right direction....

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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Hopefully he does, but in the meantime I am taking a break from the Jedi audio track and killing me some Necromorphs! Dead Space 2 ROCKS!!!!!

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to go from lossless AVI to x264, try meGUI.  Its pretty straightforward.  I recently did this for a 1080p fanedit I created.

When setting up meGUI, I think you have to place the x264.exe in the same directory (it should tell you this during install).  After that, just use the avisynth script creator tool in the menu to open the AVI and load it into meGUI.  You can then adjust the settings to whatever you want (it runs off of an avisynth script in the background).  A pretty handy interface for using avisynth and x264.

ThrowgnCpr’s edits on Fanedit.org

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 (Edited)

Dark_Jedi, you can use megui to encode a great mkv. You can download it here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/

That is the offline package so no need to install, just run it.

Once you run it make sure you are connected to the internet because it will look for updates. You will need these as it has a lot of presets updated all the time. It has a bitrate calculator, avs scriptcreator and everything you'll need and is very user friendly. I would use the script creator even if you are familiar with avs scripts. You can adjust the aspect ratio, scaling and everything in there.

There are many presets included. It all depends on what you want. I'm not sure if you can output an anamorphic mkv because there are a lot of players that don't recognise the anamorphic flag so would diplay it at the incorrect ratio. Your best bet would be to resize the video horizontally so you can keep the original vertical resolution. In the filters tab of the script creator change the resize filter to Lanczos4 as this is the best one.  I've only ever encoded non anamorphic video to mkv with this program so its best to try out different options. I would also crop the matte bars off the video as this will reduce the file size also.

once you have created your script then you need to choose your encoder settings. In the drop down box you will see lots of presets. I usually use the bluray preset then change the bitrate to the desired setting in the config box. automated 3 pass encoding will give you the best results but will take a lot of time depending on your hardware. Once you have your encoder settings sorted you need to change the "file format" settings to MKV (or MP4 whichever you prefer) then just click on "Enqueue" and this will queue your render. Now you are ready to encode. Click on the "queue" tab and you will see all 3 passes queued up. Now just click start and your done.

Once your video is encoded you need to add your audio track. For this you will need Mkvtoolnix. Only use v3.2.0 because later versions are causing problems with media players, but this version works the best. It's best to get the gui for this program MKVMERGE GUI. It may be included with the download but i can't remember.

Just load your video into it first then your audio and just output your muxed video, it's that simple. You can change the video properties if you want but most players will ignore most of them anyway in an mkv package.

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+1 for the horizontal resize.  Most players wont recognize the anamorphic flag, so you're best to resize it to ~853x480.  I also go with the bluray preset and adjust the bitrate.

3 passes will take some time if you have some older hardware.  If time is an issue, it should still look pretty damn good at 2 passes.

ThrowgnCpr’s edits on Fanedit.org

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OK I will definitely check into MeGUI, but I have 1 MAJOR question, does anyone know if it will have a conflict with BD-RB? because this software(BD-RB) cannot have any issues after installing MeGUI, plus I hope it works on Win7 Pro 64bit.

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adywan said:

I'm not sure if you can output an anamorphic mkv because there are a lot of players that don't recognise the anamorphic flag so would diplay it at the incorrect ratio.

For the record, my player can read the anamorphic flag correctly.  I don't know how common this is, though, so I'd probably follow Ady's advice.

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yeah, don't know about BD-RB, but I'm also using meGUI on win7 64bit with no problems

DJ, another handy tool for MKV creation is mkvMerge.  It comes with the mkvtoolnix pack.  Its nice for muxing audio files into the mkv (like adding all the audio tracks you are working on).

ThrowgnCpr’s edits on Fanedit.org

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I'm suprised not more people are on board the XBMC boat. I'm running an HTPC with 2TB and xbmc. Haven't touched a dvd in over a year. Anyhow I'd love a good quality x264.

Handbrake will apparently take uncompressed AVI without problems.

 

See here:

https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=18112&start=0

 

Good luck!

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ThrowgnCpr said:

yeah, don't know about BD-RB, but I'm also using meGUI on win7 64bit with no problems

DJ, another handy tool for MKV creation is mkvMerge.  It comes with the mkvtoolnix pack.  Its nice for muxing audio files into the mkv (like adding all the audio tracks you are working on).

mkvtoonix is fantastic - that's what I used to add all the PCM tracks I had to the MKVs I made of your V1 set, DJ.