Help wanted: New guy needs some input for my own project - please - anyone can help — Page 3

TK421138 said:

Russ, take it however you will my friend. *chuckles* Yes I am now one of us which is pretty exciting because I've never been an "us" before. Back on the subject though, in Nero Burning ROM, should I burn a regular DVD or an AVCHD? what is the difference between the two? I would like it to play on standard DVD players (i.e. the old school ones my parent's still have) as well as the newer ones like I own (Blu-Ray etc).

 

Also, I was wondering what the quality of the DJ Trilogy is, 720? I know it upscales on Blu-Ray players but what is the actual quality? I can't begin to tell just by looking at the bitrate like you guys.

....and what does an mkv file do that an mp4, avi, wmv etc will not do??

Again, my players play them but I do not know what they are or why people use them so often now.

Great answer by the way. Thanks.

Mkv, mp4 and avi are all containers. They are like envelopes if you will and inside these envelopes are Video files, sound files, subtitles files... AVIs were all the rage in the past for distributing pirated films, and you still find them in this format on torrent sites, but I've heard they are notoriously bad with multiplesoundtracks, soft subtitles.... Plus a lot of avi's use the xvid codec which is not as efficient as .264 IMO. So now there are really two competing containers: mp4 and mkv. Mp4 is used a lot in apple products - so the picture is usually always .264 with AAC soundtracks. Compatibility with media players is usually high. MKV has become the container of choice for recent torrents just because it's so flexible. You can throw whatever video codec and whatever audio codec and whatever subtitle codec and it'll stick. Of course this creates compatibility headaches for media players, but as long as you're using a .264 codec for the video and something common for the audio like ac-3 or mp3 (godforbid), it'll usually be ok.

Once again, Thanks.

You even answered my next two or three questions!!!

I am "Old School" DVD and AVI but stopped using discs years ago. It is a fluke that I have Media Players that play everything I throw at them and now I know what it actually is that I am throwing at them.

In this respect, I am as much a "New Guy" as TK421138 was a few short days ago with things that we take for granted.

You're right,compression does play a huge part - both are lossy compression. The xvid codec used for the majority of AVI's are usually between 700 and 1000 megabytes a movie (at least the ones from torrent sites anyway) and the MPEG 2 compression used for DVD's can be one hour, 90minutes or even 2 hours per layer (4.7 gigabytes). Most commercial DVD's never use the 2 hour/layer compression scheme as it starts to become very blocky. So as you can see, a 2 hour movie uses a LOT more space on DVDs (especially with the 8 gig dual layer discs that are ubiquitous nowadays) so the quality is much higher than some AVI file.

On the apple tv, you can mux a 5.1 AC3 "passthrough" in the mp4 file. While the apple tv won't be able to decode it, it can output it through the optical audio output to be decoded by the stereo receiver.

Of course this is the mac m4v file which is pretty much an MP4 file except for the chapters and the 5.1 passthrough option.

TK421138 said:

What the heck is this "mux" talk?

Please correct my sledgehammer approach to this answer in my use of the terms demux and remux.

A DVD or AVCHD as discussed earlier is a collection of video, audio and subtitles in an agreed and approved format.

Either can be demuxed (split) into their component parts of video, audio and subtitles.

You can then remux (combine) the individual parts into a new DVD or AVCHD.

The fun part here is this. I have said before about the GOUT being a standard and many projects here follow that same standard. Therefore, the video and audio for ANY GOUT synced project can be split (demuxed) and re-combined (remuxed) with ANY other GOUT synced video or audio.

I refer you back to here   http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/A-summary-of-GOUT-synced-Video-Audio-and-Subtitle-sources-WORK-IN-PROGRESS/post/583569/#TopicPost583569

If you fancy the audio from the DJ V3 with the Harmy Despecialized, guess what, you can do it. You want the opposite, you can do it.

If you fancy the latest hairy hen 70mm re-creation with your retail GOUT DVD's, you can do it.

If you had the Japanese GOUT DVD's, you could take the audio from there and add it to both the DJ V3 and the Harmy Despecialized.

If the sources are GOUT synced, the choice is yours.

OK, the above was not explaining what mux means but does give a practical example of what can be done. A big plus is that all the software is free!!!!

If you do say that you have the Japanese GOUT, you will be the new best friend of a few around here.........

EDIT. If there are any other permutations with any other formats that can be done, please let me know.

Yes, Harmy's despecialized (especially the new 2.0 version of SW scheduled to release in the next week or two) is an absolute must in my opinion.  It is based from the official Blu-ray and then re-color-timed to more closely match the theatrical version, so the overall picture will be significantly better than DJ's.  For the "despecialized" shots he used a variety of sources, including the GOUT and then cut them together as seamlessly as I think is possible. The result is very impressive, and this will be the version that I will probably watch most often. 

And not to take anything away from DJ, as they have done a fantastic job of improving the GOUT.  Also keep in mind that DJ is releasing a new blu-ray version this year which will have improved color-timing/picture/audio compared to V3.

Other than those two, negative 1's 35mm preservation is definitely one to watch for this year, so keep your eye on that thread as well.

Harmy's SW 2.0 is WAY better than 1.0, and it's not even close.  But, yeah it might be a while before he finishes Empire and Jedi, so you might want to just give 1.0 a try on those two.  He is actually finished with Star Wars 2.0 and it is rendering as I type this, so we are only days away a release.

TK421138 said:

On a side note, having access to the Story Of albums is genius!

I can't wait!

You do so have so much to learn.

You think that is genius? 

Genius is.....  http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/RETURN-OF-THE-JEDI-story-LP-HELP-NEEDED/post/586837/#TopicPost586837

..... And the versions for the first two films done as DVD's by MoveAlong.

Once you do your homework, see what has been done around here and join in other threads, you will realise that there are things out there that you do not know about yet but once you do, you can not live without them.

Before you know it, your DVD shelf will be full to bursting point!!

YES. Although there is much duplication between it and the Rowman supplement discs.