The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Oman7,

Perhaps I haven't come across a real 16x10 yet, then. It leaves a border top and bottom, and about 1/2" on each side. I know I have some 720p movies that fill the entire width of the screen, I just haven't found one to play yet. However it does it, it looks magnificent. One of my main gripes before, was that it played things in full screen that suffered in picture quality, with Jaggle problems but there was no way to reduce the size to fit the matrix of the screen. I can live with the loss of an inch of total width, because the picture quality is so good.

Russ

 

If your video isn't diplaying properly, then something is wrong with settings, or the aspect ratio. Downloaded content for instance has black bars removed. This can screw with some players, and their automatic abilities.

 

Oman7,

I just put in Tron, which is 720p. It plays in full screen width, with about a 1 3/8" black bar on the top and bottom. Whatever the reason may be, the picture quality and aspect ratio are perfect, with no fat heads or long drawn out faces, and it works perfect every time. I don't have to adjust a thing, it does it all automatically, and looks great! I'm more than pleased with the results. I can do the same thing with PotPlayer, but it's a struggle to get it set just right, and you have to change the settings back, to play 1080p.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I use MPCHC, because when I do have problems with aspect ratio, there's an overabundance of settings You can manually control exactly what the video does with the number pad

 

TMT3 or 5 will automatically display properly as most players will unless you specify that it uses the whole screen then all bets are off.

 

Yah, very few problems with TMT Older movies with what I believe is called letterbox, are the only problems.

 

Mr_Movies,

Traditionally it is, but the way it's done with PowerDVD 12 is by being scaled within the working matrix of the aspect ratio, which gives a slightly reduced size, but with a crystal clear picture with no anomalies or distortions to the content. Even text is crystal clear. The difference is very appealing to the eyes. Jackie's PBS concert is 1080i, which normally shows some jaggles and z's on just about every player I tried. You can turn on Anti-Aliasing, which works, but the picture loses a lot of depth of field, and looks fuzzy from a distant view. With PowerDVD 12, it has the same quality as 1080p, without the fuzziness, on a full 16x9 screen. The end product is what matters to me the most, and I haven't been disappointed yet. I can't wait to try 3D! Avatar's CGI graphics are the best I've seen yet, and have great dimensionality. The fight scenes have to be seen to be believed. The new GTX550 works perfectly, and is so much better at rendering the picture than the HD4670 ever was. It was a good card, but despite 128 less pipes with the GTX550, it has enough speed to overcome the difference. I'm thoroughly pleased with my choices.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Then it's a widescreen film (wider than 16:9) and will therefore display with the black bars. All media players will do this by default, as the horizontal pixel width will be correct (1280 or 1920 pixels). Whenever films that are not 16:9 are encoded, encoders always set the horizontal pixels to match the encode (unless they're standard def reduced quality, e.g. SVCD) - therefore all you will ever see are black bars, no stretching.

 

Sam,

All I can tell you is what I'm finding. Some 720p's show vertical Black bars abut 1/2" on each side and some don't. The picture aspect ratio is spot on, with no stretched or wide heads, and circles are always perfect circles. However it does it, it always maintains the perfect aspect ratio. Other players don't seem to do this without a lot of adjustment, and some can't do it at all, so they are always stretched or squashed.

What you are saying makes a lot of sense to me, but I can't argue with the superb results I'm seeing.

Russ

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136241

get the LG its worth $10 more, i own one. i had the Lite on first and not even a month in and 3 BD burns later it started to lock up the computer.

word is to stay away from the 100 Series Blueray drive from lite-on, the 200 series are quite good i "hear" as my LG has worked great for a good 3 months now i wouldn't know hands on

 

i find reducing the desktop resolution to whatever the video format is works really well in some software rendering players like VLC and WMP/C.

 

Can you find the resolution of these examples? It's probably that they're 720p versions of shows/films that were filmed in 4:3 aspect, and are therefore reduced horizontally (e.g. 960x720) instead of vertically with film (e.g. 1920x800). Star Trek (the series) is one such example.

 

Indeed, star trek the original series blurays display with black on sides and top on my 16:10 monitor. Of course this is no surprise I can however zoom with TMT5, or adjust it with MPCHC. Not a big deal I recently didn't understand this stuff myself. Rather surprised about it too. It's actually pretty logical.

 

Like Russ, I prefer not to zoom. Then it will look stretched.

 

It doesn't look that bad Believe me, I'd prefer watch it properly on an HDTV...

 

VLC is really interesting in that it will play raw files. Incomplete files, corrupted files, hardcoded stuff, it can simply play the raw video and display what's there. It's a purely self-contained media engine meaning it's not affected by your video hardware's built-in enhancements. So while it will play just about everything, in my experience, VLC has ass image quality, especially for viewing HD content.

One of the HUGE issues I see people having with K Lite, is that they install the "Full" or "Advanced" version. Likewise I have had to show friends this as it adds a different featureset than the "Standard" or "Lite" packages. YES, K Lite Advanced messes with a LOT of stuff. K Lite standard is just a unified Codec pack. If K Lite messes with anything, you may have done it wrong. I have never had a single issue with it and I have a very large collection of many different types of media files.

For the record:

VLC = Self-Contained software player

MPC = Using the same media engine as WMP. ie a Hardware player(correct me if I'm wrong).

Have been using MPC for video and WinAmp for music for years and years. Not a SINGLE conflict with K Lite Standard.

BTW guys I really have very little need for more optical drives, but I do own a PS3 and it would be nice to gain some functionality.

 

Klite broke WMV playback for me in the past so I stopped using codec packs. Mpc-hc's built-in codecs prove ample these days.

 

Heh, not seen the like. Playing everything from WMVs to Ogg video.

Too bad Ogg video isn't as popular as Ogg Vorbis audio. The most common thing I see is MKVs with either Xvid, Divx or h.264/x.264 with AC-3 audio.

Ogg Video is very very close to DivX(Mpeg-2) but modified to work well with multiple audio formats and extra features. Makes it a great replacement for DVD rips, but not BD rips as it's too lossy.

.oga - Ogg Audio
.ogv - Ogg Video
.ogx - Ogg Multiplex

The problem is, container formats sometimes make it very hard to tell what type of file you're actually playing. Especially MKV which is a universal container and can use nearly any combination of filetypes. You could just as easily have an MKV with low bitrate Mpeg2 or high bitrate Mpeg4.

As far as I know most HD is encoded in some form of Mpeg4 and most SD is some form of Mpeg2, no matter how distantly related. Not entirely sure why these have been picked as the de-facto compression method. Likewise unsure why AC-3 is used almost exclusively for audio. It's not the only format the supports surround nor does it have the best compression tech.

Also wondering why encoders can't pick a universal format to use. For example, I have some video in .MP4 which is encoded using H.264(ie the whole package, sound and all is MP4) and some video in MKV but with x.264 video(just the video is MP4 with AC-3 audio.)

What's with all the different formats?

 

Encoders are just like users, they pick what they prefer, and based around good or bad experiences, some types will inevitably become more popular than others, whether or not they are actually superior.

 

So would you say the majority of what you see in MKV is MP4 for HD and MP2 for SD? Seems to be the overwhelming trend. Less commonly for DVD rips I see the occasional AVI which I'm pretty sure is MP2 video as well.

Likewise audio formats are rarely used intelligently either. MP3s are still everywhere even though everything about them is low quality and inefficient.

Also, AAC, Apple's iTunes audio format is basically encrypted MP3s. Standard format is 96kbs and HQ is 128kbps, and if you pay extra you can get 192kbps. Sure AACs are better than MP3s but why buy those when I can get the whole album in lossless from a properly ripped CD? Overall the CD will be cheaper and offer better quality. Not only that but then I don't have my personal possessions tied to a subscription service run by an extremely dishonest company. Paying for music from iTunes is like paying for DLC on Xbox live. Minor account issue? Everything you just spent your hard-earned money on is now useless or gone.

Interestingly I'm not the only one with complaints about iTunes compression methods. There are tons of songs in the iTunes store with stereo positioning issues, audio artifacts, missing audible data, etc. Why do people pay for this crap?

LOL if anything my ADD keeps the conversation dynamic