November 12, 2008

Macademi Wasshoi -- MKV

The first time I ran into an MKV file in a fansub, I really hated it. But these days that problem is solved; ZoomPlayer plays them just fine, especially when you have the Combined Community Codec Pack ("CCCP" geddit?) installed.

And one nice thing about MKVs is that if they're created right, they're not hardsubbed. I mean, you can hardsub, but why would you want to?

The download site I'm a member of has all four of the episodes of Macademi Wasshoi that are out, and they're all MKV's. The big advantage of them for me is that I can turn the subtitles off when taking frame grabs. So I just downloaded them all, and now I'll check to see if they're hardsubbed.

UPDATE: Well, one problem is timing. One section of the OP seemed to be playing maybe 20% faster than it really should have been, and the audio sounds a bit jerky.

But yeah, they're not hardsubbed.

UPDATE: I don't know what that playback problem was. It only happened in that one section of the OP, and it happened all three times I played through that part.

Very strange.

It's the same fansub as in the AVI files that my benefactor gave me, except that being rendered at runtime it uses a larger font, and subtitles can be turned off. So I'll be keeping an eye on the site to see how good they are about staying current. Ep 6 broadcast last Sunday, so the fansub group is two behind right now.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 04:21 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 258 words, total size 1 kb.

1 One of the problems is that the MKV container takes, relatively speaking, more horsepower to run than the equivalent AVI with hard-coded subtitles. (Mind you, part of that has to do with the choice of codecs involved - generally the more modern codecs have much better quality at a given level of compression, but also take more memory and CPU time to run, so if you have an older system, you can run into trouble that way.)

Portability is also a problem. God help you if you want to watch an MKV on a Mac... ;p

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at November 12, 2008 06:31 PM (pWQz4)

2

But I do have plenty of CPU horsepower, what with having a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. With the video being displayed double size (1408*800) it uses about 10% of my processor(s).

As to me someday getting a Mac, heh heh heh... somehow I doubt that will be a concern.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 12, 2008 06:55 PM (+rSRq)

3 The sound dragging during the OP happened to me too, but only (as I recall) in episode 3.

I think the encode is a bit messed up, because normally if you run out of CPU the sounds keeps playing smoothly and it's the video that degrades.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 12, 2008 06:58 PM (PiXy!)

4

I only tried ep 3 and that was the one where I saw it. Nothing was dragging, what was happening was that it was playing faster than it should have.

Being as the sound is stored as an MP3 or some equivalent, that made the sound a bit jumpy but didn't raise the pitch. (That's what happens when you play an MP3 back faster than it should be.)

I don't honestly know if the others had the same problem.

Watching

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 12, 2008 07:21 PM (+rSRq)

5 Watching the elapsed time counter, one time it skipped by 2 seconds instead of 1 in that section.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 12, 2008 07:21 PM (+rSRq)

6 Yes, I think that's what it was - fast, not dragging.  Screwed up, anyway, and only in ep 3.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 12, 2008 07:30 PM (PiXy!)

7 I've become a big fan of the .mkv format.  The files are a little bigger (well, sometimes 2x size), but the pictures are sharper and and the colors seem sharper and more vivid.  Or something.  I'm not sure what it is I'm seeing; but it's enough to make me dl the .mkv version if one is available.

Posted by: ubu at November 12, 2008 07:41 PM (VjIDq)

8 If you want to convert MKV to AVI, there is only one program I'm aware of that keeps the subtitles:  AllToAVI.  And it's free.

Posted by: Toren at November 12, 2008 09:19 PM (UDqSH)

9 ...and you get what you pay for.  The results are, how shall I say it, poor?  Yes, it does turn the mkv to an avi, but picture quality is degraded rather a lot.

Posted by: Wonderduck at November 12, 2008 09:33 PM (hplPV)

10 It's almost certainly a wrapper around FFmpeg, which can do pretty much anything, but is somewhat arcane in its configuration.

So you should be able to get good-quality conversions, so long as you are prepared to spend a few hours working out the right incantation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 12, 2008 09:51 PM (PiXy!)

11 While I don't download fansubs, I did notice a streaming anime file that was probably based on MKV as you could opt for subtitles or no subtitles on the fly. What was really notable was the much sharper subtitles compared to the average streaming file or even normal DVD subtitles. Is there a resolution limit for MKV subtitles as with DVD subtitles?

Posted by: ColoradoJim at November 13, 2008 07:49 AM (W8ScO)

12

I've become a recent convert to mkv files myself, but there is one thing about them that really drives me nuts.

I store all my files on one machine, but more often than not, I watch them on the desktop in another room through the wireless network. When I browse through the network tree and double-click an mkv file, it can take upwards of five minutes to actually start playing. It acts like WMP has to buffer the whole file before it will begin playing. With avi's, I double-click and I get immediate playback.

Has anybody else run into this behavior?

Posted by: Will at November 13, 2008 11:13 AM (WnBa/)

13 The version of AllToAVI I am using does not significantly degrade the picture.
However, if you have another option, I'm interested.

Posted by: Toren at November 13, 2008 12:49 PM (UDqSH)

14
Is there a resolution limit for MKV subtitles as with DVD subtitles?
Nope, they're generated on your PC using vector fonts, so whatever your monitor can cope with.
When I browse through the network tree and double-click an mkv file, it can take upwards of five minutes to actually start playing.
Five minutes is pretty bad.  5-10 seconds is what I usually see.  Maybe try out ZoomPlayer in place of WMP.

MKV provides a lot of extra features over AVI, but it's not as easily streamable.  Quite possible that some players handle this better than others.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 13, 2008 02:55 PM (PiXy!)

15 Well, I've noticed the delay scales with the size of the file I'm trying to watch, which is why I think it may be buffering the whole file. A standard definition 23 minute anime episode of about 180MB will take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute, but these new fancy widescreen HD files in the 300+MB range get ridiculous.

Posted by: Will at November 13, 2008 03:57 PM (WnBa/)

16 Toren, Nick has a how-to posted.  It's not as "one-stop" as AlltoAVI, but there you go.

Posted by: Wonderduck at November 13, 2008 08:12 PM (hplPV)

17 Excellent, I'll give that a try.  Domo arigato!

Posted by: Toren at November 14, 2008 05:37 PM (UDqSH)

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