anime.mikomi.org: Posts to "A VirtualDubMod question"urn:uuid:amo-forum-topic-5192011-07-10T19:33:06ZA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5259me to learn a few things about 5.1 audio, about downmixing in Windows, and even about K-lite. Feel free to ask again whenever necessary.
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2011-07-10T19:33:06ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#52562011-07-10T14:06:04ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5254If the MP3 is mute on the Philips player but usable on the Insignia player then the reason should be an effect of the MP3 encoding parameters (hence my assumption that CBR/VBR makes the difference, there's not much else you can configure in MP3). It's the same with some fansubs in AVI not playing on my Philips DVD player because their video stream uses certain XviD parameters that my player doesn't support correctly (QPel and GMC3).
I agree about Windows updates being an unlikely candidate for meddling with your codecs as only few of these came with Windows (such as the MP3 decoder which is a prerequisite for Windows Media Player), and the ones you're using in this case are most likely all installed with K-lite (such as the MP3 encoder).
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2011-07-09T09:47:37ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5252 Here's something strange: on the same DVD I also included a number of fansubs (the 'Spring Week 7' batch) which had definitely been run through Switch and VirtualDubMod before the K-Lite update. They now have audio on Philips as well! Maybe disabling the AC3 Filter was responsible? I didn't write down the date when I converted these shows, so I can't be sure which came first.
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2011-07-08T16:58:42ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5250(The 5.1 reference material that I was using for my tests is Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu.) The idea of 5.1 surround sound is to assume you actually have six speakers in an appropriate arrangement around the consumer which you can guarantee in a cinema hall while not many private households have a home cinema set already. There might be some pay tv programs already using 5.1 sound but I don't know for sure. BluRay releases are even using ↗7.1 sound already, so expect this to occur in the near future (Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Ha uses ↗6.1 audio, I have yet to find a 7.1 anime release though).
Assuming that now your AC3 issue can be considered closed, we might focus on the Philips device if you want. Take whatever DVD you want, play it on the Philips player, and if any file is mute, post its MediaInfo data here.
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2011-07-08T05:06:00ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5248 So, did Stereo 5.1 sound or some other audio technology come along suddenly, and almost all fansubbers embraced it almost simultaneously? Because I hadn’t changed my technique of converting on VirtualDubMod when this trouble began, and for a good while the episodes on my DVDs played just fine on Philips.
(Mikomi was 'temporarily unavailable' all day yesterday).
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2011-07-07T15:26:22ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5245 I usually arrange to get a 100-pack of blank DVDs at Christmas time, and they last me for a year. They average around 40 cents each so cost isn't a problem if I'm careful not to waste them. I have some rewritable discs but haven't made much use of them.
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2011-07-06T02:02:03ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5244(uncompressed video) so you can never expect VirtualDubMod to behave like a video player in terms of "real time performance". That's exactly the same as when you directly play the AviSynth script with MPC.
Does the resulting AVI file play without delay in MPC resp. WMP? That's what matters. If you want to make a short test then in VirtualDubMod, use the two rightmost widget icons (tooltips: "mark in" / "mark out", the ones I surrounded in red: ) to mark a small time interval of the episode in question, then run the compression (which will then last only a few seconds) and check the result.
As for rewritables, I can recommend them for testing purposes as they do last a while, and as such are a bit cheaper than DVD-ROMs. I always watch new anime from rewritables and only burn permanent DVDs when archiving a series, thus I never burn a DVD-ROM without knowing that my player can read the data.
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2011-07-06T01:50:31ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#52422011-07-06T01:04:31ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5241 Once you have converted an episode to AVI with XviD and MP3-CBR, there's no reason why playing it with MPC on your PC should produce different results than playing it on your DVD player, other than experiencing media read errors.
Try burning the same file several times on the same DVD so that the copies will use different locations on the disk. Does that help?
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2011-07-05T23:59:17ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5235 Actually, I guess what happened regarding MediaInfo was that clicking once with the right button causes a list of options to appear, and one of those is 'MediaInfo', which I guess I hit with the second click.
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2011-07-05T21:01:43ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5233(which I'm using for many anime in order to get the full stereo experience for good music), so I'm used to changing the volume settings on my TV set every time. But in case you get tired of having audio streams of varying loudness, there are tools for normalizing the volume of MP3 streams. As I mentioned before, I am frequently playing my "Best of Anime Music" collection in WinAmp in random order, with MP3 files from various sources and with varying volume levels; to get all of these to one level of loudness I ran them through a small tool I downloaded from http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/. When watching anime, I have to adjust the loudness setting just once per series (as I'm usually watching one series in batch mode instead of switching between different stories), so I don't need this tools for my anime encodings.
I have the same "overwrite behavior" setting for Switch as you do, and it works as you expect it to. (When in doubt, you can always check the modification date of the MP3 file and inspect its content with MediaInfo.)
You get MediaInfo data when double-clicking any video? That's probably not what you want. Here on my PC, when I select a file, and via context menu select a program to "open" this file, there's one checkbox named "always open this file type with this program"; using this would change the file association for this file type, i. e. make the program I selected the one to be used for double-clicks on this file type from here on.
Your example for MediaInfo referred to the MP3 file, that's why you believe it's shorter. Try the same on an AVI or MKV container.
Your Windows operating system has a feature named "Send To". When you select a file and activate its context menu (right mouse click), one of the entries should be "Send To", opening a sub-menu with volume drives (thus "sending" means "copy") but also programs (then meaning "open with"). I created a "Send To" entry for MediaInfo a long time ago, so that's my way of invoking MediaInfo for various file types.
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2011-07-05T18:54:17ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5231loud compared to ordinary TV programs, and I have made a habit of turning the volume down to about half the normal level while watching fansubs. I now get MPC ‘Home Cinema’, whatever that means. It turns out that I do have a File/Properties/MediaInfo capability—it’s sort of a shorter version of the data I get from the old MediaInfo program. Here’s what it had to say about Votoms Alone Again:
General
Complete name : C:Documents and SettingsOwnerMy DocumentsV Alone
A[gg]ArmoredTrooper_VOTOMS_-AloneAgain_(BD,1080p)EA07E1F7track2.mp3
Format : MPEG Audio
File size : 45.3 MiB
Duration : 49mn 28s
Overall bit rate : 128 Kbps
Audio
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Duration : 49mn 28s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 45.3 MiB (100%)
Apparently, double-clicking on a stream or fansub will now take me to MediaInfo as well. In the past I always opened MediaInfo separately, then went looking in ‘My Documents’ for whatever fansub I was interested in. I will re-convert and burn Alone Again onto a DVD and see what happens.
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2011-07-05T14:27:20ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5229changed by VirtualDubMod, only inserted into the AVI container (whereas the video stream is changed in VirtualDubMod because someone has to resize the screen resolution and add the subtitles). Having said that, there's still the mystery about which audio streams your Philips player is able to understand, and if you're interested we can deal with this once "Votoms" plays on your Insignia player.
Switch still doesn't natively support AC3, and K-lite didn't install a new Switch version, so the warning won't go away. But as long as K-lite (or ffdshow or whoever may be responsible for decoding AC3 on your PC) can properly decode AC3, Switch will be able to encode the result to MP3.
From your results I derive that
AC3filter isn't buggy any more and
AC3filter comes with a proper 5.1 to 2.0 downmix configuration, that's why it delivered an uncompressed 2.0 audio stream to Switch with no voices/channels missing. Just what I was hoping for.
The additional icon for AC3 is probably a side effect of someone making a file association for *.ac3 files, i. e. specifying a program that opens these files. As this isn't Switch (which wasn't part of your K-lite installation) it must be some component of K-lite, one that I'm not aware of. If you double-click that AC3 file now you will see which program this is... perhaps K-lite 7.2.0 comes with its own AC3-to-MP3 converter these days? Then again, it might be as simple as MPC being responsible for playing AC3 streams.
Does your updated MPC now have the menu entry "File" / "Properties" / "MediaInfo"?
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2011-07-05T05:04:43ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#52272011-07-05T00:35:53ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5221 Let's sum up what happened so far:
Converting an AC3 audio stream turned out to be difficult as Switch didn't set a file association for this type.
Manually loading the AC3 stream into Switch ended up producing a garbage result.
Playing the AC3 stream with Switch produced different messages on your PC than on mine, thus we detected that on your PC AC3filter was used by K-lite for decoding AC3 audio streams.
We disabled AC3filter and made ffdshow/liba52 decode AC3 streams but the quality remained low.
Now playing the AC3 stream with Switch suddenly produced good quality but the encoding to MP3 selected only 2 channels from the 5.1 AC3 audio stream instead of properly downmixing all channels, causing the seiyuu voices to be lost.
We tried to bypass Switch by decoding the AC3 audio stream via an AviSynth script and thus using the ffdshow configuration but the result was still not satisfactory.
We tried to fix the downmixing issue of Switch by configuring the downmixing in ffdshow's "Mixer" section, but somehow didn't get any result whose quality you actually posted.
Experiencing too many differences between your old software and the 2011 state of art, we decided to upgrade your K-lite package, getting an updated AC3filter codec in the process which is now again configured for decoding AC3 audio streams.
So now we're back to square 1 of this thread - well, actually we're at step 2 or 5 of the previous list once again, depending on how we look at things.
What happens when you play the extracted AC3 track with Switch? How is the quality?
What happens when you convert the AC3 track to MP3 with Switch? How is the quality? Are the seiyuu voices still there?
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2011-07-04T23:08:11ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5214Disable the following inactive filters’ where there was ‘AC3 File {ac3file.ax}’. Does that mean that the filter has already been re-enabled by default? Or am I looking in the wrong place? As of yet I have done nothing for fear of screwing up.
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2011-07-04T15:53:38ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5208(such as "Mikomi"), so I'm surprised that you needed to close the latter. But in Windows, both programs are closely interrelated so who knows. (The reason why you had to close the Windows Explorer is probably because Windows Explorer is responsible for handling file associations and the installation process was about to change these and a restart was necessary in order to make the changes known to Windows Explorer.)
In general, the installation process sounds successful. Uninstalling ↗DirectVobSub (your subtitle interpreter) was similar to uninstalling Haali, getting rid of another individually installed product that is now part of K-lite. Hopefully your choice of "Speaker Configuration" will be used for the "Mixer" setting(s) in K-lite.
K-Lite Codec Pack 7.2.5 is a minor update for K-lite, small enough that the authors don't even offer it as a full installation package but merely as an update for an already existing 7.2.0 installation (in order to prevent unnecessary download volume). It's okay to get and install it if you want. The explanation text says: "It contains updates for Media Player Classic, ffdshow, Xvid, DirectVobSub, Win7DSFilterTweaker, and the Codec Tweak Tool" so most of this refers to modules you're actually using. I'd expect the installation dialog to be much simpler than the full 7.2.0 pack, the update might even just overwrite or ↗patch some program files and not ask for any configuration.
"↗File association" is a mapping between a group of files with the same file name extension and a program being responsible for handling files of this type. For example, the fact that you can double-click *.mkv files in order to get them played by the MPC video player is due to the fact that someone has established an association between all *.mkv files and the MPC program before, typically during the installation of said program. K-lite is a pack for playing videos, so it doesn't ship with an audio player such as WinAmp, and stealing away the file associations such as *.mp3 from your possibly already installed audio player (Windows Media Player could play a few audio types but with a lot less features than a fully-fledged audio player) would not be reasonable, with the one exception of "mpcpl".
As a general test for the new K-lite installation you might try playing as many different anime videos as possible, most notably MKV containers with high quality attributes as they're likely to use different codecs, and as many different container types as possible. If anything isn't working any more, check the file content with MediaInfo and look up the K-lite configuration for the corresponding codec type. You might also take a quick glance into ffdshow audio configuration (the "blue icon") and see how it looks like and what has changed in comparison to your old version.
As for the current discussion thread here, I recommend enabling AC3filter for interpreting AC3 audio in the K-lite configuration (because that's what we disabled due to the old AC3filter having been buggy) and then repeating all the tests in this thread, beginning with:
Play the extracted AC3 file with Switch
Convert the extracted AC3 file to MP3 with Switch, then check whether the seiyuu voices are still there. (If not then we would have to visit AC3filter's own downmixing configuration and check the settings there.)
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2011-07-04T00:57:45ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#52062011-07-03T20:08:49ZStretchstretch2424@yahoo.comhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/628.htmlA VirtualDubMod questionhttp://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=519#5197 For K-lite: Yes, that was the idea. If you need a correctly installed K-lite in order to install K-lite 7.20, and you need to uninstall Haali in order to get a correctly installed K-lite 2.80, then it looks like you have uninstall Haali first in order to get anywhere at all. If anything doesn't go well, http://haali.su/mkv/ would be the place where to get a separate Haali installation program and re-install it but hopefully you'll end up with K-lite 7.20 and Haali being a part of this package.
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2011-06-30T22:45:34ZDevil Dollhttp://anime.mikomi.org/by-rev/752.html