good stuff...yall need to get on that...Media Player Classic or VLC Player (video lan) with Matroska pack codecs will play them...they are pretty big but nice...watched a 720p copy of an episode of Entourage...crystal clear and about 550 megs...1080p was giving my laptop video card some troubles though lol

btw:

Matroska Codec Pack http://www.riverpast.com/en/download/extras/matroska/ (codecs you may need to play this extension...you might only get audio otherwise)
VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ One of the 2 most reliable players for playing this format file
Media Player Classic http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_players/media_player_classic.cfm (another good player...plays damn near every format...this afterdawn link might be slow but its th correct version (6.4.9.0)

7/11/2007 11:53:50 AM

i tried out .mkv but it seems to not be very friendly with transcode360 so i can't stream it to my xbox360 to watch on the big screen. The time i did get it to work the audio lag was astronomical and i could never get it to sync no matter how much i tweaked it.

7/11/2007 12:12:50 PM

It's a crap "format".

7/11/2007 12:16:18 PM

I've never been that impressed with it either.

7/11/2007 12:25:34 PM

its video up to 1080p...i dont know what exactly is "crap" about the format, but its certainly not the picture quality

7/11/2007 12:26:50 PM

mkv is a wrapper format
you can put any video codec or audio codec in there much like every other wrapper format ever. So video quality has nothing to do with it being mkv. 99% of the time its just h.264 or divx that would be better served up in a different container format. You can get the same quality out of VC-1 (wmv).



And as far as container formats go its terrible. Ranking up there with ogm as a terrible format only used by animu faggots.

[Edited on July 11, 2007 at 1:05 PM. Reason : .]

7/11/2007 1:04:41 PM

apparently its used by a lot of newsgroups putting out new movies but ok

7/11/2007 1:11:41 PM

Personally, I think playback quality is more important than picture quality, but I try to watch movies, not slideshows.

Quote :

"apparently its used by a lot of newsgroups putting out new movies but ok"

So is VC-1, which -- and this will be a benefit to you -- can be streamed without any kind of transcoding directly to your 360.

7/11/2007 1:53:59 PM

I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage.

7/11/2007 2:05:21 PM

yeah i've use VC1

i just got ahold of some MKV files yesterday...they seemed to work fine on my system, both quality and playback

but for better or worse, it seems to be a pretty popular format...what a lot of HDDVD rippers are converting to

7/11/2007 2:11:32 PM

the only rippers that matter are the ones in major release groups. they set the scene standards. who cares about joe blow that uploads random pos rips to usenet.

7/11/2007 3:21:36 PM

^ What he said

7/11/2007 3:50:48 PM

vlc does not play them well, just use http://www.cccp-project.net/ to play them (comes with media player classic and zoomplayer). to make it sweeter find CoreAVC to add along with it. also make sure to clean your old codecs off with cccp's insurgent if needed.

as a container though, most hdtv caps I have (24,lost) tend to be mkv files encoded with x264 and they look good (its like 1gb per episode).

mkv and x264 fall under GPL (or LGPL) and both have an active community.

[Edited on July 11, 2007 at 4:14 PM. Reason : .]

7/11/2007 4:11:34 PM

open source is pretty much the only thing mkv has going for it, but really, who gives a damn if the wrapper is open source?

the one thing Microsoft has always been pretty damn open with is their a/v wrappers.

7/11/2007 6:35:11 PM

Quote :

"who cares about joe blow that uploads random pos rips to usenet."

cause if it looks really good and its something you want to watch....

MPC worked fine on one of my desktops but only played audio on a couple laptops...VLC played video once I worked with some buffer settings and updated the codecs fyi

btw I'd love to know some better formats and players but I recently came across MKV and I PERSONALLY have had a good experience with them

[Edited on July 11, 2007 at 6:38 PM. Reason : .]

7/11/2007 6:37:10 PM

dude its JUST A WRAPPER.

there is no quality difference between MKV and anything else. You take a h.264 quicktime file and compare it to an MKV, they will be the same damn thing. or a h.264 wmv file, or a h.264 avi file.

7/11/2007 6:41:23 PM

you're speaking a little over my head

7/11/2007 6:45:58 PM

Say you've got two identical candy bars.

Say you wrap one candy bar in a Hershey's wrapper and the other in a Nestle wrapper. Both candy bars are the same, there's just something different sitting on the outside of them.

Ok, now the video you're watching is the candy bar and the Nestle wrapper is that MKV wrapper.

7/11/2007 6:51:00 PM

so file formats like avi, wmv, mov, mkv. They are audio/video wrappers.

They act as a common shell for audio and video files (mostly the combination of both).

Think of it like a computer. The case is a wrapper. Inside the case you can put different kinds of motherboards, brands of processors, etc. But it provides a common platform to build from.

So within the wrapper, for video you can choose a video codec. common ones are mjpeg, h.264, Window Media Video 8/9/10, divx, xvid, x264, sorenson, etc.

You can also choose an audio codec. like mp3, wav, ac3, ogg, aiff, mp2, etc.

This way when you open a file in your media player, the player knows how to find out what codec it's using and which decoder to use on the file.

7/11/2007 6:54:51 PM

ah ok i gotcha

so what then are the best formats for HD video, as far as:

- picture quality and framerate/fluidity
- filesize
- compatibility with numerous players

I would think something like MPG or AVI or WMV is currently as compatible as any others but how about the best balance between quality/size/compatibility?

ps: DIVX usually looks good enough for me

7/11/2007 7:01:34 PM

A container or wrapper format is used to contain several data streams and information about how to use those streams.

For example your average AVI contains 1 video stream and 1 audio stream. These streams can be encoded with any available codec. Though the most common for AVI are probaby DIVX for video and either mp3 or AC3 for audio. In addition to the actual streams, the AVI container contains what codec should be used for each stream and allows for synched playback of both streams.

The codecs are what determine video and audio quality.

MKV does essentially the same thing as AVI (one reason mkv is worthless) but also adds a data stream for subtitles i think. It may do other stuff but it doesn't matter. You could take the same audio and video streams out of mkv and wrap it in AVI and the video and audio quality would be identical.

Now the big difference is that the AVI container format can be played by pretty much any computer in the last 15 years. And as long as someone writes a direct show codec for whatever video or audio streams are inside, then you can play them through anything that takes advantage of directshow in windows. Which is windows media player, tramscode360, and any other application that wants to.

Quote :

" - picture quality and framerate/fluidity - filesize - compatibility with numerous players "

1. debateable. HD-DVD uses VC-1 and blu ray does VC-1 and h.264 last i checked.
2. depends on what bit rate you're using
3. Mpeg2 is a codec and probably the most widly compatable. Its huge, uncompressed, very low cpu to decode. AVI is probably the most widely compatable container format thanks to windows. VC-1 is probably the most highly available codec capable of HD video, again thanks to windows.

[Edited on July 11, 2007 at 7:14 PM. Reason : ,]

7/11/2007 7:05:59 PM

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

7/11/2007 7:18:21 PM

as much as I hate to admit it, mpeg2 is going to be dead in another year or so.

h.264 hardware decoding/encoding is cheap as balls now, and when the 45nm panasonic(ref?) chips hit this fall, it's going to be a non-issue. Finally good to see a format with wide-spread hardware support, in PC, standalone and gaming platforms. It's definitely the future and gladly so.

7/11/2007 7:25:49 PM

Ive downloaded some of those mkv files, and they arent worth the extra disk space. They resolution may be 1280x720, but its definitely overcompressed. It will look good for some static shots, but get into some motion and its artifact city. Maybe the format isnt bad, but the people releasing these things are definitely overcompressing.

I stick with the "HR" releases...the best picture quality to disk space proportion available, IMO. Plus XBMC will play them, unlike these "HD" releases.

7/12/2007 1:20:16 AM

wow, good job not reading the thread at all, and coming in at the end with more worthless dribble.

7/12/2007 1:38:31 AM

Quote :

"I agreee with Stein on this whole thread. mkv is garbage."

7/12/2007 9:10:05 AM