why ogm/mkv

[Tsu]

One advantage of softsubs I can think of, though I haven't seen it been used yet, is in the case of v2 releases. A fansubber could release a patch of only a few kibibytes that upgrades the script to the new version.
Of course, making such a patch is also possible for hardsubs,
but the patch would be a whole lot larger.

Originally Posted by eean

Cause folks in Hong Kong (where most of the pirated anime on ebay seems to come from) can't get them elsewhere? I'm sure they can get a satellite dish like anyone else. It's a false agrument.

There have been occurences of fansubs being sold on eBay, though.

[eean]

Originally Posted by Tsu

One advantage of softsubs I can think of, though I haven't seen it been used yet, is in the case of v2 releases. A fansubber could release a patch of only a few kibibytes that upgrades the script to the new version.
Of course, making such a patch is also possible for hardsubs,
but the patch would be a whole lot larger.


There have been occurences of fansubs being sold on eBay, though.

The other advantage is that only one group has to distribute the raws. Obviously good for the non-English fansubbers. And you could download the raws as soon as they're out and then have the subtitles a few seconds after their released, if your one of those folks that likes to get their anime quick.

Well, if they want English subtitles regardless it doesn't really matter whether they're soft or hard. More often on e-bay I've seen are professionally packaged pirated anime, as opposed to some crackhead burning some CDs with fansubs. The fact of the matter is that fansubbers don't distribute soft-subs very much because A) they're lazy and more because B) they don't want other fansubbers 'stealing' their 'work' (which has always seemed ironic to me).

[AnimeGurl]

Originally Posted by Somedude

But I'm betting you didn't sit around going "OH NOES! WHY DOESN'T EVERYTHING WORK WITH MY ANCIENT COMPUTER!?!?!?"

Yeah if only I had the money to replace this "glorified paperweight". Honestly, it really isn't THAT bad. Internet/email/IM require not a fast new comp. Photoshop CS can still run fine off my 700 mhz if im working from home. I can play AVIs and OGMs flawlessly for the most part on my 700 it's just the MKVs that give me problems. Overall, I'd say it isnt too bad for a paperweight.
And yeah, your right. I shouldn't go expecting that a 4-5 year old comp will be able to playback everything but I never said that I did. I was just stating my probs with the format. That's all.

[SirCanealot]

I don't see why you're having problems on 700mhz with JUST .mkv.
I took a look at my processor useage, and AVI was around 15-25% (Atholn 2.1ghz), .ogm was around 20-25%, and mkv was around 20-25%. All formats peeked at about 30%, and went down to 15% randomly (.ogm seemed SLIGHTLY lower).
Edit: The .mkv test was also with subtitles on: playing .SSA subtitles over the .ogm file caused the processer useage to go HIGHER than the .mkv, though with .srt subtitles on, it remaned about the same as the .mkv: heh, .srt must not take ANY juice.
This is with the latest(ish) FFDShow with no post-processing on.

MKV does NOT require much processing power.
Do you want to know what DOES require processing power x n?
Let's try a WMV9 encode!
Err... 47%-52%. And that's a .avi with AAC audio, hahaha. It's wanting 1000mhz power JUST for a 640x480 encode @ 24fps.
You should consider yourself lucky that fansubbers RARELY use WMV9! :/
And if I apply ANY decent post-processing, that usegae shoots up past 100%, and I start dropping frames.

AnimeGurl: what graphics card do you have? A graphics card can take a lot of load of the main processer, and if you have a $2 POS card, you may want to consider shelling out $30 or so for an old GeForce or Radeon card - this may help improve playback. Of course, from the sound of you, you don't sound TOO geeky, but replacing a graphics card is pretty easy - it's just finding a nice second hand shop to find a bargin in.
Heh, a friend of mine had a PII 450mhz and could just BARELY play 640x480 encodes, giving him my old POS RivaTNTII m64 (uber POS card, probably worth $3 now) didn't FIX the problem for him, but it certainly improved playback somewhat, including visual quality.

[Somedude]

Originally Posted by AnimeGurl

Yeah if only I had the money to replace this "glorified paperweight". Honestly, it really isn't THAT bad. Internet/email/IM require not a fast new comp. Photoshop CS can still run fine off my 700 mhz if im working from home. I can play AVIs and OGMs flawlessly for the most part on my 700 it's just the MKVs that give me problems. Overall, I'd say it isnt too bad for a paperweight.
And yeah, your right. I shouldn't go expecting that a 4-5 year old comp will be able to playback everything but I never said that I did. I was just stating my probs with the format. That's all.

Yeah, I guess I came off a bit hard on that one. I'm just tired of the "My computer isn't good enough!" excuse (Which I understand isn't exactly what you were insinuating). I guess I'm a bit sensitive to all the luddites that feel technology should wait for them.

Something like this would probably only require a nominal upgrade for you, Celerons or even actual pentium processors from the era are pretty dirt cheap for something that is nearly double the speed of what you're using now.

Really though, like SirC is saying, something is wrong if you're using 100% of your CPU for an mkv. I have an old 750 Slot A Athlon (old secondary computer), and it runs mkv fine with maybe 70-80% peak usage. If you're ever inclined, I'm reasonably sure one of us can walk you thru either optimizing your machine, or pointing out where the bottleneck is. Although, I'd admit that it's prettymuch a moot point since mkv fansubs are in the vast minority.

Anyways, just so you don't think I'm a total jerk, I'll tell you that I count myself in the glorified paperweight catagory. My machine is a Athlon 2000+ with a GF2 card, as far as technology goes, I'm pretty far behind as well.

[AnimeGurl]

Yeah don't worry about it. As soon as I can get a little bit of cash together I plan to get a pretty up-to-date comp. I have a really poor vid card on this 700 celeron (11MB intel accelerated graphics is the name I think) so that might cause a few probs. Not sure if I have a few reg problems as well. But no worries. MKV/OGM aren't too common for fansubs anyways and hopefully I can get a new comp before they do (if that ever happens).

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

I don't see why you're having problems on 700mhz with JUST .mkv.
I took a look at my processor useage, and AVI was around 15-25% (Atholn 2.1ghz), .ogm was around 20-25%, and mkv was around 20-25%. All formats peeked at about 30%, and went down to 15% randomly (.ogm seemed SLIGHTLY lower).

You can't judge how a processor will handle video purely by its clockrate. Let me give you an example: I have three processors, a Pentium III 550 MHz system, an Athlon 1.2 GHz system (slightly newer than the P3, both systems are approaching 4-5 years of age), and a FAR newer Pentium-M 1.6 GHz system (about four years newer than both the Athlon and P3). When I play anime on the P3, I have to set the process priority of the media player to Above Normal or High for all anime, and some of the newer ones still skip. With the Athlon, under heavy system loads or extended uptime periods, I have to set the media player to "Above Normal" for smooth playback. Video at 1024x X resolution gives the system some problems. For both systems, playing ANY form of compressed video will take anywhere from 70-100% processor power.

Compare this with the Pentium-M. At 1.6 GHz, playing a video doesn't push the processor above 8%, with an average probably around 4-5%. Even if I use Litestep or Speedstep, whatever Intel calls it, and set the processor clockrate to 550 MHz (battery saving feature), I tested just now and the processor usage went between 30 and 45%.

For final comparisons, this system uses an Intel integrated graphics chip (with either 32 or 64 MB of RAM, forgot which, though if I remember right, integrated just means it draws on regular RAM and emulates video RAM) while the Athlon has a 128 MB GeForce ti... don't even remember the number anymore, but I think it was 4000 series (4600 maybe). The video card DOES help - I was having jumpy playback in WinAmp with video until I allowed "enable YV12 overlay" or whatever it was, which essentially allows the graphics card to help out - but the processor usage was still incredibly high, and I had to set Winamp to "above normal" priority.

I don't know the exact reason for this, but I'm going to take a guess and say that the processor instruction sets have evolved over time, and perhaps now they're more supportive of video decode/encode functions, which would mean that the processors can handle such functions more efficiently and therefore need to do less for the same functions. It could also be the Pentium-M's 2 MB cache vs. the Athlon's 512 kb cache, but I'll leave that for debate between people who really know what every little thing concerning a processor does.

[taeli]

Soft subs rock.

It means we can change the subtitle size ^_^. When watching on a tv a lot of fansubs are harder to read. It generally doesn't bother me too much, but my friend James has real difficulty reading them - which really spoils his enjoyment of the show.

It means the video only gets encoded once - which drastically improves final video quality. Also, storing the subs as textual data takes up much less space than storing it as video data. The generally basic shapes/colours (of anime) underneath the subs is easy to encode - but text in video has complex shapes / colours which eats up the bits which could be used to draw giant-robots/panty-shots/emotional-eyes. [delete as applicable].

If you're having trouble using softsubs on computers, I recommend reading Studio ADTRW's FAQ at http://www.adtrw.org/faq.php . Personally I use a different set of codecs, but the previous link makes it really easy to get them working.

The CPU complaint is now invalid. I've used softsubs extensively on various computers, the slowest being a 500MHZ pentium laptop! Through the inbuilt softsub options in the ffdshow divx codec - http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi...rs/ffdshow.cfm - there is virtually NO additional CPU usage in using softsubs. Try it yourself.

The one single problem really with softsub containers (re: OGG and Matroska) is that they don't work on various DIVX hardware devices. But, to be honest, very few people have these, and

[LK_LoA]

I wish more people would use mkv. Softsubs is good!

[subcool]

newsflash, softsubs are retarted.
if you add softsubs and let people download the raw without you cleaning it in encoding, they'll only complain "Zomg! bad quality! bah!". Imagine me giving out the raws for Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko with softsubs, i can tell you that those raws are full of noise. It would just hurt the quality of the video =P

Hence, Hardsubs > softsubs

and as i stated in another thread, MKV/OGM are only usefull in multi streamed DVD rips

[Onakra]

Originally Posted by subcool

newsflash, softsubs are retarted.
if you add softsubs and let people download the raw without you cleaning it in encoding, they'll only complain "Zomg! bad quality! bah!". Imagine me giving out the raws for Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko with softsubs, i can tell you that those raws are full of noise. It would just hurt the quality of the video =P

Hence, Hardsubs > softsubs

That is quite a weak argument IMO...

What has the video quality to do with softsubs? You can "clean up" the raws with any filters you want without putting the subs hard in there. The problem is that more advanced subtitle 'gimmicks' are difficult (or not possible) with softsubs.

Originally Posted by subcool

and as i stated in another thread, MKV/OGM are only usefull in multi streamed DVD rips

As mentioned there are lots of benefits, probaly the biggest for files with variable framerates and the smaller overhead (size) compared to AVI. And when using soft subs the user can choose the font (size, color) and display the subs any way (s)he wants. But of course hard subs work just as well in Matroska (/OGM).
The option for more audio/video formats is also a benefit, although I admit that's usually not much of an issue for anime.

What it always comes down to is that most users seem to have too much trouble getting these new containers to work. That's why most fansubbing groups don't want to get into using them even if they see the benefits, because they don't want to play helpdesk.
And that's why the support for an aging container such as AVI remains so high eventhough newer and better ones are available. (Also see: MP3)

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Onakra

As mentioned there are lots of benefits, probaly the biggest for files with variable framerates and the smaller overhead (size) compared to AVI. And when using soft subs the user can choose the font (size, color) and display the subs any way (s)he wants.

Doesn't AVI support softsubs by using SubMux available from the VobSub package?

[Zarxrax]

Originally Posted by zalas

Doesn't AVI support softsubs by using SubMux available from the VobSub package?

People still have to have software installed to play it. It's easier to just install the matroska pack which is easily available and use a matroska file, than for people to figure out why their avi isnt displaying subs.

[SirCanealot]

Heh, and I've heard there IS probalems with SSAs in .avi.

Well, Cruzz said there was, and Cruzz is god, so what ever he says goes, haha.

Also, Virtual Dub doesn't pick SSA in .avi up AT ALL. I remember one raw I got once had the subs muxed into it for some reason... I thought it was hardsubbed for about 10 seconds...

And when using soft subs the user can choose the font (size, color) and display the subs any way (s)he wants.

Not with SSA on Windows you can't, heh.

And there's nothing to stop you re-encoding the raw BEFORE releasing. Lord knows, the encoding on most raws is SHITE.

[Somedude]

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Not with SSA on Windows you can't, heh.

And there's nothing to stop you re-encoding the raw BEFORE releasing. Lord knows, the encoding on most raws is SHITE.

Heh, you can always demux and edit the SSA yourself though.

[Enragin_Angel]

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Heh, and I've heard there IS probalems with SSAs in .avi.

Well, Cruzz said there was, and Cruzz is god, so what ever he says goes, haha.

Also, Virtual Dub doesn't pick SSA in .avi up AT ALL. I remember one raw I got once had the subs muxed into it for some reason... I thought it was hardsubbed for about 10 seconds...



Not with SSA on Windows you can't, heh.

And there's nothing to stop you re-encoding the raw BEFORE releasing. Lord knows, the encoding on most raws is SHITE.

What problems are they? People have mentioned desynching, but what else?

And no, vdub doesn't pick up ssa, but virtualdubmod does, so what's your problem?

Also, you can choose your font, color, etc in windows. It's built into ffdshow alpha.

[DryMaltExtract]

I prefer having the sub group decide on the font, font size and purdy colours it should be, less work for me, and they look better.

[eean]

Originally Posted by DryMaltExtract

I prefer having the sub group decide on the font, font size and purdy colours it should be, less work for me, and they look better.

...no video player I've seen forces you to choose. Usually they have very readable defaults.

Sometimes the hard subs do look good, probably better then you would have with soft subs. More often they look worse.

[exedore]

Originally Posted by GarBhaD

To sum up: with the high video/audio quality plus the personalized subs, it's almost like watching a DVD. Or even better, because with DVD you can't edit the subs in a easy way. It's just perfect!

Except that fansubs aren't meant to replace DVDs. Considering that getting the clean version is one of the perks of buying legit, it's a good reason for fansubs not to offer it.

[Shii]

Originally Posted by DryMaltExtract

I prefer having the sub group decide on the font, font size and purdy colours it should be, less work for me, and they look better.

OK, cool, SSA rather than SRT then