MKV Ordered Chapters: User's Manual

[AdemoS]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

hurr durr herpa derp derf

That's a waste of bandwidth right there...

I agree with the rest of your post the Fluff, and respect your encoding skill, but then there's that theory of yours:

Originally Posted by TheFluff

The three people who care can obviously read Japanese or the credits would be useless

Not necessarily, many groups [Solar Fansubs and AniKraze to name two] translate a good amount of the credits. And taking those Romanized names into Google Translate, is a fairly useful starting point for researching a impressive staff member.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

so why aren't they watching raws?

Many reasons.

• They want to learn Japanese, by being exposed to the language; while using the aid of translation.

• Some speech in anime is easier to follow when reading it then listening, even if you know the langauge.

• Creating a screenshot with the subtitles allows the static image to have context and dialog.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Also, as Doughnuts points out, it has for a long time been quite common to make one lossless encode of the OP/ED and then splice that in for each episode.

Fortunately, this isn't as common is it could be. Since many shows, end their episodes with the beginning of the ED music. [ex: FMA, Gundam Seed] So splicing would create a noticeable hiccup in audio.





On Topic: My opinion on Ordered Chapters is that, encoders should wait until it's as simple on Linux and Mac, as it is on Windows, to watch a OC release.

At the moment, the patch LoneShadow created is a commendable start, and I've seen other efforts like this. But until it's added to the official mplayer build, it will only help those aware of the patch.

[emptyeighty]

Originally Posted by AdemoS

On Topic: My opinion on Ordered Chapters is that, encoders should wait until it's as simple on Linux and Mac, as it is on Windows, to watch a OC release.

At the moment, the patch LoneShadow created is a commendable start, and I've seen other efforts like this. But until it's added to the official mplayer build, it will only help those aware of the patch.

I don't see why it shouldn't be done just because *nix people can't use it yet. They can still watch it even though ordered chapters aren't supported yet. Plus they can always remux or create a playlist for continuous playback.

[Nicholi]

In summary 10% of fansub viewers should dictate what the other 90% get to see.

Lawlz.

[anime_layer]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

On another note, this endless whining about the precious ending credits is getting tiresome. The three people who care can obviously read Japanese or the credits would be useless, so why aren't they watching raws? Also, as Doughnuts points out, it has for a long time been quite common to make one lossless encode of the OP/ED and then splice that in for each episode.

It's not only a question of understanding but also a question of respect.

Ending credits can easily be compared to the fansubber's credits they often take much care to place them right next to important positions in the opening credits and often show they completely disregard that there is something like original credits that could actually be read.

I couldn't care less who translated, timed or typesetted a show. It has to be good enough and everything else is irrelevant to me. In this vein I could argue that fansubber's credits should be removed since they just clog up the screen.

But I don't think that would be right. Fansubbers put a lot of effort into subbing and it's right that they get credit for that. But that applies even more for the creators of the anime that put a trendemous effort into production and often don't earn enough to support a decent living. Cutting away the ending credits like they're just dead freight really isn't right towards all the people that deserve credit for what they've done. Even if most people can't read it or don't care about it.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by AdemoS

Not necessarily, many groups [Solar Fansubs and AniKraze to name two] translate a good amount of the credits. And taking those Romanized names into Google Translate, is a fairly useful starting point for researching a impressive staff member.

I have no idea what you think you will accomplish by using Google translate on a romanized staff member name but I'm pretty sure the result will be nothing useful.

To a certain extent it is possible to find English resources about the more well-known directors, voice actors, storyline writers etc etc; mostly fan collected or fan translated material. For this purpose it could arguably be useful to have translated credits. But as previously discussed, having them in an online easily searchable database is enormously more convenient and useful than having them plastered over the video in a most assuredly non-indexed and non-searchable form. Such a database already exists: ANN. Instead of googling around, you instantly get the person in question's name (with proper romanization), the kanji with which it is written in Japanese, ready for copypasting into search engines if you are so inclined, and a convenient list of what said person has worked on. Plastering translated credits all over our precious video gives you none of this except a romanization that cannot be copypasted but has to be typed manually into the nearest search engine. To summarize: it's inefficient, error-prone and goes to extreme lengths to avoid all the good things about the internet.

Originally Posted by AdemoS

Many reasons.

The question was rhetoric.

Originally Posted by AdemoS

Fortunately, this isn't as common is it could be. Since many shows, end their episodes with the beginning of the ED music. [ex: FMA, Gundam Seed] So splicing would create a noticeable hiccup in audio.

I think it's more common than you think. Also you've obviously never encoded anything or you'd know that you never splice audio if you can avoid it; splicing only the video and adjusting karaoke timing if necessary is orders of magnitude simpler.

Originally Posted by anime_layer

It's not only a question of understanding but also a question of respect.

Ending credits can easily be compared to the fansubber's credits they often take much care to place them right next to important positions in the opening credits and often show they completely disregard that there is something like original credits that could actually be read.

I couldn't care less who translated, timed or typesetted a show. It has to be good enough and everything else is irrelevant to me. In this vein I could argue that fansubber's credits should be removed since they just clog up the screen.

But I don't think that would be right. Fansubbers put a lot of effort into subbing and it's right that they get credit for that. But that applies even more for the creators of the anime that put a trendemous effort into production and often don't earn enough to support a decent living. Cutting away the ending credits like they're just dead freight really isn't right towards all the people that deserve credit for what they've done. Even if most people can't read it or don't care about it.

And so we are (very predictably, I might add) back in the ethics debate again. I've tried to bash people over the head with their blatantly obvious logical inconsistencies in this matter for years without much success, and while it has been a fun ride I won't do it in full again here. Suffice to say that this:

Originally Posted by anime_layer

Fansubbers put a lot of effort into subbing and it's right that they get credit for that. But that applies even more for the creators of the anime that put a trendemous effort into production and often don't earn enough to support a decent living. Cutting away the ending credits like they're just dead freight really isn't right towards all the people that deserve credit for what they've done. Even if most people can't read it or don't care about it.

is a rather laughable argument. It's a bit weird that you're so obsessed with paying your respects to the people who, as you say, frequently don't earn enough to support a decent living, while you're so obviously and blatantly disrespecting their legal rights to their own intellectual property by watching their works without paying the price they've set. I would think that if you really did respect them and their wishes, you wouldn't watch fansubs, but obviously such a honorable site as AnimeSuki and obviously its most honorable and respectable site staff would never lower themselves to such questionable activities and either don't watch fansubs at all or buy R2 DVD's of everything they watch (since Really Ethical people don't watch licensed fansubs).

To sum up the thinly veiled insults of your intelligence and capabilities of logical reasoning and also wrap up the argument: it's not about respect. What is the point of crediting someone whose name might just as well be meaningless gibberish to the average viewer, even if it's correctly romanized; and whom noone but very very few viewers will ever care about or know who it is? You might just as well make up credits at random. No, the primary point of credits (beyond the 5-10 most well-known people) is not to inform the viewer of who did what and thus write their names down in history, but rather for the satisfaction of the credited person; a way to recognize that he or she has done a good job, and that the work in question is something they can be proud of as the work of their own hands. Thus, credits are not intended for the viewer but rather for the creators themselves, and hence translating credits is meaningless. The same applies to fansub credits, and hence it is none of your business to determine whether it's right or not for fansubbers to include credits. Some wish to credit themselves for various reasons, others don't. For the viewers, it doesn't matter in the slightest, but for the fansubbers it's relevant.

To summarize the summary, translating credits is at best an empty gesture to somewhat try to appease your guilty conscience, and ultimately yet another form of the all too common hypocrisy that is prevalent among Ethical Fansubbers and their supporters. End of longwinded argument.

[anime_layer]

Well, my argument was geared towards respect claimed by many fansubbers and also other non-professional groups organized around stealing intellectual property on the internet. It seems like you're against any form of respect in this matter and so I apologize for using your quote for my point. I was saying that it's hypocrisy to say the ending credits have no meaning while taking much care to place your own credits prominently and defending your rights (controlling distribution, condem stealing translations etc).

And I never made a point for translating ending credits. As you pointed out, there's not much point in doing so since any relevant information would be japanese anyway. Well, I do like watching openings and endings for each episode and happen to sleep better whenever the original ending was kept in place. I make an effort to believe in something like original vision or at least some kind of authenticity and don't like some random people, often with little or no artistic sense, to disfigure the work I'd like to see.

Oh, and I always thought that claiming it's all just wrong anyways is just as much an easy way out as is upholding some kind of hypocritic ethics. There's always been a lot of contrariness to fansubs but it's just the challange to balance off the ethics with the damage we're willing to deal.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by anime_layer

I was saying that it's hypocrisy to say the ending credits have no meaning while taking much care to place your own credits prominently and defending your rights (controlling distribution, condem stealing translations etc).

Oh yes, yes it is. I haven't said otherwise.

Originally Posted by anime_layer

Oh, and I always thought that claiming it's all just wrong anyways is just as much an easy way out as is upholding some kind of hypocritic ethics. There's always been a lot of contrariness to fansubs but it's just the challange to balance off the ethics with the damage we're willing to deal.

I'm not claiming "stealing" intellectual property wrong, because I don't think it is. I'm saying the ethical fansubber crowd thinks it's wrong, which makes all their complicated arguing as for why they should be allowed to do it anyway so amusing. I don't think skipping credits (textless OP/ED = love) is wrong either and I don't think it's disrespect. I thought the preceding post explained this.

[creamyhorror]

Fluff already linked to an ordered chapters automatic remuxer that assembles full non-OC episodes from the segments. Couldn't that just be distributed along with each episode in torrents, or at least be publicised via a text file in such releases? I'm all for increasing ease of viewing and making people aware of useful tools.

It's just a stopgap solution before segment linking becomes widely available, but it would be quite helpful to Linux/Mac users encountering OC releases for the first time.

[DmonHiro]

MKV ordered chapers are the next logica step. Keep up or get out of the way. And don't give me the "respect the original" crap. You're watching fansubs, they are ilegal, I think the respect is pretty cear. And whem i'm watching a fansub, I give my respect to the people who made it possible for me to watch the fansub: the fansubbers. The world may be filled with SUPER_AWESOME anime, but without fansubs, they would be worthless to me, so my respect goes first to the subbers

[AdemoS]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

To a certain extent it is possible to find English resources about the more well-known directors, voice actors, storyline writers etc etc; mostly fan collected or fan translated material. For this purpose it could arguably be useful to have translated credits. But as previously discussed, having them in an online easily searchable database is enormously more convenient and useful than having them plastered over the video in a most assuredly non-indexed and non-searchable form. Such a database already exists: ANN. Instead of googling around, you instantly get the person in question's name (with proper romanization), the kanji with which it is written in Japanese, ready for copypasting into search engines if you are so inclined, and a convenient list of what said person has worked on. Plastering translated credits all over our precious video gives you none of this except a romanization that cannot be copypasted but has to be typed manually into the nearest search engine. To summarize: it's inefficient, error-prone and goes to extreme lengths to avoid all the good things about the internet.

I was going to say TLDR; but there was some merit to that response. Whether it was for the sake of argument or to be helpful, thanks for the explanation.

Originally Posted by creamyhorror

Fluff already linked to an ordered chapters automatic remuxer that assembles full non-OC episodes from the segments. Couldn't that just be distributed along with each episode in torrents, or at least be publicised via a text file in such releases? I'm all for increasing ease of viewing and making people aware of useful tools.

It's just a stopgap solution before segment linking becomes widely available, but it would be quite helpful to Linux/Mac users encountering OC releases for the first time.

Hmm, something along these lines might be nice temporarily.

[blueorange]

Duh, what do you expect when you implement something like this that alienates linux/mac of course there are going to be complaints. It's basically a big "fuck you".

[WanderingKnight]

I don't particularly see it that way. It's just a bit bothering, that's all. Either way, it's things like these that push innovation.

I'm a bit more bothered by the fact that Haali's splitter (the program that handles this feature) is not open source, and that's the main reason why there isn't a Linux/OS X version of it.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

I'm a bit more bothered by the fact that Haali's splitter (the program that handles this feature) is not open source, and that's the main reason why there isn't a Linux/OS X version of it.

I suspect Haali would be happy to assist with a Linux/OS X version though; he has contributed to open source projects in the past.

[Doughnuts]

I don't think it'd make a difference if Haali's source was available or not. The code that can be ported from it is just the matroska parsing stuff, for which there's libmatroska, or for demux_mkv behind mplayer. The main part of Haali is a directshow filter, which can't be ported anyway. Also, the directory searching code used for segment linking is unportable and would be useless.

I don't think there'll be support for ordered chapters in any of the main linux player releases for quite a while anyway. Not because it's difficult to code, but because developers can't be arsed with all the privacy, security concerns and making it cross-platform. Best opting for LoneShadow's patch if need be.

[SeijiSensei]

I'll ask again. What precisely are the privacy and security issues involved here? What are the threats and to what?

Can a file linked from a Matroska file be executed? (I can't imagine an argument in favor of this from a security perspective, but if that's the spec I'd be curious as to why it was designed that way.) What if the linked file has no executable privileges?

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but all I see about this issue is some hand-waving about "security." What is the problem, and why can't it be easily addressed? And why is it seemingly a greater concern for *nix which overall has a tighter security model than vanilla Windows where most users run as root?

Edit: How does LoneShadow's patch address these concerns?

[Nicholi]

Originally Posted by blueorange

Duh, what do you expect when you implement something like this that alienates linux/mac of course there are going to be complaints. It's basically a big "fuck you".

How does it alienate them? The files still play just without links, OMFG ALIENATION!

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

I suspect Haali would be happy to assist with a Linux/OS X version though; he has contributed to open source projects in the past.

Truth.

[Kovensky]

Would we have all those powerful graphic cards available for us to use without OpenGL? They are powerful because OpenGL forced them to be; and after they got so needed because of their power, the next logical step is to get even more powerful. OpenGL may no longer be ahead of its time, but it started everything.

Back on topic, ordered chapters is a nice feature. Too bad I still can't benefit from it, because I'm a MPlayer user even on Windows. It should be relatively simple to make a bash script that can make mplayer play things correctly using -fixed-vo; unless the audio isn't spliced like TheFluff said. I never needed to use ordered chapters anyway, so I don't know about the difficulties that may arise.

@LoneShadow: can you give a link to the thread on the mailing list where you posted your patch?

[wiskas]

I've created a patch that adds ordered chapters support to ffmpeg. It was tested with BakaWolf's Code Geass and Hitsuji's Haruhi and seems to work well, but I want to do more testing and polishing before sending it to devs.
So anyone who wants to help, please post your results and bugs here (it's not against the rules, is it?) or send them to my mail wyskas -- 4t -- gmail.com

Download here
To enable it in mplayer, apply the patch, run ./configure, then open config.h, find these two lines

#define CONFIG_FILE_PROTOCOL 0
#define ENABLE_FILE_PROTOCOL 0

and replace 0 with 1. Then open libavformat/Makefile, find this line

OBJS = allformats.o cutils.o os_support.o sdp.o utils.o

and add file.o to it. Then make. I'll probably make a patch for this later.
You have to run mplayer with "-demuxer lavf" option to force it to use ffmpeg's demuxers.

Known limitations:
doesn't work on Windows - sorry, right now it's Linux only. maybe later should work on Windows, tested in mplayer and ffplay
libass won't see font attachments from linked segments. that wasn't a priority, but I'll get to it eventually. done
doesn't check that streams in linked segments have same codecs and indices so it will segfault on incorrectly linked files fix in progress
broken timing when several ASS subtitles should appear simultaneously - this is a bug in ffmpeg, not in my patch.

update: calculate correct duration, silenced annoying "Ignoring seekhead entry" messages

IMPORTANT!!! This patch won't work with ffmpeg revisions >14548 because large parts of ffmpeg's matroska demuxer were completely rewritten. It'll take some time to adapt the patch to these changes.

[Kovensky]

@wiskas: Great! I'll test it right away!
I think you should be sending it to review on ffmpeg-devel as soon as you get it working... it may spend a long time in there while you adapt it to the devs' liking.

[WanderingKnight]

Argh, and I was able to touch my Linux box yesterday for a while... now I have to wait again