AssRender: inappropriately named libass-based subtitles renderer

[Emess]

palmje, I have no idea how long you have been encoding for, but mencoder is terrible. I encode on linux and freeBSD daily, and I have NEVER found mencoder to be a suitable replacement for avisynth. I also don't know why you bothered bringing up avs3 which has been dead for 2 years and is a load of shit anyway.

Doing anything remotely detailed, like intelligent IVTC on difficult sources, frame-accurate decoding of MPEG2-TS clips, lagarith overlays (which lets face it, there is no other lossless codec atm that supports alpha channels properly and that typesetters can use,) heavy duty trimming, detailed filtering, or anything else people use avisynth for, in mencoder is either impossible or extremely difficult and time consuming.

Personally I just suck it up and use wine for some things and shell/perl scripts for others, but there is no way to get around using windows software in *nix machines currently, and to do a good job in the process of. If you really are deluded into using native tools for everything, then you're doing it wrong and anyone who downloads or whatches your encode is suffering for it.

Get off your FOSS high horse and accept reality.

E~

[D404]

Originally Posted by palmje

I've been using Linux as my primary OS for many years now and personally I've found it to be much better for the job than Windows ever was (or is likely to be) and the only reason I ever use windows is for games, though there are a few areas where the Linux apps aren't as good (e.g. Open Office vs MS Office (though you can do this in wine), gimp vs PS (gimp is good enough for most things, main downside if lack of cymk & doesn't have the same range of filters, though there are many), encoding tools such as mencoder, transcode, etc. vs avs, adobe, etc.) and the tide goes the other way as well (openssh server vs ??? and then there's the horde of great linux apps that are ported to windows: Apache, Vim, Deluge, mysql, etc.)

Linux is only good for the technically inclined. Try explainign dependancy hell, and cruddy outdated repos to your average desktop user. tl;dr its easier to get things to work on windows without hassle (see: productivity). Each OS has it's advantages. Day-to-day average use is not one *nix's.

Also, I want you to think about how many apps have been cloned form Windows to *nix (in regards to that last sentence).

P.S. Why do *nix junkies always say to use WINE? You may as well use windows if you have to use WINE to get stuff done.

[palmje]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

have you ever looked at mencoder.c

I have and it's full of comments about what still needs to be done, what needs to be fixed and it even has a comment "HACK, for some weird reason...", then again, a lot of large pieces of code have this sort of thing and this includes big companies such as MS as well.

Any particular part of it I should be looking at?

Originally Posted by Emess

palmje, I have no idea how long you have been encoding for, but mencoder is terrible. I encode on linux and freeBSD daily, and I have NEVER found mencoder to be a suitable replacement for avisynth. I also don't know why you bothered bringing up avs3 which has been dead for 2 years and is a load of shit anyway.

For some things mencoder isn't suitable as a replacement, but if all you need is something simple, then it's fine as a replacement.

I only brought up avs3 because it has been pointed out to me several times, though I have never more than briefly looked at it.

Originally Posted by Emess

If you really are deluded into using native tools for everything, then you're doing it wrong and anyone who downloads or whatches your encode is suffering for it.

The only person who "suffers" from watching my encodes is me, but I only do basic encoding stuff at this stage - I'm still in the process of learning and I typically only deal with clean sources. Maybe once I start dealing more with noisy sources using avs will be required.

Originally Posted by Emess

Get off your FOSS high horse and accept reality.

Can you please explain how I am on a FOSS high horse? given that both mencoder and avs are free, they are both opensource and they both use the gpl license as well!!

Originally Posted by D404

Linux is only good for the technically inclined. Try explainign dependancy hell, and cruddy outdated repos to your average desktop user. tl;dr its easier to get things to work on windows without hassle (see: productivity). Each OS has it's advantages. Day-to-day average use is not one *nix's.

Also, I want you to think about how many apps have been cloned form Windows to *nix (in regards to that last sentence).

P.S. Why do *nix junkies always say to use WINE? You may as well use windows if you have to use WINE to get stuff done.

I'll take dependency hell over dll hell any day! Easier to get things to work on windows? sometimes, but if you look at getting the system ready from scratch, getting linux setup is much easier - the windows setup will take me a full day, while I'll have the linux going in a couple of hours, not to mention the endless frustration of the constand restarts windows wants...

Personally I know many people who find that Linux is much better for the average day-to-day use - all it requires is NOT expecting it to BE windows - if you do, then of course it's not going to be...

cloned from windows? I assume you mean apps that were missing from linux that people decided to write for linux (which means nothing really)? or are you talking about ports of windows programs to linux? The only port of a windows program to linux that I can think of off the top of my head is DC++ and the port is much better than the original in this case.

Why WINE? If you only need a handful of windows only apps and they work well under wine (and you prefer using linux) then why not?

[jfs]

Originally Posted by palmje

I'll take dependency hell over dll hell any day!

Please don't talk about stuff you seemingly don't know anything about, DLL Hell went up in smoke 7 years (WinXP) or more ago. I haven't experienced any applications stepping on each others' installations in forever, because developers have become smarter, installers have become smarter, and due to side-by-side assemblies.

Now what was this thread about again?

[Nicholi]

A whole day to set up Windows? Sounds like a case of Doing It Wrong to me.

I think this thread is actually TheFluff's subtle troll of how linux encoding is pretty lolz compared to the tools available on Windows. Also fairly surprised no one bothered porting libass to an AviSynth filter until now. Though I guess could be the same for ffmpeg (and FFMpegSource), how would we live without it now :3.

[palmje]

Originally Posted by Nicholi

A whole day to set up Windows? Sounds like a case of Doing It Wrong to me.

Well, by the time you install windows, then install all the hardware drivers (restarting after each one, since often you don't even get a choice and even on those you do, you often have to restart to be able to install other drivers that are dependant on that driver), update windows (including multiple restarts), install an office suite, video player, internet security, browser, torrent client and all the other various programs you need to have an actual working operating environment, that's at least a good part of a day gone.

Originally Posted by Nicholi

I think this thread is actually TheFluff's subtle troll of how linux encoding is pretty lolz compared to the tools available on Windows. Also fairly surprised no one bothered porting libass to an AviSynth filter until now. Though I guess could be the same for ffmpeg (and FFMpegSource), how would we live without it now :3.

It's not really that surprising, since libass was designed for linux and doesn't work as well under windows because of the different ways the OSes handle fonts and avs is essentially a windows only application. It will be interesting to see how the kumaji project goes and what it will be integrated with.

[Nicholi]

Originally Posted by palmje

Well, by the time you install windows, then install all the hardware drivers (restarting after each one, since often you don't even get a choice and even on those you do, you often have to restart to be able to install other drivers that are dependant on that driver), update windows (including multiple restarts), install an office suite, video player, internet security, browser, torrent client and all the other various programs you need to have an actual working operating environment, that's at least a good part of a day gone.

I'm fairly certain that still sounds like a case of Doing It Wrong to me. It's not like you are trying to do something like install VS2008 (and then the SP), which might take forever and a day.

I guess if you choose to install EVERYTHING in MS Office, why the hell would one even do this I have no idea, and use some horribly bloated security suite, it is a given you are going to have to wait. Bad choices result in bad results most of the time. Windows Updates typically won't take that long so long as you are at least smart enough to do a base install with the latest SP. And those updates (beyond the SP) are far from being required right now in order to use the OS. Update while you are sleeping, complex stuff. And I've never heard of restarts lasting more than 2 minutes max (that's still omfg long just to try and get a sense of the incredibly ludicrous world you come from, my PC takes about 50 seconds to hit desktop... and its fucking slow), so I'm not sure where this "it takes forever to install drivers" comes from really :3.

But seriously...video player, browser, and torrent client? You listed these because of their commonly known long install times? I just have to lul at how hard you try at this, really.

Edit: Scratch the restart time. I still don't live in an insane Vista/7 world. Using XP is just fine for me, so restarts do not take ages.

[salty]

maybe he got a pc with old school hardwares (from 1998-99, those high ends at that time lol). i wont be surprised if he would install an application that takes 45-1hr installation. multiply 24 applications, you get 24 hrs of installation.

whats the topic of this thread again? troll?

[palmje]

Originally Posted by `Jaka

What, assuming you're not on some legacy hardware based shit and have all these applications somewhere on your hdd or have the cd, it shouldn't take longer than 3 hours.

If you use vista/7, drivers are automatically installed when you install the os (that is, again, assuming you're not on some piece of shit)

Updating windows will only take one reboot, learn2clickwait.

Office suit won't take longer than 5 mins. You're a faggot if you use internet security. Browser won't take longer than 1 min. Torrent client won't take longer than 1 min. Other programs won't take longer than 30 mins.

You must be doing it wrong or on some horrible piece of shit which I advise you to go get a job and buy something worthwhile.

I do have a piece of shit - it's an old 486dx, 400mb hdd, 16MB RAM (I think, might be 32...) - that took me about 3.5hrs just to install windows, but then again that was from a massive stack of floppies.

What I am talking about, though, is modern hardware and applies to both my desktop (AMD64, XP) and laptop (Core2 Duo, Vista).

Installing Windows: ~1hr (includes hdd format)
Installing drivers: ~40min (reboot after each one)
Office: 15min
Internet Security (separate antivirus, spyware, firewall): 30min (including updates)
video player: 30min (including codec packs)
cygwin: 40min (I use if for things like ssh, scp, etc. - things like putty are but poor imitations)
VS: 2hrs
mingw, notepad++, vim, ff, etc.: 1hr

So we're looking at over 6hrs, which is certainly a good part of a day.

installing MS Office in 5min... I'd like to see that - took me a lot longer than that on 3GHz Quad core Intel, 4GB RAM machine...

Not using internet security of some form is just retarded on windows - I've tried it before and it's just a mass of infestations before long, especially if you there are other computers on the network, or you frequently trade stuff with friends...

Only one reboot to update windows? again I'd like to see that happen - some updates do not give a wait option (pissed me off quite a few times), though most do. (compare to linux, where the only reboot I do from an upgrade is when the kernel is upgraded!!)

As a side note: One job I had, all I did for my first 2 days was setting up my windows computers (a work machine (3GHz quad core, 4GB RAM, WS2008) and an email machine (old P4, XP)) and that was considered normal. Admittedly that did involve some waiting for security clearance to some things as well as installing a mass of Dev tools.

[emptyeighty]

Originally Posted by palmje

[...]including codec packs[...]

Which do you install?

[ender]

Originally Posted by jfs

Please don't talk about stuff you seemingly don't know anything about, DLL Hell went up in smoke 7 years (WinXP) or more ago. I haven't experienced any applications stepping on each others' installations in forever, because developers have become smarter, installers have become smarter, and due to side-by-side assemblies.

It appears that this memo hasn't reached everybody that dumps libxml2.dll, expat and intl.dll to system32.

[lachs0r]

Back to topic.

I've built assrender against a more recent libass, which should fix problems with \clip among other things. I've actually done this on a Windows VM, went through the pain of setting up MSYS-MinGW and uploaded my msys directory as well. I didn't use GCC 4, though.
If you want to build with MSVC 2008, you have to link with the provided libmingwex.lib and libmoldname90.a (edit mingwlibs.cpp in assrender's source code).

You can get the build here: http://luck3r.phicode.de/assrender/

Edit: Meh, forgot to make a release build instead of debug. Fixed.

[Starks]

lach, it would be really nice if you told us which libass you're building against. If it's not 0.9.8 or the latest git, nobody's going to be interested.

[lachs0r]

GIT from a few days ago.

[bugmenot]

I've tried assrender and subtitle rendering seemed a little different from mplayer[1]. Not sure what is causing it.
Here are screens (taken by ffmpeg):



[1] the whole picture looked like this

$ mplayer \
        -ass \
        -really-quiet \
        -benchmark \
        -vo yuv4mpeg:file=/dev/stdout \
        -nosound \
	/path/to/blah.mkv \
    | ffmpeg \
        -f yuv4mpegpipe \
        -i - \
        -vn \
        -i /path/to/blah.mkv \
        -s 320x240 \
        -acodec copy \
        -vcodec libx264 \
        -vpre hq \
        -vpre ipod320 \
        /path/to/blah_ipod.m4v \
        -newvideo