Author Topic: Video File Format  (Read 5257 times)

Armor Gnome

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Video File Format
« on: March 06, 2014, 09:02:23 pm »
Wondering what other users have found to be a good video file format in regards to quality vs. disk size. 

When I only had 100 or so movies, most of my collection was ripped DVDs in .dvd format which based on their size (4.7gb +) were pretty accurate copies of the original disk.  Quality was great imo and the special features included on disk were nice to have.

Now that my collection is near 1,000 movies I have noticed a large difference in quality using .mp4 and .mkv files which average 700mb - 1.5gb.  I have animated movies for the kids compressed down to 250mb in .mkv where quality is not critical but for other videos where I intent to watch with HD surround audio and want better picture I am looking for recommendations. 
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tschak909

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2014, 04:25:36 pm »
The H.264 codec (that is a part of MPEG-4 advanced profile) has become the main-stay of high definition video output, over the last decade, alongside other codecs like VC-1.

For high-definition output, you essentially have two major resolution targets, 720p (1280x720 or approximate), or 1080p (1920x1080p or approximate).

The two major video containers that have established themselves across the *cough* high-def downloadable video content arena, are basically Matroska (MKV), and ISO MPEG-4 (aka MP4).

AVI is not in this list, because AVI's data structures are nominally signed 32-bit, and thus do not scale out well past 2.1GB of data. This would drastically limit the amount of video data that can be held in an AVI, so it's usually relegated to low resolution content, now.

If you use a tool, such as MakeMKV, to make a backup of blu-ray content, you'll see that a full quality rip of a single blu-ray movie (just the movie, not the other features, menus, etc.), will vary from approximately 20 to approximately 40 gigabytes in size. This translates roughly to a video bandwidth between 36 megabits per second, and 54 megabits per second (max, as defined by standard.)

This should give you a solid ceiling for high-def content.

Most "downloadable" content from various sites, however, will be significantly curbed, to make the downloadable size much smaller, so you'll typically see good copies of a movie from 6 gigabytes to 12 gigabytes in size.

Scale accordingly. Hope this helps.

-Thom

Esperanto

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2014, 09:31:59 pm »
Personally I don't like the .dvd format because it takes ages to get to the actual movie contents. I settled for 720p as a nice balance between quality and size. Then again even when using 720p you have small rips with bad quality and huge rips with unnecessary high quality. I think it all comes down to preference ;-).

Armor Gnome

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2014, 06:04:57 pm »
Thanks for the input.  I guess it's time to reassemble the NAS. 

Question on .mkv and PS3 playback.  I have setup PSMS on windows machines and been able to playback .mkv files.  To access my LMCE media through my PS3 I am using LinuxMCE via MediaTomb which does not show .mkv titles.  Is there another method or is that something that needs to be implemented?   
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Marie.O

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2014, 06:33:45 pm »
Should be a configuration issue on the mediatomb config file.

tschak909

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2014, 06:20:32 am »
if it's found, can we get a patch, so we can do it out of the box?

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Armor Gnome

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2014, 07:12:32 am »
Slowly poking away at changes to the config.xml, changing as few lines as possible in hopes of adding .mkv and not breaking anything else.

Because this config file is generated by mediatomb, what is the best way for me to share a patch?  My thought currently is a executable script that runs (and restarts mediatomb) after it's installation.  Could someone help me with permissions on that and upload/submit procedures when complete?
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phenigma

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2014, 10:37:34 pm »
AG pastebin the config file when you get things fixed up and we can add it easily.  Attach it to a ticket as a feature_patch.

J.

Armor Gnome

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Re: Video File Format
« Reply #8 on: April 11, 2014, 08:44:07 pm »
Haven't dropped this project yet.  I haven't had much time to do anything LMCE related lately.

I have spent some time off and on reading up on this, attempting various replacement config files and am now learning what these various settings better to write one that works for LMCE and its media players and capabilities.  For anyone else poking around with this here is the basics.

Enable transcoding = no by default
- change to yes

File extension open-with instructions = matroska is not included by default
- matroska open with _____ ( i would assume xine but I will try others if needed)

MIME type (?) = .mkv is not understood as matroska for instructions further down the config file

* Where I currently am *
- .mkv does not exist in the MIMI type section where the other file formats are present
- early on in the config file there are MIME type rules for things such as .avi = (name) .mp4 = (name)
- later in the transcoding section, (name) is assigned to a transcoding software instead of file type.  Perhaps these MIMEs were grouped early on to save repetition later on? 
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