Jump to content

Official HTPC Guide Discussion Thread (Part 1)


Thasp

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 59
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Looks nice! I've started dabbling in x.264 recently after picking up a Samsung LE-A686 40" 1080p/24p/100Hz panel. I have HDMI output on my laptop, but prefer to use the external Creative X-Fi for the sound.

 

I am curious though - do you use FFD Show? If so, what settings are you using for upscaling DVDs? Or if other software is doing that job, what and which settings? Sorry for being nosey - just curious, as I'm going to get myself an HDMI receiver going forward.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Update on the recommended input devices. I have been using the diNovo Edge for around a year now and needed a bluetooth mouse as I have been having to connect a USB one if I want to game with anything other then the 360 controllers.

 

It was as simple to install as poping in the batteries, hitting the connect button on the mouse, and then hitting the connect button on the diNovo bluetooth receiver, no software required.

 

It has been performing very well playing FC2, Fallout 3, and I have not had to reconnect it to the PC even if I shut both the mouse and the HTPC down.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Looks nice! I've started dabbling in x.264 recently after picking up a Samsung LE-A686 40" 1080p/24p/100Hz panel. I have HDMI output on my laptop, but prefer to use the external Creative X-Fi for the sound.

 

I am curious though - do you use FFD Show? If so, what settings are you using for upscaling DVDs? Or if other software is doing that job, what and which settings? Sorry for being nosey - just curious, as I'm going to get myself an HDMI receiver going forward.

 

I have been playing and encoding x264's for years and had been using CCCP up until a few months ago when I started using CoreAVC and Haali Media Splitter which actually comes with the standard CoreAVC install. I have found CoreAVC vastly superior both in quality and it is FAR more efficient when decoding extremely high bitrate stuff.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have been playing and encoding x264's for years and had been using CCCP up until a few months ago when I started using CoreAVC and Haali Media Splitter which actually comes with the standard CoreAVC install. I have found CoreAVC vastly superior both in quality and it is FAR more efficient when decoding extremely high bitrate stuff.

 

I have both installe, but am quite curious for FFDShow upscaling, as the settings I have deciphered are utterly superb. 720p upscaled to 1080p is seriously impressive. DVD to 1080p is not without its flaws, but is far from poor. Ideally, I'd like something that upscales by default and uses my HD3650 to process.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have both installe, but am quite curious for FFDShow upscaling, as the settings I have deciphered are utterly superb. 720p upscaled to 1080p is seriously impressive. DVD to 1080p is not without its flaws, but is far from poor. Ideally, I'd like something that upscales by default and uses my HD3650 to process.

 

 

The only options for DXVA that I know of are PDVD and MPCHC.

 

However I think you can force PDVD to user other codecs and I know you can force it in MPCHC so if you haven't tried that yet I would.

 

I don't use PDVD anymore so I'm not sure about that one.

Edited by krazypoloc

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thx to dr_bowtie and Silverfox

 

I have Windows Media Essentials Codec Pack 2.2, ffdshow, Haali Media Splitter, AviSynth 2.5.8, ReClock, and AC3 Filter

 

As far as DVD upconversion I just Clone my desktop w/ the resolution set to 1080p, afaik the 8800GTX is upscaling the video in hardware

 

edit: I just watched this video and did the ffdshow, ReClock, WMPC, and AviSynth setup for DVD

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/foxhoundfan

 

OK, I encoded "Man on Fire" (33.6GB H.264 1080p DTS) movie only to BD-9 (7.57GB H.264 1080p DTS) w/ BD Rebuilder w/ these settings

 

Movie-Only Backup

"Quicker" Encode for Extras

Encoder: x264

Encoder Settings: High Quality (Default), Default quality setting is the 2nd highest quality setting in BD Rebuilder

 

Target Size: BD-9 (DVD-9)

 

Audio Encoding Options

Do not convert DTS to AC3

Do not reencode AC3

Use 640Kbs for AC3 encoding

 

Video Encoding Options

Trellis Algorithm (improves quality, slower)

 

encoding time: 14hrs. 20 min.

 

I did an A/B comparison w/ my wife, we can not see the difference between the original and the backup on my Samsung 56" 1080p DLP HDTV @ 7'

 

I have 200+ Blu Rays and 200+ DVD's w/ the goal of a 1000+ movie and music video collection

 

W/ 7TB of storage and a planned upgrade path to 9TB I am going to start to to encode my Blu Rays in the highest quality setting after my AMD Phenom II 940 I ordered arrives

 

note: I attempted to compress this movie in the highest quality setting w/ my AMD 6000+ @ 12x266 for 3.2Ghz and aborted @ 30hrs. w/ only 75% completed

 

I do not claim to have done anything special, but my "Man on Fire" backup to DVD-9 is the first Blu Ray compression I have ever seen that looked like the original w/ no compression artifacts, which is good, because I am 1 of those guys that feels that ANY loss of quality is unacceptable

 

If you watch blu ray movies rush compressed to lower quality or resolution you might as well just got the DVD imho

 

ocgw

 

peace

Edited by ocgw

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Amen to quality man!!!

 

I'm the same way.

 

You may want to checkout ripbot264 for your bluray encodes. It works very, very well and is in essence just a script builder with an excellent interface. One of the really nice things about it is you can queue up as many encodes as you want and just let them run with no input.

 

I'm sure when you get your quad your encode times will drop A LOT!

 

I can encode a full bluray movie in around 4 hours on both rugs in my sig. Memory speed seems to make a huge difference as well with my server being a little slower at encoding than my HTPC even though the server CPU is 100MHz faster.

 

If your planning a new build I would suggest some type of hot swap cage or external enclosure as in some point in time you are sure to lose a drive and being able to rebuild your RAID on the fly with nu downtime is extremely nice feature.

 

I would aslo try and stick to RAID 5 or RAID 6 for your "upgrade path".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Amen to quality man!!!

 

I'm the same way.

 

You may want to checkout ripbot264 for your bluray encodes. It works very, very well and is in essence just a script builder with an excellent interface. One of the really nice things about it is you can queue up as many encodes as you want and just let them run with no input.

 

I'm sure when you get your quad your encode times will drop A LOT!

 

I can encode a full bluray movie in around 4 hours on both rugs in my sig. Memory speed seems to make a huge difference as well with my server being a little slower at encoding than my HTPC even though the server CPU is 100MHz faster.

 

If your planning a new build I would suggest some type of hot swap cage or external enclosure as in some point in time you are sure to lose a drive and being able to rebuild your RAID on the fly with nu downtime is extremely nice feature.

 

I would aslo try and stick to RAID 5 or RAID 6 for your "upgrade path".

 

I have downloaded ripbot264 but have not played w/ it much because BD Rebuilder has been working so well for me, but I do plan on checking out this tool

 

I do have (2) hot swap bays

 

I ran RAID0 in w/ 1st gen Raptors in my first serious gaming rig, and upgraded to 15k SAS RAID0

 

Now w/ my Main PC having evolved into being primarily a HTPC I am running a JBOD configuration, both my OS's (32bit/64bit) and a My Documents partition sit on the outside EDGE of a 1500GB HDD which HD Tach reports as 108Mb/s sustained average so I don't really need the speed or the complexity of a RAID array, and I would rather have maximum capacity than redundancy, what I have done is breakup my (8) HDD's into 22 partitions to decrease the chance of losing a lot of movies, in 10 years of PC building I have only lost a HDD once, and that 1 was the only HDD I ever ran w/o a fan blowing directly on it (knock on wood)

 

W/ 6780GB of storage I only have 650GB left, I will be swapping out 1 of my 500GB drives for a 1500GB drive next week, and as I encode movies to smaller file sizes and gain storage room I will begin to backup my favorite movies

 

ocgw

 

peace

Edited by ocgw

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...