Sunday, August 27, 2006

Having playback issues with our first release?

I've heard mixed reports from people that watched the release we put out yesterday for Elfen Lied, that the intro stutters during playback. I myself had no problem playing it on 2 out of 3 of my rigs at home, but I think it has to do with the original DVD source having a variable bitrate. I don't want to get too technical, but the intro must have been a different frame rate than the rest of the episode. Meaning the encoder that originally ripped the DVD, encoded the episode into 120fps with some dropped frames to get the parts to sync up smoothly. When I re-encoded the video from the original XviD to h264, I also dropped the framerate of the entire episode to 60 at the same time without taking the different bitrates into consideration. This is most likely what causes the stutter problem for a few people. What I don't understand is how it's only a problem for some people, while others it seems to work fine for.

Anyway, I began work today on a v2 in both h264 and XviD that should play smoother than the first release and also fix a few other minor things. I accidently forgot to attach the fonts I used to the subtitle file before muxing it into the mkv and also didnt resize the vid to the proper 16:9 ratio after removing a black bar from the raw (the vid should be 704x396 not 704x392). If the first version works fine for you fps-wise and you're happy with it, feel free to keep it. The font thing can be fixed by getting the fonts Jester, Kathleen, Another, and Bandy and the aspect ratio can be fixed by setting your player to 16:9 mode. I'm just personally disappointed that I didn't realize these things sooner and caused a bit of trouble for a few viewers. I guess the stress of doing a majority of the work for our severely understaffed fansub group is finally catching up to me at the worst moment.

If all goes well, expect a v2 by tomorrow.