No contest winners (yet)

[Ross Scott]

Well I've reviewed all the entries for the sound contest and I think I'm just a picky bastard in that none of them jump out at me as a clear winner, though some of them are close. I've gone and emailed all the contestants and a few have been eliminated. The rest I've written up a list of things each person could do to improve their mixes. I think after another round of revising we'll have a clear winner. My attention to detail on this may seem excessive, but it's nothing I wouldn't do myself.

 

Work continues on the videos and I hope to have some more work started on improvements to the website (including broken links) sometime soon.

 

As for the video releases, for those that have a preference, people seem to favor MKV over MP4 almost 2:1, so I plan to be transitioning to that. From the feedback I received, there seems to be NO consistency with what stutters on people's computers. It's almost like each format is different for every person. MKV at least has the advantage of being one of the highest quality options, so even if you don't like the format, you'll be working with a better source if you want to convert it to something else. Also if you prefer the existing WMV copies of the videos for some reason, I recommend grabbing them now, because I plan to take them down later and replace them with the higher quality .MKV files.

[sullygass95]

Awesome I'd like to see the winner's editing job, and I'm glad you're transitioning to MKV I like higher quality anyway. BTW, has FM Episode 39 been uploaded yet or are you still editing it?

[marto282]

no mention about the dog?...

that barking is getting really annoying over time.

Hope to see more FM / CP soon

[Ross Scott]

Awesome I'd like to see the winner's editing job, and I'm glad you're transitioning to MKV I like higher quality anyway. BTW, has FM Episode 39 been uploaded yet or are you still editing it?

It was sent to Otto about a week and a half ago, he'll be working on the sound editing while I'll be working on Episode 40.

[QuakeIV]

None of you won, try again.

[SirNicholas]

For everyone who doesn't like MKV and isn't afraid of command-line interfaces (those be few, I fear), FFmpeg can convert practically everything and is fairly fast as well.

I know I've said it before, but really, once you get to know FFmpeg you don't have to worry about compatibility anymore. (:

 

Looking forward to FM and CP!

And when it concerns sound quality you can't be picky enough. Good luck to all the contestants!

[J.C.]

I miss Otto. He used to hang around these parts more.

 

So Ross, about the download for Ep. 38, is that going to be the first one to be released in mkv?

[sullygass95]

Awesome I'd like to see the winner's editing job, and I'm glad you're transitioning to MKV I like higher quality anyway. BTW, has FM Episode 39 been uploaded yet or are you still editing it?

It was sent to Otto about a week and a half ago, he'll be working on the sound editing while I'll be working on Episode 40.

Cool, can't wait to see it on youtube. I've never actually beat Half-Life myself so I'm almost as excited to see what situation Freeman is in as I am to see his reactions to them.

[Obsidian]

For everyone who doesn't like MKV and isn't afraid of command-line interfaces (those be few, I fear), FFmpeg can convert practically everything and is fairly fast as well.

 

Or, alternatively, if Ross uses the h264 video codec and a .mp4/.m4v friendly audio codec, one could use MKVextract to extract the streams and remux them into an .mp4/.m4v container. That's what I'll be doing, at least; all of the fun of MKV quality without the compatibility issues

[civic199]

As for the video releases, for those that have a preference, people seem to favor MKV over MP4 almost 2:1, so I plan to be transitioning to that.

I specifically signed up to say:

NOOOOOO!!! What about mac users? We can't watch these sweet episodes on our iPhones/iPods/iPads/apple tvs/macs(itunes)

mp4 is good as mkv, and easily play at both platforms, but not vice versa!!!(((( WHY???

 

[Axeldeath]

His image is pretty convincing.

[Vapymid]

We can't watch these sweet episodes on our iPhones/iPods/iPads/apple tvs/macs(itunes)

.... WHY???

 

[trollmode]Get a proper computer?[/trollmode]

 

 

Regards

[SirNicholas]

As for the video releases, for those that have a preference, people seem to favor MKV over MP4 almost 2:1, so I plan to be transitioning to that.

I specifically signed up to say:

NOOOOOO!!! What about mac users? We can't watch these sweet episodes on our iPhones/iPods/iPads/apple tvs/macs(itunes)

mp4 is good as mkv, and easily play at both platforms, but not vice versa!!!(((( WHY???

 

 

Here you go: http://www.ffmpegx.com/, it even has a GUI!

[civic199]

Here you go: http://www.ffmpegx.com/, it even has a GUI!

thx, but maybe im an absolutly n00b and what then? what i should do with that? no... i just wanna download and play! without my extratime to convert it.

why you reject mp4-format? it is the same quallity with the same output file size, plus its crossplotformer (actually i dunno how good it is under *nix, but i think its still quite well).

srsly, i wanna download, drop it into my itunes library, sync and go. no extra movements. and its still good for pc and mac. and ios. and linux, i think. and pc and mac, again.

 

hear my voice!

[fman23]

Here you go: http://www.ffmpegx.com/, it even has a GUI!

thx, but maybe im an absolutly n00b and what then? what i should do with that? no... i just wanna download and play! without my extratime to convert it.

why you reject mp4-format? it is the same quallity with the same output file size, plus its crossplotformer (actually i dunno how good it is under *nix, but i think its still quite well).

srsly, i wanna download, drop it into my itunes library, sync and go. no extra movements. and its still good for pc and mac. and ios. and linux, i think. and pc and mac, again.

 

hear my voice!

 

Um, the mkv CONTAINER (it is the same format) is more optimized and customizable. And to my understanding, you can drop mkvs into itunes. I wouldn't know I use linux but I think apple has the slightest bit of common sense.

[Obsidian]

Here you go: http://www.ffmpegx.com/, it even has a GUI!

thx, but maybe im an absolutly n00b and what then? what i should do with that? no... i just wanna download and play! without my extratime to convert it.

why you reject mp4-format? it is the same quallity with the same output file size, plus its crossplotformer (actually i dunno how good it is under *nix, but i think its still quite well).

srsly, i wanna download, drop it into my itunes library, sync and go. no extra movements. and its still good for pc and mac. and ios. and linux, i think. and pc and mac, again.

 

hear my voice!

 

Um, the mkv CONTAINER (it is the same format) is more optimized and customizable. And to my understanding, you can drop mkvs into itunes. I wouldn't know I use linux but I think apple has the slightest bit of common sense.

 

'Fraid not on the iTunes thing. It makes sense, though; why support it on one platform but not the rest? Of course, there's always "why not just support it?"

 

And the usefulness of the MKV container is debatable, especially related to the content we'll see from Ross. Assuming his video codec will still be h.264 and his audio codecs won't be anything alien to mainstream formats, and that he'll continue to insist on .SRT subtitles (which I hope he does), then there'd be no difference if the videos were uploaded as in .m4v or .mkv. If Ross wanted .ass/.ssa subtitles (which idk why anyone would), then you'd be right in that .mkv is more useful.

 

Luckily, I'm not scared of a little command-line, so I'll have no problem extracting the streams from the MKVs and muxing them into the .m4v container with or without subtitles (not sure if I want to bother with proof reading just for subtitles).

 

As a side note, it'd be cool if Ross would pre-tag his videos for those of us who will be adding them to iTunes, XBMC, Plex, Boxee, et cetera won't have to organize them ourselves

[Ross Scott]

NOOOOOO!!![/color][/size] What about mac users? We can't watch these sweet episodes on our iPhones/iPods/iPads/apple tvs/macs(itunes)

mp4 is good as mkv, and easily play at both platforms, but not vice versa!!!((((

If the majority had voted for MP4, I would have gone with that. I don't use Apple hardware, so I don't have a strong opinion on it one way or the other. While the results of the tests were all over the damn place, I actually saw some posts / emails / can't remember where people had smooth playback with MKV, but not MP4. Who knows. The workload for me increases exponentially for each additional format I add, because that's some 50+ videos I'll have to convert. Since H264 offers the highest quality for the space, I'll be releasing the videos as MKV, then users can convert them to whatever they want. I actually hope to modify the website so that additional users can submit mirrors in any format they want.

[Michael Archer]

That sounds fair enough. I can always convert without substantial image loss.

[Obsidian]

That sounds fair enough. I can always convert without substantial image loss.

 

Protip: remuxing the streams inside the MKV into an MP4/M4V file results in zero image loss ;D

[civic199]

i hope someone can make and share proper mp4s with us...

buy the way, what about built-in subtitles? is it real to release files in that way?