This is really more of a general concern, but I feel it needs addressing because I have not been able to get this stuff to work adequately for years.
I love MC to death. Its feature set is unrivaled on all fronts. Red October, in principle, is probably the best idea to come out of a media player for some time.
Unfortunately, as I've indicated in at least three other topics, it's not perfect yet, mostly in regard to subtitle rendering, but also when trying to make a custom configuration. In MC 16 or 17 (can't remember which), when RO first came out, there were two additional options in the video section: "Red October Standard with additional filters" and "Red October HQ with additional filters." This was AMAZING because choosing either of them would automatically allow any external codecs and splitter to do the work while reaping most of RO's benefits without issue. I don't know exactly why they were taken away, but they were replaced with the newer "Custom" and "Windows merit-based" options.
I am not a video encoding/decoding genius. Most of this stuff flies completely over my head. However, I watch a lot of anime. I don't know Japanese. So, naturally, I want to be able to establish some kind of configuration that allows the subtitles to render correctly. I have not had success doing this since MC 16, I believe. Such is why I moved over to the PS3 Media Server until I found that trying to stream DVD/BD rips through it is an even worse nightmare, especially since that program isn't exactly stable between each release, good of an idea as it is.
So I came back to this and things have been all right, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get MC to prefer external codecs over those chosen by RO. I tell the thing to use DirectVobSub for subtitle rendering, but it always just uses madVR instead. Turning it back to RO Standard prevents madVR, but I'm guessing it moves to something else because DirectVobSub still will not work. No amount of tinkering with it (trying LAV, trying ffdshow, trying whatever) does what I want it to, unless I tell it to specifically use Windows merit-based, which comes with another problem: DVD rips (as in, IFO's with VOB's, folder structure) will not, under any circumstance, play with merit-based selected. I have tried enabling and disabling mpeg-2 support/DVD video playback in both LAV and ffdshow. Same resulting "Failed merit-based rendering" error.
This would be easy if there was a comprehensive guide on how to use this stuff, but most everything written on the Wiki was written for MC 16 and prior. There is almost no documentation on how to get MC working with the K-Lite Codec Pack. Just CCCP, which has not been updated in over a year and, quite frankly, is likely a dead project. Elsewhere on the internet, since MC is such a niche player, most playback guides that are written for an optimised anime playback setup (read: not just for your typical MKV fansub releases, but also for DVD/BD rips) are written for Media Player Classic Home Cinema or some other player that I don't want or need in place of MC. MC is capable of doing everything that all these other players do and much more and I really don't want to have to install all this other player software just to play all these specific files that I can't seem to get the program configured for.
I just need some general help with this. It's not so much anime as it is everything; I just say anime because that's the most complex and problematic thing to get playing properly. I figure that if I can get anime to work, I can get everything else to work.
List of issues:
For MKV's (especially anime fansubs):
General ASS/SSA rendering problems. Subtitles lines that overlap in terms of time are not placed correctly within the video. Many lines appearing at once (such as two people talking while a sign translation appears) cause premature cutoffs and some lines fail to appear at all.
ASS/SSA subtitle effects are still generally unsupported.
For DVD rips:
Cannot be played with merit-based rendering, no matter how extensively external codec settings are configured.
For BD rips (especially anime rips):
General PGS rendering problems. Subtitles lines that overlap in terms of time are not placed correctly within the video. Many lines appearing at once (such as two people talking while a sign translation appears) cause premature cutoffs and some lines fail to appear at all.
FYI, for ripping all DVD's and BD's, I use DVDFab's MainMovie feature. I do not rip an entire disc and I omit all menus, leaving me with just the video files in folder structure. For TV series, I rip each episode one at a time, meaning that they all have their own folder structure.
It doesn't matter what is needed to assist troubleshooting: logs, sample videos, screenshots, whatever. Just ask and I will provide.
It would also be cool if RO itself were configurable or at least that it could be determined what, exactly, it is using at any given time. I know that it uses madVR for HQ rendering, but that's about it. Does it use LAV? Does it use VSFilter? What does it do?
Author
Topic: [18.0.78] Up-to-date playback guide (Read 9396 times)