Anime playback thread

If this needs to be moved to Technology or else where, Move it. I believe this is anime related since playback is always an issue for people. I have created a guide how to get h264, mkv, and HD 720p 1080p subs working on slow PCs. Everything you need is included. If you cant play back a file, cant play HD, cant play mkv, cant play h264, or watch AVI then this guide is for you.

Using this guide my friends laptop Pentium4 1.5Ghz CPU can play Thoras relases. For those who don't know Thora does blurays HD only and softsub MKV. Very high quality stuff.

VLC sucks, never use it for anime but keep it for a backup player incase something doesnt run.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YZ3MRK6E

Megaupload link includes MPC, CCCP, other audio codacs, CoreAVC (Slow PCs want this) and instructions on how to set it up. If the link breaks I will reupload it. Should soon be a bot on Rizon that has this same guide. (Not in #fakku)

FAQ (I feel this is nessercy in order educate people a bit more. Im no expert though on any of these, its just what Ive picked up over time. Knowledge is power. Correct me if I am wrong with anything.

1. What is the difference between xvid and h264?

Everything needs a source and that source can be TV, DVDs, Blurays, or webcasts. Most come from TV and if you have ever watched anime on TV you would know that it looks much better. The good looking TV broadcast that you see is called a transport stream (.ts file). These files can range from 2gigs in size to sometimes 6gigs. They also dont play very well in most media players. If groups were to release 2-6gig files per episode im pretty sure no one would watch them. You have people complain over 400mb files 2-6gigs is staggering. In order to release the video at a decent size groups have to do what is called compression. Xvid is the community's standard for SD avi (400p) files in most cases. H264 or sometimes called x264 is the standard for HD mkv and mp4 (720p) and with some groups they use it for SD. The form of compression can be used on any kind of video. Things like xvid are just not ideal for HD. In other words h264 is better than xvid as the picture will look better and closer to the original. H264 is turn is harder to run on most PCs.

2. Whats the difference between AVI, MKV, MP4 and why should I choose MKV and MP4 over AVI.

I am in way shape or form an expert on this subject, but what I know should be enough to get the gist of it. They are all what you call Containers (Think of them like a box), Not video formats (not so sure about mp4 with this but it wont matter to you). They all hold a type of video and audio. AVI in most cases has some hard limitations. AVI can not hold AAC audio which is a higher quality than mp3, but in most cases not as loud. AVI can not hold h264 video without hacks that can break media players (Dattebayo does this). AVI also does not hold softsubs (External subtitles). This means they must hardsub it which is when you embed the subs into the video itself. This degrades picture quality even further and they can not be removed. MP4 is this but it can hold h264 and does not have the picture limitations. Also MP4 allows better types of audio. Then there is MKV. MKV is just about limitless. In theory it can hold anything. MKV is more of the ultimate box. MKV can hold everything from fonts, subtitle files externally so no need to hardsub and degrade picture quality, Audio of any type, Picture of any type. Generally MKV is harder on the PC since it has external files that it must read, but this is all in turn to give the viewer a better experience. MKV also allows two subtitle tracks and dual audio for you people who like dubs and subs. Also you can turn subs off. This is very good for you people who know Japanese or will one day who archive releases. Many raws out there are just bad. GOOD groups release off a .ts source that look better than just about any other raw out there. If you watch raws this makes them good aswell since it allows you to get better picture in most cases.

AVI is overall outdated. Many groups have stoped releasing them or put little to no effort into them. In another year or two AVI will be rare atleast from the current trend. Learning how to play MKV HD files now on your Slow PC is a must if you want to continue to watch your anime.

3. My Graphics card or monitor doesnt support HD why would I want to download HD?

Neither did my old PC that I used to watch anime on. Picture still looks better than SD. Would recommend watching HD releases anyway.

/end wall of text. If theres anything wrong above or something that needs added Tell me and I will edit my post.

Hopeing this was informational. The main reason for this post was the play back file at the top. If theres something still wrong or you it doesnt work I will do what I can to assist you.

Edit: Overlay Renderer is the fastest for those with slow PCs. Goes under options > output > and then choose from the choices.

More Edit: Im finding out more and more about mpc-hc. If your pc is fast use output EVR CUSTOM, if that doesnt work then use mpc normal overlay, if that doesnt work try mpc-hc overlay.

[color=darkblue]Good post. I'll be sure to never mention VLC ever again...[/color]

Nice Guide there Sindalf.
Maybe this'll solve some common problems you may encounter during your daily anime dosis.

:D

Sweet. Even though I already knew most of this stuff, I can still appreciate it having been forced to find it out by myself in the past, due to hardware issues and hunger for quality. /+rep/
I would also like to further stress the part about CoreAVC. Dunno how it does it but that frigin codec made some impossible to play files run smoothly on my older machines without any visible quality loss. Also for those who still have some juice left in their machines - codecs like ffdshow (standard component of CCCP) have a buttload of options (like deband or sharpen) that can further influence the quality of your playback at the cost of PC resources. Google the subject or fiddle with them yourselves if you feel up to it. Very much worth it IMHO.

I hope a better place to put this can be found (some sticky maybe ?).

You have to pay for CoreAVC in must cases. For once in my life, I suggest you buy it if you have extra cash. Getting better versions of this out is good for the entire community. Fund it.

Awesome. Now this is a very useful thread...I just hope this helps people to burn it inside that VLC sucks.

Hell, no need for VLC even as backup...MPC and Zoom Player do it all.

And yeah, CoreAVC is awesome. I can play 720p in my damn 1GHz old-timer...wow.

Dude, this was awesome. I do not have problems playing anything but this was surely very informative. This should definetly be stickied.

May I ask a question? Lately i've been hearing a lot of good stuff about that CCCP codec pack. Do you think that one is better than K-lite? And what player does it contain? (the one where you play your animes and movies and stuff)? I play with MCP but if there's a better one, I wanna use it. :P

(I'll rep you when I can for sure)

CCCP is very good. It what ive been told as the Best Free codacs which is why it doesn't have coreavc. CCCP has MPC-HC (Homechima) which has more internal codacs. Those can mess with your current codacs and cause problems in some cases. Others it will help. Reason normal MPC is provided because if there is less then you can just use the external codacs that work.

I don't know much about k-lite. Ive been told alot that its made of fail. Only one person I know uses it.

Made of fail? :O

Yes made of fail. I dont use it cause thats what ive been told. Doubt it will matter anyway since what ive provided can play just about anything except rmvb files (dont want those anyway) and some crazy rare audio files.

And so can K-lite. Ò.ó (and it can play rmvb, though I don't want those either)

Keep in mind that CCCP was basically designed to replace numerous, stand-alone codecs, groups had to distribute in order for their releases to play properly. In other words, while it may not be the most all-powerful package, it is definitely the one best optimized for decoding anime. Furthermore, while still having no problem with most of the other stuff out there CCCP doesn't clud your machine with additional, near-useless software causing crashes or conflict. I used K-Lite in the past and found switching to CCCP a huge improvement.

Uwah if Das says it, then it's true. I'll download it right away.

I find no difference between using CCCP or K-Lite. In my opinion they are exactly the same except for which codecs are enabled and what some of the settings are. As long as you know what your doing, you can customize either to get the same result.

Awesome. Now the Blu-ray 1080p Evangelion 1.11 runs super smooth.
Thanks, helped a lot.

Also, if you don't want to install an illegal version of coreavc, I find that divx's h264 decoder has similar performance on top of being completely free. CCCP has a good guide on that here: http://cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=DivX_H.264
If you use K-Lite codec pack, do all of that and when you get to the cccp part just go into ffdshow's video options and in the codec section set h264/avc to disabled.

Make sure afterwards you configure the decoder and set hw interlacing to on if you got a good graphics card and to remove the divx logo from startup.

I really like the effort you put into this thread. I don't need the stuff you uploaded since my computer already contains the Nvidia 9600 GSO and a 2.2 Ghz dual core for gaming purposes but this would come in handy for a few laptops I have laying around that I just barely got to play HD videos on youtube.

This also helps to explain why I never could find anime in HD until Bakemonogatari (First anime I downloaded in 720P). I just assumed that no one believed in anime in HD back then for some odd reason -_-;.

I don't really need it either since I have a Nvidia 9800 GT and a 2.66 Ghz quad. Coreavc still is good for playback on Thoras HD videos since without it ive noticed even people with top of line pcs have some issues relating to picture artifacts.



What? I might misunderstanding this but are you saying you couldn't find anime in HD until Bakemonogatari? I can say anime has been released in HD for near the past three years and is incredibly easy to find.

Also everything I included has way more than enough to play fakkus videos. Always someone who says they cant run it.

I just downloaded and followed the instructions you provided for the CCCP, I switched from using k-lite to this and played a 720p anime but i don't seem to notice any difference regardless though thanks for helping out with providing a different playback method.

Shouldn't notice almost any difference if you can all ready run HD anime. The only difference I noticed was from the video output choices and 1080p. That is if my eyes were not playing tricks on me. It should be easier on your cpu with the coreavc (I think anyway)

This is more for people who don't think their PC can handle 1080p and anything not xvid avi.