2010-04-18, 07:18 | Link #1 |
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*unfinished* Watching Anime on iPod: From MKV to AVI to M4V
Nowadays, most all fansubs are distributed in MKV format, a format that allows softsubbing, chapters, and whatnot. This is great and all, but the mainstream tech businesses haven't quite caught up to MKVs yet; therefore, support for MKV files is unfairly rare. Of course, iPod is included in the list of machines that can't play MKV files, or any files for that matter, unless they're encoded in Apple's weird and annoying M4V format. I need fansubs on my iPod, since they always go unwatched on my computer, so getting those MKVs on my 6Gen iPod doing is a necessary skill.
If done under default settings, this process will result in a considerable loss in video quality. For better results, set your quality settings higher. Remember that since this is going to be presented on a tiny iPod screen, what looks horrible on your big computer screen won't look too bad on your iPod. This tutorial is an expanded version of one I found on Nick's Anime Blog. First, make sure you have everything you need downloaded. To convert MKV to AVI: *VirtualDubMod - To put files into an AVI container *VobSub - To get VirtualDubMod to work with separate subtitle files (soft subs) *MKVExtractGUI Mirror - To unpackage video, audio, and subtitles from MKV containers *MKVToolNix - To get MKVExtractGUI to work right *All2AVI - To convert raw MKV video (no audio or subs) to AVI format *H.264 and XviD codecs - To get any of this stuff to work right Optional: *AC3ACM - To be able to use AC3 files in VirtualDubMod *LameACM - To encode to MP3 in VirtualDubMod *VLC media player - To convert non-MP3s to MP3s, and to play freshly downloaded MKVs To Convert from AVIs to M4Vs: *3GP Converter - To encode AVIs into iPod-friendly M4Vs. It's in Japanese, but you can configure it to use English. Now, on with the tutorial itself! Install Everything Obvious step is obvious. Not everything comes with an .exe installer, so just unZip/unRar into whatever folder. I chose to make my desktop my work area, since it's easy to get to files there. If you get FFDshow, you'll need to set it up. -Start-->Programs-->Combined Community Codec Pack -> FFDShow VFW Codec Configuration -will update later... Acquire Necessary Files -Start up MKVExtractGUI (from here on out known as MKVE). -Click the button with an ellipse (...), then choose your MKV to convert. -Checkmark the video (H264), audio (usu. AC3 or MP3), and subtitles (usu. ASS). Checkmark any fonts you may want to use. -Click Extract |
2010-04-18, 11:33 | Link #2 |
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: Finland / Japan
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It's usually not a bad idea to try and make a nice guide for the newbies to follow when stuff needs to get converted for appliance X or Y, but there're too many places I actually have to facepalm at here.
Not to mention that the iPods come in multiple ages, which all have different settings and resolutions that they want, using an application that hasn't been updated for five+ years isn't actually that sane :P (not to mention that the non-mod version has been kept up to date if you haven't yet seen that). Also, VSFilter's (yes, this is Vobsub) newest version comes with the CCCP and should be usable with VirtualDub if you only copy the filter to the vdub's needed folder and rename it if needed. As an overall image on what should be done, personally I would probably just use ffms2 in Avisynth with timecodes output + Aegisub's VFR->CFR conversion for the subtitles paired with a needed AssumeFPS on the Avisynth side + timecodes input on the x264 side (it does have timecodes input nowadays, y'know) and then remuxing/re-encoding the audio depending on what the Matroska file contains. I'd guess the iPod would work with VFR MP4, since the PSP copes with such files as well. Another option could be a libass-enabled mplayer piped to ffmpeg (maybe with some CFR conversion done at either side if needed, too). First of all this drops out the need to make something into avi, as well as aims at keeping the VFR there. Ordered chapters are a whole different possible PITA, but hey -- uau's mplayer and some Avisynth ++'ing should actually do its job. And the sugar on the bottom. You could possibly actually automatize all of this (not sure about the Aegisub's VFR->CFR conversion for avisynth, but otherwise) :P Anyways, good luck with the guide and I hope this'll help you to see how to make this thing as fool-proof as possible.
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2010-04-18, 13:34 | Link #4 | |
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Also, some people will still want to do the conversion and watch the stuff, and IMHO it should at least be done correctly. I had meant to do something to automatize encoding without subtitles and keeping the VFR, but it never got further than random batch scripts and henkan-kun (3gp_conv) profiles. Subtitles and VFR input always make stuff harder, but not exactly impossible >_> .
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2010-04-18, 15:07 | Link #5 |
ひきこもりアイドル
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I have converted stuff with Perian and Quicktime Pro on Mac OS X to iPhone/iPod Touch and it was alot simpler to hard code the subtitles. Although not pretty since Perian doesn't support special effects in ASS, just the text and styling, it actually works pretty well and I don't really have to go jump into the hoops to get it working.
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2010-04-18, 17:24 | Link #6 | |
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Although I have no idea how Quicktime handles stuff inside... but I guess when you're encoding for a device with a small resolution like these it really doesn't matter (it does, but as long as it doesn't completely rape the output as in do unneeded framerate conversions etc. it should be "fine").
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2010-04-18, 17:49 | Link #7 | |
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2010-04-18, 18:23 | Link #8 | |
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(Shows me how much I actually deal with hardsubs)
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2010-04-21, 19:06 | Link #10 | |
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2010-04-21, 20:40 | Link #11 | |||
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As I mentioned earlier, I did think of mplayer-uau (/mplayer-kovensky)'s output piped into x264 with timecodes from, say, ffms2 and lastly merged with audio that's encoded from another mplayer process' audio dumping feature's output as something that'd be possible to handle instead of Avisynth hackery and all kinds of other stuff to support ordered chapters/segment linking properly when re-encoding (there's the filtering-as-in-resize-etc. patch for x264 for resizing etc., so I'd guess this'd be mostly OK). This, as well as the Avisynth hackery I mentioned, could of course be put under a single interface so that people like you wouldn't even know that there are multiple parts moving inside (not to mention that most of the tools that are around seriously don't care about these features that get used in fansubbing every day, mostly because they're going for the easy way through -- or because their developers don't even think/know about these features, so a specific mix of applications is already needed for the best outcome). Quote:
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TL;DR If Perian can do it correctly with subs rendering, do give this a try. He seems to have some weird settings in the quality bar because he wanted to mimic the QT encoder's change of quality in the preview window, but that can be overridden as far as I can see. And of course you'll (gasp!) have to learn what kind of settings your poor device needs. Otherwise I'd say the mplayer + x264 w/ filtering patch would be the way to go (with another mplayer dumping audio and feeding it to an audio encoder). Anyways, my hands are currently somewhat full with two projects at the moment from university, but I'll have to see if I can get something done after I get all of them done as I've been playing with completely custom workflows and batch scripts -- as well as with pyQT after I found out how much hackery I had to do to make stuff work nicely inside Keitai Douga Henkan-kun's ways of scripting. In other words, you'd really struggle at finding an easy-to-use app that can already do ordered chapters / segment linking as well as correct VFR from files right now. Quick Edit: Mplayer seems to be real bad at giving output to stdout, hurr. Most people just point towards cygwin's and *nixes mkfifo, which in return need their own kind of an mplayer build. Oh well...
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Last edited by JEEB; 2010-04-21 at 22:39. |
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