FairUse 2.6 is out

[lakedude]

fu2k and UMP

I love you guys! Well I love FairUse anyway. Too bad I can't get ya to take a donation. I use FU more than any other program and to me it is worth chargin for.

fu2k you made a wonderful program, ahead of its time, rock solid. bullet proof, almost perfect.

UMP you are finishing what was started in a great way. Your additions are pretty much exacty what FU needed. You do not give yourself enough credit sometimes.

Many Thanks and keep up the good work!

[UMP]

Originally posted by lakedude
Too bad I can't get ya to take a donation.
This might change in the near future ;)

Thank you for your support,

ump

[RathO]

@UMP: FairUse is just getting better and better with its 0.40 version!

1- I was wondering if its possible to add a "Browse" button so we can decide where (on wich hard-disk) the final file will be written?

2- Would be great to be able to create a FairUse project with already unencrypted vob files on our hard-disk.

3- Are you planning to add some options for filters? (now im thinking about Convolution3d and maybe some other usefull filters...)

Keep up the good work! :p

Regards

[UMP]

1. this is not planned ATM

2. you might build an iso image and mount it with daemon-tools

3. the "original resize" mode features built-in filters, but this mode is currently about 2-3 times slower than the MMX version (without filters).

[mikegun]

hi @ all

maybe I missed something but I still do not understand why the thread for this great programm is in the general discussion forum ??

regards,

m.

[RathO]

@UMP:

What are the filters the original resize mode is currently using?
Is it that hard to add a button so the user can decide where to write the final file? :confused:

Thank you for your reply.

Regards

[UMP]

@mikegun : I guess it is because it can encode to both XviD and DivX, so it wouldn't fit in one of the two forums.

@RathO: it wouldn't be _that_ hard, but I don't feel this to be a high priority task.

Regards,

ump

[lakedude]

maybe I missed something but I still do not understand why the thread for this great programm is in the general discussion forum ?? Good question. I think the problem is that FU is too reliable and doesn't generate enough traffic. They explained that they monitored the traffic and FU just don't generate any. Too simple and too reliable. Who ever needs to ask questions? The whole thing is self explanatory.

[mikegun]

Originally posted by lakedude
Good question. I think the problem is that FU is too reliable and doesn't generate enough traffic. They explained that they monitored the traffic and FU just don't generate any. Too simple and too reliable. Who ever needs to ask questions? The whole thing is self explanatory.

hehe, thats a good point.

rgds.

mikegun

[UMP]

Originally posted by lakedude
Good question. I think the problem is that FU is too reliable and doesn't generate enough traffic. They explained that they monitored the traffic and FU just don't generate any. Too simple and too reliable. Who ever needs to ask questions? The whole thing is self explanatory.
Is this a joke or is this serious ?

[RathO]

Too bad, it would be a great option that would push me to use FU over my old classic method. It is hard-disk-killer to process-mux movies on a single hd IMO and i just hate that.

[no offense here]
OK, let's see if the money can bring this option... i'll make a little contribution via Paypal if it gets on soon :p
[/no offense here]

Also, would be great to have more details about what exactly is the "old resize" and what is the "new one".

Can you publish on your website your to-do list if possible?

Keep up the good work UMP!

Regards

[UMP]

Originally posted by RathO
[no offense here]
OK, let's see if the money can bring this option... i'll make a little contribution via Paypal if it gets on soon :p
[/no offense here]
From the FU donation page : "In short, I am not selling user support or new features implementation."

You should only donate if you want to _donate_. :p

Also, would be great to have more details about what exactly is the "old resize" and what is the "new one".
The "original resize" is a bicubic resizer written in C. The "new one" is an MMX-optimized bilinear resizer.

Bilinear resizing is usually considered to be better than bicubic when it comes to shrinking the picture.

Regards,

ump

[ender]

Hi !

Great work, however for us PocketPC & PALM Users it would be GREAT to have a simple "rotate 90°" Option, could you implement that in a next version ??

Thanks for Fair use anyways !!!

Ender

[UMP]

This is already on the TODO list, through it's not my number 1 priority :)

Regards,

ump

[halbacht]

Well guys, I am not sure whether what I am going to describe here belongs to this thread, but I simply don't want to start a new one with my first post in this forum...

Let's go: I have a 16:9 TV, standalone MPEG4 player and an anamorhic (16:9) DVD with a 2,35:1 film.

What I want to do is to make a XVID AVI using FU, but optimized for watching on my TV set, it means it should contain anamorhic frames. Although it would be nice if I there were a SW player that can automatically handle such anamorhic AVIs on the comuter, it's not my primary concern at the moment.

To do such thing with FU is at the moment not possible.

Why? Because FU does not support native output of anamorhic material.

I mean in the FU Wizard resolution screen, you can pick up 'Output Video Size' that are found to be suitable (using FU intern logic) either for 'TV Aspect Ratio' (equals to 59:54 PAL PAR), or not which probably defaults to computer monitor display with 1:1 PAR. For anamorhic DVDs, FU realizes that in both cases you will have to resize, what is exactly what you need when you are going to watch the film on the computer monitor. So the resolutions that one can use for an output video size are limited to those ones which have a resizing included.

But for 16:9 TV sets this simply means the lost of vertical resolution and advantages that anamorhic DVDs bring with.

To be (hopefully) clear, that is the exact sequence of what happens:

- After first steps I cropped the horizontal black bars, and after that I have frames with 704x432 resolution.
- The best output resolution offered by FU in this case is 704x320 (with 'TV Aspect Ratio' set).
- When I choose this resolution, I get 'normal' frames in AVI, BUT (excuse for caps) I loose 112 lines of vertical resolution.
- When I play such material on my TV, I get squieshed picture with DAR ~ 3:1. That's because my TV set in automatic mode have a 'feature' to always stretch the lines to fill in the full screen.
- Well, as a 'workaround' I use a 'zoom' feature of a TV set which stretch the picture vertically so that the final DAR is as the original one (2.35:1), but I know that I have lost about 33% of vertical resolution, and that my favourite film can look much better if played without vertical streching...

I think it would be great if the FU Wizard get one additional 'check box' (or radio box) which allow to set the output video size to resolutions which correspond to native anamorhic build. In practice it should equal (in at least one most ineteresting case) not to do resizing at all, which can only additionally speed up the whole process.

And chances are good that the number of people using stanalones MPEG4 players and 16:9 TVs will increase in future.


One more question for MPU:

Afaik the black-white luminance range for watching on PCs is 0-255, while for TV it is 16-236 or so.
How it is handled in FU at the moment? I mean is the output optimized for PC (analog to Avisynth filter colorYUV with 'levels' parameter set to "TV->PC")?

If it is so it would be great if it can be configurable as well, so when preparing the material targeted for watching on TV the original luminance range stay the same as original...

I have a strange feeling that my XVIDs when looking using standalone player are a little darker then on my PC and I think that maybe can be a reason.



And finally my personal message (MPU, fu2k):

you have done a great job, guys. It was a long way to go, a lot of wonderful people contributed to 'fair use' ideas considerable amount of their time (and lives), and a lot of extraorinary good and
useful products are available at the moment.

But with your product a ripping has become a 'no brainer' as it should be. There are a lot of us that prefer this all-in-one way, always or at least sometimes. That's a way to find time to do something else in our lives far away from computer screens...

just keep on...

[RathO]

@UMP: I have a fullscreen movie, and i'm wondering why the resolution choosed by FU doesn't match the 4:3 AR.

For a 1 cd rip, i always use 512x384 res >> 4:3. (I'd go 640x480 for a 2 cd rip, wich is not the case right now...).
The preferred resolutions that shows FU, 512x384 does not appear, and the preferred res are not 4:3.

Is the problem related with the cropping?
Should we specify to FU the source AR? >> 4:3 or 16:9?

Regards

[UMP]

And chances are good that the number of people using stanalones MPEG4 players and 16:9 TVs will increase in future.
Anamorphic encoding would be very easy to implement, but my fear this would lead to confusion for many users, provided that it seems that the final AR on the display will highly depend on the used devices rather than the encoding settings.
I mean : an anamorphic encoding will display fine on _your_ TV set with _your_ standalone player, but there is no guarantee how the same encoding would display with another hardware (no to speak about PC monitor). I don't like the idea to implement "try and see if it works for you" features in FairUse.

Afaik the black-white luminance range for watching on PCs is 0-255, while for TV it is 16-236 or so.
The luminance range is currently 0-255.

@RathO: FU already knows the source AR. If you're looking only to predefined standard resolutions, you might try with no cropping at all, through this is not recommended.


Regards,

ump

[halbacht]

@UMP:I respect your fear to put inside one all-in-one and easy-to-use tool one such (advanced?) feature. But think again:
I mean : an anamorphic encoding will display fine on _your_ TV set with _your_ standalone player, but there is no guarantee how the same encoding would display with another hardware (no to speak about PC monitor). I don't like the idea to implement "try and see if it works for you" features in FairUse.

First of all, this is a story about ALL 16:9 TV sets and ALL MPEG4 stadalone players... And these people are slowely coming with their needs and desires, look in AGK threads....

It took me some time to understand what's happening and to realize that the picture I get can be much better without (almost) any development effort. At the beginning I had the feeling that something is wrong, but I didn't figured out what. There are a lot of newbies that are using ripping for the same reason as me, but are simply not aware that they easily can get much better results. I mean they are maybe happy with what they get, but they (and me) will be much happier if we get something much better...

As you stated it is very easy to implement :), BUT you don't give it to us :(. So (no offend here) this reminds me on my database admin: I know that something exist, BUT he simply don't give me the right to use it :angry:! Na ja, I don't like him anyhow...

BUT, I like you and your work and respect all what you put inside this program (I am a sw developer as well). I am just telling you:
HEJ, your program can perform MUCH better in one important use case and it is easy to do, so use the chance and do it.
You will be the first to offer such feature in one all-in-one tool.
Don't disappoint me...
To avoid any doubt (for unexperienced users) you need to either:
- make this feature available only in expert mode, or
- use clear statement that the feature is exclusively for 16:9 TV sets

And nothing more, everybode will understand it, even newbies are not sooooo blind :), believe me!

Concerning luminance:
The luminance range is currently 0-255.
Thank you very much for answer, it means the same problem: for watching on TV sets it would be very nice if (ONLY in expert mode) we can adjust the luminance level to be appropriate for watching our XDIVs on TV sets (in this case 16:9 or 4:3 doesn't matter, of course).

thanks for reply,
regards halbacht

[RathO]

What i mean is that with AR 4:3, 512x384 should be available in the preferred res. When FU crops using AutoSet, the AR % of error should be 0%, wich is not the case right now with its ~1.xxx% AR error.

I know its no big deal, but you know...

J'te remercie ;)
Regards

[UMP]

What are the nearest displayed resolutions ?

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by halbacht
...I think it would be great if the FU Wizard get one additional 'check box' (or radio box) which allow to set the output video size to resolutions which correspond to native anamorhic build. In practice it should equal (in at least one most ineteresting case) not to do resizing at all, which can only additionally speed up the whole process....


Thats not exactly true for all players, most i tried do a correction to the vertical axis because of the "square pixel pc" /"non-square pixel tv".
So in your example 704x432 would be to high, a resizing to 704x400 is necessary to get a correct aspect ratio on my 16:9 TV, gknot can calculate that.
But as said that may differ from player to player, my ess based player seems to like 704x432 :rolleyes:
So i think it would be best to allow entering custom values for the resolution.

[UMP]

FU's "TV Aspect ratio" option disables the ITU-R BT.601 aspect ratio calculation just like in GK.

The point here is that if one _does_ crop the picture, then obviously the output res can't be the full 720x... width. How could it be ?

FU produces perfect aspect ratio output, following or not the ITU-R BT.601 standard or not (depending on viewing on PC/TV). Final dot.

Regards,

ump

[halbacht]

@Zhnujm:So in your example 704x432 would be to high, a resizing to 704x400 is necessary to get a correct aspect ratio on my 16:9 TV, gknot can calculate that.
But as said that may differ from player to player, my ess based player seems to like 704x432.
So i think it would be best to allow entering custom values for the resolution.
I mean my original DVD with anamorphic content is designed to be played on 16:9 screen and all equipment in the 'Picture Production Chain == PPC :)' (DVD, player, TV) play together to produce the best possible picture in DVDs native resolution, it means 720x576 (by the way, smart 4:3 TV sets will see a heck and will automatically reduce the vertical resolution in 4:3 ratio, so that you on them as well get the original movie DAR).

After ripping and cropping I see that useful content (while 2.35:1) is coded with in my case, to be absolute precise 702x432 - it may slightely vary from movie to movie. So I know the best would be to do a little horizontal 'letterboxing' in order to bring a whole useful information on the visible part of the screen, let's say 8 additional pixels left and right which finally bring us to 720x432 (and not 704x432), and let the PPC(see above) do the rest, it knows how to do it best...

But even without letterboxing (maybe not for newbies while it requires manual intervention, so they have to know what they are doing and why), I would be ready to sacrifice few pixels in order to use FU because I really love this tool.

But I cannot sacrifice more than 100 pixels of vertical resolution, its simply too much for me...

Anyhow I agree with your proposition to get a freedom to set the desired resolution (in expert mode), that would solve everything.

So let's see what will bring us the next version, I really hope the we can (together) convince UMP...

regards,
halbacht

[UMP]

I'm already half-convinced that full high-res might be an interesting feature, but...

So I know the best would be to do a little horizontal 'letterboxing'
I would tell : don't do any horizontal cropping ! Why crop to add black lines after that ? If you don't use cropping, you'll get the full horizontal width you're aiming. The real issue with that would be that black borders are very bad for compressibility. Anyway, I think much of us can still watch a video while missing 2 or 3 pixels on each side. :)

I agree with your proposition to get a freedom to set the desired resolution (in expert mode), that would solve everything
I fear I don't :p
That would lead to manual (and IMHO useless) AR calculations. There are defined and precise rules for AR calculation, based on :

1. the source size
2. the format (PAL/NTSC)
3. wether the calculation should follow the ITU-R BT.601 standard
4. wether to do anamorphic encoding or shrink to "simple" res

1 and 2 are determined from the source, FU allow the user to decide point 3, and currently forces the user's choice for 4.

The only change that might be seen in a future release would concern point 4. Manual override would be nonsense IMHO.

Regards,

ump

[r6d2]

Originally posted by UMP
The real issue with that would be that black borders are very bad for compressibility.Hi, UMP,

I know this is practically "urban folklore", but have you actually measured this? I have done it several times with MPEG-2 and the impact is completely neglillible. It woud be nice to have somebody else's confirmation.

[UMP]

I haven't tested this myself, I trusted the author of VDub on this one.

[r6d2]

Believe it or not, I had a discussion with len0x on the AutoGK thread, quite similar to the one you are having here.

My idea was to crop keeping the original height, for one, and with anamorphic sources, resizing the width for a perfect "archival level" encode. Keeping the height required to encode small black bars to get mod 16 or mod 32.

len0x's use of AutoCrop sometimes crops too much. About 2%. I haven't really digged into FU cropping, but maybe those 2 or 3 lines you think you are missing are not that few after all. :confused:

I was advocating for anamorphic AVIs too, even further than that, original PAR AVIs, meaning to keep the NTSC/PAL format PAR and resize at playtime. Then I run into de container issue which I found way too cumbersome to provide a respectable player all the data needed to play correctly.

Even though I got some really good results after all with Matroska and Zplayer, I sort of fell back to the "keep it simple, stupid" concept of: 640 width, height corrected to keep DAR, one single quality based pass, average quant 3. :)

But the conceptual idea is still interesting IMHO.

[RathO]

@UMP: I encoded a movie last night and i always get the temp files to be deleted. So all i had this morning is is my final matroska file. But the file is corrupt (its timecode is corrupted) so the whole movie has to get buffered before playing and when i switch language, the movie starts again.... ok, so let's say the final file is unusable...

Is this a common problem?


UMP, i got the solution: just add a button in the expert features so we can skip or not the final step of muxing all the files... this way, we can use other tools to do so, like MKVtoolnix, wich has a great and easy way of tagging the files (languages...)


Regards

[UMP]

@r6d2: I have yet to see FU to do a wrong cropping. If it fails to determine the edges, the user is asked to crop manually (happened once to me). fu2k did a very good job on this part. :)

@RathO: that's the first time I hear about this, don't know what may have happened.

Regards,

ump

[r6d2]

Originally posted by UMP
@r6d2: I have yet to see FU to do a wrong cropping.Maybe I did not make myself clear, sorry. len0x's AutoGK crops correctly, in the sense that it keeps perfect aspect ratio.

But the rounding thing he forces produces too much cropping sometimes, not just the two or three lines you pointed out. So I thought you might have not noticed that and would like to have a closer look.

[UMP]

That was how I understood it :)

[halbacht]

@r6d2 :
I was advocating for anamorphic AVIs too, even further than that, original PAR AVIs, meaning to keep the NTSC/PAL format PAR and resize at playtime
Very pleased to hear your opinion. In a matter of fact that's what I wanted but was afraid to ask for.

Let's see why. The next lines describe the scenario valid ONLY for TV sets. It's not valid for computer screens.

I hope everybody will agree that 720x576 is the best possible DVD resolution, while native. On PAL TV I will always see 576 lines doesn't matter whether they are filled up with a movie, or with black bars. I can't avoid them while I don't want to cut may TV :). The problem is that the movie fill up only a part of this resolution, in my case 702x432. So I decide to cropp in order to help XVID to compress only the part I am interesting in, my 702x432.

Imagine now the tool which will (after XVID has done its honest job) simply return back my (now compressed) 702x432, and insert it inside original 720x576, exactly on the same place it took it out before compressing! The rest will be, as always, filled up with black bars (for 2.35:1 movies, for 1,85:1 they are almost invisible) so that I have again 720x576. But my TV knows very well what to do with this 720x576, and I trust it to do the job to the end...

What does all this mean?

It means FORGET resizing when targeting the rip for TV sets. Just determine the real movie size (haven't notice problems in FU with that), pick out the bare movie, do XVID, but put it back again from where you took it. That's all folks! We have great XVID movie in best possible TV resolution.

For all other non 720x576 resolutions, DVD player have to make some decision how to prepare this non-standard resolution for TV set. And these decisions can be different from model to model. But with 720x576 they all 'think' the same. So 720x576 is a 'no brainer'!

Then I run into de container issue which I found way too cumbersome to provide a respectable player all the data needed to play correctly.
When targeting computers, we have a different story. You have to handle anamorphism. It make also sense to resize and get more room for other useful programs, what you can't do on TV. So we have to face with the fact that TVs and computers are still very different and other logic have to be applied when preparing rips for them. The programs which understand it and optimally support both cases will simply have more acceptance.

I am trying to move FU in that direction. The chances are, as I realized, better then before.

regards,
halbacht

[RathO]

RathO: What i mean is that with AR 4:3, 512x384 should be available in the preferred res. When FU crops using AutoSet, the AR % of error should be 0%, wich is not the case right now with its ~1.xxx% AR error.

UMP: What are the nearest displayed resolutions ?The nearest is 512x368 :confused:

Regards

[Wilbert]

On PAL TV I will always see 576 lines doesn't matter whether they are filled up with a movie, or with black bars.
Not quite true. There's also vertical overscan. But, that's not very relevant in this discussion.

For all other non 720x576 resolutions, DVD player have to make some decision how to prepare this non-standard resolution for TV set.
Again false. There are other valid dvd resolutions, like 704x576 or 352x576. But, that's not very relevant in this discussion.


Imagine now the tool which will (after XVID has done its honest job) simply return back my (now compressed) 702x432, and insert it inside original 720x576, exactly on the same place it took it out before compressing! The rest will be, as always, filled up with black bars (for 2.35:1 movies, for 1,85:1 they are almost invisible) so that I have again 720x576. But my TV knows very well what to do with this 720x576, and I trust it to do the job to the end...

What does all this mean?
That you have to use GKnot, if you want to do this :)

However, I doubt whether this is necessary. During playback on your pc, black borders are added to fill it to 4:3. Precisely what you need for tv. Besides that, it depends on how your videocard is doing the digital to analogue conversion. I can't image that the horizontal size (of the XviD clip) is of any relevance (in the sense that you will see much difference between 768, 720, or 704). I'm not sure what happens with the vertical size though.

[UMP]

Originally posted by Wilbert "Imagine now the tool which will (after XVID has done its honest job) simply return back my (now compressed) 702x432, and insert it inside original 720x576, exactly on the same place it took it out before compressing!"

That you have to use GKnot, if you want to do this :)
I fear that - GKnot or not GKnot - this does not make any sense...

What does "insert (compressed) 702x432 inside 720x576" mean ?

Regards,

ump

[Wilbert]

I took it to mean: add black borders to get 720x576 before compression. Maybe he meant after the compression, but that's not possible.

[UMP]

I think so, then he simply should do no cropping at all :)

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by UMP
...That would lead to manual (and IMHO useless) AR calculations. There are defined and precise rules for AR calculation, based on :...


That would be true if all players/containers would support AR settings, unless this is done theres no general rule for encoding anamorphic resolutions.
As pc user i would prefer no resizing at all, as standalone user i would prefer a "square pixel" correction.
So entering custom values is just the easiest solution.

[UMP]

Originally posted by Zhnujm
As pc user i would prefer no resizing at all, as standalone user i would prefer a "square pixel" correction.
This is the matter of a checkbox. I still don't like the idea to enter custom values.

[halbacht]

@Willbert:
Welcome in discussion, and thank you for corrections.

Only as reminder: I have a 16:9 Samsung TV, Yamada 6000 MPEG4 standalone player (ESS Vibratto chip set) configured for 16:9 output and anamorphic 2,35:1 DVD and I want the best possible picture _on_the_TV_using_standalone_MPEG4_player using FU. I don't care too much for MBytes...

I am already using GK to achieve the results I am writing about (thanks anyhow) but I want to switch to FU while I find it very good and simple to use. I want to convince UMP to include support for resolution(s) which is(are) most suitable for anamorphic output because it's trivial, reduce overall time (no resizing) and give marvellous results on my equipment.

But my intention is NOT to order a FU solution only _for_my_player_, much more to help finding a solution fora most (ideally all) such machines. Because I am pretty sure that all such players MUST treat 720x576 resolution on the same way, I suggested this resolution in my last mail as a possible general solution. All other resolutions can be potentially misinterpreted by standalone players, although it is not very likely. To find out how my equipment treat such cases I have just finished a little test and I want to report the results. I have used FU to produce 5 different AVI clips based on one 'A man apart' 2 minute chapter in 720x432 after clipping (while 2,35:1) with the following output resolutions (all offered with TV aspect ratio set):704x320,
640x288,
576x288,
496x224,
400x176The results are the following: for ALL (!) resolutions I have got IDENTICAL (and wrong) movie DAR on my TV , approximatelly 3:1. Image is ALWAYS the same size, with the horizontal over the whole screen. It means my MPEG4 player always STRETCH the image so that it fills the whole TV horizontal, and then scale the vertical so to maintain the assumed DAR. The problem is that it beleives that the picture is anamorphic (its a default configuration when it is connected to 16:9 TV), and accordingly uses 16:9 PAL PAR by stretching a horizontal, and not 4:3 which use FU in its intern resizing calculations. I mean for 4:3 TVs FU is perfect, but 16:9 sets can produce much better image if they get anamorphic files. So it means I have distorted picture with much wider horizontal black bars that they should be.

I can handle this situation on two ways: 1. I can use 4:3 mode on my TV set, BUT then I additional vertical black bars, horizontal black bars stay the same size. DAR is now correct (2,35:1), but the picture is so small that I even don't think using this mode.

2. I can use 'zoom' mode on my TV. In this case TV scales once more the vertical dimension, again by 4:3, while the horizontal dimension stays the same. In this case movie DAR is again OK - 2.35:1, the picture fills ALL the screen, BUT the problem is that the vertical is got BY SCALING of 320 lines of FU output resolution to 432 (which is now on the screen), and NOT by using ORIGINAL 432, what is possible if FU simple include the option to not resize the original image.. but I use this mode sometimes...
Maybe some more tests with different MPEG4 players and different 16:9 TVs should be made, but who can organize that? I have this equipment and nothing else.

I spend too much time with GK to do the rips. For DVDs I don't use filters, I don't need resizing, I don't like to crop manually, and to use a bunch of other tools to do the job. It works of course, but that's why I prefer FU - simple to use, all-in-one BUT the same quality. Bravo!

just one thing more please: anamorphic output...

regards,
halbacht

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by UMP
This is the matter of a checkbox. I still don't like the idea to enter custom values.

Well, if you implement both modes that will be no problem :)


Originally posted by halbacht
Because I am pretty sure that all such players MUST treat 720x576 resolution on the same way, I suggested this resolution in my last mail as a possible general solution. All other resolutions can be potentially misinterpreted by standalone players, although it is not very likely.

No, 720x576 is not a good idea if you use a player with the mediatek/sigma players that i tried as the picture will NOT be correct with such a resolution. Everything less than 1.33:1 will not play correctly.

[UMP]

The standalone players world is a jungle, where the digital world's rules we're used to does not apply.

Each manufacturer's player has it's own behaviour it seems...

[Zhnujm]

Blame ESS for creating a chipset that cannot do a proper resizing.
Others work the same as a PC, play a 720x576 avi file with your PC and you will see that it does not fill the screen but has black borders left+right because its not 4:3.

[Wolfman]

I have tested this software again ..and it def appears improved.. especially in relation to TV aspect ratio(standalone playback).. my gripe is that you can't have vobs as input.. I even re-authored a 15min test DVd (mini-dvd) on cdr, and it would'nt accept it (no encryption, region perhaps?). It would not accept the same dvd mounted as an image in daemon tools. Running every test off a real DVD is a very hardware -intensive process.
Any better suggestions for testing?
Also which works better (to you) on ESS player, the internal divx/xvid or external divx/xvid.
Does it look like ESS will sort out their aspect ratio problems??
if you set a PC player software to full screen it will fill the screen with no black borders left or right!?

Tv aspect ratio would be one thing that would make me use this program
Also on another point how good is the error handling in fairuse? I have a dvd which plays fine but when fair use tries to read it gets to about 3/4 thru then fails.. it just seems to sit there nearly locking machine but getting no further thru?? I then have to reboot to exit the program

[UMP]

my gripe is that you can't have vobs as input..
FairUse is a DVD backup tool. Not a VOB-on-HD conversion tool. You should try AutoGK.

I even re-authored a 15min test DVd (mini-dvd) on cdr, and it would'nt accept it (no encryption, region perhaps?).
I don't have made any testing on such material.

Any better suggestions for testing?
Do your testing with a real DVD, using a trailer. :)

Also which works better (to you) on ESS player, the internal divx/xvid or external divx/xvid.
The idea behing "integrated" codecs is that FU comes with default settings that match the codec version. "Internal" codecs with default settings are known to work fine on ESS chipsets.

if you set a PC player software to full screen it will fill the screen with no black borders left or right!?
This depends on you. If you use the black borders crop feature you won't have black borders... :D

Also on another point how good is the error handling in fairuse?
Should be good enough. Which version are we talking about here ?

[Wolfman]

which codec looks better, on playback ((on standalone) on 4:3 tv) for the same filsize i should have said. latest version of fu4.0. I do use autogk, but it lacks the Tv aspect ratio, otherwise I would use it everytime. I have experimented with GK but I havent figured out the necessary adjustments to the aspect ratio, in the final step.
help anyone??
problem dvd is cabaret..freebie from newspaper

[UMP]

Originally posted by Wolfman
I do use autogk, but it lacks the Tv aspect ratio, otherwise I would use it everytime.
I think AutoGK only encodes to the so-called TV AR. Nothing bad there, it simply means that it does not follow ITU-R BT.601 specs, which is GordianKnot's default.

May I ask what does make you prefer AutoGK (len0x, no offense here ;)) ?

Regards,

ump

[Zhnujm]

Small feature request:
Is it possible to add the ability to do only audio encodings ?
Maybe if someone forget to add the audio or select the wrong language... :rolleyes:

[RathO]

Other small feature request:
Please add an option so the final file doesn't get muxed. This way, we can use the program we prefer to mux and tag the audio files the way we want, since FU doesn't.

In my case, i prefer using MKVtoolnix to tag my input files.

Regards

[Wolfman]

Reasons for preferring autogk:
Main thing is that I can put my vobs on disk and run completely on the Pc. It has a specific install for ess players . Its is also pretty fast. I think there is a certain amount of control re audio (2 tracks available) and the audio quality (AC3 possible) also the interface (to my eyes) is more intuitive. Plus I can tell, to a certain degree what is going on under the hood. multiple encodes are faster and easier to do. (I often make mistakes, or dislike the quality and have to redo). Also subtitles are available. I have just experimented with full GK and the quality was superb..but god its slooow 4.5fps. Not that your program is bad, its just nice to have different options especially for widescreen films (2.35-1).
reasons for not liking it : aspect ratio and aspect ratio and oh yes aspect ratio (on standalone playback).