HandBrake

The MKV *container* doesn't use Media Foundation, but the codecs for the internal tracks (video and audio) most definitely do. Haali Media Splitter (aka Matroska Splitter) is enough to open the container and use Media Foundation for the content within in Windows 7/WMP.

Rodney

Utterly irrelevant unless you are talking about the same codec with the same settings (and even then goes right out the window once you consider constant quality rate factor). It hasn't been a useful metric for years.

Rodney

MKV and AVI are containers, not codecs.

You are using MPEG-4 in AVI and H.264 in MKV, so you should expect very different visual quality between the two at the same bitrate.

Rodney

I'm not familiar with how to set the region on the Mac, but I'm sure someone else will chime in - bear in mind you only get to do this a few times (5 on most drives) before the last setting will be permanent - thank the studios for that. I can't speak knowledgably about your friend's configuration -...

Looks to me like your disc is region-locked to a different region than your drive is set to.

Rodney

Are you sure mbtree must be forced? It works for me by default (verified with AVInaptic).

Rodney

Random guess? Your device probably only supports baseline, so Apple Universal is probably the best way to fly on it.

Rodney

There is no standard (yet) for DTS-in-MP4.

Rodney

The semi-transparent box surrounding the subtitle text is generated by the iPod and cannot be disabled.

As for why the subtitles do not display properly on your television, I have no advice on that - I've never tried. It certainly sounds like an iPod firmware bug to me.

Moving to Devices.

Rodney

It's best to leave the rate at auto - upsampling does nothing to improve quality and downsampling will most definitely degrade it. As far as bitrate, 160 is the max for the FAAC encoder, which is what HandBrake uses - if you are instead using QT for encoding, increasing bitrate beyond that is not li...

I also want to reiterate that the loss of AVI support was *NOT* an arbitrary decision. The AVI container is literally 20 years old. It was created when the most sophisticated multimedia you could have was low-resolution compressed and interleaved video and audio. No subtitles, no multiple audio trac...

If the first audio track is AAC, I'm surprised WMP12 can't grok it - removing the second AC3 track isn't likely to help much here.

Rodney

Kay_Jay wrote:Can anyone recommend a decrypter that'll work with brand new DVDs?

AnyDVD is the gold standard - and costs a good bit of gold, too. *laughs*

Rodney

It is likely the CPU that is overheating. In any event, I'd recommend service through AppleCare, explaining that when the CPU is fully utilized for extended periods of time (such as video conversion) your Mac overheats and crashes.

Rodney

It is almost certainly a heat issue. Does it happen more frequently when ripping longer titles? (To ask another way, if you rip only a single small chapter, do you see the same behavior?)

Rodney

Interesting - your settings look fine and I don't see any obvious issues, though the rate does seem quite off.

Does this happen on all discs or just this one?

Rodney

Green and white boxes are *always* a sign of encrypted content. Make sure you have VLC installed in /Applications (not ~/Applications!) and make sure the "bitness" matches the version of HandBrake you are using (32-bit or 64-bit).

Rodney

This is only the title scan. Where is the actual encoding activity log?

Rodney

Output from a CLI title scan (-t 0) would be very useful to see.

Rodney

Same strategy as all other protected titles - watch the movie with the DVD player, take note of the title it selects, then manually specify that same title number in HandBrake.

Rodney

I think the main reason it was mainlined was to expose issues with decoders so they can be addressed quickly - there's nothing like a thousand users with pitchforks to get a company's attention.

Rodney

If it's NTSC, you are most definitely limited to 480px vertical by iTunes. This limit does not apply if you "hand-inject" outside of iTunes, from what I've been reading.

Rodney

This is a permissions issue - try running with administrator rights.

Rodney

start /low /wait xxx seems to do the trick, other solutions also exist.

Rodney

I suggest you do a bit of reading of the dozens of posts about this very subject already in the forums. It's a copy protection issue.

Rodney