Technical Issues and Questions

[tenia]

You need to go to the MakeMKV settings -> integration, then check all the boxes there to enable the feature.

MPC HC AND VLC ARE WORKING OMG THANKS.

Now, I need to get the HDR tonemapped (or not) (I'll see).

EDIT : HDR tonemapped via MadVR --> Tonemapping using pixel shaders --> target 100 nits with the BT.2390 tone curve.

[tenia]

One last thing (I think) : which BD Info type soft are you using to extract the usual data from the disc ? I'm trying with, well, BD Info (0.758 and 0.801), none of them loads properly the disc. Using MakeMKV can load the disc on the older version but not decrypting it, same for DVD Passkey. It looks like it's also an integration thing, because BD Info isn't specifically integrated through MakeMKV library.

[tenia]

Update on this : it looks that it's indeed an integration thing.
EDIT : what an interesting development (as I don't recall having done something to enable that) : it looks like DVD Fab Passkey allows me to directly decode UHDs exactly like BD, without the use of MakeMKV, with the advantage that BD Info works with Passkey !

[ZHansen]

Does anyone have thoughts on the Sony UBP-X700m as a good option for a reliable but basic region-free 4K player? Just looking to be able to play 4K discs but don't need anything fancy. They're $289 at 220 Electronics currently. Thank you!

[nicolas]

Does anyone have thoughts on the Sony UBP-X700m as a good option for a reliable but basic region-free 4K player? Just looking to be able to play 4K discs but don't need anything fancy. They're $289 at 220 Electronics currently. Thank you!

I have the same player but I’m not using it for 4K discs any more, only for SACDs and Region A-locked BDs as I’ve upgraded to a Panasonic player as my main device. The Sony’s 4K playback is solid and probably just right for what you’re looking for. One tip: You need to manually active Dolby Vision in settings each time you watch a 4K disc with Dolby Vision as the player otherwise forces all other content into DV if it’s always turned on.

[Michael Kerpan]

I watched the UK BluRay of Kitano's Kikujiro last night -- and in dark/black background scenes I noticed a latticework pattern, with lighter lines around darker middles of the "boxes" -- these stretched across the entire screen (insofar as it was supposed to be uniformly dark). An encoding issue? A player issue (Seiko)? An elderly plasma display (Samsung) issue? Any ideas?

[nicolas]

I watched the UK BluRay of Kitano's Kikujiro last night -- and in dark/black background scenes I noticed a latticework pattern, with lighter lines around darker middles of the "boxes" -- these stretched across the entire screen (insofar as it was supposed to be uniformly dark). An encoding issue? A player issue (Seiko)? An elderly plasma display (Samsung) issue? Any ideas?

Does the issue you noticed come across in the following screenshot? https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0 ... 42&i=9&l=0
I’m asking because the master that’s been used for this Blu-ray is very bad and the encoding is equally as disappointing on both the UK and German Capelight releases.
The master also looks practically identical on both discs. Therefore it could simply be the master, but just as well a combination with your setup though. Have you watched the film before on your system?

[Michael Kerpan]

I think you can see that effect in scenes like this (though not as clearly as in ones where there is even more uniform darkness), I haven't dug out my old Japanese DVD to see what IT looks like.

Kitano seems not well served on BluRay (but better than Zhang Yimou, I guess).

[kekid]

It seems that "Subscene", the primary site I used to find subtitle files, has closed.
Does anyone know what happened, and what is the next best alternative?

[nicolas]

It seems that "Subscene", the primary site I used to find subtitle files, has closed.
Does anyone know what happened, and what is the next best alternative?

No idea what happened with Subscene but Opensubtitles.com is a good alternative.

[TMDaines]

Update on this : it looks that it's indeed an integration thing.
EDIT : what an interesting development (as I don't recall having done something to enable that) : it looks like DVD Fab Passkey allows me to directly decode UHDs exactly like BD, without the use of MakeMKV, with the advantage that BD Info works with Passkey !

Woah? You are able to play UHDs on Windows directly without ripping to the drive in advance? This is why I still haven't made the leap, that and having only an 1080p projector.

[Michael Kerpan]

Tenia -- DVD Fab has such a huge array of products -- did you just get Passkey on its own? Is there more than one version?

[tenia]

Yes, I bought Passkey 9 as a standalone probably about 8 years ago, with a lifetime licence. It seemed at first not to work with UHD, which is why I tried MakeMKV. MakeMKV main caveats are how you need to mail its makers when faced with a new unsupported disc, and how it's built around allowing specific softwares to do direct playback, so BD Info for instance doesn't work with it and you need to rip the disc to then scan it.

But for whatever reasons, I tried Passkey again when loading a UHD and it turned out to simply decode it, allowing me to play it through MPC-HC and VLC.

I'm on Windows 10, nothing fancy. The soft itself would be DVD Fab Passkey for Blu-ray (current version is 9.4.7.0).

[Michael Kerpan]

Does this also allow one to do screen shots?

[tenia]

Yes, I've tried it and it does allow screenshots in 4K.

Part of the appeal of softs like Passkey to me has always been to bypass screencapturing limitations, since depending on your playback softwares (though using anything else than Power DVD kinda does it already), you might be stuck on BD (and then UHD). It did the trick for BD, and now does it for UHD. The only thing is that if the disc is too recent, it won't decode it yet, but Passkey automates the sending of the data to the database, and it takes about 2-3 days for the disc to then be decodable and thus playable.

I've setup MadVR on MPC-HC to downconvert HDR to SDR, and then set un rendering --> screenshots --> encoded video size (in "create screenshots with a custom zoom factor" - which was enabled by default, maybe it's actually best to disable it altogether, but it was enabled by default and set up at "100% view", which took screencaps at the size on the software screen so if it's not in full screen, you don't get native rez caps).

So basically, I can now do everything I do with BDs, but with UHDs too.

[TMDaines]

Nothing prepares you for the moment when your projector bulb loudly explodes above your head. Thought someone had shot at our windows! Ordered a replacement for the BenQ W1110 from myprojectorlamps, who seem to be well regarded for the sweet spot of OEM bulbs in 3rd party casing.

Coincidentally this happened when I was double-flashing my Hitachi/LG BP55EB40 Blu-ray drive to make it UHD compatible. Thought the two things were linked for a minute, but once I got my heart rate back down and switched to my TV monitor, I saw that the flashing was seemingly succesful and now I am just waiting for a UHD disc to test.

[swo17]

A bit of a different question: I guess running SNAPSЖOT is pretty taxing on a computer. Mainly, I rip a lot of Blu-rays to large files and then play them back at high speed to get a lot of my screen captures. (I've tried just playing the Blu-rays themselves at high speed but that hasn't worked well for me.) And to make gifs I'll sometimes take hundreds of screen captures in quick succession. Anyway, I need to replace my home computer and would welcome suggestions of a good machine to handle heavy processing like I'm doing. I'm guessing something like a gaming computer would be well equipped to handle all the heavy work, though that might come with a lot of features I have no use for. I'd probably like to spend less than $2000

[domino harvey]

There should be a lot of guides on YouTube for video editing setups, which I suspect is closer to what you’re looking for as far as processing specs

[andyli]

If you do not need capture an exact frame, consider using a tool like ffmpeg to batch generate hundreds, if not thousands, of screenshots without running the video at all and then picking the ones to your liking.

[swo17]

Thanks, a video editing computer looks like it would be an improvement. And I do often want to capture an exact frame, but it would be very handy if there were a way to simply extract every frame from a film between two specified time codes

[bugsy_pal]

If you're confident with self-building, I think you could build a ripper computer for less that $2K. A mid-range Intel or Ryzen processor should be ample. I reckon an Intel i5 or i7 should do (I'm not sure what the comparable Ryzen processor would be).
You'd want a really fast SSD for storage, as big as you can afford, in the M.2 NVMe format with PCIe 4.0 interface (plugs directly into the motherboard) - there are plenty of them around at decent prices.
If you want to do any video transcoding, I think a mid-range nVidia graphics card would be able to do some of the work that might otherwise be handled by the main CPU.

[swo17]

Not that confident but thanks!

[tenia]

If not confident with self-building, maybe there's a place you can look into that could provide you with the bare minimum in terms of building and leaves you add RAM, HDDs and the graphic card ? I always found that the sole difficulty was the CPU, as I've always been wary of the thermal paste thing. But everything else is pretty much plug-and-play : click it when it's supposed to go, plug the supply cord and any computer cord (SATA, and so on) and hop you go.
It was a very long time since I changed/added anything to my computer, but adding a GC, a new SSD drive (though not a M2 NVMe one), 16 Gb of RAM and a new BD-Rom drive took me 5-10 min each time, nothing more.

This point aside, bugsy's advices look quite right : a mid-range CPU + a mid-range nVidia GC are likely to do the trick, plus a SSD for storage (and these are dirt cheap nowadays). In France (which I'm unsure but should have equivalent prices than in the US), you could get a built PC for 1350€ with a i5-12600K, 16 Go DDR5, GeForce RTX 3060, 2 x Kingston SSD NV2 1 To, an ASUS BW-16D1HT drive (which can be made UHD-able) and a 650W supply (plus cables and fans).

I have an i5-6500 + a RTX 2070, SATA SSDs and 24 Gb DDR4, and I think I'm able to do what you're looking for.

[swo17]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have built a computer before but it's been a while and I'm not confident that I wouldn't screw something up like the CPU as you mentioned. I did already order a pre-built PC yesterday with a lot of the specs people have mentioned here. Hopefully that does the trick

[tenia]

My father taught me and my brother to build computers, like, 20 years ago, but the one thing I never liked doing (and that he always did) was the CPU. Everything else we were able to do ourselves.
When I upgraded my computer these past months, it probably had been 10 years since I last did it myself, and I found myself silly when it took me 3 times to properly plug the GC (one retry because I failed to remove all the rubbers from the pins, and a second one because I forgot to plug the supply ), but that's pretty much the worst I got (that and a slightly capricious RAM stick) so it felt like there wasn't much to worry.
Patience and care are key, going one step at a time while keeping a pragmatic mind.

But if you bought a pre-built PC, it means that at worst, you'll have a map to know what goes where if a component needs to be upgraded for something a bit stronger.