mattgadient.com

I wrote this up quite a while ago, and it’s been sitting as a draft since. I pulled information on each setting from a few different websites, and while I don’t have any “final results” to show you (and the write-up wasn’t quite completed), hopefully the information’s useful in helping you to better determine what each setting does (and how it will affect encode time and quality), and to come up with your own settings.

I’ve used Handbrake in the past to encode movies and various TV series from DVD source. Recently, I grabbed the latest version (0.9.3), and decided to encode a TV series from DVD.

In short, here’s what I’m looking to get from my encode:
-High quality, even if it takes a while to encode.
-File size of between 250-400mb for each 1-hour episde (about 42-44 mins).

Of course, the best way to see how well you’ve done is to find something to compare it to. Therefore, I grabbed a torrent of the same TV show, and aimed to create a better quality encode at a smaller file size.

Before dumping into the x264 settings, it’s worth noting that I used a 2-pass encode, and mixed the audio down to a 160kbps Dolby Surround encode.

Here’s a list of the x264 settings I chose in Handbrake, and why:

Reference Frames: 6
Normally, I’d go much higher here. However if you go too high, both hardware and *some* software players can choke. Unfortunately, reference frames are subject to diminishing returns. According to a document at mplayerhq.hu , while going from a setting of 1 to 2 would improve the signal-to-noise by 0.15dB, going from 6 to 12 would typically improve the signal-to-noise ratio by only 0.02dB but result in a 15-20% longer encoding time. Really high diminishing returns for something you probably won’t notice, and something that might cause issues if you ever try to play your video in a hardware player. That said, go crazy if you want and try 16. Just make sure your video plays fine afterwards.

Mixed References: Yes
You get some quality at the cost of some speed. I’ve never seen anyone give a good reason to turn it off. Read more…

If you’re using VLC for Mac OS X and playing files over the network, you might be noticing some stutter, lag, delay, freezing, etc every so often. Basically your video’s happily playing along, and the screen will freeze for 2 or 4 seconds, then play again. You may also find that Quicktime DOESN’T stutter or freeze. Of course it doesn’t help if Quicktime won’t play your video and VLC will.

Sound like the issue you’re having? Here’s the fix… Read more…

At the same time that I bought the Garmin, I grabbed a TomTom XL 330S as well. It’s funny, you’d think one would completely win over the other.

It just doesn’t work that way though. They’ve each got pros and cons which I’ll be getting to in another post. In any case, a site has been created for the TomTom as well. Content’s done, but it’ll be slowly added to the site over the next while (just like the Garmin which is also done but pages will be added over time).

A quick list of some pros and cons: Read more…

I recently bought a Garmin Nüvi 255W GPS. It’s a pretty impressive unit – it almost reminds me of a Mac in it’s ease of use. I’ve already used it a bit, and plan to do some testing with it over the next few days. I’ll sum things up with a few pros and cons: Read more…

A small shocker using Maya on a Quad-Core Intel processor was that CPU usage by default was about 50%. Yes that’s right FIFTY PERCENT. It looked similar to this:

Maya using only 50% CPU usage.

This was a little disappointing – Maya 2009 basically caused another dual-core machine to grind to a halt, and was only using about half the potential of the Quad-Core.

This was my first time actually using/seeing Maya (I was helping out someone else who needed some rendering distributed), so I searched around. It took forever, but I finally came across the fix.

If you’re using the default Maya Software renderer, there’s an option in the Render Settings menu, but I wont go into that here. The individual I was helping needed MENTAL RAY to be used (instead of Maya Software Renderer), and there wasn’t an equivilent option in that menu.

If you’re using Mental Ray, this is where you make the change: Read more…

I’ve been going through phpmyadmin doing a little database optimization throughout my sites. One big surprise was massive overhead in the “wp_comments” table for this blog.

“Overhead” usually comes into play when you’ve deleted something, whether it’s a Wordpress post/comments, Joomla articles, etc. It’s space that’s basically empty in the database (since the stuff’s been deleted), but is still taking up room.

In any case, I was shocked at how much was removed the first time – quite a few megabytes. Then again, this blog’s been going on for 3 years now. To give an idea as to how much can be cleaned up, after the first clear, I emptied the spam left by Akismet, and took a screenshot: Read more…

Writing my last post got me thinking about link directories. I’ve used them in the past. I don’t anymore.

See… They’re legitimate.

But they’re not very useful. At least not in the way most people try to use them. Website Traffic.

Read more…

When you can’t count on HP, the Linux community is fortunately there for us Mac users.

No, there are no “HP Certified” drivers. Yes, there are Mac ones.

I pulled the information from a thread here. Thanks goes out to craigverse for the info.

Before going any further, Leopard users seem to have a very high success rate using the 1st package listed (the drivers I used). Snow Leopard users however have been met with very mixed results – some get it working, and others don’t. If you try and it doesn’t work, there are many possible side-effects: you may end up with printers permanently listed that don’t work, you may have conflicts with other installed printers, and there could be other issues.

First of all, you’ve got to download 3 programs. You can find them at  http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/hpijs. The ones you’re looking for are foo2jzs, Foomatic-RIP, and gplgs (choose the gplgs that corresponds whatever verson of OS X you happen to have).

If you’re a little lazy, I’ve zipped all 3 and uploaded them here:
MacOSX_HP_Color_LaserJet_1600_drivers.zip (drivers I used)
MacOSX_HP_Color_LaserJet_1600_drivers_new.zip (new drivers with SL support – not tested)

Read more…

November 6, 2009 update: I’ve taken a look at Fusion 3 vs Parallels 5.

November 5, 2009 update:
Parallels 5 is now out too, which also supports DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3 (PS3.0). I’ll have to test it later.

October 30, 2009 update:
VMWare Fusion 3 has come out, which now supports DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3 (PS3.0). If you read this article earlier, you may have noticed that Mass Effect 2 didn’t run on either VMWare 2 or Parallels 4, because they only supported PS2.0. Now that Fusion has PS3.0 support, it *may* now run Mass Effect 2, although I haven’t tried it yet.

In any case, if you’re looking to purchase Fusion, make sure you get version 3 (and not the older 2.0.1), as it’s likely to play even more games.

Finally, feel free to continue reading this review – I apologize for it being insanely long (it was originally split up between 4 pages). Note however that it is now outdated. It’s still valid if you’re using Fusion 2.0.1, but if you’re using the new Fusion 3, keep in mind that your mileage may very.

I’ll try to test both of the latest versions at some point in the future.

VS
Which one is better for Windows gaming on the Mac…?

Q: I like Apple Computers, especially Mac OS X. Problem is, I also like gaming, and all the games are for Windows. I know I can dual-boot with Bootcamp, but I’d really like to be able to play from within OS X. Question is, are the emulators (or more accurately, Virtual Machines) good enough that I can play my Windows games while in OS X?

A: We’re about to find out…. Read more…

A little hiccup on my OSX86 machine… I’d double-click the regular WoW installer, and the little animation would happen, and then… nothing.After a little searching, it appears I needed what’s known as a “Carbon Library Fix”. I’m guessing it has something to do with Rosetta being a little broken or something with the iDeneb install. In any case, I downloaded it from a korean site here (Google Translated).

I’ve provided the file here: CatbonLib_FIX.pkg.zip