Quantum

It Just Won't Play!

I've seen people have a lot of trouble with running video files, especially the newer ones that use the mkv container. Maybe you've downloaded an episode of a show and found when you opened it that only the sound or video would run, or that the subtitles wouldn't even show up?

Skip the Rest, Give Me the Good Bits

First, if you don't care how it runs, or want to customize anything you can just skip the rest of this tutorial and download the Combined Community Codec Pack. Click the link, download the latest release, run and just let it set all the default options. You should be up and running in minutes.

If you're interested in a little more background and how to trick out your installation, read on.

Anatomy of a Modern Fansub: The Bits and Pieces

MKV - Matroska is one of the newest formats of "container". A container is just that, something that holds other things inside of it. In this case usually a audio file, a video file and sometimes a subtitle file as well. Matroska stands out because it can hold other things as well, but for our purposes we don't need to get into that. Basically the important bits are that it's open source, well designed, and not that well supported by a lot of video players (Windows Media hates it), though that's changing.

H.264 - This is a video codec. A video codec is simply a way to store video in a compressed format. It's MPEG-4 specification, which is a format decided on by the MPEG group, which is a group that decides on video codec standards (imagine that). H.264's design was only originally standarized in 2004, which in fairly new for a video codec. It's design allows it to give higher resolution video in a smaller size, in theory. In reality most fansubbers seem to take it as an excuse to increase filesize and do less work encoding, but that's a rant for another day. It also usually requires more CPU power to process than older codecs like XVID. To run H.264 you'll need a h.264 codec, of which there are only two that really concern us. FFShow, which is gratis and CoreAVC which costs about 8 bucks USD for a copy, but is much less CPU intensive.

AAC - A audio format, which has better quality than mp3 at the same bitrate. Popularized since iTunes uses it as it's default format. Otherwise you'll not see it that much. Used in a fair number of fansubs these days due to it's superior sound quality.

OGG - Another audio format you'll likely see. It's the only open source, non-patented major audio format avaliable. On par with mp3, though better in some ways. Not as many fansubbers use this anymore, but you'll still see it often enough.

ASS - No giggles, this is a real format. It is the predominant subtitling format used in fansubs. This is what everyone uses. The main reason I mention it, is that a lot of new fansubs do what's called "softsubs", which means instead of inserting the subtitles into the video file itself as used to be done, they are simply overlayed at the bottom of the screen. This has the benefit of allowing them to edit the subtitles right up until the moment the are released to the public, since they don't need to send it to someone to encode the show all over again (which can takes hours, or even days if it's a slow computer and a big file). On the downside, if the subtitles have fancy effects going on (like some karaoke) that can cause stuttering and slowdown on underpowered computers.

Bringing it All Together

Now that you know enough to impress your friends, lets get down to the nitty-gritty. If you haven't already, download and install CCCP. I'll wait. Got it? Good.

The default installation is pretty well balanced, but there are a few things you can do to improve it. The first and biggest thing you can do is use CoreAVC for your H.264 content instead of the default codec. The one from FFDShow is good, but will use a lot of CPU power. With CoreAVC I've run HD quality h264 without stuttering. Now CoreAVC does cost a few bucks, but it's a worthy purchase. Also you might be able to find it through other select sources, which I'll leave up to your imagination.

The first thing you'll do after installing CCCP is go to your Start Menu -> Programs -> Combined Community Codec Pack -> Settings. Click, and you should get this screen:

Leave everything as it is, except uncheck the H.264 box.

Now go find/purchase CoreAVC and install it, and you should be all set.

Media Player Classic HomeCinema

Another thing is that for some reason the current version of CCCP uses an old version of Media Player Classic HC, which is the default media player that comes with CCCP and my personal favorite. You can get the latest version from their sourceforge site. The easiest thing to do is download the zip file and then just extract it over CCCP's default installation of it. That can usually be found here:
Just drag and drop the files from the zip, and say yes when it asks if it can override. The new version has some nice features and bug fixes you can look into.

Making Your Video's Look Better

One nice feature of MPC is that it has some built in filters you can use to improve the quality of your videos. Open up MPC HC and at the top click Play -> Shaders -> Combine... This will allow you to pick and put together different filters to apply to your video. Add the 16 - 235 -> 0 - 255, and use it on all your video's. This is a very simple filter that will make your video's blacks actually black and the white's white. Other filters to try in combination is also the sharpen and sharpen complex. This is a useful filter for older or lower resolution shows that might have blurry edges, but can look pretty bad on new shows. The other filters are worth messing around with just to see how they look. Be aware though, that some of these filters can cause a performance hit to your CPU.

If you tap CTRL+P, it will enable or disable the shaders, so you can go back and forth and compare the visual quality.

Stoner

well well, i didnt know there was a 64-bits version of mpc. thank you

YO YO! When you're out gay bashing, Ill be at your house fucking your girlfriend! in the ass!