[diamondsw]

Trying to keep this on topic and not ranty. :bzz:

I was trying to open AMV Hell 5 in Quicktime 7 so I could copy a few clips out and put it on my iPhone (the credits, especially). I was rather surprised that it will not open with "Invalid Public Movie Atom was Found in the Movie". Opening it in Quicktime X sort of works, except the video is smearing, not updating at all, and of course, there aren't any editing controls in QTX anyhow. And of course, it doesn't open/work in iTunes so it's not going on the iPhone, iPad, streaming to an AppleTV, etc. Even though it's already in MP4/H.264, it's been tweaked to the point where the format is broken.

This isn't the first time poor encoding choices have caused problems. AMV Hell 4, the first one in MP4, was encoding in *just* such a way so it wouldn't play on iDevices. I raised the issue then, and it's sad that it still doesn't work a dozen Minis and a Hell later. Come on, the format is well known and even *based* on Quicktime's format, and there's nothing in AMV Hell that should require esoteric tweaks that break video formats.

These are the ONLY MP4/H.264 files of hundreds that do not work in Quicktime. At that point, I'm sorry, it's not Quicktime's fault and using VLC or CCC on Windows is not the answer - fixing your encoding is. Seriously - what the hell are you doing?

Eh, so much for non-ranty. Sigh. I just give up - I'll continue to enjoy them in monolithic format through Plex, but so much for watching them in any other form other places, showing bits to people on the go, etc. I'm sure if you switched one of those many, many, MANY x264 options it would clear itself right up - like every other file in existence.

[Shibbidah]

One of mah friends put it on his iPod with no problems.

[Evileel]

You can convert it to compatible format yourself.
And we have already discussed about this issue in AMV Hell 5 thread:
http://amvhell.com/showthread.php?p=177349#post177349

[diamondsw]

You can convert it to compatible format yourself.
And we have already discussed about this issue in AMV Hell 5 thread:
http://amvhell.com/showthread.php?p=177349#post177349

Using commercial Windows-only software which will (I'm assuming) require actually re-encoding the content, thus lowering the quality substantially. I've re-encoded video on occasion, and the result is never pretty.

Or... perhaps it could have been done right in the first place. Every other file I have works fine, but the AMV Hell releases are always a pain - breaking a standard is never cool.

EDIT: Yeah, something is definitely screwy in there. Ran it through VLC with no transcoding options; just place the existing streams in a fresh container. Said files open in QuickTime 7, but it's playing the frames out of order, flickering back and forth. The credits in particular are jiggling back and forth as the scroll upwards. From the look of the stream, I doubt this will be possible to fix without the source material, at least not without major quality degradation from full re-encoding. Sounds similar to this report (http://www.videoredo.net/msgBoard/showpost.php?p=68949&postcount=3) of jittery playback and use of out of order frames in the H.264 stream.

The x264 options used are as follows: "cabac=1 / ref=16 / deblock=1:1:1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / fade_compensate=0.00 / psy_rd=0.40:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / fgo=0 / bframes=10 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:0.60"

That's far more options than I've ever seen applied to a single file. Which makes me think that most of these are superfluous and just waiting to cause problems. You know when documentation (http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/x264Options) says that "sane values for ref are 1 to 6" and this was done with 16 - well, not a good sign. Bigger is not always better. Or when it says (http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings) to adhere to spec it should have been "4", the default is "3", and this used "16"... Well, that's just one option of a few dozen. Several other options added for debatable improvement, but it makes it break on all kinds of setups. You can kiss most hardware accelerated platforms goodbye with this kind of encode. But hey, you can play it in VLC on your desktop/laptop, so who cares about netbooks, phones, portable game systems, consoles, DLNA streamers, etc. It's far more "l33t" when it's almost impossible to play, right?

[alucard151]

they worked just fine as is on my ipod and itunes...


Edit: i also have professional encoding software that i use to re-encode the amv hells to formats for use in other media devises. and it keeps the original quality of the input source, this is achieved by first de-encoding the video and audio back to raw material the encoding it again in a different format. so if you have problems with a particular video. just let me know and i prepare a new one for you.

[diamondsw]

they worked just fine as is on my ipod and itunes...


Edit: i also have professional encoding software that i use to re-encode the amv hells to formats for use in other media devises. and it keeps the original quality of the input source, this is achieved by first de-encoding the video and audio back to raw material the encoding it again in a different format. so if you have problems with a particular video. just let me know and i prepare a new one for you.

The offer is definitely appreciated; for now I'm much more interested in how you got iTunes to accept AMV Hell 5. I even downloaded a fresh copy and tried to add it; iTunes would have none of it. Same problems - as far as I can tell, this file is not playable by iTunes, Quicktime, or an iPod/iPhone. I'd be rather surprised if other hardware-accelerated devices (iDevices, settop boxes, etc) can play it either, given the extreme encoding settings.

[diamondsw]

I should follow up to say that using Handbrake with the Apple Universal preset gave surprisingly good results, with a 20% increase in file size. I'm pretty sure this would be much less on the original source since there wouldn't be an additional intermediate encode. For now, this works for me, since it makes the file play everywhere, and I can even edit it without any further encoding (I can just clip parts of the video as needed and do the equivalent of a streamcopy - no re-encoding).

[Zarxrax]

Sorry, but quicktime is just a broken piece of crap.
It has long been acknowledged as being one of the worst h.264 decoders out there.

AMV Hell 5 was encoded with x264, which is the only h.264 encoder that any serious encoder would consider using.

If you are on a mac, you should install Perian (http://www.perian.org/) which attempts to make quicktime not suck so bad.

[diamondsw]

Look, I'm not going to defend Quicktime's "unique" support of file formats (other than to point out that it's the basis for MP4 - notice the "MooV" atom in there?). The point is that if you're going to distribute something as widely as AMV Hell, it would be best if it's viewable easily on the broadest number of platforms and devices. Saying "install a codec pack" or "use VLC" is the kind of crap we used to get from anime fansubs years back. It sucked, and this sucks just the same. Actually it's worse now, because you've also just eliminated support for every embedded device out there (game consoles, settop boxes, phones, and other portable devices). So much for taking it with you to show people, or easily playing it on your TV without an HTPC. It's especially galling when you're already using a widely-supported codec, and then botching it by using tweaked encoding options for little or no benefit.

Seriously - how much larger is AMV Hell 5 if encoded (from original source, not re-encoded like I had to) using a simpler, more compatible profile like the Apple Universal settings in Handbrake? I'm betting visually it's indistinguishable and the size difference is less than 10%.

[Zarxrax]

Look, there has to be some cutoff point somewhere. There are definitely lots of devices that amv hell 5 will play on--I've not eliminated support for every embedded device out there. The only thing I've seen you say that it doesn't play on is apple stuff, so I don't know how you extrapolate from that that it wont work on anything.
Even among apple's own devices there is not any consistency. Videos that play on certain ipods will fail to play on older ipods. How far back am I supposed to support? And what makes apple's stuff so special? What about psp users? Shouldn't I encode it so that it supports their PSP? What about people who don't even have any of these newfangled devices? Maybe I should just release it as DVD? VCD?

When companies don't adhere to standards that are set forth, and I don't own every device in existence, there is no way to test and ensure that an encode will meet whatever arbitrary requirements it needs to meet in order to be compatible with something. And when lots of devices out there all have their own different requirements, its impossible to make EVERYONE happy.

I think that encoding a single high quality version that works on MOST stuff is the best solution. If people need it to support some specific device, then they can reencode it to support their device. Releasing a watered down low quality version in order to gain a bit more compatibility just hurts everyone.

[lexavian]

I'm going to start out by saying that I am an idiot savant or maybe just an idiot when it comes to computer stuff. That being said, I have downloaded the Amv Hell 1-5 and I am hoping to put them on my iPod touch. I have the following 3 problems:
1. Not all the files are mp4s, which I believe is a requirement of all ipod videos.
2. AMV 5, the only that's done downloading so far that's in mp4 format, was succesfully added to my itunes library but when I view it there it is horrible quality and gets pixelly and sometimes, it even freezes. When I viewed it in Windows Media player, it worked nearly flawlessly (the only problem being that the opening quote looked funky until about a second after it said Quinton Tarantino, but that issue is easily negligible.)
3. Even though Amv 5 is in itunes it doesn't transfer to my ipod. I have tried doing what someone else suggested: selecting the video, going to Advanced, and selecting Creat ipod or iphone version. but I got an error saying "Error occurred while converting the file "AMV Hell 5 Dedicated to Dio". An unknown error occurred (-2002)."
Sorry for the trouble. Any help would be greatly appreciated. If you are going to help please remember, I'm an idiot at this stuff and as such, please treat me like one and walk me through this.

[Zarxrax]

As one of the above posts mentions, you may have success using the application "handbrake". I have never used this application so I can't offer any further support than that though.

[fuzzytipsy]

I have tried a variety of things, and EncodeHD (http://dcunningham.net/media-tools/encodehd/) has been the best by far. Make sure to follow the download instructions. Once it is fully installed you can choose what format to convert videos to, and I have used it to get all AMV Hell's onto my iPhone.
The tricky part is that you need to download a separate file, as it says in the download instructions, which is compressed to a .7z file, so you may want to download 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) as well. I hope this works for you!

Edit:
I am currently in the process of uploading my iPhone compatible versions of the AMV Hell's to my filevo account: http://filevo.com/users/fuzzytipsy/1249/AMV%20Hell%20(iPhone%20Compatible)

[CyberSkull]

I've tried using subler (http://code.google.com/p/subler/) to repackage it, but it keeps crashing whenever it has to save either the original or the imported version.

If the original author could use Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/) or some such similar tool to re-encode from the source it would fix all the compatibility issues.

Also, Perian (http://perian.org/) is of no help with this file.