Re: AMD weighs in on HD versus 4K

On Thu, 05 Jun 2025 13:26:38 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Xocyll wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
>

On Wed, 04 Jun 2025 16:21:58 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>

Just last night I remembered why I dislike .mkv format

>

I tried fast forwarding though one (on the HDD, via the dvd player) and
it could only go up to 3x speed (3 arrows), vs the 6 arrows an mp4 will
go at, and it seems like a logarithmic progression in the speeds.

>

So to get an hour plus to a specific spot in the movie if it's and mp4
takes 2-3 mins maybe but mkv takes 20 or more.

>
To be fair, that's probably a limitation of the DVD's software and not
the format itself. You can scan through MKV as fast as any other
format (VLC let's me FFWD up to 64x in normal increments, then jumps
to 72x, 77,5x and beyond in weird little jumps. Possibly a limitation
of the network bandwidth?)

>
Except it's not network, it's a usb connection directly to the dvd
player (not a dvd drive connected to a computer, a regular
connects-to-the-TV player,) and it can fast forward at much higher
speeds for other formats, it's only mkv that's slow as hell - from the
exact same source.
>

There are lots of possibilities here. Old player with bad software. Media
encoding. etc. But what's least likely, imo, is the container: mkv. I
think you may be badmouthing the messenger instead of the culprit.

In a typical mp4, H.264 (AVC) and mp3 (or rarely AAC) are "what's
inside." mkv and mp4 are just the containers. It *should* be trivial for
any player to extract the data streams from any container. Encodes are a
whole other story, though. That's where things break down.

First off, strictly speaking, the container is an unlikely but possible
problem. mp4 was widely adopted in the early 2000s, but not mkv. It's
like VHS versus Beta. An older DVD player might have a poorly written or
outdated mkv unpack library. But my LG TV (2016), for instance, unpacks
mkv as well as mp4, and it's streaming over wifi from a media server. No
difference. The software on that TV is pretty shit, so I'd be surprised
if it was the package format itself.

But one thing about mkv is the packagers that created them tend to prefer
the bleeding edge in encoders. So it's possibly the encode formats. For
instance: H.265 video (HEVC, the default on phones now) or AAC audio.
HEVC is from 2013.

All sorts of things have had trouble processing HEVC, including Windows,
and if you convert such an mkv to mp4, it would likely have transcoded to
AVC (H.264). My best guess is that you went from HEVC (bleeding edge) to
AVC when the file converted, and that your player sucks at HEVC.

There are some quality improvements with HEVC that matter to
video/audiophiles. So they use it, but I still had to download HEVC
extensions for Windows 11. It's still not standard (or it's an encumbered
IP). Everything comes with AVC decoders, otoh.

My Samsung phone lists H.264 as "more compatible," but if you choose it
as the default, it grays out all sorts of options and warns me that I'm
taking crappy video.

I can't tell the freaking difference, personally.

HEVC has, for instance, HDR-10 options. DVD players do not deal in HDR,
afaik. It's the mostly likely culprit, imo.

--
Zag

What's the point of growing up
if you can't be childish sometimes? ...Terrance Dicks, BBC