[X] My Assistant

interesting. what was it then?
back in the MPC (non-HC) days, people used the K-Lite codec pack to get ffdshow and other windows-API-compatible video decoders. IIRC, MPC-HC started moving away from DirectShow though, not sure what they used to replace it since I stopped using things like MPC in around 2009 in favor of cross platform solutions which also tended to perform a little better.

I distinctly remember that the color depth in MPC-HC was worse for a while. And 10-bit h.264 decoding is natively supported in ffmpeg.

Can't remember anymore. It was a rarely updated shareware.

I first found out about 10-bit videos while still studying in university. At the time, multi-monitor setups for gaming (e.g. AMD Eyefinity) was all the rage. So between 2008 and 2010. Ffmpeg must've have gained 10-bit support some time after that.

Nobody uses directshow or ffdmpeg/show anymore.

It's all about lavfilter and madvr.

This post has been edited by Pillowgirl: May 26 2020, 21:02

People still use that MPC-HC shit?
Lol. Feels like 2007 in here.

I still use it.
MPC-HC still gets updates for changes, features, and problem fixes.
Users still download current versions at: [github.com] https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/releases

I still use it.
MPC-HC still gets updates for changes, features, and problem fixes.

I never said that it didn't. It's just silly to because there are better options that aren't platform dependent.
Also I never asked for a download link. It wouldn't work on any of my hardware anyway.

Nobody uses directshow or ffdmpeg/show anymore.

It's all about lavfilter and madvr.

Yeah I knew directshow was being killed off years ago, just wasn't sure what ended up replacing it.
It's still using ffmpeg underneath (libavfilter is from ffmpeg).

I first found out about 10-bit videos while still studying in university. At the time, multi-monitor setups for gaming (e.g. AMD Eyefinity) was all the rage. So between 2008 and 2010. Ffmpeg must've have gained 10-bit support some time after that.

If I remember correctly (it's been quite a while) I do believe MPC-HC only had ffmpeg and DXVA implementations for decoding at some point, and IIRC Vista and lower didn't have DXVA h264 decoding at all so it had to use ffmpeg there. Vista could, but with a lot of restrictions and it depended on what appears to be an optional update and only works via a single API.

If Platform Update Supplement for Windows Vista is installed, the H.264 video decoder is available on Windows Vista, but is accessible on Windows Vista only by using the Source Reader.

Lol @ MS documentation

The maximum guaranteed resolution for DXVA acceleration is 1920 × 1088 pixels; at higher resolutions, decoding is done with DXVA, if it is supported by the underlying hardware, otherwise, decoding is done with software.

(note) In Windows 7, the maximum supported resolution is 1920 × 1088 pixels for both software and DXVA decoding.

The decoder supports DXVA version 2, but not DXVA version 1. DXVA decoding is supported only for Main-compatible Baseline, Main, and High profile bitstreams. (Main-compatible Baseline bitstreams are defined as profile_idc=66 and constrained_set1_flag=1.)

Also, side thought: it's kind of retarded that people even use 10-bit encoding, especially for modern anime where the colors are pretty flat anyway and monitors with >8-bit-per-color depth are pretty uncommon and expensive. All it serves to do practically is waste space and reduce the amount of compatible decoding hardware. Banding could potentially be an issue, but that's more often an issue with 6-bit-per-channel LCD's with bad dithering rather than the encoded video. I can say I see more banding caused at decode-time than at encode-time with video and jpeg images (where you can save RAM by decoding at lower depth; some programs like to do that by default).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 27 2020, 06:12

I may finally get my monitor tomorrowtoday [editor's note: 3rd shift is confusing], sweet Eris. *frantically knocks on wood* I wish I had left negative feedback instead of neutral. Just use the fucking courier you say you're going to use, not FailEx. It's been sitting at the closest hub for 5 days now- I think they prioritize and give almost acceptable service to volume customers.

Also had an order from B&H I ended up trying to cancel cause I found better deals on better parts, but their office (and not the warehouse) closing Saturdays put a damper on that. Refused the packages, but the lady at Walgreens [FedEx has a <50% chance of leaving packages at my apartment] accidentally marked them delivered first- which complicates it. If they ever get the monitor in, I'll double-check how refusing them shook out.



As much as it pains me to do so, going to throw windows on there for the games that refuse to work in proton or wine properly. Going to try an OEM edition of Win 7 Pro first. Not sure how that'll work out, the last time I tried to setup windows, I ran into awful driver issues and DLL/dependency hells.



Whenever I get the monitor, I can also do a side project of mine- hosting an IRC bouncer/ZNC on a raspberry pi 3B+. Don't have anything that can display HDMI right now, nor an adapter to DVI.

This post has been edited by Wayward_Vagabond: May 27 2020, 07:12

As much as it pains me to do so, going to throw windows on there for the games that refuse to work in proton or wine properly. Going to try an OEM edition of Win 7 Pro first. Not sure how that'll work out, the last time I tried to setup windows, I ran into awful driver issues and DLL/dependency hells.

Life hack: stop playing games that won't work in wine. If they don't give a fuck about you you shouldn't give a fuck about them.

I too remember really annoying driver issues last time I ran windows on bare metal on a machine that was over three years old (entirely due to OEMs not caring and chip companies not providing decent drivers directly (like ALPS; I think Synaptics did similar too)). Even when OEM versions did work they usually had inferior control panels to the stock ones that the manufacturers (e.g. ALPS/Synaptics) provided that lost functionality.

Also I discovered a scratch on my monitor today. Kind of pisses me off. I have no idea what I did to cause it. It doesn't show up normally but I can see it in the right lighting.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 27 2020, 07:59

Also, side thought: it's kind of retarded that people even use 10-bit encoding

Uploaders claimed 10-bit encoding is a bit more "efficient", in terms of quality-compression trade-offs. I don't have a reason to doubt them.

It still increases file size for a marginal increase in depth, plus most source media won't have that depth to begin with and it introduces either rounding errors or banding from truncation depending on the decoder for most GPU's and displays.

Today's thought:
Broke another goddamn trimmer potentiometer on one of my monitors today. Korean CRT's in the early 90's really were bottom of the barrel. If the tube in this one weren't so nice I'd probably have given up on it by now; there isn't a single board in it that hasn't had problems. The trimmer's just icing on the cake.

Thankfully I have service manuals for it so I've been able to decode what the trimmer values are so far. Still annoying to have to order them.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 27 2020, 21:47

Had to make my first reboot since I installed H@H
It's so stupid that updating Visual Studio would require a system reboot before being able to restart the application.
Oh well, restarted the Windows updates to make the most of this mandatory reboot, and I don't think this had bad consequences, but I will have to remember about this.

When did that seagate thing happen? My google-fu is failing.

I can't find it now, probably 10-15 years ago. I think it was with 1TB hard drives. Wholesalers were pissed as the fail rate on a batch was 60%+.

I can't find it now, probably 10-15 years ago. I think it was with 1TB hard drives. Wholesalers were pissed as the fail rate on a batch was 60%+.

I remember the high failure rate of some disks but not the exact circumstances.
Anyway, yeah, glad I didn't buy any seagate stuff during that period right around the Maxtor buyout.

Seagate stuff has a higher than most failure rate, and seem more difficult to the data recover people. Just a poor showing all around.

Finally got my bloody monitor. After a hiccup with bios not recognizing the monitor, it's working great and fits the space in my desk more or less exactly. Quite happy with it so far; noticed a slight framerate drop in minecraft with the resolution bump (1440 x 900 to 1920 x 1200), but still holding 99.

Next problem is noise. I was tweaking fan settings, and finally figured out the intermittent turbine type noise. My PSU only does on/off fan control, with a 2700RPM fan I can't seem to find a spec on.
Ordered a corsair PWM 100cfm 140mm fan, another thermistor, and some cables, so I can have my motherboard control the PSU fan based on it's real temp. I may have the fan draw from the main 12v rail in it's case- it'll just run wide open if the supply is still on but PWM drops out.

Seagate stuff has a higher than most failure rate, and seem more difficult to the data recover people. Just a poor showing all around.

I must have a real anomaly, then, because my PC's booting from a 15 year old seagate drive with no SMART errors.

Finally got my bloody monitor. After a hiccup with bios not recognizing the monitor, it's working great and fits the space in my desk more or less exactly. Quite happy with it so far; noticed a slight framerate drop in minecraft with the resolution bump (1440 x 900 to 1920 x 1200), but still holding 99.

A gentleman's resolution and aspect ratio. Since I can't afford 1:1 that's what I use.
If you don't want the 1440x900 I'd love it as a secondary.

Next problem is noise. I was tweaking fan settings, and finally figured out the intermittent turbine type noise. My PSU only does on/off fan control, with a 2700RPM fan I can't seem to find a spec on.

You might have a sleeve bearing fan mounted horizontally. They like to do that after a couple years. I replaced my PSU's fan with a dual-ball-bearing fan and it's been great ever since. Shame on the factory/designers for using a sleeve bearing fan in a configuration that they knew was going to be horizontally mounted. That's just a terrible idea and they knew it was going to fail in a few years.

Ordered a corsair PWM 100cfm 140mm fan, another thermistor, and some cables, so I can have my motherboard control the PSU fan based on it's real temp. I may have the fan draw from the main 12v rail in it's case- it'll just run wide open if the supply is still on but PWM drops out.

I just run my fan at full-blast (configured in BIOS) since I also control my PSU fan from my motherboard by using a chassis fan header. It's still very quiet because the fan itself is larger. I don't feel the need for temperature sensing since it's already so quiet anyway. My CPU fan (stock Intel cooler from around 2012) also runs fixed at high speed and it's fine. I prefer an unchanging static noise level to one that fluctuates, but the big PSU fan is probably quieter than any of the other fans in my machine.

I use an identical fan to the one in my PSU on my case as an intake. Bought them at a best buy, actually. They've been just fine.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/bwGsGSbg.jpg)
I just ran the fan header out of the PSU case and to the main board. Been doing it like this for two years at least now. I forget why I removed the finger guard grate from the PSU, but it looks nicer like this anyway so it doesn't matter. My original was also a 2-pin full-on fan, but I forget the RPM's and don't know what the CFM was. It worked, so it doesn't matter to me anymore regardless.

Looking at this pic reminds me that I've needed a new power switch for at least two years. I just have my machine set up so it turns on when power's restored, so I've been using the PSU's switch. Could also use a new SATA controller, although I should probably just find a used full-ATX motherboard first. Or I could move my GPU to the bottom PCIe slot, since a 750 Ti probably can't make use of the PCIe 3.x bandwidth anyway and that'd free up my second conventional PCI slot. But I still should find a full ATX board because that still doesn't leave room for my SCSI controller.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 28 2020, 08:24

Seagate has been proven the worst HD maker with the highest failure rate.

Seagate was a very good HDD maker, before they moved their production to china. Some 10 years ago.

Wait, I think I'm not allowed to use the words "good", "china" and a negation in the same sentence.

Seagate has been proven the worst HD maker with the highest failure rate.

Based on Backblaze's report?

Since you are all bashing seagate I had different experience with them. I mostly use seagate hdd and they served me well so far. 5-6 internal hdds i had so far. 2 of them went down after serving me 2-3 years and rest of the 4 is still online without much problem 4+ years

5-6 external hdd (1-2tb models) So far no issues. The oldest one is a 500gb seagate external hdd with usb 2.0 i bought 10-12 years ago and it still works great when I plug it in.

Heard a lot about seagate hdd failures but it didn't happened with me (so far) so guess I am lucky

2 of them went down after serving me 2-3 years and rest of the 4 is still online without much problem 4+ years

My newest HDD is a 6 year old WD black. Those are rookie numbers.
I've never had a single HDD fail that quickly. My desktop runs 24/7. In fact the only HDD failures I can remember are my old iPod's internal drive and a laptop seagate drive from 2009.
My newest seagate in regular use is 15, and my oldest is 24 (SCSI drive in my Amiga). So if Blue Penguin's time window is correct, then I dodged the bad years. But I have no way of knowing how good the 24 year old drive still is since it pre-dates things like SMART and I didn't own it until it was 20 years old already.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 28 2020, 17:33

I remember the high failure rate of some disks but not the exact circumstances.
Anyway, yeah, glad I didn't buy any seagate stuff during that period right around the Maxtor buyout.

Seagates are the ones that fail the most often in my household. Their drive motor berings either wear out sooner (vibration or noise detected), more storage errors appear on the platters. I have the best longevity luck with samsung, hitachi, and toshiba drives.

Seagates are the ones that fail the most often in my household. Their drive motor berings either wear out sooner (vibration or noise detected), more storage errors appear on the platters. I have the best longevity luck with samsung, hitachi, and toshiba drives.

yeah, i believe you. My Seagates might just be too old to have been made in the modern era of seagate shittiness. Or maybe I'm lucky.
Those are my only two seagates, though; the rest of mine are Hitachi, IBM (pre-HGST), and other makes.
Hitachi's HDD line is totally absorbed into WD now though. AFAICT all that's left is Toshiba, Western Digital, and Seagate.

RIP Fujitsu, as well.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 29 2020, 03:53