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I consider myself being in that category of players, because of the radical ammunition conservation (which implies extreme enemy luring) and too often position saving.

I’ll say this to my defense: you never know what lies ahead! ;) Maybe I’ll need all that ammo later, after all… The games should include hints like “don’t waste all your granades; you’ll need them in a couple of minutes” during the play. ;) Lame? Well, maybe. But I somehow manage to do majority of the kills with a machine gun or a similar weak weapon. Patience…

The reason why I save often and save my ammo is that I really, really don’t like playing the half-hour long missions twice (one word: “Hitman” — they made it impossible to save more than a couple of times per level on the hardest skill and thus made it a real PITA, IMHO). And just what did the authors of “Max Payne” think when they unlocked a higher skill level for you to choose only when you finish the entire game?! I’m not playing it twice, even if it would have been epic like Half-Life (I’m thinking of the first part of the game, not that HL2 all-the-physics-null-adrenaline crap). Ah, those were the days: Half-life… I remember when I got that seeking, unlimited ammo alien gun I killed almost all enemies with it. ;P

I’m playing “Prince of Persia: warrior within” currently and I must admit that the frequency of game saving positions is just about right, ie. you can’t save the game when you “feel like it” and there’s no ammo to waste, so there’s no dilemma there. ;))

Listening to Sufjan Stevens I came to a conclusion that I feel a slight miscomfort and disagreement with lyrics that include words like “god”. Even one of my favorite bands, Metroschifter, includes “god” here and there and their album “Generation Rx” is praising “lord’s” workings all the way…

Take a look…

…who lost all sources to his magnificent Buzz modular synth because of a harddisk crash. Current Buzz beta often crashes my machine. He’s a complete retard for not making backups. I fucking hate this guy. There, I said it.

Have the video in mind, listen to “Slow” and ask yourself: is it a coincidence that the “pull focus close up…” line sounds like “pool fuckers close up…” in the song? Hm…

…to bring everyone up to date. I quit my job: working in three shifts was too demanding for me because I couldn’t do anything, like doing my final written papers for school and studying for an exam for example, in parallel. My social life was suffering too, because the working schedule was scheduled only for a week ahead, week after week, so I couldn’t make any plans…

So, here I am now on a “vacation”, just enjoying the summer and thinking on which subject I should write those papers on and also preparing to study at night for this one exam at my philosophy university. Belgrade is calm at this time of year: it’s very hot outside - a perfect time for indoor stuff like playing backgammon, rummy and all of those FPS games I missed because I didn’t have the time to play them… ;) I just rediscovered Worms, the Armageddon sequel this time, and it looks excellent.

The computer quieting project is going well: I bought a new SerialATA mobo so I could install Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SerialATA 160GB, quiet as a whisper, pretty cold and fast HDD. At the same time I was in Novi Sad for EXIT festival, I have bought Glacialtech CPU cooler and 12cm case fan, both running at 19-20dBA. I also dug up a Panaflo 9cm case cooler from some old PentiumI power supply…

Like I was saying, I was at the EXIT music festival, on the 4th day. I went there because of the Datsuns, a rock’n'roll band from New Zealand, which seriously kicked ass. Unfortunately, the other bands kind of sucked, so that’s about it.

First identify the part of the dvd containing the video:
-Most of the time this is dvd://1
-If not try try dvd://2, dvd://3 etc.
-The command would be mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hd*
-* is your adress of the dvdrom

Get all the information of the movie:
-mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hd* -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v 2>&1 | grep sid >log.txt && mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdd -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v 2>&1 | grep aid >>log.txt

Use vobcopy to copy the disc:
-vobcopy -l -t video.vob
-Make sure you’re dvd-drive is mounted or it may complain
-Copy the .IFO file beloning to the movie part (dvd://number) from pathtodvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_number_0.ifo

Detect the black borders:
-mplayer video.vob -vf cropdetect
-Skip through the video to let it do it’s work
-Note the suggested crop values in log.txt

Detect the filelength (for I never see the credits)
-mplayer video.vob -osdlevel 3
-Skip to the end, note down the time where the video ends in log.txt
-If you want to include the credits, please ignore this step, it will cost quality though

Run the first pass of Xvid (fast):
-mencoder video.vob -endpos hh:mm:ss -nosound -o pass1.avi -sws 2 -vf crop=xxx:xxx:xx:xx,scale=576:320 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1:chroma_me:max_bframes=2:bvhq=1:vhq=1:trellis
-Your endpos is in your log.txt
-The cropvalue in in your log.txt

If the size of the first pass is reasonable, you can encode the audio and then run the second pass.
-The size is reasonable if the resulting video-only file has to be about < =30% smaller.
-Don't forget some MB for the audio
-If the resulting file has to be bigger, increase the resolution in steps of 32. For example try 640:352. Rerun the first pass with changed settings.
-If the compression would be higher than 30%, rerun the first pass with a denoise filter or decide to go for 2 CD's. Recommended denoise filter: hqdn3d=2:1:3 (Put it right after cropping with a ",")
-Based on the amount the video has to compress, choose a quality for the audio. I recommend using vorbis for movies. For hard to compress movies use vorbis at q0, otherwise stick to q2, or with real good compression q4. (Higher has no usage, for you won't possibly hear, if you insist just use the AC3 file)

Encode the audio:
-mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -ao pcm -aofile 2channels.wav video.vob -aid 128
-oggenc -q2 2channels.wav
-vorbisgain 2channels.ogg (Pumping up the volume without distortion)
-The -aid number you want is in your log.txt

Rip the subtitles:
-mencoder video.vob -ifo movie.ifo -vobsubout subtitles -vobsuboutindex 0 -sid 0 -ovc frameno -nosound
-for every extra subtitle you want to rip, increase vobsuboutindex with 1. With sid you can specify the languages found in your log.txt
-One subtitle usually costs you about 1,5 MB (compressed)
-Best way to measure the final size is to mux the subtitles only in a matroska file --> see end of instructions

Compute the bitrate:
vbr=(totalsize-audiosize-subtitlesize)*fps*8/frames
vbr=(734003200-62861936)*25*8/150750
vbr=870926

-These are examplevalues
-Bitrate is quite good, usually an undersize of about 1-2 MB.
-We’ll use this bitrate for the second pass

Run the second pass:
mencoder video.vob -endpos hh:mm:ss -nosound -o pass2.avi -sws 2 -vf crop=xxx:xxx:xx:xx,scale=576:320 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=870926:chroma_me:max_bframes=2:bvhq=1:vhq=1:trellis

Now mux it all together and check for audio sync:
-Use mkvtoolnix (mmg to start)
-Open from mmg: pass2.avi, 2channel.ogg and subtitle.idx
-Set aspect-ratio of the video according the information outputted at the end of pass1/2
-Mux!
-Check if the audio is in sync with mplayer (mplayer pass2.mkv)
-Use control + or control - to see if it’s getting better
-Redo the muxing with an other audio offset. This is positive if you used control +.

Enjoy your new quality rip!

“Last time I sent messages to an SMTP server, it couldn’t even spell “hello” correctly.”

(by zsa on some Slashdot discussion)

;))

There’s something in listening to The Posies’ album “Frosting on the beater” while reading these lessons…