• @But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
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    192 days ago

    Man I remember when dvds were a new thing. The sixth sense was the first dvd I ever bought. dvds used to have interactive menus, Easter eggs, multiple behind the scenes documentaries and videos, photos and info on the production. Now you buy a blu ray and it goes straight to the movie, no menu, no features, no bts footage, just the movie and nothing else.

  • @potate@lemmy.ca
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    1323 days ago

    Legitimately one of my favourite YouTube channels. Tech deep dives (generally on extremely esoteric topics), sarcasm, and interesting insights.

    • @CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      323 days ago

      It really depends on the ripper. I’d say 9/10 times captions are included on most of my downloads.

      It’s that 10th one that is super annoying and I have to wait for jellyfin to download them one by one from open subtitles.

      • @CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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        353 days ago

        As a ripper myself for one of the internal groups, both DVDs and Blu rays have this annoying thing where they include the subtitles in image format (PGS for BRs, forgot what the DVD one was). It’s a headache for the rippers and encoders because we then need to OCR the subtitles for the encodes we put out there. Sometimes if we get lucky the movie is on a streaming platform making this process obsolete as we grab the .vtt files from the streaming service and sync it with the BR we’re making (as well as transforming it to .srt) . My only assumption as to why MPAA decided on image format subs for both DVDs and BRs is because it makes it easy to deal with different languages and the likes, you just display a static image and fk everything else. But for the people putting out quality releases if we ship PGS that means we’re just doing a bad job.

        Support your fav trackers (and their internals!)

        • @flightyhobler@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I spent my college days ripping and manually correcting OCR’d subtitles for more movies than I care to count in the early 2000s. Do you mean to say I could have monetized it?

          Also, fuck lower case Ls and upper case is

          • @CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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            42 days ago

            Highly doubt you can monetize it. Most groups do it as a hobby because they care about preservation. Internal groups don’t lack the time or storage space. What we do lack is dedicated BluRay rippers from distant regions.

        • @LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz
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          62 days ago

          Oh damn, I had no idea that’s why a lot of movies had OCR issues with my subtitles. I knew the information, and I had this problem, but I never put it together to realize that it had to be OCRd.

        • @GhostlyPixel@lemmy.world
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          33 days ago

          I rip for my personal collection/data hoarding and was surprised to learn how much of a pain PSG subs are. I figured I just had HandBrake configured wrong until I started looking into it.

      • veroxii
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        33 days ago

        And the downloaded ones are never in sync properly.

  • @SpaceScotsman@startrek.website
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    212 days ago

    I’m surprised VLC fares that badly with CCs encoded this way. Usually it’s pretty good. I’m also now wondering if ffmpeg also shares the same problem

    • A Wild Mimic appears!
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      52 days ago

      The top Youtube comment by Ridley Combs explains it pretty well:

      FFmpeg maintainer here, and the details behind the caption decoding issues you’re seeing in VLC are complex and horrific. They largely stem from how the EIA-608 caption format expects text to be laid out in a monospace grid onscreen, which isn’t really how the text rendering stacks used for modern subtitling work (this is probably why changing the font caused problems on those Sony players); beyond that, the behavior can just end up pretty complex, and there’s no convenient public-domain corpus of sample files for open-source software developers to test against. These kinds of issues also affect the Japanese (ARIB) and European (Teletext) formats to varying extents. These days, a lot of the focus ends up being on converting the text into modern Unicode text formats, styled using modern techniques, so direct rendering of the legacy formats hasn’t had as much attention lately.

    • Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet
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      122 days ago

      Because of the way those captions are stored VLC has to use OCR to convert the .SRT file (which basically stores low resolution b/w images I assume to easier allow for different alphabets) to normal text. I don’t know why the open source solutions are so bad at this (especially considering how good the proprietary solutions seem to be) but I had similar problems ripping a DVD. I would assume that had he turned off the special font VLC uses for the subtitles and instead just seen the raw data there wouldn’t have been a problem. Why VLC doesn’t enable this by default (/ have this) I don’t know.

      • @kaknife@lemmy.world
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        122 days ago

        This is not about DVD subtitles, which are images as you say. This is about “Line 21” closed captioning. I.E. the text data that is embedded in an analog tv signal. There should be no OCR needed.

  • @Squizzy@lemmy.world
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    182 days ago

    These videos are really interesting but sometimes I really wish they were more concise. I know its his whole thing but damn I want the knowledge.

    • TheRealKuni
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      172 days ago

      I kind of love that about his videos. I scoff at the time, but then start the video and next thing I know it’s a half hour later and I’ve learned something in a surprising amount of depth.

      I like a world where not everything needs to be 5 minute videos. Some things can be longer form.

      • @Squizzy@lemmy.world
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        32 days ago

        Very fair, this comment is likely a result of me not being able to do that this week. But I have ploughed through hours of dishwashers, EV brakes and rice cookers in a day before.

    • @warbond@lemmy.world
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      162 days ago

      It’s not just the information for me, he’s also passionate about the stuff that he explores and that comes across in his videos.

    • @FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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      52 days ago

      Yeh that half hour video could have been 5 minutes. Never seen him before but enjoyed his style and how he explains things, but it felt like he said the same thing over and over again 6 times.

      • @Squizzy@lemmy.world
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        62 days ago

        I enjoy his work but it can get excessively long winded at times. Not necessarily five minutes but tighter for sure.

  • @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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    32 days ago

    There’s two parts to this; the dvd player and the video player in the TV (or if it’s a HDMI player, in the players firmware).

    • @CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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      113 days ago

      You would be surprised but in the US DVDs are still king. They sell far better than regular BluRays and even better than 4K UHD BRs. So saying it’s dead is difficult.

        • @CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          It’s not really dead, but they’ve definitely scaled down their operations. With streaming services increasing their prices YoY I believe the return to physical media will be cheaper in some cases.

          • @taladar@sh.itjust.works
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            22 days ago

            File based formats are just so much better than the shit formats with a specific type of media baked in like Audio CDs and Video DVDs and BR. Especially when those are combined with deliberate deviations from the standard for “copy protection” or with DRM.

            Not to mention that you don’t have to give up the advantages of networks along with the disadvantages of streaming services. Files can be downloaded, uploaded and copied across the network just fine.

            • @CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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              22 days ago

              You’re preaching to the choir. That’s why we spend time making remuxes and encodes. But for release groups to make those we need the format to survive, because Hollywood won’t make the physical media if there’s no copy protection.

              • @taladar@sh.itjust.works
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                32 days ago

                Hollywood seems to have invented the ultimate in copy protection in recent years anyway, making movies so bad nobody even wants to watch them. It is not used by 100% of movies yet but it is spreading.

      • @FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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        3 days ago

        Correct, because anything related to DVDs as the title suggests is wholly irrelevant in 2025.

        Watching now - I’m in PAL land so line 21 captions were never a thing for me.

      • @janNatan@lemmy.ml
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        22 days ago

        Blu Ray players too. I have a Sony BPX 370, and it will play any (non 3D or 4k) Blu Ray or DVD from anywhere in the world.

      • @realitista@lemm.ee
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        12 days ago

        I did have one for a while but it broke and DVD isn’t really high enough quality to watch any more anyway. Though I do feel like my PlayStation should play them which it doesn’t.

      • @neclimdul@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        I meant that in the video it’s consistently not worked for a very long time. Seems the switch to HDMI left it behind. While it would be nice if devices supported it like he asked, the fact it was skipped in the HDMI standard and not mandated by law means it’s unlikely devices racing too the bottom line will ever care. And that’s basically what we see. Only the most expensive devices even acknowledge it’s an issue.

        That said, I hope VLC devs see his video and improve things. I’m sure it’s more complicated then it seems but it would be cool for them to add that to the ways they’re better than every other player put there.

  • Sixty
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    3 days ago

    reads meta data 1st We gotta get Alec to show up on William’s chaos ranch for an episode of Farmer’s with Brain Damage. If anyone can get 1 million billion Sunflowers to grow in sand and not get eaten by Kevin’s dog it’ll be Alec.

    Now I’ll watch the video. I’m sure it’s good. It’s always good.

    edit: Yep. Interesting.

    I think, it’s not very expensive or difficult to find work around solutions to the few people holding onto standard definition media.

    • @chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz
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      23 days ago

      You’re taking about bringing a man of control and order into that den of chaos and goblinry? I don’t think Alec would enjoy it.