Actually, I rarely hear them. I usually put all my mp3s into winamp's playlist, and there's around 4000 others in the list. Always cool when one of them starts playing tho.
Before It's too late, there's a question I've been meaning to ask;
As most of you know, the new astro series is going to be playing on the 17th. I intend to capture and encode it. What kind of quality and filesize do you guys think would be best? I want it to look decent at least but I also want people to be able to download it.
Here's some theoretical size/resolutions I might use
*150Mb - 320x240 - like the 80s japanese episodes I encoded from VCD everything will be kinda blurry, fine details will be turned to smooth colors. and all the lines will look soft after zooming to full-screen.
* 210Mb - 400x300 - much better than the 150 Mb, sharp details will have mpeg artifacting still.
* 320Mb - 512x384 - 2 episodes will fit on a CD, everything will look nice.
* 400Mb - 640x480 - files too big, quality would be really good tho.
FTP server
I am looking at a 202 MB 23:34 file, that really seems almost adequate. I use a full screen window on a 19" LCD. 
Admittantly, it could be better, but it could also be much worse. The properties sheet says 640 by 480, 29 FPs, 147 kbps, 24 bit, DiivX codec, and MPEG layer-3.
Another one's property tab says 240 by 320, but it is just too clear to believe that. Another one shows 352 by 240, but only has 14 fps. It is noticably jerky, but watchable, nevertheless.
Yet a fourth, has 640 by 480, but only 23 fps. I find 23 fps quite satisfactory if coupled with a higher resolution. But do not do this to please me, as I have access to WBDC, which carries the show Saturday mornings.
<_<
Admittantly, it could be better, but it could also be much worse. The properties sheet says 640 by 480, 29 FPs, 147 kbps, 24 bit, DiivX codec, and MPEG layer-3.Another one's property tab says 240 by 320, but it is just too clear to believe that. Another one shows 352 by 240, but only has 14 fps. It is noticably jerky, but watchable, nevertheless.
Yet a fourth, has 640 by 480, but only 23 fps. I find 23 fps quite satisfactory if coupled with a higher resolution. But do not do this to please me, as I have access to WBDC, which carries the show Saturday mornings.
<_<
Heh, you had the right idea Jeffbert, I just went through some HQ anime videos and found out the optimum settings that the expert subbers already figured out. At 640x480 using the Xvid codec a typical 23-28 min anime should be encoded to exactly 233 MB. that will fit 3 episodes per CD, and with all the post-processing options, you need to pause the video to notice the mpeg artifacting usually (it's a bit more noticeable on ones with lots of action all the way through, but still good enough).
If that's too big, episodes at 175MB (4 per CD) would look decent at 400x300 resolution.
(so if enough people want smaller files now's the time to say so)
Ah, here's some useless technobabble (feel free to ignore the rest of this post)...
The clarity & quality is mostly dependant on the source (S___ in, S___ out).
I'll be losslessly recording it from digital sattelite which uses mpeg-2 streams - same codec that DVDs use for the channels (it's Constant Bit Rate (CBR) so it's got a bit of artifacting, but that can usually be filtered out and fixed completely, especially on animated shows where the filters actually improve the final output - too bad the graininess/artifacting is added again when re-encoding it to mpeg-4).
NTSC video is 29.97 FPS, but I'll be inverse telecining it to 24 FPS (this is what 90% of all animation is done at - some use less), so at 24FPS there will be no loss. 29.97 is too much for animation so those extra frames are simply 2 frames blended together (interlacing). That's why on some videos you'll pause it and see 2 frames all blurred together or the horizontal interlace lines themselves. The process to remove those frames is very time consuming, but well worth it in the final product because you can get more quality or smaller filesize by removing the redundant crap-frames.
No matter what, the videos I'll be making of the new series will be alot cleaner and nicer looking than any of the 80's series video files (VHS stuff is notoriously hard to encode well because of all the analog graininess that's there, if you filter it out you end up blurring everything, and if you leave it in the files need to be huge or else they'll be all blocky and messy looking).
If that's too big, episodes at 175MB (4 per CD) would look decent at 400x300 resolution.
(so if enough people want smaller files now's the time to say so)
Ah, here's some useless technobabble (feel free to ignore the rest of this post)...
The clarity & quality is mostly dependant on the source (S___ in, S___ out).
I'll be losslessly recording it from digital sattelite which uses mpeg-2 streams - same codec that DVDs use for the channels (it's Constant Bit Rate (CBR) so it's got a bit of artifacting, but that can usually be filtered out and fixed completely, especially on animated shows where the filters actually improve the final output - too bad the graininess/artifacting is added again when re-encoding it to mpeg-4).
NTSC video is 29.97 FPS, but I'll be inverse telecining it to 24 FPS (this is what 90% of all animation is done at - some use less), so at 24FPS there will be no loss. 29.97 is too much for animation so those extra frames are simply 2 frames blended together (interlacing). That's why on some videos you'll pause it and see 2 frames all blurred together or the horizontal interlace lines themselves. The process to remove those frames is very time consuming, but well worth it in the final product because you can get more quality or smaller filesize by removing the redundant crap-frames.
No matter what, the videos I'll be making of the new series will be alot cleaner and nicer looking than any of the 80's series video files (VHS stuff is notoriously hard to encode well because of all the analog graininess that's there, if you filter it out you end up blurring everything, and if you leave it in the files need to be huge or else they'll be all blocky and messy looking).
400MB is probably overkill. The fansubs were around 200-270MB and the quality was fantastic. I'd go for 512x384 with a filesize of around 230MB (3 eps per CD). But then again, I won't be downloading them. 
I've been recording Transformers Armada at 400x300 with a DivX 4 bitrate of 750, audio at 128k (MP3). It looks like this:
Filesizes for a typical 21-22 minute episode are 140MB (5 per CD). Looks like TV to me.
I've been recording Transformers Armada at 400x300 with a DivX 4 bitrate of 750, audio at 128k (MP3). It looks like this:
Filesizes for a typical 21-22 minute episode are 140MB (5 per CD). Looks like TV to me.
Yeah, it's the price I have to pay for variety 
. I listen to music alot, and don't like hearing songs untill I'm sick of them. My brother and I have switched to mp3 CDs for most of the music we listen to now. We go through a full cd of mp3s every 3 months or so. The only problem we've been having lately is that we have to sort through alot of songs to find enough good new music for a new cd each time we get bored of the last one 
.
... Too much time on my hands? Yeah. Probably.
. I listen to music alot, and don't like hearing songs untill I'm sick of them. My brother and I have switched to mp3 CDs for most of the music we listen to now. We go through a full cd of mp3s every 3 months or so. The only problem we've been having lately is that we have to sort through alot of songs to find enough good new music for a new cd each time we get bored of the last one .... Too much time on my hands? Yeah. Probably.
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