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ReClock
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Mini Table of Contents

What is ReClock?
The not so great history of frame rates
The nightmare of badly born DIVX
The bigger nightmare of PC hardware
The better history of DirectShow
Here comes ReClock
Let’s be a little more technical
Installing and configuring ReClock
Using ReClock
Using TV out with ReClock
Using the VSYNC tools
How to optimize SPDIF output
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What is ReClock?
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Said simply the purpose of ReClock is to definitely get rid (I hope) of jerky playback of AVI and MPEG material on a PC (or a PC connected to a TV).

ReClock is born from my own frustration. I have a fast PC, a good video card, and when I play a DVD or DIVX on my brand new Home Cinema, I get dropped frames here and there for no reason, or a completely jerky and un-watch able movie. This is very annoying.

The following sections will give you a complete and I hope clear explanation of what cause jerky playback, and how ReClock will try to solve these problems.

The last section will give you the instructions on how to install and use ReClock.

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The not so great history of frame rates
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In basic terms, a video can be thought of as being made up of numerous snapshots, called frames. The frame rate is the number of frames displayed each second

As you know there exist 3 common broadcasting formats: cinema, TV, and computers

Cinema is the oldest. It is the format of the movies you see in your favourite theater. Cinema movies play at 24 frames per second ( fps). It’s very simple: every 1/24th of a second, your see a new frame. This is also called “progressive scan”.
A television, however, does not deal with video in terms of frames. Instead, it displays video using half-frames, called fields. Each frame contains exactly two fields. One field is made up of the odd horizontal lines in a frame. This is called the odd field or the top field since it contains the top line of the image. The other field is made up of the even horizontal lines in a frame. This is called the even field or bottom field. This way to broadcast video is called “interlaced scan”
Now there are three common TV standards: PAL, SECAM and NTSC. All of them use “interlaced scan”.
Let’s start with PAL, which is the European TV standard. It is also used for DVD and DIVX material. PAL material is played at 25 fps (or 50 fields per second). You see the first problem here: how can we play a 24 fps movie on a 50 fields per second PAL TV? Well first of all, we can present each movie frame two consecutive times to make the movie play at 48 fields per second. But playing the movie like this would give jerky playback every second because one movie picture would be missing. So the movie is just played 50/48 times faster to match 50 fields per second. So a cinema movie that has duration of 60mn plays on PAL in 57mn36 seconds. That’s why movies you watch on your PAL TV are always a bit shorter in time.

SECAM is the French brother of PAL and works exactly the same way. It is still used in France because it gives better colours when broadcasted by radio waves (less sensitive to noise).

And now here is NTSC, the American brother of PAL. NTSC is also used for DVD and DIVX material, and plays somewhere near 29.97 fps (to be exact it is 4.5 MHz/286/525). You see a bigger problem here. How can we play cinema movies on NTSC. Accelerate them? Sure no, because you would notice that the film plays much too fast (a 60mn movie would play in 48mn3s). So NTSC engineers came with a solution called “telecine” or “3:2 pulldown” which is quite complicated. To convert a film that runs at 24 fps to run at 29.97 fps, it is first necessary to slow down the video by 0.1% to 23.976 fps. Then approximately 6 frames are added to the video each second, bringing the frame rate to 29.97 fps. This is done by adding one extra frame to each group of 4 film frames. Although they could simply duplicate 1 out of every 4 frames to produce the extra frame, this method is not used. This is because the duplication of one frame would cause that frame to be displayed for twice as long as the other 3 frames, which leads to jerkier motion. Fortunately, film producers can make use of the field-based nature of video to more gradually introduce the extra frame. Instead of adding a whole new frame at once, 2 fields are introduced separately to each group of 4 film frames. Since 2 fields make up a frame, this method is equivalent to adding 1 new frame. However, since the 2 duplicated fields are not added at the same time, this reduces the jerkiness of the video.

Let’s finish with computers. Computers are quite simple, they just do work like cinema and use “progressive scan”. But they use many more frame rates: 60 Hz, 75 Hz, 85 Hz, 100 Hz when watching your monitor, 50 Hz when connected to a PAL TV, and 60 Hz when connected to a NTSC TV. To obtain a smooth playback on a PC you just have to make sure that your video card uses a refresh rate that is an exact multiple of the movie you play. You can already see that PAL can be played fine at 50 Hz, 75 Hz or 100 Hz, but NTSC cannot be played without begin jerky because all we have is 60 fps which is not a multiple of 29.97 fps.

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The nightmare of badly born DIVX
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DIVX for the most are created from DVD material, and DVD material generally comes from movie material.

DIVX created from PAL material are generally fine, because they were created from 24 fps material simply accelerated to 25 fps or from direct 25 fps material. PAL is a good guy.

And now you have telecine for NTSC. Since telecine can only be displayed correctly on “interlaced scan” hardware, it must be removed for PC playback. This operation is called “inverse telecine”. Doing this on a film will revert the frame rate of the movie to 23.976 fps. Funny, but … jerky on every PC you will use to play the movie.

Some people that create DIVX from NTSC don’t even know that inverse telecine must be done. So those DIVX stays at 29.97 fps and will have artefacts when watched on your PC because interlacing artefacts do not compress well at all.

And to add another thing to the story, some DIVX has sound and movie sync problems that are solved by … modifying the frame rate a little bit so the movie duration matches the sound track duration. This is a quick and dirty way to do it. Imagine a 25 fps DIVX that is modified to play at 25.001 fps; well every 1000 frames (that’s only 40 seconds) the playback will become jerky.

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The bigger nightmare of PC hardware
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When you connect your PAL DVD player to your TV, things are really simple. Your player read the movie from the disc at 25 fps, and sends the signal to the TV at 25 fps.
Now imagine that your player is a little too fast and send the movie to the TV at 25.01 fps. What will happen? Jerkiness? No … In fact your TV is smart, and will stay synchronised with your player as long at the player plays near 25 fps. To be more precise no player in the world plays the movie exactly at 25 fps because clocks are never accurate. So every player play the movie “near” 25 fps, but this is no problem for your TV since it is locked to the video signal it receive.

Now when you play a DIVX on your PC and watch it on your PC what happens? First of all, if the refresh rate of your monitor is not a multiple of the frame rate of your DIVX, jerkiness will happen for sure. Do you remember that DIVX can be 24 fps, 25 fps, 23.976 fps, 29.97 fps, or even 25.001 fps? This is the first and main cause of jerky playback.

The other source of jerkiness is much more subtle and harder to understand. Suppose you play a 25 fps movie on you PC. Well your PC isn’t smarter that any DVD player, it will play it “near” 25 fps because it uses its internal clock, which is inaccurate. But it should not be a problem because DVD players also do that? Bad luck, it is a very big problem, because your video card does not synchronise its speed with the speed of the movie like a TV would do with a DVD player. In a PC the clocks used in the video card (to show the video) and in the PC (to play the video) are completely distinct, thus there always is deviation between them, and then jerkiness is inevitable.

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The better history of DirectShow
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DirectShow is the DirectX component that plays or record video and audio on your PC. DirectShow contains many modules called “filters” and connect them in a “filter graph” to finally render the movie.
Let’s take an example, with the steps needed to play a DIVX movie:
- First you need to demux the audio and video from the AVI file: one filter will do that and will produce two streams (audio + video)
- Then you need to decode audio stream (MP3 for example): a MP3 decoder filter will do that
- You also need to decode video: a DIVX decoder filter will do that
- You must render the decoded movie in a window: a video renderer filter is needed
- You must play decoded audio: an audio renderer is used.

DirectShow was cleverly designed because it will automatically search and find what filters are the best to render a movie. For example, the audio and video renderers are completely generic (they are provided by Microsoft) and will eat the output of every decoder filter in the world.
That’s one reason why there exist many DIVX players out there. A player is only a nutshell where filter graphs are built and run.

Now, DirectShow has another interesting feature. When building a filter graph, it set up a “reference clock” that is used to provide a unique time to all the filters in the graph. All filters will play their stuff at the speed of the reference clock.
The default reference clock in DirectShow is provided by the Microsoft sound renderer. Why? Because in order to play sound correctly, your sound card must receive samples exactly at the speed they will be played. So the default reference clock is in fact synced to a hardware clock somewhere in your sound card. Video frames just follow this clock, making jerkiness inevitable.

You may ask why Microsoft made this choice. They could have chosen to sync the reference clock to the video and all would be nice. I suppose they didn’t for at least two reasons:
- Video cards do not have a high-resolution hardware timer available to make a clock.
- Sound playback would become problematic since the sound card would not receive its samples at the speed they would be played. So the sound would not stay synchronised with video

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Here comes ReClock
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Now I think you understand what does ReClock. It provides a reference clock that is synchronised with your video hardware. How? By replacing entirely the default sound renderer with a new rewritten DirectShow filter that is somehow cleverer.

But by doing so, ReClock must solve the two problems we saw in the last section:
- Video cards do not have a high-resolution hardware timer available to make a clock: well, this is not completely true, since many of them have something that will help us. ReClock provides a reference clock based on a high-resolution timer based on hardware on your motherboard or your processor. Let’s call this clock the “system clock”. Then, ReClock will correct the system clock with information gathered in real time from your video card if they are available. How it does that will be my little secret :)
- Sound playback would become problematic: this is true. How can we solve that? By varying the speed of the sound in real time to force the sound to stay in sync with the video. This is another reason why we replace the sound renderer with our own one. There are two ways to change sound speed: playback speed and pitch. Normally, ReClock will choose to change the pitch of the sound in real time by adjusting the audio clock because it’s quite easy to do and does not degrade too much sound quality. It also allows very fine tuning on the video vs. sound synchronisation. This will however change a little bit the sound you will hear, but your ears should not notice that with such a low correction. Starting with version 1.4, you can also ask ReClock to combine audio pitch change with audio time stretching witch allow to change the playback speed without noticeable pitch artefacts.

Another thing that does ReClock is to change the global playback rate of the movie in order to match its frame rate to a multiple of the refresh rate of your monitor. Here is how it does that:
- CINEMA mode is detected if the monitor has a refresh rate that is a multiple of 24 Hz (72 Hz, etc…) and if the movie has a frame rate between 23.75 and 24.25. Then the playback rate of the movie (including sound) is modified to match exactly 24 fps.
- PAL mode is detected if CINEMA mode wasn’t possible and if the monitor has a refresh rate that is a multiple of 25 Hz (50 Hz, 75 Hz, 100 Hz, etc…) and if the movie has a frame rate between 23.75 and 25.25. Then the playback rate of the movie (including sound) is modified to match exactly 25 fps.
- NTSC mode is detected if the monitor has a refresh rate that is a multiple of 30 Hz (60 Hz, 120 Hz, etc…). Then the playback rate of the movie (including sound) is modified to match exactly 30 fps.
- CUSTOM mode is detected when the frame rate of the movie +/- 2% is a multiple of the monitor refresh rate. Then the playback rate of the movie (including sound) is modified to match exactly a multiple of the monitor refresh rate.
Finally if nothing matched, ReClock will try to match the playback rate is not modified, but the reference clock is still synchronised to the video card in order to obtain a stable clock.

Side note: you may ask if NTSC will work well with TV since PC does 30 fps where the TV wants 29.97 fps. That’s a good question to which I do not have a complete response, but strangely I observed that when I use ReClock with the excellent TvTool in NTSC mode with a GeForce 3, I get a clock correction that make the reference clock work near … 29.97 fps. So it seems that when the PC uses TV out in NTSC mode, the refresh rate is not 60 Hz, but 29.97*2 Hz, but I’m not sure at all of that, since it may be a coincidence. Anyway playing NTSC at 30 fps on a NTSC TV should not be a problem; as you may know NTSC was originally a black/white standard at 30 Hz that became 29.97 Hz for technical reasons when colour appeared.

So by adjusting the reference clock to match your video card, adjusting the sound to stay in sync with picture, and modifying the global playback rate, ReClock should allow a smooth movie experience on your monitor and even on your TV.

But as I said before, ReClock will not work with all PC because it uses some functions that are not available on all of them. Firstly your PC must support high-resolution timers (nearly every modern PC has them). Secondly, your video card must support some special calls. I know that most nVidia, ATI, Intel i815 and Matrox G200 do support those calls, but some cheaper or older cards may not. If those functions are not supported, ReClock will not load at all or will display an error message and the Microsoft audio renderer will be used.

Moreover, ReClock has some constraints you need to understand:
- ReClock requires DirectX 9.0 or later.
- ReClock will load and work only if your movie has sound, because ReClock is an audio renderer.
- ReClock will not always find the frame rate of the material. For example streaming will never be supported.
- When your run ReClock for the first time for a specific resolution and refresh rate, the reference clock will be inaccurate during the first minutes of playback while being corrected. This can cause jerky playback at the beginning of the movie. The time to obtain an accurate clock will depend on many factors (initial error of clock, PC speed …). During this period, you will see a flashing yellow/red icon in the system tray. After this adjustment the icon will become green (or yellow), and ReClock will store the correction in the registry, so when you will open another media, the clock correction parameters will be retrieved.
- Changing the playback speed can be noticeable on sound especially when 23.976 fps material is up rated to 25 fps. Doing so will accelerate the sound by 4%, and sound will seem to be a little high pitched. If you don’t like that, you can enable the “audio time stretching” function (explained later in this document).

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Let’s be a little more technical
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Now that you know what DirectShow is and what does ReClock, I will explain here some technical knowledge that will be useful to fully use ReClock.

Originally, Microsoft designed one DirectShow audio renderer called the “WaveOut renderer”. This renderer was based on an old audio technology dating back to Windows 3.0 (let’s call it the Wave API). Later, when DirectX started to emerge, Microsoft designed a new audio renderer called the “DirectSound renderer” which is based on DirectSound technology (the DirectSound API). The later should provide better sound quality with less CPU overhead and less latency. On a “normal” PC with DirectX 9.0 or later, the “DirectSound renderer” is generally automatically used.

At the same time DirectSound emerged, PC started to be used to play DVD’s. As you know, nearly all DVD’s have a 5.1 Dolby or DTS soundtrack (i.e. 6 independent audio channels), that can be played on multiple speakers by your PC and the appropriate audio card, or send to an external AC3 decoder/amplifier with an SPDIF compatible soundcard. You can see those are two different ways to handle sound. When you play some media (MP3, DIVX, and DVD) and your soundcard provides directly the sound to the speakers, you are using PCM (Pulse Coded Modulation) sound, and I will call this “PCM mode”. When you are sending an AC3 or DTS stream over SPDIF to an external decoder/amplifier you’re doing AC3 pass-through mode, and I will call this “SPDIF mode”.

PCM and SPDIF modes are very different by nature:
- In PCM mode, ReClock receives the raw audio waves in digital form and transmits them to the audio card, but it can tweak them because it understands what is inside. So the sound can be reshaped (pitch or playback rate can be changed, and dynamic compression can be applied). Altering the playback rate allows ReClock to re sync the sound with the video. Playing a video at 25 fps with a sound that was “designed” to play at 24 fps is no problem.
- Now in SPDIF mode, ReClock receive a binary encoded AC3 or DTS stream and transmit it to the external decoder/amplifier via SPDIF link. But it can’t understand what is inside because this content needs to be decoded to be understood and played (that’s the purpose of an AC3 decoder). So how can ReClock alter the playback rate in SPDIF? Well, in fact it can’t do it nicely. AC3 frames are divided into chunks that have a sound duration of 32ms (a chunk is also called a frame or packet). Each frame is independent of the previous and of the next. To shorten the sound, ReClock drop frames, and to lengthen the sound, ReClock repeat frames. This is called the drop/repeat algorithm. Usually dropping or repeating an AC3 frame is not noticeable if it does not happen too often (remember a frame is only 32ms long), but it is not possible to play a media at a speed that is very far from its original speed (playing a 24 fps file at 25 fps would make a frame drop every 25 frame and it is very noticeable). That’s why in SPDIF mode, ReClock will only accept to alter the speed of media files very slightly (it won’t try to accelerate a 24 fps file to 25 fps).

Now DirectShow also have its oddities. When the “WaveOut renderer” was the only way to play sound, it was extended to handle SPDIF so it could take PCM or SPDIF input. When the “DirectSound renderer” appeared, it was plagued with problem in SPDIF handling, and many audio card manufacturers also had problems to handle SPDIF with DirectSound. So, this renderer is not commonly used to handle SPDIF. From this, you see that the best way to handle PCM sound is to use DirectSound and the best way to handle SPDIF sound is to use WaveOut. So, as ReClock needs to handle both PCM and SPDIF modes, it provides you the two worlds: WaveOut API and DirectSound API, so you have the choice. In this regard, ReClock is a hybrid audio renderer. Please have a look on a section “How to optimize SPDIF output” for a method that will allow you to minimize drop/repeats in SPDIF mode.

Version 1.6 also comes with a new audio renderer called "Kernel Streaming". This API is the lower one available in Windows to produce sound. It talks directly to audio WDM cards drivers, and has many advantages :
- lower possible audio latency
- complete bypass of the windows internal audio resampler that degrades sound quality

... and some disadvantages :
- no audio volume control
- will not work with every soundcard in ReClock especially when streaming AC3 sound
So if you want top notch audio quality, you can use Kernel Streaming with ReClock.

Let’s now speak about video renderers inside DirectShow. Just like for sound, Microsoft made with time different versions of video renderers:
-*First the “Old renderer”: it uses old video technology is slow and should not be used anymore.
-*Then the “Overlay mixer” came: this one uses “overlay” capability of video cards based on DirectDraw. Overlay is a technology that allows an application to display efficiently and with good quality pictures on screen but it has limitations: not all cards can do it, and you are limited to one video on screen (one overlay) at one time; also overlay can cause problems when using TV output. Besides its limitations, the overlay mixer is still widely used today
-*When Windows XP came out, the Video Mixing Renderer appeared, also called the “VMR7”: this one is based on Direct3D, and has no limitations. But your card must be able to handle it (recent card and recent drivers). VMR7 is used by Windows Media Player on XP.
-*And finally when DirectX 9.0 appeared, a second and distinct version of the VMR came out and this one is called the “VMR9”: it is an up rated VMR7 renderer with even more capabilities. You must use a good player if you want to try this one (for example Zoom Player)
-*Some players like BSPlayer have their own video renderer (based on overlay for BSPlayer).

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Installing and configuring ReClock
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Installation is straightforward; simply launch setup.exe. This will install the product in C:\Program files\ReClock by default. You will also notice a new menu in the start menu. This menu will give you access to this “read me” and uninstall utility.
Un-installation is simple too. Simply uninstall ReClock from the ‘add/remove program’ panel of Windows or from the ReClock menu. Do not delete ReClock folder or un-register it manually, it would not uninstall it correctly! If you did something wrong to uninstall it, just reinstall and uninstall ReClock with the normal procedure and all will be well.

Now you can use the configuration application to modify some settings. You can launch it from the Start menu.
Here is an overview of the configuration application:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=149229&stc=1&d=1249223677

If you don’t know what to choose or if you messed up things, click on “Advanced settings”, then click on “Restore default settings”, then click on “Clean-up video timings database”, then go to “Video settings” and click on “Clean-up manual frame rate database”, then click on OK, and all default settings and parameters will be restored.

Let’s first have a look on the “Audio settings” tab. Here you will configure all sound related parameters:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=149234&stc=1&d=1249224289

- “Devices to use with DirectSound/Kernel Streaming/WaveOut”: You can choose here what specific soundcard must be used when using DirectSound, Kernel Streaming or WaveOut. Use this if you have more than one soundcard, or if you use a specific card for SPDIF.

- “Audio interface to use for PCM sound”: Here you can choose between DirectSound API, Kernel Streaming API, or WaveOut API to play normal sounds (PCM). DirectSound is the preferred choice for PCM, but highest audio quality is only possible with Kernel Streaming.

- “Audio interface to use for SPDIF/AC3 sound”: Here you can choose between DirectSound API, Kernel Streaming API, or WaveOut API to send AC3 sound over SPDIF. WaveOut is the preferred choice for SPDIF.

- “Sound pre-buffer size”: this is the amount of sound to bufferize before to play it. The lower it is, the faster you can seek inside media files. But high values also give room to handle properly sound speed variations and speed problems. Values under 100ms are not suggested.

- “Max latency for PCM/SPDIF”: You can specify here, how much sound desynchronisation is accepted on PCM or SPDIF mode between sound and video. If you experience some sound drops here and there you can try to increase the values here. Values are expressed in percentage of pre-buffer time.

- “Resampling quality”: Resampling the sound is a process that will degrade hearing quality. But you can tweak this by enabling ReClock to use more CPU to degrade less audio. Higher resampling quality will use more CPU. "Very good" and "excellent" settings will eat CPU but audio resampling will be very very good even for audiophiles.

- “Accept old multichannel formats”: This option was made especially for some audio cards like the Vortex2 that don’t understand special commands to handle more than 2 audio channels. If you have one of those cards, enable this option only if you get no sound at all in multichannel mode.

- “Set ReClock as preferred renderer”: if checked, ReClock will load in place of the default Microsoft DirectSound or WaveOut renderer for every media file you will play (this also apply for MP3 files played with Windows Media Player). If unchecked, you will have to configure your player to make it use ReClock. Media Player Classic and ZoomPlayer can do that (see the FAQ on my website to configure them).

- “Force ReClock to be loaded in place of default DirectSound/Wave renderers”: sometimes players explicitly ask DirectShow to play audio with a Microsoft renderer, and in this case you can’t benefit from ReClock advantages. If you check this setting, ReClock will bypass that, and be loaded even if the player requested the DirectSound or WaveOut renderer (for example Windows Media Player will play DVD with ReClock, TheaterTek DVD player too, and Windows Media Center Edition too). As you can see this is quite a dangerous setting that should only be used on a PC dedicated to media playback (like a HTPC).

- “Force ReClock to be loaded in PowerDVD”: same trick, but for the PowerDVD player. This player normally relies on its own internal audio renderer. Just as with DirectSound/Wave renderers, ReClock can bypass this and load in place of PowerDVD internal renderer. The same warnings apply that those with the same trick for DirectSound/Wave.

- “Enable audio time-stretching”: if you check this setting, ReClock will be able to change the media speed without altering the sound pitch (this is called time stretching). This is a very cool setting that will allow you to watch a movie at half or twice it’s original speed without getting strange voices (chipmunk, etc …), or compensate for PAL speedup voice alterations. You can ask ReClock to enable this when the media is slowed down, accelerated or both. The reason time-stretching was made optional is that it will degrade slightly audio quality.

Now let’s have a look on the “Video settings” section. Obviously, here you will configure all video related parameters:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=149235&stc=1&d=1249224289

- “Hardware access method”: this will give you control over which method ReClock will use to gather clock information in real time from your video card. Direct3D is the preferred method to use, but if you experience strange lockups or if ReClock doesn’t work at all, you may want to try DirectDraw.

- "Monitor detection method" : in multi-monitor environnement you can let ReClock guess on which monitor is playing media, or force ReClock to think it is using a specific monitor. Automatic is the preferred mode.

- “Determine frame rate of media files using DirectShow”: ReClock needs to know the frame rate of video files played in order to handle them, and DirectShow provides such mechanism. This setting doesn’t apply for DVD however. If you uncheck this option, ReClock will not use DirectShow to determine the frame rate. This can be useful because in very rare cases DirectShow can be inaccurate.

- “Determine frame rate of media files using built-in estimator”: this is the second way to determine frame rate (if DirectShow didn’t found it or was disabled). This setting applies only to non DVD material. If you uncheck this option, ReClock won’t try this method with media files. If this is the case, you can propose a default value in the textbox under or leave it “unknown”. Then you will be able to adjust manually the frame rate in the properties panel of ReClock during playback.

- “Determine frame rate of DVD using built-in estimator”: the same setting as the previous but only for DVD material. Now when frame rate is not found for DVD, you can propose a default value in the textbox under or leave it “unknown”. Then you will be able to adjust manually the frame rate in the properties panel of ReClock during playback.

- “Accepted slowdown/speedup of media speed in PCM mode”: this will tell ReClock by which margin the movie can be accelerated or slowed to match a multiple of the current refresh rate. This only apply when PCM mode sound is used (i.e. not SPDIF where margin are internally fixed to much lower values because SPDIF sound can’t be “stretched”). The default settings allow ReClock to do “PAL speedup” (i.e. playing 23.976 fps content at 25 fps which is a 4.2% speedup). You can prevent it from doing so by putting 1% speedup instead of 5%.

- “Enable guessing a better media speed when hardware refresh rate do not match”: this setting will change ReClock behaviour when it can’t change the media speed to be an exact multiple of the refresh rate (i.e. yellow icon). If you check this, instead of playing the media at its original speed, ReClock will change its speed to match the refresh rate multiplied by 2 or 3 (if possible within the speedup/slowdown margins you specified in the previous setting). For example, if you play a 23.976 fps media file on a 60 Hz display (this is 2.5025025 frames per video refresh cycle), it will be speeded up to 24 fps (this is exactly 2.5 frames per video refresh cycle), because 24 is a multiple of 60x2. Enabling this setting will allow you to use the VSYNC tools in “yellow icon” conditions (see paragraph “Using VSYNC Tools”), and will improve playback experience (more regular stutter).

- “Clean-up manual frame rates database”: pushing this button will erase all remembered frame rates you have ever entered in ReClock properties panel.

Now let’s have a look on the “Advanced settings” section:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=149236&stc=1&d=1249224289

- “Enable VSYNC correction with VMR9”, “Enable VSYNC correction with other renderers”: please see paragraph “Using VSYNC Tools”.

- “Give high CPU priority to player”: if enabled, higher CPU priority will be given to the player currently hosting ReClock. It is likely to give smoother playback if some background tasks are running on your PC while you watch a video.

- “Do not show icon in tray”: if the little clock in the tray bother you or is not compatible with your playback environnement, then check this box.

- “Enable events notifications”: if enabled, ReClock will launch the file named “RunEvent.vbs” in the ReClock install directory, each time a media file is about to be played or stopped, when playback condition have changed, or when quitting the player. You can customize this script to do whatever you want, for example to change the monitor refresh rate when it does not correspond to the one of the played media file. For convenience, the distribution of ReClock provides a sample called “RunEvent.sample.vbs”. For more explanations have a look inside this sample, and don’t forget to modify it properly and to rename it to “RunEvent.vbs” before to use this feature.

- “Enable logging”: when checked enable a debug log to be produced in c:\reclock_log.txt while ReClock runs. Use only for bug tracking because it can slowdown ReClock or fill your disk.

- “Disallow/Allow ReClock to load with.../Don't restict" : here you can provide a list of applications names in which ReClock won’t be allowed to load (without extension and separated by a “;”) or only allowed to load with (depending of the allow/disallow setting). When ReClock is not allowed to run with an application, it will force Windows to revert back to default audio renderers. However this setting does not apply when ReClock has been forced to load in place of DirectSound, Wave, or PowerDVD renderers (see related settings). For example, if you don’t want Internet Explorer to use ReClock then simply click on "disallow" and put IEXPLORE in the list. Also, if you use some video capture application in which ReClock interfere with capture you may want to use this feature. To obtain the name of an application simply have a look in the properties panel when ReClock is loaded in that application.

- “Clean-up video clock timings database”: for each resolution, and video refresh rate, ReClock keeps track of what correction to apply to the system clock to make it match the video clock speed. For his purpose it uses an algorithm that will slowly converge to the proper correction values and then it will store those correction factors in the registry. Pushing this button will allow you to erase those correction factors in the registry. Doing so will then force ReClock to rerun the correction algorithms, for each resolution and refresh rate combination. Use this if you don’t see the “ppm” indicator going low after some time. Also it is a good idea to erase those settings, after having tweaked the video timings with Powerstrip.

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Using ReClock
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Now how do you use ReClock? Simply by launching your favourite Media player (like BSPlayer, ZoomPlayer, or WMP). If all goes well, your movies should play normally and sound should be working and synced to the video.
You can see what is doing ReClock by accessing its control panel during playback. You have access to this panel by double clicking the tray icon or from the filter list in your player (it’s easy with BSPlayer and ZoomPlayer).

Speaking of the tray icon you will see it can have these colors combinations:
- Green: all is fine, ReClock found the frame rate (or it was specified manually), and is currently adapting the speed if necessary
- Flashing between Green and Red: same that Green, but ReClock has not yet found the good system clock correction to apply. Icon will go green in a few minutes, but during this playback may stay jerky.
- Yellow: ReClock cannot find a suitable speed adaptation (for example the video card refresh rate is not a multiple of the frame rate).
- Red: ReClock didn’t found the frame rate, or clock correction has been disabled

Here is an overview of the control panel:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=149237&d=1249224275

The “Media infos” group box will give you information about the media that is currently loaded in the player and the player name. If the filename or the video stream frame rate can’t be determined, no adaptation will be made on the frame rate to match your video card refresh rate. Here you will also be able to enter frame rate manually if ReClock didn’t find it (and this will be remembered)

The “Video hardware” group box gives you information about your video card. You will get here very important indicators, because all the work that ReClock to properly resync video is based on those. First, the “Display” line should tell you the current resolution and refresh rate that have been detected by ReClock. If your video card can handle more that one display, it well also tell you how many monitors have been detected, and on which monitor the media is currently being played (the monitor numbers are the same that you see in your display configuration panel).
Example: 1024x768@75 (2/3) means: you have 3 monitors, and I’m playing back on number 2 which use a resolution of 102’x768 at 75 Hz.
Please note, that ReClock will always resync the video with the monitor on which the playback window of your media player is placed. If you drag your playback window from one monitor to another, ReClock should detect the change and react accordingly (resolution and refresh rate should match your settings). If this is not the case, try to switch between D3D and DirectDraw API in the configuration application.
The “Refresh rate” line will show you another refresh rate that is close to the current display monitor one but will change over time and will stabilize to a value that tells you what real refresh rate your video card is using (this should closely match the one given by a utility like Powerstrip). You will also see what API ReClock is using to gather video clock information from your video card (DDR means that DirectDraw is currently used to do this job, where D3D indicates that Direct3D is used). Direct3D is the preferred method to use, but if you get lockups when playing something with ReClock, then you may want to give DirectDraw a try (all versions of ReClock prior to 0.99k were using only DirectDraw). You can configure this with the configuration application.

The “Renderers infos” group box gives you information about which video renderer you player is using for video, and what API is used for audio (either WaveOut or DirectSound).

The “Clock corrections” group box will tell you what is done by ReClock to correct the system and audio clock. The “ppm” indication gives you indications on how accurate your system clock is (the closer to 0, the best). A 1 ppm means 0.0001% of clock deviation. For example, if your clock is 3.5 MHz, and if you play a 25 fps movie you will loose a frame every (1000000/25/3.5) second (that’s around 3 hours). For the sound part, the “sync” indicator tells you what is the current desynchronisation between picture and sound (this should always be close to 0ms). The pitch indicator tells you by which quantity the sound pitch is currently modified (less than 1 if sound is low pitched, more than 1 if high pitched). The stretch indicator is only visible if you enabled “audio time stretching” in the configuration application (less than 1 if sound is “slowed down”, more than 1 if sound is “accelerated”). You also have the ability to disable completely the system and audio clocks adaptation using the checkbox “slave reference clock to audio”. Doing so, ReClock will work much like the default DirectSound audio renderer, but rate adaptation will still function and reference clock will be slaved to audio clock with a smooth algorithm. Anyway, remember that you will probably experience jerky playback again by checking this checkbox, so the recommended way to use ReClock is to leave it unchecked.

The “Media adaptation” group box will tell you what adaptation is done to the video to match your hardware. You have the choice between different modes:
- Auto: this is the normal way to use ReClock. In this mode, ReClock will correct the speed of the media to match a multiple of your video refresh rate. If your video refresh rate does not correspond to the video, ReClock will indicate you what to do under the combo box.
- Original speed: in this mode, you can override the speed chosen by ReClock and play the media at its original speed.
- Nearest integer speed: this will round the frame rate to the nearest integer value.
- Other speeds: you can choose any target frame rate you want based on original media speed or on the refresh rate of your monitor. Audio will stay in sync (quite funny at 50 fps).
That’s being said I repeat that the best and normal way to go is to choose “Auto”.
You will also see a little check box labelled “Locked” near the media adaptation choice. If you check this button, you will force the settings used by ReClock. For example, if you have a 60 hz display, and have 24 or 25 fps media to play, you may choose “Refresh rate / 2.5” and lock it, so all media would play at 25 fps even if this is not a multiple of 60 Hz.

The "Sound adaptation” group box will give you more control on sound:
- You can enable hardware resampling (by your soundcard) of sound instead of software resampling. Hardware resampling gives better sound quality (no degradation in quality at all), but due to some limitations of some soundcards, it may not work well on all of them (you may experience sound desynchronisation). That’s why it is not recommended.
- You can mute sound if you want. If the player does not handle properly media files with multiple sound tracks, then you will get one ReClock instance for each track, but this option will at least allow you to mute unwanted sound tracks.
- You can enable the “PAL speed down” algorithm. This setting is only available if you have enabled “audio time stretching” in the configuration application. If you check this, ReClock will perform a 4.25% pitch reduction of the sound to counteract the speedup of some NTSC DVD to PAL conversions on which sound is high pitched by a margin of 4.25%.
- You can enable or disable the “dynamic range compression” for sound. This is an algorithm that will try to make the sound volume more constant. You will see which gain is applied to sound, and how many samples were clipped (saturated). You can also choose how strong the effect of the compressor is with the combo box (light, normal, and strong). “Normal” level is suggested.

The “VSync adaptation” group box will give you control over the “VSYNC tools”. Please see the paragraph “Using VSYNC tools” for more instructions.

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Using TV out with ReClock
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First of all, if you have a dual head video card (a card capable to display different images on your monitor and on your TV at the same time like a Radeon for example), setup your TV as the primary display or make sure that the player playback window is located on the monitor that will handle TV out (normally the secondary monitor). Don’t use theater mode. Then activate TV-out.
If your card needs a utility (like TV Tool), launch it and activate TV-out.
Then, launch your media player and open a media file, and check that the hardware video refresh rate detected by ReClock is:
- 50 Hz if your TV is in PAL
- 60 Hz if your TV is in NTSC
If the refresh rate detected by ReClock is not equal to the refresh rate of your TV, then ReClock is not compatible with your video card or it did not detect correctly the display device (have a look on your properties plan in “Video hardware” to check that).

Important notice: if you need to adjust the size or the position of the TV image with the control panel of your video card (or TV Tool), remember to quit and restart your media player after you have made your adjustments, because ReClock will need to estimate how the hardware video clock has been affected. If you don’t do that, you will experience jerky playback. If you did something wrong, you can ask ReClock to “relearn” clock corrections by hitting the “Clean-up video timings database” in the configuration application.

As of now ReClock is known to work fine with the following cards:
- GeForce 2/3 cards with TV Tool, or with built-in drivers
- Radeon cards with built-in TV-out

If you are not sure if ReClock does correct the good video clock on your hardware, you can use the “VSYNC tools” to check that if this is the case or not. See paragraph below.

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Using the VSYNC tools
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ReClock is able to make sure that the video frames are rendered at a speed which is an exact multiple of the video refresh rate. But we have another problem to face: vertical synchronisation (VSYNC) versus movie frames synchronisation. The VSYNC is a signal or an impulsion that marks the start of a new frame on a TV, monitor, or projector.
Each time the video renderer draw a frame on screen it usually try to start drawing if it know it will be able to draw the entire frame during a video frame period. If it’s not the case, it will wait the next video frame (also called vertical sync or vertical blank or VSYNC), before to continue drawing. If by bad luck each frame comes near by a VSYNC, you will get permanent jerky playback because sometimes the renderer will choose to wait next VSYNC and sometimes not depending on how late the frame arrived.

ReClock tries to eliminate this problem by making sure that VSYNC will not happen at the same time as frame arrival in the renderer.
- If you want to enable VSYNC correction, you will have to check that it is enabled in the configuration application (see “Enable VSYNC correction with VMR9” and “Enable VSYNC correction with other renderers”). You have the choice to enabled it for all renderers, or all renderers but VMR9, or only with VMR9 (more on that later)
- It will activate only if the adapted media speed is an exact multiple of the hardware refresh rate (for example a 23.976 fps movie on 75 Hz TV), or if you checked “Enable guessing a better media speed when hardware refresh rate do not match” an exact multiple of the hardware refresh rate x2 or x3. Since VSYNC/Frame synchronisations issues will only happen when one have a common multiplier with the other, there is no point to use the VSYNC correction when it’s not the case.

The VSYNC tools have three distinct purposes in ReClock:
1) They can show you on screen when does VSYNC happen. To enable this function check “Show VSYNC on screen”. You should then see on screen some points making a vertical pattern. Each point corresponds to a VSYNC that occurred during the last 100 frames played. You will also see a little horizontal line in the middle of this packet (I will call it the VSYNC bar). This is the current estimation of VSYNC position made by ReClock. Now what to learn from this? Many things:
- The height of the packet gives you an indication on how regularly frames are delivered to the renderer. If the packet height is low (10-15% of the height of your movie excluding black bars), then your playback is likely to be good.
- The position (given by the VSYNC bar) of the packet is important. There are some positions of the bar that are likely to give jerky playback because these positions correspond to instants when frames are presented to the renderer during VSYNC. Please see (3) for a solution to this
- The movements of the little VSYNC bar are very instructive. If it stay quite steady during playback (not traversing the screen completely to come back on the other side), it means that frames are presented to the renderer at a very exact multiple of the refresh rate. So it means that ReClock use the good hardware clock to make its work. This is the way to validate ReClock on multi-headed displays.

2) They can tell you if your playback is jerky or not. For this enable “Tearing test” in the properties panel. You will then see a vertical bar moving from left to right incrusted in the video. If you see the bar broken vertically somewhere, then it means that the renderer is displaying 2 frames at the same time (buffering problem). You should then choose another renderer (see your player options) or try another player. If you see the bar changing speed, or stopping/restarting, then it means your video is jerky. There can be many reasons for this
- Your CPU is not powerful enough to play the video smoothly
- Frames are presented during VSYNC. See (3) for a solution to this

3) They can tweak the reference clock to shift frame presentation in the renderer when frame come at a bad moment (during VSYNC). If you checked “Enable VSYNC correction” in the “VSync adaptation” group box of the properties panel, or selected this in the configuration application you will enable this function. Doing so, you will see two more little horizontal bars on the left of your video. Those are the limits that are given to the VSYNC bar. Each time the VSYNC will go outside these limits, ReClock will fine tweak the reference clock to make it go back within limits. This micro-correction has no impact on the overall smoothness of the movie playing back and will ensure that you won’t get jerky playback. As said in the previous paragraphs, some VSYNC bar positions are likely to give jerky playback. From my experience, those positions depend on your system. That’s why you can choose the limits you will give to the VSYNC bar by tweaking the slider called “Target VSYNC position” in the configuration app.
Here is the procedure to find the good settings:
- Launch configuration app, check the two “Enable VSYNC Correction”, and choose left position as target for VSYNC position
- Launch your player, choose a video to playback, and enable “Tearing test”. If the test bar does not stutter, then quit your player and move the target VSYNC slider a little further on the right. Repeat this until you get a stuttering bar
- You have now found a target position that give jerky playback. Now simply move the slider one half of its size away from the current position (left or right, it’s not important), and you should be fine. For example: ¼ would become ¾, ½ would become full left or full right, etc…

However depending on the renderer filter that is used, the VSYNC correction may fight against similar algorithms implemented inside the renderer itself. Here is the situation I saw with the common renderers (but I believe it can be all different with other hardware than mine):
- VSYNC correction will be disabled with the internal renderer of BSPlayer
- Overlay mixer: does work fine
- VMR7: does works fine too
- VMR9: this renderer seems to have an internal way to do the same thing and will somehow work against the VSYNC correction algorithm of ReClock. That’s why you can disable VSYNC correction for this renderer in the configuration application if you want.

You may want to try the VSYNC correction with different players. The two best players I know of are ZoomPlayer and Media Player Classic as they both allow you to choose which video renderer to use.

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How to optimize SPDIF output
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As said before, SPDIF mode re synchronize the sound with the video part by dropping or repeating AC3 frames which can be unpleasant to the ear.
What can we do for this? First of all, try to play media files that do not need to be “reclocked” by a wide margin. For example, forcing a 24 fps file to play at 25 fps, will result in massive drop of 4% of samples which is too much and should be avoided.

Now, please follow these guidelines:
- if you want to play a file at 23.976 fps (NTSC progressive DVD) or 24 fps, put your monitor or projector at 48 Hz or 72 Hz, or 120 Hz
- if you want to play a file at 25 fps (PAL DVD), put your monitor or projector at 50 Hz or 75 Hz or 100 Hz
- if you want to play a file at 29.970 fps or 30 fps, put your monitor or projector at 60 Hz, or 120 Hz
- if you don’t fall into one of these categories, use the media adaptation called “refresh rate / x” with “x” giving the least speed difference for the file. For example if you want to play a progressive NTSC DVD (23.976 fps) on a NTSC TV (60hz), you should choose “refresh rate / 2.5” that will reclock the movie at 24 fps.

Now you have setup properly you media adaptation, there is something we can do to improve things a little bit. We can fine tune the hardware refresh rate of your video card to make it closer to the clock of you audio card, and this will minimize the number of audio drops and repeats. To do this, you need a tool called Powerstrip which is available on www.entechtaiwan.com.

The procedure is a bit tricky and should be tried by people that know what this stuff mean J

Step 1: setup your hardware properly, and choose the video refresh rate on your video card

Step 2: launch configuration application, and hit “Cleanup manual frame rates database”

Step 3: launch your favourite player and start playback of your media with AC3, set media adaptation as needed. Now wait for the ppm indicator to stabilize to a very low value (under 10 ppm)

Step 4: stop playback, and start it again for 30 minutes. After that, you can see in the properties panel a count of AC3 frames dropped or repeated.
Now make this little computation:
E = “number of sample repeated” – “number of sample dropped”
RATE = ( (1000 x 60 x 30) + (E x 32) ) / (1000 x 60 x 30)

Step 5: quit your player

Step 6: launch Powerstrip and go to “Display profiles” -> “Configure” -> “Advanced timing options” and check “Ultra fine geometry”. Now have a look on the refresh rate indicated by Powerstrip. Multiply this number with the RATE value you computed before, and modify it with the new value

Step 7: launch configuration application, and hit “Cleanup manual frame rates database”

Step 8: go back to step 3, and repeat the tests, until you find and optimal “refresh rate” value in Powerstrip

PS: as an alternate method, instead of recomputed each time the refresh rate with the RATE value, you can increase it by little steps if E > 0 or decrease it if E < 0.

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A Guide to Creating a MKV File


Table of Contents

Required Utilities
Ripping and Demuxing a Blu-ray Disc/HD DVD Movie by eac3to
By Command Line
By HdBrStreamExtractor, a GUI for eac3to
By Another EAC3to GUI Plus
Muxing Tracks into a MKV File by mkvmerge GUI
Subtitles
By BDSup2Sub via Image Based Scaling Method
By SupRip via OCR Method
Re-encoding
1080p to 720p
MPEG-2/VC-1 to H.264 by MeGUI
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Required Utilities
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Ripping and Demuxing

SlySoft AnyDVD HD (http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html) (commercial; to decrypt AACS-encrypted M2TS)
Haali Media Splitter (http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/) (to split tracks)
eac3to (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966) (to rip and convert audio tracks)
ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater 2.1.6.113, a 30-day trial version (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JHKJLL7D) (to decode DTS-HD Master Audio in case you convert DTS-HD Master Audio to FLAC)
ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater 2.1.6.125 Update (http://www.arcsoft.com/downloads/digitaltheatre/arcsoft/totalmediatheatre_2.1.6.105_2.1.6.125_Update_ALL.exe)
HdBrStreamExtractor (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141829) (a GUI for eac3to)
Another EAC3to GUI (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16945102#post16945102), Another EAC3to GUI Plus (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17051238#post17051238) (another GUI for eac3to)
Muxing

MKVToolnix (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/) (includes mkvmerge GUI)
Subtitles

BDSup2Sub (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145277)
SupRip (http://exar.ch/suprip/)
Re-encoding

Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/AllDownloads.aspx)
MONOGRAM GraphStudio (http://blog.monogram.sk/janos/tools/monogram-graphstudio/)
AviSynth (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page)
MeGUI (http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/)
x264 (http://x264.nl/)
Others

XvidVideo - The latest SVN of MPC HomeCinema, ffdshow tryouts etc. (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=BVNav&from=ru&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xvidvideo.ru%2F)
madFlac (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=130498)
Useful Software at Doom9.net (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software2.htm)

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Ripping and Demuxing a Blu-ray Disc/HD DVD Movie by eac3to
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By Command Line
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Remarks

If the track you have has either DTS-HD Master Audio or DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, then to convert it to FLAC you must have ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 2 (TMT2) installed or the best you can hope for with ffmpeg supplied with eac3to is the "core" DTS track.
If all you want is the audio tracks untouched, then you will require the following extensions for your output files: Dolby TrueHD (.thd), DTS-HD Master Audio (.dtshd), DTS-HD High Resolution Audio (.dtshd), Dolby Digital Plus (.eac3) etc.
Use a bit of common sense ....these are provided as a GUIDE AND CAN BE MODIFIED TO SUITE A USERS NEEDS. Just because you don't see any argument for audio in an example doesn't mean you can't add one i.e. If you have a container that has audio, video, chapters. subs etc you can use any and all of eac3to's features. Its quite a logical program.
THIS IS IMPORTANT - If you choose to use this method over the more advanced guide that uses Blu - Ray as an example then eac3to WILL ONLY CONVERT LOSSLESS tracks (TrueHD, DTS-HD MA and LPCM ONLY) automatically to FLAC format. ALL LOSSY tracks such as DD+ will be output in the format they were originally encoded in. Theses can be run back through eac3to to be converted to what you like or not as the case may be.
If you want to create a DTS (not core which libavcodec can extract: ships with eac3to) but from say .eac3 track YOU MUST have SurCode DTS Encoder (http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/products/surcode.html) installed on your machine.
For this we will be using the command line interface but each of these commands can be written into a .bat file and double clicked to engage. For today's tutorial we will be using the region B (UK) OLDBOY (2003) Blu-ray Disc (Tartan distributor): H.264 1080p 23.976, DTS-HD MA 7.1.

Once you have loaded your disc and AnyDVD HD has done its magic then open a command prompt and navigate to where your eac3to folder is located on your hard drive. From here type the following command:

eac3to.exe G:

Followed by enter. Note that here G: represents my Blu ray drive so amend accordingly .....This will give you a list of "titles" that are available on the disc like in the following example:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXjN3ek6I/AAAAAAAAAJw/PiOwSfH9O80/s800/Anal1.JPG

For us we want the main movie, so the length, format etc tell us that this is title 1 (this is also a very good method to tell seamless branching titles apart ...each will be listed as a separate title and usually have a different duration ;)). To this end we now type:

eac3to.exe G: 1)

This will now give us a detailed overview of what is contained in title 1 as shown in the following still:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXpjnXRnI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/fFGPRWBpHIA/s800/deanal.JPG

We can now see what numbers/tracks we need to extract, since this is a foreign language title we will need subtitles, the main video, main audio and the chapters. This can be achieved by using the numbering system employed by eac3to. For this title we want tracks 1:, 2:, 5:, 11:, 12:, 13:, & 14: (written in the same manner). So to extract these to a directory (alter to reflect your own structure) of my choosing we write:

eac3to.exe G: 1) 1:"D:\OLDBOY\chapters.txt" 2:"D:\OLDBOY\OLDBOY.mkv" 5:"D:\OLDBOY\OLDBOY.flac" 11:"D:\OLDBOY\OLD.sup" 12:"D:\OLDBOY\OLD1.sup" 13:"D:\OLDBOY\OLD2.sup" 14:"D:\OLDBOY\OLD3.sup"

If you make a mistake then don't worry eac3to will tell you that "this ********** conversion is not supported" as in the figure below:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXqEqO5ZI/AAAAAAAAAKI/SB6wmQ3BgfA/s800/amend.JPG

If you get everything correct you will get the following:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXqcFpSWI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/vr8xWTNP-Ys/s800/process.JPG

Remarks

eac3to now auto-corrects for the delay in any audio file that it decodes so you do not need to add this value anymore when muxing using mkvmerge. For example if you convert a DTS-HD Master Audio track to lossless flac then you are decoding the track firsts (into PCM) & then re-encoding it back into flac. On the other hand if you rip out the core legacy DTS track from the DTS-HD MA track, eac3to doesn't have to decode it. Hence if the track has a delay (see eac3to log) you MUST add it in the delay section of mkvmerge.
Channel mapping for Blu-ray Disc LPCM channels in now the default option so you no longer need the -blu-ray handle.
Pulldown is now automatically removed by default when stripping the video and muxing into MKV so the -StripPulldown flag is no longer required. If you want to keep pulldown flags you can add the handle -KeepPulldown after the video portion of your command.
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By HdBrStreamExtractor, a GUI for eac3to
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I must stress before anybody assumes this is the "best" way to use eac3to, that it is not! The reason that this is included is for those of you who have command line phobias or do not have sufficient experience/time to learn. All the features that eac3to offers are ONLY available in the command line, this GUI uses the most common features and places them in a point & click interface. IF YOU WANT to get the MOST from the power that eac3to has to offer I STRONGLY suggest you master at least basic command line skills. That said, for those who can't or will not this will get you by. You can download the GUI from here:

http://code.google.com/p/hdbrstreamextractor/downloads/list

Extract it & then place it in your eac3to folder (along with the config file too). On opening of the executable you will be presented with this screen:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lmNCyJCI/AAAAAAAAATA/GuvizX4bfFA/s800/HDBDext1.png

Just like using the command line option you will need AnyDVD HD running & decrypting the disc, now the first thing to do is define either the folder (folder icon on far right of "input") from which the movie files are stored (weather this be on your HD or direct from the BR disc) or the m2ts file(s) ("select input file(s)" icon on immediate right of "input" box) we are interested in turning into a shiny new MKV (for this demo we are using folders). We are doing this using the UK Trainspotting Blu-Ray direct from the BD drive. In ALL cases you will have to show eac3to to the location of the "\BDMV\STREAM\" folder. In my example (the picture below) you can see "F:\BDMV\STREAM\" this is because my BD drive is located at F:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lmfky83I/AAAAAAAAATE/PE0NDj1dFIQ/s800/HDBDext2.png

You will also need to specify a destination folder, my example is "D:\trainspotting", one this is done hit "feature(s)" link (in blue) and let eac3to analyze the disc. This will then give you a list of m2ts (along with Playlist mpls files) files with corresponding durations. Choose the one that is the most likely candidate for the movie i.e. usually the longest. In our case this is title 1 (equivalent in command to scripting eac3to.exe F: 1) to do a more in depth analysis). Double click this one and let eac3to do a deep analysis, following this you will be presented with a screen like this one (complete with all the streams within the main movie i.e. audio, video, subtitle tracks):

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lmYw7LzI/AAAAAAAAATI/9gvQek7ILnc/s800/HDBDext3.png

Now just like the command line we need to tell eac3to what we want to extract from the disc. We do this using check boxes under "stream(s)" to choose the correct tracks & we decide how they are going to be processed by choosing what the extension of the output files are going to be from under the "Extract As" column. When you are happy hit the "Extract" button on the lower right hand pane and eac3to will do the magic. This like the command line should take approx 30 min - 1 hour depending on what you are ripping, your drive speed & how many conversions i.e. DTS-HD MA to flac conversions are taking place. See below:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lm2gnVaI/AAAAAAAAATM/I4egb1iSifU/s800/HDBDext4.png

Then you are done & need to now mux your new streams back together using mkvmerge (see Guide 4) or if you need subtitles sorting out then go to Guides 5 & 6.

_______________________
By Another EAC3to GUI Plus
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For this you will need to download a copy of MikeEby's newest creation from here:

http://www.acdnow.com/AnotherEAC3toGUI/AnotherEAC3toGUISetup.zip

This is as the title suggests is Another eac3to GUI but this has a wee difference in as much as it will parse video/audio quite well to give you previews of what you are going to rip to MKV ...pretty good function. This software is very very new & needs a bit of work but it has lots of potential so without further distraction lets get on with taking a look at how it works. Mike has posted on here & I'm sure he would value your feedback on his software, suggestions etc (correct me If I'm wrong Mike?) but please guys & gals don't be too pushy. Writing software is a labor of love but its still pretty time consuming (Thanks).

You first need to install this software to your local drive, after you have done this you will get this screen asking you for the location of eac3to & a destination folder for your rips, as shown here:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lIwKO_6I/AAAAAAAAASU/BKMZMbKV94Q/s800/anothereac3to1.png

Fill this out in a similar fashion to me above. Then click OK & you will be greeted with this lovely screen, which I think looks very clean:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lI4SffaI/AAAAAAAAASY/3GSP5JStt2M/s800/anothereac3to2.png

Now you have to give it both the path to the streams (BDMV/STREAM/ for either on disc or on HDD) & to the destination, remember as with any eac3to usage AnyDVD HD must be running! Once you have done this click "Analyze" & in the lower left hand box the titles will appear with the appropriate file sizes, choose the largest and click on the arrow to move the selected m2ts file to the "Source Stream files" box. At this point you can use the video box to preview the video & audio. This feature is very handy for working out the episodes of TV series on BD:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lJBEwEXI/AAAAAAAAASc/xre_RJhD3_M/s800/anothereac3to3.png

Click either "Add Batch" followed by run all (add multiple jobs as you want, possibly all from HDD or if you have multiple BD drives, repeating the appropriate processes where needed) or click "Command line" followed by "Run Command". Both will result in the following command line being employed:

eac3to.exe "F:\BDMV\STREAM\00004.m2ts" "D:\HD-movie-folder\MyMKVFile.mkv"

(obviously this is specific to my title: Star Trek - The Voyage Home) but the general command is:

eac3to.exe "F:\BDMV\STREAM\xxxxx.m2ts" "D:\YourFolder\MyMKVFile.mkv"

This type of command as some of you will be aware will cause eac3to to parse ALL streams in the container so what you end up with is a number of audio files (diff languages), a number of subtitle files (all for diff languages again), the video file (more than one with pic-in-pic), the chapter & log .txt files. Since eac3to by default converts lossless Audio to flac these will be done automatically but with legacy/lossy files such as ac2 or standard core DTS, these will remain as is. This means if they have a delay associated with them (check eac3to -log.txt for details) it will have to be applied during the muxing stage in Guide 4. LOSSLESS Tracks (unless output in original format i.e. .thd, .dtshd) that have been decoded & converted to anything else weather this be lossless flac or a legacy format such as DD (AC3), DTS, AAC etc DO NOT NEED A DELAY APPLYING.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2lJUDcn7I/AAAAAAAAASg/5fvqI9R-TNE/s800/anothereac3to4.png

Now all is taken care of, be aware that doing a mass conversion of everything does take a while longer than only converting the tracks you need ...so be prepared to take a time penalty. That said I'm sure this program will evolve quickly & I will update regularly as to the improvements.

________________________________________
Muxing Tracks into a MKV File by mkvmerge GUI
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Start up mkvmerge and click on the add button to add the files that you want to mux into an MKV i.e. video, audio (as many as you want), subs (must be converted to srt or idx first...see GUIDE 5 & 6!).

http://lh6.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k270Zl6I/AAAAAAAAAEs/EH8suK2OMy8/s800/10.JPG

Once you have done this to find out any delays that must be applied etc open up the eac3to log (open in previous screen), any audio delays will be displayed next to the relevant track. To apply this click on your track in mkvmerge and go to the format specific options and write it in under delay. If their is no delay in the log leave it your good to go. Note that with new versions of eac3to (v2.2 onwards) their is no need to apply a delay in mkvmerge with tracks that are decoded by eac3to i.e. TrueHD to flac, but you still require the delay on tracks that are just demuxed i.e. AC3 to AC3.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k3r0Zl7I/AAAAAAAAAE0/s8f2Qt5Iyh8/s800/11.JPG

If you want chapters then go to the global tab and enter your chapter file, this can also be edited by dragging and dropping it in the window in the chapter editor:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k0L0ZlzI/AAAAAAAAAD0/qNBWpMm4h_c/s800/12.JPG

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k4L0Zl8I/AAAAAAAAAE8/YmXsKqG47bk/s800/12a.JPG

Note that chapter files can be used with any title at your need ...they are essentially just text files and can be modded using a text editor i.e. Notepad/WordPad etc. to reflect any changes you want to make i.e. Add chapter names etc.
Set your output file and any other perimeters that you want i.e. default track flags/names etc and press mux and you will get the following screen:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k0r0Zl0I/AAAAAAAAAD8/mAwQgRyG92Y/s800/13.JPG

This shouldn't take too long and then you can delete all the files you do not want and you can play this file back in any DirectShow capable player as long as you have the relevant codecs installed, no more crap commercial players that will not let you play the discs that you have bought, no more down sampling audio and an infinite amount of tweaking to get the best possible picture if you should so choose :D

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k1L0Zl1I/AAAAAAAAAEE/gEYCVchlRNs/s800/15.JPG
The shining in HD in MPC.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k4b0Zl9I/AAAAAAAAAFE/1eNsgDyt6mI/s800/14.JPG
MPC with working chapters.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_DgB_wkgJ6qI/Sn2l_LNhjrI/AAAAAAAAATs/7W54I3LV4VY/s800/startrec_mpc.png
MPC HomeCinema showing Star Trek - The Voyage Home with 7.1 24 bit sound & English Subtitles.

I would always make sure you use a good renderer i.e. Haali/EVR or VMR9 ...never use overlay or similar, this will make your new HD MKV look soft, flat and boaring.

You can use this method for HD DVD also you just have to reflect the change in disc structure when using eac3to as per the example given, all else is the same.

________
Subtitles
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_______________________________________
By BDSup2Sub via Image Based Scaling Method
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Coming soon!

______________________
By SupRip via OCR Method
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For subtitles I like to use a program called SupRip. This can be obtained here:

http://exar.ch/suprip/

Open up SupRip and you are presented with the following screen:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXqlAdw4I/AAAAAAAAAKg/gzmfyMnFxoQ/s800/Sub1.JPG

Open your desired subtitle file (.sup) and you will be presented with something like this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXq6oeUtI/AAAAAAAAAKo/S7O-uTc45XY/s800/sub2.JPG

Click on Auto-OCR and if you are lucky most of the work in identifying the subs will be done automatically but if your not (like my example here not to worry). Check "Automatically continue with next subtitle" next to the OCR button. Click on a letter in the top box and then type this in the box next to the "OK" button (the letter will appear on the left) and click "OK". The program will automatically move to the next letter and you should repeat this until all for that subtitle are done. Next click "OCR" and another subtitle will pop up but this time some of the letters will be filled in :) this is because SupRip learns as you type each letter and its data base is updated each time you add a new letter. Keep going until you are complete ....I know what you are thinking but no you will not have to do every single one. For the average title you will need to do between 5-10% of them and the OCR function will do the rest.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXrhxDmsI/AAAAAAAAAK4/ZDQvjXMRryE/s800/sun4.JPG

Note you can at anytime click on any letter in the upper panel and change it (you may need to do this from time to time as sometimes SupRip does have minor problems with some similar letters and some punctuation) in the lower white box. This is pretty rare tho so don't worry about it.

When you have done click on the "SRT" tab and you will be presented with the following:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXrwNmC5I/AAAAAAAAALA/ciIGveH5rnY/s800/sub5.JPG

You can now at a glance see if all your subs are correct and make sure that their times are appropriate. Leave the setting as they are and click on "SAVE" and give your file a memorable name. Note the extension wants to be .srt as shown in the following example (you don't have to write it!):

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SMkXsPvjNyI/AAAAAAAAALI/gPu128YOU80/s800/sub6.JPG

This will give you a small file that can be directly imported into mkvmerge and muxed into your final file. Their are a number of other subtitle creation programs available i.e. subtitle creator etc but I've found this to be the best and fastest and least frustrating. Enjoy. :D

___________
Re-encoding
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____________
1080p to 720p
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To do this you can miss out Muxing and progress strait here, or you can do Muxing first and do this at a later stage. It makes no difference.

First extract the x264 encoder to a folder of your choice and then open up GraphStudio. Choose graph, then insert filter, then under DirectShow choose the Haali Media Splitter you will then get a new window asking for a file to split:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k5b0ZmAI/AAAAAAAAAFc/8899LNd_7VA/s800/19.JPG

You may have to change file type to all files to see your MKV, select the video and then depending on what the video is encoded in i.e. AVC, VC-1 etc we need to choose the correct decoder. In the case of the example the file is in VC-1 so we need the "WMVideo DMO" filter so we add that. We are now done with filters and just have to connect the video out pin to the in0 pin (do this manually by dragging the mouse between them...do not choose to render the pins automatically or your encode will not work):

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k6L0ZmBI/AAAAAAAAAFk/3us7NumeIiU/s800/20.JPG

Save the graph under something memorable into your x264 directory.

NOTE IMPORTANT: YOU WILL REQUIRE A DIFFERENT FILTER FOR EACH FORMAT AND AS SUCH NEED ALL THE ONES THAT HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc SUPPORT. THE ABOVE FILTER "WMVideo decoder DMO" is ONLY for VC-1 (used by Warner & Universal a lot). IF YOU HAVE AVC (typically Sony, Fox Paramount) YOU WILL NEED EITHER CoreAVC or ffdshow (CyberLink decoders will not work). ffdshow is good for MPEG-2 material.

Next we need to create an AviSynth script so open up notepad and type the following:

DirectShowSource("shining.GRF", fps=23.976, framecount=172108, audio=false). BicubicResize(1280, 720)

The two important things here are framecount (get this from your eac3to log) and fps (always 23.976 for film, may differ for TV again eac3to log at the top where it gives info on video streams).

BicubicResize is an older filter which has since been replaced by LanczosResize, Lanczos4Resize and Spline36Resize etc.; use these instead, you will get much sharper results. The format is the same i.e. filtername(1280, 720)

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k5L0Zl_I/AAAAAAAAAFU/7w0Nl5IjC10/s800/17.JPG

Save this with the extension .avs just as you did for the eac3to .bat files, again in the same folder as x264. If you want to add other options here like Trim(0, 3000) to encode the first 2 min make sure that each additional term is added after a full stop i.e. after every set of brackets. There are many options that can be specified and I'll cover some more in the blu ray/advanced guide
Now we move to the final step, creating a .bat file for the encoder. For a good quality set of settings use the following code:

x264 --bitrate 9500 --progress --threads auto -b 3 --b-bias 5 --b-pyramid --weightb --b-rdo --bime -8 -t 1 -o NUL shining.avs

x264 --bitrate 9500 --progress --threads auto -b 3 --b-bias 5 --b-pyramid --weightb --b-rdo --bime -8 -t 1 -o shining.mkv shining.avs

Those two lines make a decent two pass x264 encode in just a few hours (~8-10). You have to obviously adjust the input/output files, and can do the same with the bitrate (9500 in our example) as well as any other option if you want. Save this as a .bat file (same directory as x264.exe again) and run it by double clicking.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k4r0Zl-I/AAAAAAAAAFM/1_prULyMPJQ/s800/16.JPG

If you want the best image quality, the the following code:

x264 --pass 1 --bitrate 9500 --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --direct auto --deblock -3:-3 --subme 1 --analyse none --media --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim -o NUL shining.avs

x264 --pass 2 --bitrate 9500 --ref 5 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --deblock -3:-3 --subme 7 --analyse all -8 --trellis 1 --me umh --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim -o shining.mkv shining.avs

Re-encoding the video with these settings will probably take around a full day on an average dual core computer (you can just copy and paste these and change what you need same with the AviSynth script tp prevent any situations arising with spelling mistakes etc....sounds silly but many have come unstuck). Of course, a whole book could be written on the pro- and contra of various x264 settings.

This should leave you with 4 files in your x264 directory and a fifth/sixth on completion depending on what settings you use:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k6b0ZmCI/AAAAAAAAAFs/tVRE2JtsKMo/s800/21.JPG

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k1r0Zl3I/AAAAAAAAAEU/2vI4QNV-NXo/s800/22.JPG

http://lh6.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SD1k170Zl4I/AAAAAAAAAEc/d4n7voqL98o/s800/23.JPG

Once you have finished then go back to GUIDE 2 and remux your new re-encoded file with your audio .Note if you have already done step 2 previously and don't have the original audio, subs etc you can just import the original file and uncheck the original full bitrate/size video but delays etc still have to be applied so i would recommend holding on to your log files.

___________________________
MPEG-2/VC-1 to H.264 by MeGUI
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This method uses MeGUI (http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/) to convert any DirectShow compatible video source to H.264. With this guide you will be able to convert DVD, Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD etc. basically anything that can be played via the DirectShow interface. You will still need step 1 & 3 of first post (3 can be performed in MeGUI but not going to do it here, same principle. Also M2TS/EVO can be directly brought into MeGUI but their is no way to join them so be warned and also the time to rip with eac3to is similar to just ripping ... nobody wants their Blu-ray Disc/HD DVD drive working through out a re-encode).

Note that there are many sub tools that are loaded under MeGUI. Those tools are downloaded automatically the first time you launch MeGUI. In addition to these you will also need everything you would need to implement the original x264 encode above i.e. x264.exe, AviSynth, GraphStudio and all the relevant codecs i.e. WMVideo DMO (VC-1), CoreAVC/CyberLink H.264 decoder (AVC) ffdshow or equivalent for MPEG-2.

Before you can get to using MeGUI you first need to set it up, go to options->settings and set up "main" as shown below, then go to the "program paths" and set up each of the program paths we are going to use i.e. x.264.exe, mkvmerge etc ...you can set up all the paths if you want i.e. Mencoder, FAAC etc. but they are not required here.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxCzI6XSI/AAAAAAAAAI8/QkXKCuxYAas/s800/11.JPG%22

OK so now are almost ready to get started but first I've been playing with different resizing algorithm and sharpening filters and have set on a nice combination (thought your encodes looked good well wait till you see this :D). You will need:

UnDot block noise reduction (http://members.cox.net/trbarry/)
asharp adaptive sharpening filter (http://ziquash.chez-alice.fr/)
Extract both of these and then place the .dll in the AviSynth plugins folder and you are done (UPDATE: Don't use asharp anymore ...not required, instead use LanczosResize (see below)).

The first screen of MeGUI looks like this:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfw-aWXHpI/AAAAAAAAAHs/yODFb4U9AEM/s800/1.JPG

Go to "tools" then "AviSynth script creator" and you will get a window like this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfw-w0cuHI/AAAAAAAAAH0/DZ7EL-M1IQg/s800/2.JPG

Drag and drop or open normally your MKV and you will be presented with the following:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfw_CNe0FI/AAAAAAAAAH8/3Dk7jiKmz3g/s800/3.JPG

Once I select my Source MKV file in the AviSynth Script Creator screen I see a preview window. The preview window size can be changed by dragging the window edges. Bigger sources makes the window unwieldy so I would suggest you make it small enough so that you can see the MeGUI interface underneath. Leave the preview window open as we'll be modifying some elements on the preview screen. The Input DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) should be displayed 1.778 in the example. Directly below that is a check box for 'Clever (TM) anamorphic encoding', check this and in the opposite dropdown box choose "Resize to Achieve Mod 16". Below that you will see the resize options, you should enter them here i.e. 1280 x 720.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfw_UXAVmI/AAAAAAAAAIE/tyTQeknhLpY/s800/4.JPG

On the "filters tab" choose the spline36 resize filter (If not using asharp use Lanczos or Lanczos4 ...will give you just as good results put requires less processing power) and check noise filter, this will give you the sharpest resize with the least loss of detail. I would suggest you always leave "Minimal Noise" selected, even for 'clean' sources. For older source material, I would suggest you select "Little Noise". Anything beyond that can have a noticeable softening affect which you may find unpleasant. Experiment here to find what you see as acceptable. This setting can have a very beneficial effect on Bit Rate usage even when the noise isn't immediately obvious to you. If you suspect that you have an interlaced source then use the "analysis" button first.

The "EDIT tab" allows you to make any final modifications to your AviSynth script before saving it. For instance if you wanted to tweak some of the filter functions, resize it or add an additional filter, etc. We are going to add the "asharp" filter (Note: This step is not required if you are using Lanczos), at the bottom choose "load dll" and load in the plugins from the AviSynth/plugins directory you placed it in at the beginning:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxAJab62I/AAAAAAAAAIU/aHnY05XuKa8/s800/6.JPG

Now we add the modline as follows in the following screen (note that I have 20+ tests and (10,4) is the best quality that I have found by my eye ....think you will be pleasantly surprised how good your new encodes luck now 1080p eat your heart out).

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxAfSQNwI/AAAAAAAAAIc/dxYaGueWtlM/s800/7.JPG

If you have no other modifications to enter, you can just click SAVE in the bottom right corner of the AviSynth Script Creator window (save to the same directory as your MKV ...for ease). Next you need to supply the x264 encoder with a video profile so across from this click "config". You will be presented with the following:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxA--84_I/AAAAAAAAAIk/UbJBzAA2BXg/s800/8.JPG

Your screen wants to look like mine, obviously change bitrate if you would like. Also check "turbo". Next we move to the ZONES TAB
This tab allows you to specify custom bitrate zones much like MPEG-2 encoders used. Its not required here since the source should be very 'clean' being HD. Just be aware that if you have a problem scene that seems to be getting excessive macroblocking you can tweak that 'zone' here.

The RC and ME Tab has four subsections - Rate Control, M.E., Misc, and Quant Options. These sections contains the guts of the H264 codec. These settings also have a huge impact on the speed that your PC will encode your output. The items of interest are highlighted.

Rate Control section

Leave the Rate Control section at the defaults.

M.E. Section

Set your M.E. Algorithm to a minimum of Hexagon. If you have the CPU power I would suggest you set it on Multi-Hex.

Subpixel Refinement

I would not suggest you go any higher than '6 - RDO (Slow)'. RDO Level 2 is EXTREMELY slow for very little gain. 6 - RDO is required to use 'RDO for B-Frames' on the Advanced Tab. I would suggest you select 6 - RDO.

MISC Section

Set your Keyframe interval to 10 times your output video's framerate. If your encoding video that is 23.976 frames per second, then set the Keyframe Interval to 240. If you are encoding video at 29.97 fps, then set your keyframe interval to 300.
For the Min GOP size, set this to the rounded value of your framerate (ex: for 23.976 framerate video set it to 24).

Quant Options

Trellis: Set this to none ... causes slight speed increase with macroblocks but a speed penalty with other operations.
Number of Reference Frames: Set this to from 5 to 8. This value can have a big impact on your processing time. The lower the number the faster the encode. The higher the number the slower the encode, but the better the quality. Note that values over 5 give marginal improvements. You can go as high as 16. Do not set this value lower than 3.

I have included a good set of options for all here ....this will give you a good looking encode without taking days (much experimentation went into finding these :( so I would suggest these as a good reference but please feel free to have a play :cool:):

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxBjOZIRI/AAAAAAAAAIs/Is0uLkKazr4/s800/9.JPG

For the "advanced" tab use the following:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxCXZuScI/AAAAAAAAAI0/BeTvTXyxvS4/s800/10.JPG

If you want you can enable some macroblock options but this will slow your encode and as long as the bit rate is not too low you shouldn't really need them. If you detect macroblocking in your encode and decide to use them (unlikely) use all of them to get real benefit.

If you want to save these settings in a new profile rather than overwriting one of the default profiles then click the 'New' button and give your profile a new name. Otherwise, just click the 'Update' button and then click OK.

This will put you back to the Main MeGUI page. At this point, you can begin encoding your video if you like.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxDFcrf7I/AAAAAAAAAJE/cbpuga_c5-w/s800/12.JPG

Remember your output file should be set to MKV (very limited with MP4) and if you haven't checked "autostart queue" in the setting you will have to go to the "Queue" tab and start it manually. If all goes well you will get a screen like this:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/Pitty.the.fools/SEfxDRiIjDI/AAAAAAAAAJM/TNoktB7r0ZE/s800/13.JPG

Once its completed, then you need to either go to "tools"->"muxer" to create your full MKV or use GUIDE 2 (more options with mkvmerge) to complete.

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I am sorry for lots of reserved posts. They are for future expansion of the guide although perhaps I don't need that much posts.

Why did this post fall of the stickies?

It never was a sticky, its brand new. Although it should definitely become a sticky

renethx great work and amazing amount of info!

Need some help choosing the best motherboard for a WHS (Windows Home Server) build will also run VMware server (later) for some other stuff.

Decided on a 4U rackmount case with approx 10 internal SATAIIdrives so I guess an mATX or ATX board will do fine.

Which mobo would fit these min requirements.

-Core2 quad/Core2 duo cpu
-Serial Comm port (used for lighting control PLM)
-onboard graphics (nothing fancy,just a server)
-Sata internal (as many as possible otherwise need PMs)
-eSata external port (2 would be better)
-PCI slots (as many as possible for future needs)
-onboard 56k fax/modem (if possible, if not will add PCI ver)

I'm partial to Asus to mobos, but I don't mind another brand/model if it's solid.

Thanks very much for your help.

MiBz

This type of question is best answered by looking at Core2_MB_(2007-11-18).xls. A few motherboards close to your requirement are

Intel DG965WH
ASUS P5K-V
GIGABYTE GA-G33M-DS2R

Excellent work! I like the addition of the pictures for the equipment listings. Very beneficial.

My only suggestion is to maybe place dates next to your pricing as this quickly changes but it is still nice for providing a reference point.

I'm planning on getting a new soundcard and videocard as soon as possible for my current pc (845PE chipset). For the videocard I've picked XFX 7600GT AGP 8x (motherboard has AGP 4x connector). Yesterday I found out XFX also has a 7950GT AGP 8x card. I'm not a gamer, I need a card for regular pc stuff as well as HDTV (I have the MDP-130). Later, I'm getting a 24" or 27" LCD monitor 1920x1200 to view the MDP130 on. I don't know which one to buy. I remember something at the time these cards were realeased about something that was "broken" on the 7900 series and was fixed on the 7600 series.

renethx,

Have you experienced the Scythe Ninja Mini? As heatsinks for a small-form-factor system go, it's pretty nice, and I didn't see it on the list, though it's elder brother the Ninja (no "Mini") made the cut.

Rgds,
AB

Morpheus_Rising

7600GT AGP is just fine for your purpose. You can also buy the latest Radeon HD 2600 XT AGP in the same price range ($120?).

archibael

Scythe Ninja Mini is not in the CPU/CPU Cooler chapter yet, but will be added soon. I have used it and it is pretty good for Pentium Dual Core and Core 2 Duo E4xxx in a SFF system.

Hi renethx,

Big thanks to you for such an excellent thread. I have built an HTPC myself and would have been glad to have seen your guide had it been written at that time.

Just off the top of my head, I agree with Seasonic PSU choice as highly recommended at Silent PC Review, I personally have the 650 Watt version and would certainly recommend it. I coupled it with an Antec P180 case, ThermalRight Ultra 120 (Passive) (thanks to the 2 case fans in stock P180) and have never been more impressed by any other combination ESPECIALLY quiet for the HTPC environment. I would also recommend a RheoStat for adjusting fan speed control to optimize heat levels when Process intensive applications are run.

I also have a 8800GTX installed for gaming, and for noise minimization I would recommend it over the 8800 GT due to it's quieter dual slot Heat Sink Fan compared to 8800GT's single slot Heat Sink Fan which will have a faster spinning fan.

BTW, is there any possibility of compiling this into a PDF or some other portable format in the future?

Input Devices

Since the Input Devices in under construction, may I take the liberty of recommending the Microsoft Media Center IR Remote and Keyboard combo.

I have used other Radio Wireless Keyboard and Mouse combos in the $60-$80 range, (including the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop and low end Logitech Keyboard and Mouse Wireless Combo) and have been largely disappointed at the reception performance.

For $60 Canadian, I was able to find the MCE IR KEyboard and IR remote. I coupled it with a Logitech G7 mouse. The results were remarkable. IR transmission from the MCE combo always successful even without LINE of SIGHT!!!! It will work as it's not covered by a blanket and as long as your in the same room. The IR must be VERY bright!! Most of the time the wireless radio combo didn't work in the same room!!!! As for the Logitech G7 Wireless mouse, it works at the 2.4 Ghz band, there has never been a problem with reception either even with WiFi, but your paying $100 Canadian for it.

As for controlling the rest of the home theater system beyond just the HTPC, I would HIGHLY recommend an activity based universal remote. I was able to grab a Logitech Harmony 659 off Ebay for around $60. First Activity Based remote I've used let me tell you, I don't know how I could have lived so long with the dumb universal learning remote that came with my Onkyo Amp where you had to tell it what device you want to control before actually being able to control it.

Perhaps the best remote for that price range.

I've seen some remotes at $500 range, but besides more buttons and a bigger LCD, the fundamental functionality remains the same in all Activity Based Remotes, so just buy what you need.

Renethx-

I'm planning to upgrade our demo system by swapping out the existing motherboard/cpu with components from your list of recommendations. Before doing this, I just wanted to check with you about the feasibility of mixing and matching components from different lists.

For example, will there be a problem with using a MicroATX mobo (mid-level system) with a CPU from a higher performance list?

I'd like to go with this combo:

Motherboard: ASUS P5K-VM LGA 775 Intel G33 MicroATX
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66 Ghz LGA 775
CPU Cooler: ZEROtherm BTF90
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2 GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2-800

This will be going into an existing Lian-Li PC-V800B case with stock PSU and includes an MSI NX8600GT T2D256EZ graphics card, etc.

Your comments are greatly appreciated and thank you for this wonderful thread. Hopefully you'll be able to integrate your efforts with the work currently performed by greeniguana00 and binary64 in the future.

Thanks again,

Interesting Configuration greggplummer! I've always been interested in seeing how a HTPC in MircoATX formfactor can perform.

In fact, before I bought the Antec P180, I was looking into the Thermaltake Mozart among others like it. My priority of goals were 1) Noise 2) Style 3) Small Size

So, after noticing the allowable fan size was always below 120mm, and usually 80mm, I began to reconsider. Common knowledge has it that a larger sized fan spinning at a lower RPM can have an equal or higher CFM to that of smaller sized fan spinning at a higher RPM, hence lowering noise. That is why I chose Antec P180 with all 4 fan slots being 120mm and dual aluminum-plastic-aluminum layered chassis.

As I have missed an opportunity for testing a MicroATX, I would be very interested in the actual noise and heat performance once your system is built, as the CPU is similar.

I took a look at your configuration. As I'm no expert on the clearance of all heat sink fans in each MicroATX case, I can not comment on whether the ZEROtherm BTF90 will fit. But you may want to consider that as the fan is custom design, it doesn't look to be user replaceable.

Interesting Configuration greggplummer! I've always been interested in seeing how a HTPC in MircoATX formfactor can perform.

In fact, before I bought the Antec P180, I was looking into the Thermaltake Mozart among others like it. My priority of goals were 1) Noise 2) Style 3) Small Size

So, after noticing the allowable fan size was always below 120mm, and usually 80mm, I began to reconsider. Common knowledge has it that a larger sized fan spinning at a lower RPM can have an equal or higher CFM to that of smaller sized fan spinning at a higher RPM, hence lowering noise. That is why I chose Antec P180 with all 4 fan slots being 120mm and dual aluminum-plastic-aluminum layered chassis.

As I have missed an opportunity for testing a MicroATX, I would be very interested in the actual noise and heat performance once your system is built, as the CPU is similar.

I took a look at your configuration. As I'm no expert on the clearance of all heat sink fans in each MicroATX case, I can not comment on whether the ZEROtherm BTF90 will fit. But you may want to consider that as the fan is custom design, it doesn't look to be user replaceable.

Actually, the Lian-Li PC-V800 (http://www.lian-li.com/product/product06.php?pr_index=75&cl_index=1&sc_index=1&ss_index=34&type=a) case is an ATX case. I went with a MicroATX mobo because of the cost and the possibility that it will be moved to a smaller case in the future. The ASUS P5K-VM seems to include all the features I need for this system. We don't need a lot of extra slots because we use a lot of external devices - our FireWire audio device, a media server and an HDHomeRun. I would have gone with a smaller case, but couldn't find one as simple, cheap and well built at the time (1-1/2 years ago). The case height is about 6.3" (160mm), so hopefully there will be enough room for the ZEROtherm BTF90.

BTW, I have an Antec midtower for my office machine and it is pretty nice and quiet. It looks very similar to the Antec Sonata III (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15137#) (maybe it is a slightly older version). I wanted to go with desktop HTPC form factor case for this and consider something like the Antec NSK2480 (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=92480), if I were to start from scratch. But I don't know if that case would have the necessary clearance.

BTW, is there any possibility of compiling this into a PDF or some other portable format in the future?
Threre is no plan to do so. The best way is converting HTML to PDF by using Acrobat. The contents are updated very frequently (almost everyday).

Renethx-

I'm planning to upgrade our demo system by swapping out the existing motherboard/cpu with components from your list of recommendations. Before doing this, I just wanted to check with you about the feasibility of mixing and matching components from different lists.

For example, will there be a problem with using a MicroATX mobo (mid-level system) with a CPU from a higher performance list?

I'd like to go with this combo:

Motherboard: ASUS P5K-VM LGA 775 Intel G33 MicroATX
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66 Ghz LGA 775
CPU Cooler: ZEROtherm BTF90
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2 GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2-800

This will be going into an existing Lian-Li PC-V800B case with stock PSU and includes an MSI NX8600GT T2D256EZ graphics card, etc.
In general there is no problem with mixing components in different categories, you still need to take care of mechanical compatibility and PSU though.

Edited

BTF90 should fit P5K-VM and PC-V800B. Assuming MSI NX8600GT-T2D256EZ has the same heatsink as MSI RX2600XT-T2D512EZ, it should fit P5K-VM.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2186982,00.asp

Morpheus_Rising

7600GT AGP is just fine for your purpose. You can also buy the latest Radeon HD 2600 XT AGP in the same price range ($120?).

Thanks Renethx, I ordered the 7600GT. I think I'm going to get the Asus Xonar for my new soundcard.

Most AGP versions of the Radeon HD 2600 XT (or Pro) do not appear to be HDCP compliant.

@renethx:
One thing your guide doesn't make quite clear enough (IMHO) is that graphics cards do not assist (much) in hardware acceleration of stored x.264 codec video files, only with HD-DVD or Blueray discs. That's a really important point for most of us thinking of the media server solution.

renethx - Great job and everyone appreciates the many hours you devote to this.

A couple of minor things needed:

- The first post needs a link to the end of the reserved posts, so that people don't just jump to the end of the thread, and ask the same question that was asked in the previous page.

- More specifically, in your recommended MicroATX AMD system, you need to mention that the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-2SH motherboard and the Antec NSK-2480 case are both excellent choices, but they have a glitch when you put them together, which is that the SATA connectors point right into an internal wall of the case. Some people have spent some time to cut a hole in the quite solid metal case (presumably using a Dremel tool, which not all of us own), but I found a much easier solution, which I describe in:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12199010#post12199010

The other problem that people encounter with that motherboard is that it requires RAM memory that works at 1.8 volts, i.e. either "1.8v" in the specifications of the memory, or else a range that includes it, such as "1.8v-2.1v". A twist is that some memory that are not listed as "1.8v" will run fine at that voltage, such as the memory you recommend for the board - that memory and others are listed by Gigabyte as compatible in their memory list:

http://www.gigabyte.us/FileList/MemorySupport/motherboard_memory_ga-ma69gm-s2h.pdf

David O and A_Dude

Thanks for the comments. I will address them shortly.

About GA-MA69GM-S2H and NSK-2480, I guess using 90-angle (left-angle or up) to straight SATA cables is a more reasonable solution than the case mod (not everyone likes this type of job or has tools), like:

- StarTech SATA18LA1 18 inch Left Angle Serial ATA Cable (http://www.startech.com/Product/ItemDetail.aspx?productid=SATA18LA1&c=US) (can be purchased at as low as $2.60)
- Tripp Lite P941-19I 19" SATA Cable, Straight/Up (http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?productID=2708) (can be purchased at as low as $2.31)

Or just use non-latching SATA cables as kapone assured in this post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12095425).

First off, this thread rocks! Thanks renethx for spending many hours putting this together.

I had everything all set up on Newegg to build the "old" 2TB server on the "Core 2 Motherboard" thread and then (luckily) came across your new thread.

I'm going to build the 16 HDD System I Home Media Server. I have a couple (probably newbie) questions that I'm hoping someone can answer:

1) With this setup, how do I get 16 SATA plugs off of the PSU that is mentioned. Can I daisy-chain off the plugs that are on the PSU? What is the best way to add a ton of extra SATA plugs for all the HDDs?

2) Can anyone recommend a mATX board with dual giga-lan? I'm thinking that if I do this up front, I have a better chance of the server being able to push 1080p data to two sources at once. Am I dreaming?

3) I couldn't find the LIAN Li EX-23NB Internal HDD kits at Newegg but did find these. I'm guessing these would also work?
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811999141

4) If I add 8 500gb drives now and set up a raid5, can I add 2-3 drives later without having to set up the raid all over again (using the the Highpoint Rocketraid 2340 card recommended)?

Also, here's a link to the components I've set up so far. Any recommendations or comments are welcome!
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=6414511

-Brian

Just a heads up for those planning a budget mATX setup, the recommended NSK2480 case with PSU is available for $50 after rebate, free ship, today and tomorrow only.
http://shop2.outpost.com/product/5356188

spillz564

1) Use power cables like this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812123119).

2) There is no mATX mb with dual Gb LAN. You don't need dual Gb LAN. A router/switch is enough to stream data to two.

3) No. It must be a 3-in-2. EX-23NB is here (http://www.frozencpu.com/products/6140/cpa-219/Lian-Li_EX-23NB_Black_Drive_Bay_ExpansionCooling_Kit.html). You can also use EX-23B (http://www.google.com/products?q=EX-23B&scoring=p). Difference is only external appearance.

4) Yes, it's called Online Capacity Expansion (OCE).

spillz564

1) Use power cables like this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812123119).

2) There is no mATX mb with dual Gb LAN. You don't need dual Gb LAN. A router/switch is enough to stream data to two.

3) No. It must be a 3-in-2. EX-23NB is here (http://www.frozencpu.com/products/6140/cpa-219/Lian-Li_EX-23NB_Black_Drive_Bay_ExpansionCooling_Kit.html). You can also use EX-23B (http://www.google.com/products?q=EX-23B&scoring=p). Difference is only external appearance.

4) Yes, it's called Online Capacity Expansion (OCE).

Thanks renethx, much appreciated! I'm glad I asked about the internal drive bays.

Looks like this will be a fun Christmas project!

Great thread, as was the previous one.

Would the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H cut it for 1080p with the AMD BE-2400? Is there any other drawbacks to not going with a separate GPU? Any other drawbacks to this solution? Im right in thinking the picture qulaity on th 690 chipset is comparable to a GPU solution and very good?

dmce

1080p is no problem, but smooth playback depends on various factors (playing from a file or disc, codec, bitrate etc). For Blu-ray/HD DVD, you will need 2.4GHz or higher, say 3.0GHz (so need to overclock BE-2400). Please read Unofficial thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=924348) for details. If you go with a discrete graphics, BE-2400 will be just fine for everything.

Great guide thus far! I too may be looking at building a HD capable HTPC soon and having come along this thread is an absolute godsend.

Just one quick remark. I notice you suggested the Asus P5K-VM for a mATX mb in a HTPC build, but would you recommend that over the P5E-VM HDMI which has the newer G35 chipset if cost was not a concern? I ask this question simply because i'm after a mATX mb that offers 2 PCI-Ex1 slots so i can have 2 tv-tuners instead of 1. If anyone can point me to another mb that has this feature i would be very grateful.

Keep up the great work!:)

eeexeee

Apart from onboard video and extra SATA ports, perhaps there will not be much difference between the two. If you use it in a SFF system, 6 SATA ports are a kind of useless. The main improvement of G35 onboard video over G33 is 3D performance, meaning a so-so video playback performance of G35. So the motherboard in Recommended MicroATX System - Midrange will not change unless P5E-VM HDMI is cheaper than P5K-VM.

eeexeee

Apart from onboard video and extra SATA ports, perhaps there will not be much difference between the two. If you use it in a SFF system, 6 SATA ports are a kind of useless. The main improvement of G35 onboard video over G33 is 3D performance, meaning a so-so video playback performance of G35.


And better deinterlacing. And HW acceleration of VC-1. And better detail/denoise and 4x4 scaling.


So the motherboard in Recommended MicroATX System - Midrange will not change unless P5E-VM HDMI is cheaper than P5K-VM.

The G35 is not hugely advanced over the G965 video-wise (only real video difference is VC-1 acceleration). The biggest thing G35 brings to the table is that it comes out at a time when motherboard vendors are savvy to the fact that people are looking for an HTPC motherboard and are therefore building in HDMI ports. In the "olden" G965 days (a year ago) it was pretty much VGA only because no one figured the prices of HD disk drives would come down so quickly and therefore who needed HDMI? (Doh!)

renethx,

I benefitted from your postings and am currently building a low end mATX version base on your recommended list.

However, in my area the AM2 5000+ black edition is very scarce, though there are plenty of AM2 5000+ non-black edition. Because of this the price difference is about USD 35.

I wonder, if the black edition cost so much more, would you still have recommend the black edition. Else what's the better option? And what will I be missing from the black edition, if I choose to deviate?

Thanks!

seeth

Black Edition is not the only option. Any Athlon 64 processor of 2.4GHz or above, Windsor core 65W or Brisbane core, is fine.

The only difference between Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz Brisbane and Black Edition is that the multiplier of the latter is unlocked. That means you can overclock Black Edition by raising the CPU multiplier which is supposed to be easier than overclocking by raising the clock generator frequency. The fact is that either method works well.

Hi renethx. I've been checking out these threads for a long time and I just recently decided to build your 16 HDD II setup. This is what I pieced together, with some great deals today. Can you let me know if anything won't work? I'm not exactly experienced at building computers. I'll have 5 1TB SATA Hitachi drives in addition to the 320GB SATA drive. I dropped a few things off the list, for now, because I figured I wouldn't need them until I add more hard drives. If I was wrong about that, I'd really like to hear it :)

CPU: Pentium Dual-Core E2140 1.6GHz Socket 775
Motherboard: ASUS P5B-VM DO Intel Q965 chipset microATX (7 x SATA ports, 1 x eSATA port)
OS: Microsoft Windows Home Server 32 Bit 1 Pack - OEM
Case: Thermaltake Armor Series VA8003BWS Black Full Tower Case w/ 25CM Fan - Retail
PSU: SilverStone SST-ST75ZF 750W
Memory: CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400 DDR2-800 2 x 1GB Kit
HDD: Maxtor 320GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA Internal Hard Drive

Total = $748.27
Total after rebates = $608.27

BlackFlag79

Looks good!

Renethx...My colleagues here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and I religiously look to your guides for advice on our HTPC building efforts. Thanks for this update!!

One question...I notice your videocard recommendations have fans.

What do you think about fan noise from these units?

If its signficiant, can you recommend the best fanless card for a pure HTPC with ample space for any card...Thanks, Chris

One question...I notice your videocard recommendations have fans.

What do you think about fan noise from these units?

If its signficiant, can you recommend the best fanless card for a pure HTPC with ample space for any card...Thanks, Chris
Even a very small amount of airflow is helpful to reduce the GPU temperature greatly. So I prefer fan models. Of course a fanless model is fine if your case airflow around the heatsink of the graphics card is excellent. In general the stock fan is not the quietest but you can control it with a proper software tool (e.g. RivaTuner (http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner)). Or you can replace it with a Zalman or ZEROtherm VGA fan that is near silent and cooling GPU efficiently. (The drawback is it occupies two slots, but this also applies to many fanless solutions.)

Some good fanless models are:

ASUS EN8600GT SILENT/HTDP/256M (occupies two slots)
GIGABYTE GV-NX86T256H GeForce 8600 GT
GIGABYTE GV-RX26T256H Radeon HD 2600XT
MSI "EZ" models (occupies two slots if the PCIe x16 slot is in the second postion)

renethx: thanks a lot for your guide. It helps me a lot on building my first HTPC, and in fact, my first DIY PC.

Regarding GPUs, it seems that your recommendations are a little bit outdated. According to AnandTech (I cannot post URL since I just registered), the new mid-range 8800GT includes PureVideo HD as well, and excels 8600GTS a considerable margin in terms of performance.

renethx,

Any idea as to when you will post your TV Tuner chapter?
I am to my third HDTV ATSC tuner (PCI card), that I can remember, and am very disappointed with them.
They take forever to change channel and/or have low RF sensitivity and/or are a major pain to use and/or are too slow to show a high resolution image without jerking.
I would like the next one to be the one and hope you can give me a good advice.

Thanks!

I've been a lurker of your previous thread on building HTPC's. Finally pulled the trigger with some of the BF deals. Since I am building on a very tight budget I could not take all your recommendations, but would appreciate some advice on my GPU.

This is what I have purchased so far:

CPU: CPU AMD|A64 X2 4000+ 2.1G AM2 65N R - Retail
Memory: 2 x 1GB COR TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX
Mobo: Have not decided yet,
GPU: I purchased the x1950 Pro ($75) and also the HD2600 ($110)

I've been reading online and can't figure out which one to keep when factoring price/performance. I am not a gamer and do not intend to do any gaming. This HTPC will purely be used to play 1080P content. What is your suggestion?

I know my CPU is slightly below your recommendation, but I've read that it can easily OC to 3Ghz so processor power should not be too big of an issue. Any help regarding the GPU and possibly the CPU would be appreciated.

Thank You!

Regarding GPUs, it seems that your recommendations are a little bit outdated. According to AnandTech (I cannot post URL since I just registered), the new mid-range 8800GT includes PureVideo HD as well, and excels 8600GTS a considerable margin in terms of performance.

The last update of the video card chapter was May, 2007, so it's seriously outdated. My current recommendations would be:

For pure video playback:

Radeon HD 2600 Pro/XT
GeForce 8500/8600 GT
For gaming and video playback:

Radion HD 3850, $179
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, $279
I chose HD 3850 in High-End and 8800 GT 512MB in Premium System. 8800 GT 256MB ($179-$199) may not be good at higher resolutions. 8600 GTS is out of contention.

renethx,

Any idea as to when you will post your TV Tuner chapter?
I am to my third HDTV ATSC tuner (PCI card), that I can remember, and am very disappointed with them.
They take forever to change channel and/or have low RF sensitivity and/or are a major pain to use and/or are too slow to show a high resolution image without jerking.
I would like the next one to be the one and hope you can give me a good advice.

Thanks!
I have not looked into TV tuners seriously yet. Some that came into my mind are

HDHomeRun
ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo PCI Express
AverMedia AVerTV Combo PCI-e
A good comparison site is

http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/comparetuners.html

anonymouschris

Overclocking depends on each CPU die and there is no assurance that your processor overclocks to 3.0GHz. You'd better go with a video card with UVD (i.e. HD 2600 Pro/XT).

Edited

I misunderstood your question. Which form factor, ATX or mATX, do you like? The chapter on mb recommendations should be helpful. The most important components for video playback are CPU and GPU. Mb is less important, but it offers various functionality (PCIe slots, USB, FireWire etc.). Mb choice mainly depends on what features you would like to have (apart from basic stablity and reliability).

renethx,
another GPU consideration is the asus 8500gt (link (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121094))
256mb ddr3 and 600mhz clock for $80

mATX mobos:
GIGABYTE GA-G31MX (link (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128061))
ASUS P5KPL-VM (link (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131197))

there's tons of selections, you have a good list, i'm currently building a low/mid range htpc for dvds/hd-dvds/tv using the following parts:

Case: NSK2480 ($50 after rebate at frys.com)
CPU: e6550 ($125 OEM processor) with fan i had left over from a previous build
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-G31MX ($75)
RAM: g.skill 2gb kit ($50)
GPU: Asus EN8500GT ($80)
HDD: 500gb Maxtor ($80)
PSU: included in above case

Total: $460

it should handle my needs nicely :D

renethx,

thank you for your response. so your suggestion would be to keep ditch the x1950 and keep the 2600pro.

i will be purchasing a full ATX mobo. I've read your section on MB's for AMD and it seems like it will be a crapshoot. i need a mobo with good OCing capabilities, but that has passive cooling. that being said i am also hoping for passive cooling since the computer will be on 24/7.

Right now I'm leaning on a open box version of ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - for $80.

Premium

The final ATX system aims at not only HTPC but heavy gaming and workstation.

System

CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Socket 775, $280.
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme, $56.
CPU Fan: Scythe S-FLEX S-FDB 120mm Fan SFF21E, $15.
Motherboard: XFX nForce 680i SLI MB-N680-ISH9 ATX, $200.
Memory: Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT12864AA804 DDR2-800 2 x 1GB Kit, $50 (after rebate at Newegg.com).
Graphics Card: XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 PV-T88P-YDF4, $270; two of this card for SLI, $540.
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB HD501LJ 500GB SATA, $110.
PSU: Corsair HX620W, $140.
Case: Cooler Master COSMOS 1000, $180.
Total Cost: $1301 for non-SLI, $1571 for SLI
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2018/0atxpremiumauv3.png

Does anyone know what the overclocking capabilities are with this setup?

From what I have been finding around the net just now, this Core 2 Quad Q6600 can be cranked higher and be more stable with the Asus P5K Deluxe mobo. Anyone have first hand experience with this?

Big thanks, I hope to have this "Premium" HTPC computer, or similar, up and running before the end of this upcoming week. Its been way to many years since I have built a computer from the bones up.

Big Thanks,

Sean B

Edit: I am also very overwhelmed with all the video card options out there now. What makes the 512MB XFX GeForce 8800 GT the top choice here for the <$300 range? With this computer I am mainly concerned with Low Noise and High Power for (Photoshop, Primer, 3D Studio Max, Pro Tools, Maya, and some gaming)...Also most importantly, full 1080p output with no issues under extreme loads.

Also, Is it true u need to be running 64bit vista to get full 1080p potential?

Much Appreciated

R -

Thanks for your work, and as a by-product, the excellant feedback you ellicit from the community.

I'm looking to convert my existing HTPC to a digital dictation PC, have already installed Dragon Dictate on it.

I have the week after Xmas off, my wife must work, so I have that week earmarked as rebuild date.

I'm looking to build a high end, no-gaming rig, and will use your suggested build as baseline;

CPU: Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz Socket 775, $194.
CPU Cooler: ZEROtherm BTF90, $30 (after rebate at Newegg.com).
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 Intel P35 chipset ATX, $178. An alternative is abit IP35 Pro, $179.
Memory: Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT12864AA804 DDR2-800 2 x 1GB Kit, $50 (after rebate at Newegg.com).
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3850 (any brand), $179.
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB HD501LJ 500GB SATA, $110.
PSU: Corsair HX520W, $100.
Case: SilverStone Grandia SST-GD01B-MXR, $229.

My questions,

- does anyone know what sales may be coming up in next 4 weeks that may lessen cost
- I will reuse my wifi card, 320gig hd, (I have a 2TB WHS box for storage), and LC03 case, will the 400watt Silverstone psu be enough, or is an upgrade called for?
- looking at the the LG dual drive for HDDVD/BR, does that impact anything?
- will substituting the following be a problem?:
another GPU consideration is the asus 8500gt (link)
256mb ddr3 and 600mhz clock for $80

Thanks,

Gene

Will this card be a better htpc choice since it does not have a fan?
ASUS EN8500GT SILENT/HTP/256M GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121092)

I read your earlier post about the advantages of having a fan, but I have a relatively small living room with a 42 lcd (1080p) on the wall. I need the htpc to be quiet as possible. Will I lose a lot if I purchase the card with the heat sink instead of the fan? I plan on using the htpc for recording OTA HD and analog cable tv.

anonymouschris

Please read Newegg "Open Box" motherboards... (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1985417&arctab=/y) before ordering an open box item. I would rather choose a low-end mb such as GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 and GIGABYTE GA-MA69G-S3H.

I'd like to build a simple HTPC to replace my DVD player (someday add a HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray) and to stream from sites like Netflix. While I'd like to do this on the cheap, I don't want to sell myself short on future uses. Additionally, my time is limited (pregnant wife and 20-month-old at home!) so i can't research this to the bone like I normall would. Any recommendations on a parts list. I like the GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard as it seems to include everything I'd need. Simple is good!

My biggest question, beyond advise on parts, is will the PQ be as good on such a system as it would be from "regular" DVD players?

Thanks for any advise!

smbehm

If you are not interested in SLI or RAID, a P35 chipset motherboard is perhaps the best choice for you. I still recommend abit or GIGABYTE over ASUS because of 20W to 40W higher power consumption of the ASUS board.

As for video card, I am not sure which is suited for your purpose. You need to do your own research.

64-bit Windows means the support for memory size over 3GB. Your choice of OS (32-bit or 64-bit) depends on whether your applications are 64-bit and/or utilize 4GB memory or more effectively.

etcarroll

Radeon HD 3850 can be replaced by GeForce 8500 GT if you are not interested in gaming. 8600 GT is supposed to be better than 8500 GT in post procressing because of more shader units. If you choose 8500GT/8600GT, 400W PSU is enough.

Radeon HD 3850: 95W TDP
GeForce 8600 GT: 43W TDP

ryn05

I chose XFX GeForce 8500 GT (passive cooling) in my low-end system recommendations. But ASUS or GIGABYTE 8500 GT (passive cooling) is equally well.

xwilliam

Radeon X1250 is as good as a DVD player in PQ.

That's great - thanks!

etcarroll

Radeon HD 3850 can be replaced by GeForce 8500 GT if you are not interested in gaming. 8600 GT is supposed to be better than 8500 GT in post procressing because of more shader units. If you choose 8500GT/8600GT, 400W PSU is enough.

Radeon HD 3850: 95W TDP
GeForce 8600 GT: 43W TDP

any tv tuner recommendations? main use will be svideo in from dish network STB and an OTA Antenna for HD.

thanks

How does the XFX nForce 680i SLI MB-N680-ISH9 overclock with the Q6600? Do you think you can get 3.2Ghz stable 24/7?

I've already got these parts:
* CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Socket 775
* CPU Cooler: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
* CPU Fan: Scythe S-FLEX S-FDB 120mm Fan SFF21E
* Memory: Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT12864AA804 DDR2-800 4 x 1GB
* Graphics Card: Two XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 PV-T88P-YDF4
* Case: P180B

I'm still not sure whether or not I want to go SLI. I may sell one of the 8800's or use it in a second system. If I don't go SLI it's because i want to Matrix RAID & get a modest overclock... in which case I'll get a P35/X38 board.

I'm looking to build a centrally located HTPC/Media server that would initially distribute audio to my "whole house audio" system (CQC interface, Delta M-Audio 410 card to individual amps), but later could be expanded to distribute video as well. I'm definitely a newbie to all of this, trying to learn as I go, so I'm probably missing some key details...

I've gotten the following suggestion from the cocoontech.com board, and would be interested in your feedback on the choices. Here's what was suggested (with prices from Newegg):
$130: Intel E4500
$100: Antec Sonata case plus power supply
$120 :Intel brand 965 chipset motherboard with 2 RAID arrays (1 for boot, 1 for CDs if you want). Intel BOXDG965WHMKR LGA 775 Intel G965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard (This also has onboard video so you don't need a graphics card.)
$50: 2 x 1GB = 2GB of memory;G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
$86: TWO 80GB SATA drives for boot for RAID1; Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$65: One 250GB SATA drive for CDs.; Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$140: XP Pro.
Totalling $691
Thoughts on this setup for the price?? Any alternate suggestions in a similar price-range?

Thanks for the great topic, and appreciate any feedback you can offer...
Autoidiot

I'm looking to build a centrally located HTPC/Media server that would initially distribute audio to my "whole house audio" system (CQC interface, Delta M-Audio 410 card to individual amps), but later could be expanded to distribute video as well. I'm definitely a newbie to all of this, trying to learn as I go, so I'm probably missing some key details...

I've gotten the following suggestion from the cocoontech.com board, and would be interested in your feedback on the choices. Here's what was suggested (with prices from Newegg):
$130: Intel E4500
$100: Antec Sonata case plus power supply
$120 :Intel brand 965 chipset motherboard with 2 RAID arrays (1 for boot, 1 for CDs if you want). Intel BOXDG965WHMKR LGA 775 Intel G965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard (This also has onboard video so you don't need a graphics card.)
$50: 2 x 1GB = 2GB of memory;G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
$86: TWO 80GB SATA drives for boot for RAID1; Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$65: One 250GB SATA drive for CDs.; Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$140: XP Pro.
Totalling $691
Thoughts on this setup for the price?? Any alternate suggestions in a similar price-range?

Thanks for the great topic, and appreciate any feedback you can offer...
Autoidiot

Just a few random thoughts as I'm going through pretty much the same exercise:


While that's a good price on the E4500, is it worth the extra dollars over the E2180? If you're wanting the 11x multiplier, the E2200 comes out next week.
Any reason you're going for the 965 motherboards? I'm strongly leaning towards G33 for its low power (since this thing will be on for 24 hours a day), and as a bonus, it has the ability with an ADD2/SDVO card to have digital t.v. output (abet not the highest quality, per archibael comments on G35 improvements)
Intel makes good motherboards, but if you even remotely think you want to over-clock, you might consider something else
Seems like you could spend just a few dollars more on hard drive and get lots more storage (so that you don't have to mess with it in 6 months or a year or whenever). 500 GB drives are regularly on sale for around $100 - that's the sweet spot right now.


Have fun!

Marc

How does the XFX nForce 680i SLI MB-N680-ISH9 overclock with the Q6600? Do you think you can get 3.2Ghz stable 24/7?
3.2Ghz is no problem (there is no guarantee though).

autoidiot

-Pentium Dual-Core 2140 1.6GHz is enough for a media server.
-DG965WH is good. If you don't need much expandability, GA-G33M-DS2R is better in that it supports up to 6 drives in a RAID array (and overclocks well).
-RAID1 for the boot drive is not so useful.
-500GB is better for storage, isn't it?

Any reason you're going for the 965 motherboards? I'm strongly leaning towards G33 for its low power (since this thing will be on for 24 hours a day), and as a bonus, it has the ability with an ADD2/SDVO card to have digital t.v. output (abet not the highest quality, per archibael comments on G35 improvements)


G35 > G965 > G33 for picture quality. You're right, though: G33 is better from a power standpoint.

The G965WH board is decent; I have its smaller brother the G965OT. Marc is right about overclocking the thing, but if you're keeping everything at stock it's very happy-making. I bought the ADD2 HDMI card for it and with some quirks it works well.

Hi All, this is pretty helpful threads. I've been making my decision base on what has been discussed here.

I decided to go with mATX board since I won't need to have that many expansion slot. 2 PCI is enough for me. 1 for my audio card and 1 for my Win HD card. So I got this motherboard, basically sticking with the G33 chipset. MSI G33M-FI LGA 775 Intel G33 Micro ATX.

I have been looking at what CPU to get and right now leaning toward this Allendale E2180 which is 2.0Ghz with 800 Mhz FSB & 1MB cache. If I want to oc this as suggested in the 1st page, will this cpu/mobo combo oc'able? Have anyone tried? If I can get it to 2.6 or 2.8 Ghz and then pair my video card with either 8500GT/8600GT/2600PRO, then I should be set. I don't have any plan for game, this HTPC will mostly be used for watching DVD and TV via OTA thru the Win HVR. It will also be front end for music using Foobar 2K thru RME-audio card.

G35 > G965 > G33 for picture quality. You're right, though: G33 is better from a power standpoint.

...

Really the g965 is better than the g33 for picture quality? In what respects?

Really the g965 is better than the g33 for picture quality? In what respects?

The Quick Reference Guide to Intel Integrated Graphics (http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/1488.htm) shows most of the differences. Things that jump out to me: better de-interlacing and video scaling, as well as having sharpness/detail and noise reduction.

BTW archibael, is the MPEG-2 decoding support correct on table 2 for the G33? Does it really have all three hardware assist (iDCT, Motion compensation and VLD)?

Marc

That is my understanding, yes. I'd be lying if I said I have access to the microcode to verify, though. :)

Thermalright doesn't list XFX boards in their compatability charts (http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/Ultra-120-MCL.htm). is that ok for the Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme & the XFX nForce 680i SLI MB-N680-ISH9?

Thermalright doesn't list XFX boards in their compatability charts (http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/Ultra-120-MCL.htm). is that ok for the Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme & the XFX nForce 680i SLI MB-N680-ISH9?
Ultra 120 Extreme is compatible with the XFX 680i SLI board because XFX 680i SLI = eVGA 680i SLI = the 680i SLI reference board.

FYI, Anandtech has published it's list of recommended HTPC components under its Holiday Buying Guide. There is some overlap, but also many differences.

Building the HDD System I Server
I've finally got everything installed into the box and running but I'm having an issue with the Highpoint 2340 card and Windows XP MCE only recognizing the Raid 5 drive at 2TB, when in reality it is set up with 9 500gb SATA drives. One drive is a "spare" so the remaining 8 drives show up as 3.5TB in the Highpoint Management software and in the bios utility.

But when I go through Windows->Control Panel->Admin Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management the total size of the drive only shows up at 2TB (2048gb). Can anyone help me to understand why???

I've called Tech Support at Highpoint but apparently they are not answering their phones during "normal business hours" as listed on their website. 9am-6pm PST.

Also, I wanted to add a couple notes on the server install:
1) There are a TON of cables to fit in this box. I only have 9 HDD + 1 system drive but still had difficulty fitting all the cables in.
2) The LIan LI HDD expander modules work well except that one of the drives interferes with the internal HDD "cage" on the Aerocool case. I suspect that if you were trying to put 15 drives in this case, it would be very difficult without modifying the case using a dremel.
3) With all the cables in this box, I had to remove the side airflow fans (x3) b/c I couldn't get the sides of the case on with the fans in place.
4) I'm heading out to Japan on business tomorrow morning but when I return I'll try and post some pix of the install.
5) Even with 5 80mm fans, the CPU fan, and a 120mm exhaust fan, this case runs surprisingly very quiet. Not as quiet as a silent HTPC, but definitely much quieter than I had anticipated :-)

I think I'm going to be very happy with this server once I get everything up and running and can get the 2TB drive problem in Windows fixed.

Thanks renethx for putting together this thread!

Again, if someone has any ideas on the 2TB drive recognition issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Building the HDD System I Server
I've finally got everything installed into the box and running but I'm having an issue with the Highpoint 2340 card and Windows XP MCE only recognizing the Raid 5 drive at 2TB, when in reality it is set up with 9 500gb SATA drives. One drive is a "spare" so the remaining 8 drives show up as 3.5TB in the Highpoint Management software and in the bios utility.

But when I go through Windows->Control Panel->Admin Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management the total size of the drive only shows up at 2TB (2048gb). Can anyone help me to understand why???

I've called Tech Support at Highpoint but apparently they are not answering their phones during "normal business hours" as listed on their website. 9am-6pm PST.

Also, I wanted to add a couple notes on the server install:
1) There are a TON of cables to fit in this box. I only have 9 HDD + 1 system drive but still had difficulty fitting all the cables in.
2) The LIan LI HDD expander modules work well except that one of the drives interferes with the internal HDD "cage" on the Aerocool case. I suspect that if you were trying to put 15 drives in this case, it would be very difficult without modifying the case using a dremel.
3) With all the cables in this box, I had to remove the side airflow fans (x3) b/c I couldn't get the sides of the case on with the fans in place.
4) I'm heading out to Japan on business tomorrow morning but when I return I'll try and post some pix of the install.
5) Even with 5 80mm fans, the CPU fan, and a 120mm exhaust fan, this case runs surprisingly very quiet. Not as quiet as a silent HTPC, but definitely much quieter than I had anticipated :-)

I think I'm going to be very happy with this server once I get everything up and running and can get the 2TB drive problem in Windows fixed.

Thanks renethx for putting together this thread!

Again, if someone has any ideas on the 2TB drive recognition issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Is it a basic volume? If so, 2 TB is the limit - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/storage/getstorfacts.mspx

Did you break it up into logical volumes? I assume you don't want a single 3.5 TB C: drive? Making a small 8-12 GB OS volume, then larger media volumes would be more efficient, both in usage (cluster size) and restoration in the event something gets damaged or corrupted.

Is it a basic volume? If so, 2 TB is the limit - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/storage/getstorfacts.mspx

Did you break it up into logical volumes? I assume you don't want a single 3.5 TB C: drive? Making a small 8-12 GB OS volume, then larger media volumes would be more efficient, both in usage (cluster size) and restoration in the event something gets damaged or corrupted.

I didn't break it up. I wanted a single 3.5TB drive but I guess I could split it up into a 2tb drive and a 1.5tb drive.

The max size makes sense, thanks.

I guess I'm going to have to figure a few more things out. I'm hoping I can still use one spare drive to cover both the 2tb and 1.5tb drives that I'll be setting up right?

I've got a separate 80gb drive for the system drive. Would I be better off putting the system files on the Raid array?

Thanks for the assistance, I haven't set up a Raid array before.

Renethx,
In your high-end system you mention Gigabyte DS4 and ATI Radeon 3850. However, the mobo features PCI Express x16 and x1 slots while the GPUs all seem to use PCIe 2.0. Am I missing something?
Thanks

I didn't break it up. I wanted a single 3.5TB drive but I guess I could split it up into a 2tb drive and a 1.5tb drive.

The max size makes sense, thanks.

I guess I'm going to have to figure a few more things out. I'm hoping I can still use one spare drive to cover both the 2tb and 1.5tb drives that I'll be setting up right?

I've got a separate 80gb drive for the system drive. Would I be better off putting the system files on the Raid array?

Thanks for the assistance, I haven't set up a Raid array before.

Since you're configuring a single RAID 5 via the card, then yes, the 1 parity drive would cover however many logical drives you created within the big RAID 5. You could use the additional 80 GB drive for the OS, (assuming you have the physical connections) but there's no harm in putting it on a small volume on the RAID array. You certainly don't need 80 GB for the OS...

While it can be nice to have all that space accessible via a single drive letter, what happens when you want to upgrade to Vista in the future? Will you blow away the entire partition and start over? Keeping a separate small partition for the OS allows you to easily reinstall, upgrade, fix any virus / worm damage, etc without risking the TBs of media files it sounds like you're going to have on this system.

Since you're configuring a single RAID 5 via the card, then yes, the 1 parity drive would cover however many logical drives you created within the big RAID 5. You could use the additional 80 GB drive for the OS, (assuming you have the physical connections) but there's no harm in putting it on a small volume on the RAID array. You certainly don't need 80 GB for the OS...

While it can be nice to have all that space accessible via a single drive letter, what happens when you want to upgrade to Vista in the future? Will you blow away the entire partition and start over? Keeping a separate small partition for the OS allows you to easily reinstall, upgrade, fix any virus / worm damage, etc without risking the TBs of media files it sounds like you're going to have on this system.

Very helpful, thanks. All the arrays I had seen in the past used a separate drive for the OS, so I had assumed (apparently incorrectly) it wasn't possible to put the OS on the array.

I think I'll keep the OS on the 80gb drive (attached to the mobo via sata) since I already have everything loaded.

It looks like I'll need to rebuild the Raid5 to set up a 2TB drive and a 1.5TB drive. Even though I'm not adding the OS to the array at this time, do you think I should set aside some space for one (on the raid) in the future? Maybe 50-100gb or so?

Very helpful, thanks. All the arrays I had seen in the past used a separate drive for the OS, so I had assumed (apparently incorrectly) it wasn't possible to put the OS on the array.

I think I'll keep the OS on the 80gb drive (attached to the mobo via sata) since I already have everything loaded.

It looks like I'll need to rebuild the Raid5 to set up a 2TB drive and a 1.5TB drive. Even though I'm not adding the OS to the array at this time, do you think I should set aside some space for one (on the raid) in the future? Maybe 50-100gb or so?

If you have to blow away the current config to modify it, then sure, I'd leave 50 GB for a potential future OS partition. I don't think you'll miss it that much in a 3.5 TB system, and worse case you could always use it for additional data storage if you didn't go the OS route.

If you have to blow away the current config to modify it, then sure, I'd leave 50 GB for a potential future OS partition. I don't think you'll miss it that much in a 3.5 TB system, and worse case you could always use it for additional data storage if you didn't go the OS route.

So far, I think I need to delete the array so I'll leave space for a future OS of about 50gig or so. Thanks for the suggestion.

spillz564

I am sorry to hear that you have several problems. Windows XP 32-bit has the 2TB limit and I should mention this somewhere in the guide. Somebody claimed the OS supports over 2TB with dynamic volumes (there is no definite confirmation though). Read this thread: A few questions about Media Servers... (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=940179). Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) supports over 2TB with no problem.

Certainly cramming 16 drives (and a system drive) in the AeroCool case is not easy and needs some DIY work. I hope I am able to pick up this server system in the Assembling Guide.

Renethx,
In your high-end system you mention Gigabyte DS4 and ATI Radeon 3850. However, the mobo features PCI Express x16 and x1 slots while the GPUs all seem to use PCIe 2.0. Am I missing something?
Thanks
PCI Express 2.0 is backward compatible with PCI Express 1.x, so graphic cards and motherboards designed for v2.0 work fine with v1.x and vice versa. So far Intel X38 is the only chipset (for the Intel platform) that supports PCI Express 2.0, but there is little difference in graphics performance between X38 and P35.

spillz564

I am sorry to hear that you have several problems. Windows XP 32-bit has the 2TB limit and I should mention this somewhere in the guide. Somebody claimed the OS supports over 2TB with dynamic volumes (there is no definite confirmation though). Read this thread: A few questions about Media Servers... (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=940179). Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) supports over 2TB with no problem.

Certainly cramming 16 drives (and a system drive) in the AeroCool case is not easy and needs some DIY work. I hope I am able to pick up this server system in the Assembling Guide.

I wouldn't have even gotten to this point without the help from your thread, and the people who have posted on it. It has been a (fun) learning experience so far. Like anything, the more a person plays, the more they learn.

Hopefully 9 500gb drives will hold me over for quite some time :D

I'll worry about how to fit in the other 6 somewhere down the road :p

btw, I did try converting the array to a dynamic drive but still couldn't get anything over 2TB recognized.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out...

is there are difference between the XFX MB-N680-ISH (http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=242703&prodlist=pricegrabber) and the ISH9 as recommened here?

or is this a syntax/typo issue with the particular etailer?

is there are difference between the XFX MB-N680-ISH (http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=242703&prodlist=pricegrabber) and the ISH9 as recommened here?

or is this a syntax/typo issue with the particular etailer?
I am not sure. I guess they are identical. Part Number at this page (http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listConfigurations.jspa?seriesId=989302&productId=989542) is MB-N680-ISH9, while Part Number in the Product Sheet (PDF file) (http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listSeriesSpecSheets.jspa?series=NVIDIA+nForce+680i&seriesId=989302) is MB-N680-ISH. I sent an inquiry to XFX.

Note that nForce 680i does not support the upcoming Yorkfield (45 nm quad-core) processors.

Good and bad news. According to OCWorkBench (http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?%20threadid=69215), AMD RS780 (780G; supporting UVD) is expected in January 2008, while NVIDIA MCP78 (supporting PureVideo HD) will be delayed till March 2008.

Related news are:

OCWorkBench – AMD RS780 integrated chipset supports UVD, PCIe and DDR2/3 (December 3, 2007) (http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?%20threadid=69217) (RV610 = Radeon HD 2400)

OCWorkBench – NVIDIA MCP78 photos leaked at China site (December 1, 2007) (http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?%20threadid=69188)
OCWorkBench – NVIDIA MCP78 Preview (November 2, 2007) (http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/nvidia/mcp78/g1.htm)

Of course, details are also found in Appendix in this guide!

Cheers for that info. Hopefully RS780 will be what RS690(690G) so nearly was. A solution thats does HD from disc without just missing the mark and being able to use a nice low power cpu.

Hi Renethx...

I contributed to both the hardware and software side on Troy's thread, but finally decided to do my own thing, at least initially... may still try a bluepill install. I went premium because this will also be used for HD video editing:

CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4
Memory: Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 2 x 1GB
Graphics Card: Asus SilentPipe EN8600GTS (No Fan)
HDD0: WD Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM
HDD1: Hitachi DeskStar 1TB
Case: Antec P182
PSU: Antec Phantom 500w (fan only when needed)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
CPU Fan: ?????

My question concerns cooling.

What I like about the Antec case is that it has separate chambers for the PSU/HDDs and the boards. There are two fans sucking air directly from the motherboard/CPU (one back and one up). I'm adding an optional fan that will blow across the GPU cooling fins and out the back. What I am questioning is whether, with two fans dedicated to getting the hot air off the cpu heatsink and out of the case, does a fan on the heatsink make sense? Is it really needed? I'd rather keep the mechanical vibrations on the case instead of on the electronics. Does anyone go with radient-only cooling on the processor?

TIA... and you do phenomenal work.
--
Jim

AZdigital

Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme is not good for passive cooling. It is designed to work with a high air pressure. Scythe Ninja Plus is a better option (designed to work with a low air pressure). Unless you overclock Q6600, perhaps Ninja Plus without a fan is fine. You can always add a fan later if necessary.

From Silent PC Review – Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme: Heir to the CPU Cooling Throne (October 12, 2007) (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article759-page3.html):

There are really only two serious competitors: The Ultra-120 and the Scythe Ninja. Both heatsinks were tested previously with the same reference fan on the same heatsink testing platform, so direct comparisons can be made. The Ultra-120 eXtreme surpasses its predecessor by about 3°C at all four fan voltage levels. It can't quite compete with the Ninja with the reference fan at 5V, but this is only a useful comparison if you are considering passive cooling, as the noise difference between 5V and 7V is indistinguishable from all but the closest of distances. The Ultra-120 eXtreme really starts to shine at 7V where it matches the Ninja's performance, before overtaking it at 9V and 12V. The extra airflow definitely helps the transfer of heat through the relatively tight fin spacing.

AZdigital

Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme is not good for passive cooling. It is designed to work with a high air pressure. Scythe Ninja Plus is a better option (designed to work with a low air pressure). Unless you overclock Q6600, perhaps Ninja Plus without a fan is fine. You can always add a fan later if necessary.

FYI, the Thermalright HR-01 Plus is similar to the Ultra-120 Extreme, and is apparently designed for fanless operation. It's odd to me that the Extreme is actually quite a bit larger than the Plus, and therefore would seem to me to be better for fanless operation, but I'm not a mechanical engineer so what do I know. Perhaps the fin spacing is tighter on the Extreme and therefore it requires a fan.

BTW, I have the Plus without a fan on the E6850 (3GHz), along with a fanless ATI HD2600XT and an Antec case with a single low-speed fan, and haven't had any heat problems yet. At 100% utilization I'm still below the CPU thermal limits - not a lot, but enough.

Perhaps the fin spacing is tighter on the Extreme and therefore it requires a fan.
Yeah, that's the point. I am not a mechanical engineer, though.

Hi
Can anyone recommend a graphic card for the mATX board? I need one that would best fit my mATX board. A fanless one that does not intrude and take over the next PCI slot or interfere with the DIMM slot. Preferably staying in the 8500/8600/or 2600 areas

soyuppy

There are several fanless 8500 GT cards from ASUS, GIGABYTE and XFX that occupy only one slot.

ASUS EN8500GT SILENT/HTP/256M
ASUS EN8500GT SILENT MAGIC/HTP/512M
GIGABYTE GV-NX85T256H
GIGABYTE GV-NX85T512HP
XFX GeForce 8500 GT PV-T86J-UAHG

The following models (8600 GT, 2600 XT respectively) do not fit in Antec NSK2480/Fusion (one-slot models, but too high):

GIGABYTE GV-NX86T256H
GIGABYTE GV-RX26T256H

Optional DAS (Direct Attached Storage)

The nForce 680i SLI chipset supports up to 6 HDDs. As the motherboard has a third PCI Express x16 slot (x8 electrically), you can add a RAID controller card for more storage space. For example, the following combination supports up to 16 HDDs (8 internal and 8 external).

HighPoint RocketRAID 2340 4-port SFF-8087 (16-port SATA) RAID Controller PCIe x8 Card, $419. An alternative is Promise SuperTrak EX16350 (with XOR engine and RAID 6), $560.
Cooler Master STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module (turns 3 x 5.25" bay into 4 x 3.5" bays), $25.
0.5m SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 miniSAS cable (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/) x 2, $55.
2-Port SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 Adapter (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/), $53.
HighPoint Ext-MS-1MES SFF-8088 to eSATA cable x 2, $100
Addonics MST4ESA-B (http://addonics.com/products/raid_system/mst4.asp) Mini Storage Tower (4 HDDs, 4 eSATA ports) x 2, $272.
Total Cost: $924 (HDDs for storage are not included)
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/2843/0atxpremiumbmp8.png

I'm still building the premium ATX and thinking about RAID options kind of based on what renethx did with the DAS here.

However, I was looking at the Areca 1220 (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16816131004) & 3ware 9650SE (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116043) controllers (8 ports). The 3ware is only pci-e x4 if that means untapped potential with the open x8 port???

Since they are multi-lane SATA on the cards I was thinking of using this Internal SATA to External 4X L-bracket Adapter w/dual ports (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_cables_adapters/4X7PLD.asp) to go to the external mini-storage instead of the 2-Port SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 Adapter.

What do you think of this change?? not worth it? compatibility issues? leave anything out??

I still don't know which drives I'm going to use. I may scrap the DAS and build a NAS with the new Samsung F1 HD103UJ 1TB drives. I don't know, I do like the idea of RAID 5 or 6 for the storage/backup... then again for the cost to do that I could just buy the HP MediaSmart Server with WHS. thats an option too lol

leftheaded

Using InfiniBand (SFF-8470 to SFF-8470) cables instead of mini-SAS cables is more cost-effective, reducing the total cost by about $100. (I don't know why I have not thought of that!) If you go for external 8 SATA drives only, then buy

- Areca ARC-1220ML or HighPoint RocketRAID 2322 8-port SATA controller with dual external mini-SAS (SFF-8088) connector
- Multilane InfiniBand SFF-8470 to external mini-SAS SFF-8088 cable x 2
- Addonics MST4ML-B Mini Storage Tower (4 HDDs, 1 SFF-8470 port) x 2

A PCIe x16 slot (x8 electrically) supports PCIe x8, PCIe x4, PCIe x1 cards.

As for storage drives, WD10EACS is also a good choice.

soyuppy

There are several fanless 8500 GT cards from ASUS, GIGABYTE and XFX that occupy only one slot.

ASUS EN8500GT SILENT/HTP/256M
ASUS EN8500GT SILENT MAGIC/HTP/512M
GIGABYTE GV-NX85T256H
GIGABYTE GV-NX85T512HP
XFX GeForce 8500 GT PV-T86J-UAHG

The following models (8600 GT, 2600 XT respectively) do not fit in Antec NSK2480/Fusion (one-slot models, but too high):

GIGABYTE GV-NX86T256H
GIGABYTE GV-RX26T256H
Thank you

NVIDIA just announced the new GeForce 8400 GS (G98 or D8M) GPU. It is manufactured in 65 nm process like GeForce 8800 GT and features PureVideo HD Gen 3 that finally takes over all the VC-1 workload from the CPU.

Expreview - Born for HD: first review of G98-8400GS(D8M) (http://en.expreview.com/?p=77&page=1)

Unfortunately the article did not talk about PQ at all (as expected).

Can anyone help me in deciding on a MOBO? I am torn between the EVGA 680i SLI 775 A1 and the
XFX MB-N680-ISH. Any suggestions as both are pretty similar in price and features?

I built a "16 HDD II" system with a few changes, mainly a Thermaltake Armor for the case. A few notes for anyone looking to do the same:

1. The Silverstone power supply is pretty big... I couldn't get the top fan of the Armor to mount with it in. Figured it wasn't a big deal because there were 3 other fans in the case, including a giant 25cm fan on the side.

2. Despite pictures of the Silverstone box on Silverstone's website as well as Newegg's, the power supply does have 6 SATA connections and not 4.

3. The fans in the case use Molex connectors.

4. Pretty obvious heads up here... don't make the mistake of buying the "ASUS P5B-VM LGA 775 Intel G965 Express Micro ATX Intel Motherboard" instead of the "ASUS P5B-VM DO LGA 775 Intel Q965 Express Micro ATX Intel Motherboard". Only after putting the entire thing together and looking for the missing 2 SATA ports did I realize my mistake... figured it wasn't worth it to deal with the returns and disconnecting and reconnecting everything. Guess my system is more of a "14 HDD II" system now :(

Some of these might be pretty obvious (especially the last one), I dunno... I've never built a computer before. Thanks a lot for the help, renethx :) It was pretty frustrating at times but now I have a 6 hard drive, 4.32 TB Home Server. Now it's time to move hundreds of DVDs to it...

4. Pretty obvious heads up here... don't make the mistake of buying the "ASUS P5B-VM LGA 775 Intel G965 Express Micro ATX Intel Motherboard" instead of the "ASUS P5B-VM DO LGA 775 Intel Q965 Express Micro ATX Intel Motherboard". Only after putting the entire thing together and looking for the missing 2 SATA ports did I realize my mistake...
that's exactly why I'm trying to determine whether or not there is a difference between the XFX "MB-N680-ISH" and the "XFX MB-N680-ISH9". It could be nothing, or it might become obvious after I assemble.

congrats on the new build :cool:

EDIT: I just got off the phone with XFX techsupport. The rep said the difference between the two is packaging. He said it's the same motherboard, and that they commonly use the last character in a model number like that for packaging differences.

NVIDIA just announced the new GeForce 8400 GS (G98 or D8M) GPU. It is manufactured in 65 nm process like GeForce 8800 GT and features PureVideo HD Gen 3 that finally takes over all the VC-1 workload from the CPU.

Expreview - Born for HD: first review of G98-8400GS(D8M) (http://en.expreview.com/?p=77&page=1)

Unfortunately the article did not talk about PQ at all (as expected).
From reading above article, does mean I can stick with just 64-bit GPU cards? Looks like the 2400 even outperform the new G98-8400 in both .H264 and VC-1 decoding. The 64-bit cards are much cheaper than the 128-bit. Or are there more benefit to go with the 128-bit card? ie 8500/8600 or 2600?

is there a setup where I can have the storage enclosure (preferably rackmount) about 15-25' away?

I was thinking about doing the "Premium ATX" with a Norco 1220, but the guys at Norco said the limit of the eSATA connection was 6'. Any alternative types that can make longer runs?

my intent was to have a single drive in the workstation (no RAID) and in the enclosure have a 100GB RAID 0 volume & remaining in RAID 5 or 6. is this possible?

is there a setup where I can have the storage enclosure (preferably rackmount) about 15-25' away?

I was thinking about doing the "Premium ATX" with a Norco 1220, but the guys at Norco said the limit of the eSATA connection was 6'. Any alternative types that can make longer runs?

my intent was to have a single drive in the workstation (no RAID) and in the enclosure have a 100GB RAID 0 volume & remaining in RAID 5 or 6. is this possible?

How about iSCSI? It's cheaper than FC because it won't require special HBAs. But it does require a target controller - typically a motherboard running Windows or Linux. There are lots of options from open-source to pre-built systems. But if you go this route you might also consider NAS.

One advantage of iSCSI over NAS is that it's pretty easy to get 100-200MB/s with a standard motherboard. That's difficult with NAS due to the file overhead. The disadvantage is that iSCSI storage isn't sharable like NAS. But since you were thinkink of eSATA to begin with, sharing doesn't seem to be a requirement for you.

I'm still building the premium ATX and thinking about RAID options kind of based on what renethx did with the DAS here.

However, I was looking at the Areca 1220 (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16816131004) & 3ware 9650SE (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116043) controllers (8 ports). The 3ware is only pci-e x4 if that means untapped potential with the open x8 port???

Since they are multi-lane SATA on the cards I was thinking of using this Internal SATA to External 4X L-bracket Adapter w/dual ports (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_cables_adapters/4X7PLD.asp) to go to the external mini-storage instead of the 2-Port SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 Adapter.

What do you think of this change?? not worth it? compatibility issues? leave anything out??

I still don't know which drives I'm going to use. I may scrap the DAS and build a NAS with the new Samsung F1 HD103UJ 1TB drives. I don't know, I do like the idea of RAID 5 or 6 for the storage/backup... then again for the cost to do that I could just buy the HP MediaSmart Server with WHS. thats an option too lol


leftheaded - the 3ware and probably the Areca controllers will not do what you want. I called 3ware about doing exactly what you want to do and they don't support port multipliers in external enclosures. The engineer went on to say that they will more than likely never support port multipliers (either command queuing or FIS). I looked at the specs on the Areca and it does NOT state port multiplier support so more than likely it won't work. Only way to know for sure before dropping that kind of coin is to call and talk to an engineer. On my list to call tomorrow is Adaptec and Promise, however, I think I will be getting the Highpoint 2522 as it plainly states port multiplier support. Unfortunately it doesn't state which mode it supports as I would much rather it support FIS as it is much faster.

Building the HDD System I Server
I've finally got everything installed into the box and running but I'm having an issue with the Highpoint 2340 card and Windows XP MCE only recognizing the Raid 5 drive at 2TB, when in reality it is set up with 9 500gb SATA drives. One drive is a "spare" so the remaining 8 drives show up as 3.5TB in the Highpoint Management software and in the bios utility.

But when I go through Windows->Control Panel->Admin Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management the total size of the drive only shows up at 2TB (2048gb). Can anyone help me to understand why???

I've called Tech Support at Highpoint but apparently they are not answering their phones during "normal business hours" as listed on their website. 9am-6pm PST.

Also, I wanted to add a couple notes on the server install:
1) There are a TON of cables to fit in this box. I only have 9 HDD + 1 system drive but still had difficulty fitting all the cables in.
2) The LIan LI HDD expander modules work well except that one of the drives interferes with the internal HDD "cage" on the Aerocool case. I suspect that if you were trying to put 15 drives in this case, it would be very difficult without modifying the case using a dremel.
3) With all the cables in this box, I had to remove the side airflow fans (x3) b/c I couldn't get the sides of the case on with the fans in place.
4) I'm heading out to Japan on business tomorrow morning but when I return I'll try and post some pix of the install.
5) Even with 5 80mm fans, the CPU fan, and a 120mm exhaust fan, this case runs surprisingly very quiet. Not as quiet as a silent HTPC, but definitely much quieter than I had anticipated :-)

I think I'm going to be very happy with this server once I get everything up and running and can get the 2TB drive problem in Windows fixed.

Thanks renethx for putting together this thread!

Again, if someone has any ideas on the 2TB drive recognition issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

There is a way around the 2TB limit. Check out this whitepaper from Adaptec:

http://www.adaptec.com/NR/rdonlyres/0877F6FF-458A-4CDE-BA50-179BB693A1FE/0/3759_2TB_WP.pdf

From reading above article, does mean I can stick with just 64-bit GPU cards? Looks like the 2400 even outperform the new G98-8400 in both .H264 and VC-1 decoding. The 64-bit cards are much cheaper than the 128-bit. Or are there more benefit to go with the 128-bit card? ie 8500/8600 or 2600?
In simple terms, PureVideo HD Gen3 just caught up with UVD.

GeForce 8400 GS (G86) / Radeon HD 2400 Pro has many issues. 8500 GT, 8600 GT, 2600 Pro or 2600 XT is a better choice.

is there a setup where I can have the storage enclosure (preferably rackmount) about 15-25' away?

I was thinking about doing the "Premium ATX" with a Norco 1220, but the guys at Norco said the limit of the eSATA connection was 6'. Any alternative types that can make longer runs?

my intent was to have a single drive in the workstation (no RAID) and in the enclosure have a 100GB RAID 0 volume & remaining in RAID 5 or 6. is this possible?
I think you will want:

Areca ARC-1231ML (http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcie341.htm) 3-port mini-SAS (12-port SATA II) PCIe x8 RAID controller, $730.
Internal SATA to External Multilane PCI Bracket (http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-multilane-pci-adapter-bracket.html), $30 and Internal SATA to External Multilane Dual Port PCI Bracket (http://www.cooldrives.com/intoexmudupo.html), $48.
External SAS 4X to 4X (SFF-8470 to SFF-8470) Cable (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/) x 3 (1m, 2m, 3m or 5m), $297 for 5m.
NORCO DS-1240 (http://www.norcotek.com/DS-1240.php) 12 Bay InfiniBand Multilane SATA Hard Drive Storage Array (12 HDDs, 3 SFF-8470 ports), $575. AMUG Reviews (http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/norco/1240/)
Maximum eSATA cable length is 2 m (6'). Maximum SAS cable length is 6 m (20'). Maximum InfiniBand cable length is 15 m (50') or more?

NORCO 1220 is a port multiplier enclosure with two SiI3726 chips and does not work with many RAID cards as l2e pointed out.

Can anyone help me in deciding on a MOBO? I am torn between the EVGA 680i SLI 775 A1 and the
XFX MB-N680-ISH. Any suggestions as both are pretty similar in price and features?
Perhaps they are identical, manufactured at the same factory.

leftheaded - the 3ware and probably the Areca controllers will not do what you want. I called 3ware about doing exactly what you want to do and they don't support port multipliers in external enclosures. The engineer went on to say that they will more than likely never support port multipliers (either command queuing or FIS). I looked at the specs on the Areca and it does NOT state port multiplier support so more than likely it won't work. Only way to know for sure before dropping that kind of coin is to call and talk to an engineer. On my list to call tomorrow is Adaptec and Promise, however, I think I will be getting the Highpoint 2522 as it plainly states port multiplier support. Unfortunately it doesn't state which mode it supports as I would much rather it support FIS as it is much faster.

You may want to consider a SAS controller and SAS enclosure. You can still use SATA drives, but you'll be able to scale to roughly a 100 drives. It will cost a little more than SATA-only, but if you're talking about dozens of drives eventually then it really won't matter.

On my list to call tomorrow is Adaptec and Promise, however, I think I will be getting the Highpoint 2522 as it plainly states port multiplier support. Unfortunately it doesn't state which mode it supports as I would much rather it support FIS as it is much faster.
RocketRaid 2522 is FIS-based PM aware according to AMUG HighPoint RocketRAID 2522 PCIe SATA PM RAID Controller Review (November 16, 2007) (http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2522/).

wow, thank you all a ton!! this is a lot to digest, but I'm starting to see what's possible thanks to all this help. i've got some homework to do.. thanks again everyone!

edit:

I'm going to start my homework on the network solutions (gigabit). The only reason I'd want RAID attached to my workstation is for RAID 0 performance. If I can get that same performance over a gigabit network, then I think that should work well.

In this setup the workstation (the recommended "Premium ATX") has a single drive. The enclosure would serve two purposes:

1) providing a high performance 100GB RAID 0 volume that any client can use
2) storage & backup - probably RAID 5 or 6

Maybe I want two machines on a gigabit network - the Premium ATX and a sophisticated RAID option on one of the recommended rackmount builds?

anyway, i've got my work cut out for me.. thanks again

You may want to consider a SAS controller and SAS enclosure. You can still use SATA drives, but you'll be able to scale to roughly a 100 drives. It will cost a little more than SATA-only, but if you're talking about dozens of drives eventually then it really won't matter.

Thanks, I completely overlooked the fact that sas and sata share the same backplane. I am looking for a smoking fast RAID 6 setup as I don't trust sata drives during a rebuild not to die. I am looking to spend around $1000 for a 5 bay enclosure (minus drives) and the controller.

Any suggestions HappyFunBoater?

Thanks, I completely overlooked the fact that sas and sata share the same backplane. I am looking for a smoking fast RAID 6 setup as I don't trust sata drives during a rebuild not to die. I am looking to spend around $1000 for a 5 bay enclosure (minus drives) and the controller.

Any suggestions HappyFunBoater?

You're definitely right to be wary of SATA drives failing in an array. The biggest problem is the retry timeout on typical desktop drives. They have long error retry timers that can interfere with the RAID algorithms, and it's very common to see drives fail in an array with "no problem found" when returned for replacement. But if you pay a little extra and get a nearline SATA drive, sometimes called RAID-ready, then you won't run into these problems.

RAID-6 is also a great option for efficient storage, but be aware that your random write performance will be horrible - each host IO will be converted to six disk IOs. If you're doing mostly reads and you never, ever want your storage to go offline, then RAID-6 is a good option. And hardware-based RAID-6 is included for free on most RAID controllers.

As far as hardware, you should definitely look at brand-name RAID cards from a vendor that has actually shipped volume to OEMs and the channel. The first 95% of the RAID stack is easy and any bozo off the street can write a RAID stack. But the last 5% takes YEARS to get right.

As far as enclosures, I'm honestly not real sure who's got the best deal. But a SAS-based enclosure with a real SAS expander instead of a SATA multiplexor "should" be relatively cheap. The SAS expander should only add $20 parts cost to the box - not that that has anything to do what a vendor may try to charge for it. :-)

Good luck.

I currently have a 2 year old Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT card and am thinking about replacing it with something faster. Which of these two cards is a better choice and why? Price difference is negligible. I'm not a hardware engineer, so don't really know the nits of the differences. I saw that you basically trade memory speed for memory size. I have an ASUS mobo and love it.

ASUS EN8500GT SILENT/HTP/256M
ASUS EN8500GT SILENT MAGIC/HTP/512M

thank you,
Craigo

I currently have a 2 year old Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT card and am thinking about replacing it with something faster. Which of these two cards is a better choice and why? Price difference is negligible. I'm not a hardware engineer, so don't really know the nits of the differences. I saw that you basically trade memory speed for memory size. I have an ASUS mobo and love it.

ASUS EN8500GT SILENT/HTP/256M
ASUS EN8500GT SILENT MAGIC/HTP/512M

thank you,
Craigo

I am not sure about these particular models, but in general larger memory size means better gaming performance at higher resolutions and memory clock also affects gaming performance. But they have little to nothing to do with video playback performance. I would get the cheaper one among the two.

Hi Hukt
I also need those 90 degree cables from monoprice.
Do you have the part # for them. I can't tell by the picture if they are 90d. down or 90d. up.
thanx, Tony

About to put this htpc together for playing 720p some 1080p content from external USB drives to play plasma tv. What do you guys think

Antec New Solution NSK2480 Black/Silver 0.8mm cold-rolled steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 380W Power Supply

GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Black Edition Processor Model ADO5000DSWOF (Will probably overclock this just a bit)

A-DATA Value Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model VDQVE1A16K

Scythe SCMNJ-1000 80mm Sleeve "NINJA MINI" CPU Cooler - Retail

I'll have probably a 200+ gig drive as the main drive and then a few external 500 gig drives for media, will connect via HDMI to my tv and via optical to my receiver. Total price should be under $400

Hi Hukt
I also need those 90 degree cables from monoprice.
Do you have the part # for them. I can't tell by the picture if they are 90d. down or 90d. up.
thanx, Tony
Wrong thread? You should ask here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=924348&page=18).

About to put this htpc together for playing 720p some 1080p content from external USB drives to play plasma tv. What do you guys think

Antec New Solution NSK2480 Black/Silver 0.8mm cold-rolled steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 380W Power Supply

GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Black Edition Processor Model ADO5000DSWOF (Will probably overclock this just a bit)

A-DATA Value Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model VDQVE1A16K

Scythe SCMNJ-1000 80mm Sleeve "NINJA MINI" CPU Cooler - Retail

I'll have probably a 200+ gig drive as the main drive and then a few external 500 gig drives for media, will connect via HDMI to my tv and via optical to my receiver. Total price should be under $400

Looks good.

wow renethx, you seem like the wiki of htpc knowledge. I originally started a thread in the $3K or less projector section based on my projector, but the question is about my htpc rig and the audio I want to get out of it. I'd like to use 2 7800gt's in sli to run my video (just bought the LG combo HD/Blu-ray drive from newegg) and according to the link at nvidia the 7 series does the purevideo but NOT the purevideo HD? I guess I'll be swapping my 8800gts's in sli to this htpc from my main office/gaming rig then.

For sound, I have a 7.1 onkyo receiver, what's going to give me the highest quality sound? Is it a codec thing rate limited so a aftermarket card vs. the onboard is not really going to do anything for me? Or do you suggest the aftermarket audio card like Audigy (it's the only company I personally have experience with, don't know if anybody else out there is any better or compatible with vista home premium 32bit).

I'd like to use 2 7800gt's in sli to run my video (just bought the LG combo HD/Blu-ray drive from newegg) and according to the link at nvidia the 7 series does the purevideo but NOT the purevideo HD? I guess I'll be swapping my 8800gts's in sli to this htpc from my main office/gaming rig then.

For sound, I have a 7.1 onkyo receiver, what's going to give me the highest quality sound? Is it a codec thing rate limited so a aftermarket card vs. the onboard is not really going to do anything for me? Or do you suggest the aftermarket audio card like Audigy.
Please go to this page: PureVideo HD (http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_hd.html) and look at "Product Comparison" (22KB PDF). Both 7800 GT and 8800 GTS have PureVideo HD Gen 1. However 8800 GTS offloads more processing from the CPU than 7800 GT because of higher core clock and its PQ may be different (better or worse). You'd better try both cards and compare them.

As for analog sound, a discrete sound card is usually better than onboard sound (better DAC and OPAMP). Please go to the sound card chapter of my guide. It's a bit outdated, though. Recent popular mid-range ($100-$200) cards are

- ASUS Xonar (sound processor AV200 = C-Media Oxygen CMI8788)

- Auzentech Auzen X-FI Prelude 7.1 (CA20K1, the same processor as Creative X-FI)

There is a dedicated thread for each card.

im looking at putting together an HTPC, go figure since im posting here, and am going to be using it as a HD PVR for cable, music, playing dvd's and eventually hddvd/br, so the only limiting part should be the drive itself. It will be displaying through a 63" Sony HDTV and audio through an Onkyo receiver

now i have built a few gaming rigs and various computers, but with little available time, i have since gotten behind with just about everything that has been going on with computers, so i have been researching parts and this also being my first HTPC build, i just want to make sure i havent overlooked anything

Case: Silverstone CW03, my main question with the case is for fitment of all components, and the touchscreen is important to me for use of music playback without needing to turn on the TV

MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 Rev. 2.0

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, on the GIGABYTE website it says that it is supported since bios version F6, would this cause any issues w/ initial setup? i dont want to have to buy some low end CPU to setup and update bios

CPU Heatsink/Fan: Thermalright Ultra-90(P4LGA-775) with an Arctic Cooling 92mm AF9225PWM, granted the 120 would be better but i know that will not work w/ the heatpipe setup for the GA-P35-DS4 mobo, im not sure if there is any better one that will fit the mobo but im also not sure about fitting it in the case, there shouldnt be any issues right?

Graphics Card: ASUS EN8600GTS silent/HTDP/256m, obviously noise level is a concern so the passive cooling is a plus but are there any that would be better? (similarly priced that is)

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) BL2KIT12864AA804, pretty sure its compatable with the motherboard

PSU: Corsair CMPSU-620HX

HDD: Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB HD501LJ

Sound Card: AuzenTech Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 AZT-XFPRELUDE

TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 1101WB, after reading through tons of information it seems like this should work, this is the one part that im really unsure of though

Optical Drive: Sony NEC Optiarc SATA DVD burner AD-7190S, this will be replaced with a HD DVD/BR drive once i would actually be using it

OS: Vista 32-bit Home Premium

In simple terms, PureVideo HD Gen3 just caught up with UVD.

GeForce 8400 GS (G86) / Radeon HD 2400 Pro has many issues. 8500 GT, 8600 GT, 2600 Pro or 2600 XT is a better choice.

What about 2400XT?

Antec New Solution NSK2480 Black/Silver 0.8mm cold-rolled steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 380W Power Supply
GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Black Edition Processor Model ADO5000DSWOF (Will probably overclock this just a bit)
A-DATA Value Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model VDQVE1A16K
Scythe SCMNJ-1000 80mm Sleeve "NINJA MINI" CPU Cooler - Retail

I'll have probably a 200+ gig drive as the main drive and then a few external 500 gig drives for media, will connect via HDMI to my tv and via optical to my receiver. Total price should be under $400

That looks like a very similar spec to what I was considering - I'm toying with addiing a 2400XT and dropping to a M/B without the X1250 IGP. What do folks think?

mdoog

- CW03 is too new to see user's or professional reviews.

- Q6600 works with DS4 Rev. 2.0 right out of the box.

What about 2400XT?

2400 XT (basically the same as 2400 Pro with much higher memory clock) is fine. But 2600 Pro is a much better choice as the price difference is only ~$10.

If you are going for a discrete graphics, then you may choose AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ ADO4400DDBOX 2.3GHz 65W ($84) or Athlon X2 BE-2400 ADH2400DOBOX 2.3GHz 45W ($100). They are cheaper and cooler than the Black Edition.

mdoog

- CW03 is too new to see user's or professional reviews.

- Q6600 works with DS4 Rev. 2.0 right out of the box.

ok thanks and ya after posting i found that the info on the CW03 came out less than a month ago, seems nice that it is 14 mm taller, making it easier to fit the larger heatsinks and allow better airflow, too bad, anyways my question is would the Thermalright Ultra-90 be able to fit in the LC18? i guess the Scythe Ninja Mini would fit all of my needs also.

so since it would be in the LC18 case instead, only switching to the Scythe Ninja Mini and using everything else listed previously i should be set? in terms of compatibility and physically fitting that is.

ok thanks and ya after posting i found that the info on the CW03 came out less than a month ago, seems nice that it is 14 mm taller, making it easier to fit the larger heatsinks and allow better airflow, too bad, anyways my question is would the Thermalright Ultra-90 be able to fit in the LC18? i guess the Scythe Ninja Mini would fit all of my needs also.

so since it would be in the LC18 case instead, only switching to the Scythe Ninja Mini and using everything else listed previously i should be set? in terms of compatibility and physically fitting that is.

The max height of a cooler should be 138mm for SilverStone LC18 (H170mm) according to SPCR Forum - Silverstone GD01 and LC17 HTPC Cases (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44608). I think you would want Thermalright Ultima-90 instead of Ultra-90 as it is shorter (139mm) and better. Ultima-90 barely fits in LC17/LC18/LC20/GD01/CW01. It will fit in CW03.

I don't recommend Ninja Mini for cooling Q6600. BTF90 or Ultima-90 is better for a quad-core.

Quick question: how important is the size of the cache on the CPU in terms of HD playback using GMA3x00? I ask this because i have read other boards that a 1Mb Cache limits video performance, yet i was considering a E2160 to overclock on my HTPC.

Would i be better off getting a CPU with a larger cache such as an E6xxx?

Quick question: how important is the size of the cache on the CPU in terms of HD playback using GMA3x00? I ask this because i have read other boards that a 1Mb Cache limits video performance, yet i was considering a E2160 to overclock on my HTPC.

Would i be better off getting a CPU with a larger cache such as an E6xxx?
In general cache size does not matter, CPU frequency is everything for video playback without GPU HW assist.

The max height of a cooler should be 138mm for SilverStone LC18 (H170mm) according to SPCR Forum - Silverstone GD01 and LC17 HTPC Cases (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44608). I think you would want Thermalright Ultima-90 instead of Ultra-90 as it is shorter (139mm) and better. Ultima-90 barely fits in LC17/LC18/LC20/GD01/CW01. It will fit in CW03.

I don't recommend Ninja Mini for cooling Q6600. BTF90 or Ultima-90 is better for a quad-core.

Uhm, you have some graph to link me to avvalorate this?
I was thinking to go with the ninja mini and a Q9300 or Q9450.

I'm considering the same case (SS CW03), that looks the best among all cases using 7" touchscreens.

Uhm, you have some graph to link me to avvalorate this?
I was thinking to go with the ninja mini and a Q9300 or Q9450.

I'm considering the same case (SS CW03), that looks the best among all cases using 7" touchscreens.
That's my experience. Minja is not bad, but BTF90 is better for Q6600 @3.0GHz. Yorkfield runs cooler than Q6600, so Minja should be fine. I haven't tested Ultima-90, but it should be better than BTF90.

Great thread! renethx, thanks for all your time and effort. My family room home theater requirement:

All must fit neatly into my girlfriends entertainment center:mad:(what a pain)

Dell Dimension 4600 (mATX I think) laying sideways:
Pentium 4 2.8
1.5GB RAM
Visiontek HD 2400 Pro outputing 1920x1080 60MHz to
Sony Bravia KDL-40V3000 (purchased because of width restraint, might upgrade to 46" if I can tweak a shelf) via DVI to HDMI cable
Dolby Digital Mystique sound card output to Yamaha RX-V361(purchased because of depth restraint) via optical running 3.1 to yamaha FCR and sub

The mobo looks like a mATX and I wanted to move all HTPC components to an attractive SHALLOW DEPTH case exactly like the A-Tech 3000 Heatsink Case that you recommend, but hopefully much cheaper. :D

Questions:
1. Is there another less expensive alternative to the A-Tech 3000 with the same depth?

2. Can I even move all the components out of the Dell or am I going to have some kind of proprietary BS dilemma?

Kindest Regard for any help
Sid

sid.leake@gdsonl

SilverStone LC02/LC04 is relatively shallow, but still 300mm in depth. Moreover you need to use riser cards to install expansion cards and AGP is not supported so that you can't use the mb from Dell Dimension 4600.

Perhaps you'd better buy a new mb (with or without IGP), CPU and memory.

Thx for the quick response.

One more question, I use an external Double layer DVD attached via USB to my HTPC. When I am watching DVD's my TV says 1080P on the display. Am I to assume that my video card is upconverting my DVD's to 1080P?

Thx for the quick response.

One more question, I use an external Double layer DVD attached via USB to my HTPC. When I am watching DVD's my TV says 1080P on the display. Am I to assume that my video card is upconverting my DVD's to 1080P?

My guess is that no matter what your HTPC is displaying it will be sending a 1080p signal to your TV. (Fullscreen 3d games are the exception)

Is SW Raid 5 fast enough for torrent downloads at 8mb/s ?

What about Hard Drive playback of data backed up from HD DVD/ BLU-RAY disks at ...50mb/s (i believe that was the streaming data rate, correct me if I'm wrong)?

Which SW Raid gives the best reliability and performance?

Edit: WOW, switched up B/b TWICE, I must have been REALLY drunk!!!!

this is a really informative thread, well done renethx.

now to my question!!!

can i use the motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R) in a media server. will it support hardware RAID 5 via its 7 sataII ports. If not what other options do I have. ideally i wouldnt like to spend extra $$$ buying a dedidated raid card. will i still get good results with an onboard raid set up.

Is SW Raid 5 fast enough for torrent downloads at 8mB/s ?

What about Hard Drive playback of data backed up from HD DVD/ BLU-RAY disks at ...50mB/s (i believe that was the streaming data rate, correct me if I'm wrong)?

mB/s? That's mBytes/sec. I think you meant mb/s - mbits/sec. Most cable broadband rates are 10mb/s max.

Even the poorest SW RAID-5 implementation would be able to do 8mb/s, or 1MB/s, on writes.

On reads, there should be very little RAID-5 overhead - assuming you don't have a failed drive and aren't running in degraded mode. 50mb/s is no problem.

Thx - very well done thread and lots of hard work that is much appreciated!!

I'm looking to build an HTPC that will do the following:
- Play my MP3 collection
- screen show pictures
- play standard DVD's with the same or better quality than my current stand alone 480P player.
- capable of playing Blue Ray or HD Dvd in the future when the prices of players drops.

My questions:
- what is the minimum level of CPU?
- what is the minimum level of GPU?
- Do I need a stand alone sound card or will an integrated MOBO work for surround?
- Other things I should consider to make this work well?

Thx in advance!!

Which SW Raid gives the best reliability and performance?

RAID-6 has the best reliability and lowest performance. (Reads are actually high performance, but writes are REALLY poor.) It supports two drive failures, but software implementations are not common.

RAID-5 is similar to RAID-6, but supports just one drive failure. It is also the most efficient RAID level, requiring just one drive's worth of overhead. (RAID-6 is two.)

RAID-10 has good reliability and best performance. It supports one drive failure per RAID-1 pair. In other words, half the drives could fail and the array would still work, assuming they were the correct drives. If not, a two drive failure can bring down the array. Also, RAID-10 is the least efficient RAID level, requiring half your drives to be used for overhead.

(BTW, I'm assuming that you're asking about redundant arrays, and not RAID-0.)

Also it's important to point out that software RAID is not bootable, it can't support write-back cache and it can take a lot of CPU cycles. Hardware RAID with battery-backup avoids all these problems, but of course costs more.

With all this said, do you really need the redundancy offered by RAID? Do you care that your media library is taken down when a drive fails? If you're not serving video to a hotel, etc., then losing access isn't a big deal. Just tell your family to watch a DVD. It's not like you're going to actually lose your data, because it's backed up, right? Remember, RAID isn't a backup strategy - it's an "always available" strategy. That's why I use RAID-0 for my media, and I backup to cheap, external USB drives. And I try to keep those USB drives offsite, at my office or wherever, just in case the house burns down - knock on wood.

audio card connections vs. quality.

Looking at the HT Omega Claro, will the s/pdif connection be a cleaner/higher quality connection vs. the miniplugs? I assume so, but not sure.

audio card connections vs. quality.

Looking at the HT Omega Claro, will the s/pdif connection be a cleaner/higher quality connection vs. the miniplugs? I assume so, but not sure.

The s/pdif signal is digital and "should" be better than the analog signal on the miniplugs. You'll also be able to run a longer cable with no degredation in quality.