Harvest Ridge Theater (A CJ Project) - Page 49

Not one bit. The way I understand it, the MKV is a container that holds the movie. I don't believe that the contents are transcoded in the conversion, but I may be wrong. Both are 1080p (if the source was 1080p).

In making the MKV's I am able to remove the audio and subtitles for the languages that I don't need, thus rendering the MKV's smaller than the original ISO. I also remove all of the menus, previews, all of the junk that I'll never use. For a lot of movies, the ISO is 44GB, and the resulting MKVs are in the 25 - 32GB neighborhood.

I ripped ISO's of the dsks that I really like or have some collector or classic value (LOtR trilogy, Good Bad & Ugly, etc). The rest I ripped as MKV using MakeMKV (free program that does a GREAT job). Look it up on the web and you'll see how cool it is. You will also want to grab a copy of AnyDVD for backup purposes too.

Ripping out the audio tracks for the languages that you don't need, the subtitles for the languages that you don't need, the previews and the other crap makes for a significant savings in space for many movies.

You will want to keep the SD soundtracks though, in case you decide to play the MKV on a sysstem that does not support Dolby 5.1 audio. I kept all f the English soundtracks, including the DD, DD2.0, DD5.1 and any HD soundtracks too.

I'm playing with changing the skin on the YAMJ. I really like this new skin. Photos up soon.

I currently have 12TB of online storage. About half of that is used for BR and SD DVD ISOs and rips. I also use the storage array to hold my music collection, my photo collection and my audio book collection.

I'm averaging about 43 MKV files per TB. The image files that I retain are significantly larger...about 26 per TB. The ISOs contain all of the different language soundtracks, the subtitles for all languages, the previews, and the behind the scenes "extras".

When I built the server, I used Win2003 and set up the RAID 5 array in software. This worked fine intially due to a fast processor and a good amount of memory, but it limits the ability to expand the array on the fly. To gain that functionality, I'll need to purchase a hardware RAID card or two, then start a new array (using new disks). After that I can start transferring data. The good part is that I will certainly have plenty of disks so that I can hot swap as failures occur when the transfer is complete. The main detractor for going with a hardware solution was cost...those hardware RAID 5 cards are expensive!

With proper management, I should not have to do the conversion for quite some time, though.

Well, thank you for the kind words. I'm glad that my build thread can be of use for someone.

I knew that I was using an AT screen from the start, so the space behind the screen this just made sense. It was designed to hold the speakers and sub. Holding the pole was a bonus. I have to say, that the pole did present a problem that we were able to overcome quite elegantly. The angled walls did present a challenge for the acoustical plan, but BPape worked around it quite well. There is another member of this forum with the same house plan that I have (his is in another town). By chance, we both put our theaters in the same part of the house. His is flipped...his screen is where my back wall is. We did this without knowing. I met him at his theater open house and that's when I found out we had the same plan. His handle on here is mmmkam. Check out his finished theater too.

If I were doing this over again, I'd use the design service (see the sticky at the top of this forum). They will be able to help you plan out a great space, including an acoustical plan. The design alone is well worth the price. Check it out...the folks who do it are pros!

I don't see any problem with taking some of the space that would be dedicated for behind the screen for use as a storage area accessible from the outside. I would expect that ou need at least 28" between the screen and the back wall for speakers. 36" would be better, depening on the size of your speakers. The space between the outside and inside should be separated by a wall and treated accordingly.

Start a build thread, and post a picture of the space and your proposed plan. Some of the regulars here will be able to chime in and help you figure out some alternatives or provide some pointers.

Good luck!

THe time has come to update my storage array. I need to build a second array and move non-media to it (photos, program files , backups, etc).

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good SATA RAID 5 or 6 controller card that allows for hot swapping and adding new drives (thus changing the size of the array) on-the-fly?

Thanks for that suggestion, but WOW! I'd add that a negative is the cost...about $900 (for the 1880IX)! WOW...that's an expensive card. Anything cheaper (think order of magnitude cheaper)?

Yea, I guess I knew they were expensive, but I was thinking in the $3-400 neighborhood.

I would like to build an array of six 2 GB drives using RAID 5 or 6 that I'll use the card (or cards) for. That should give me 10TB of space. I'm going to build a second array (using software RAID 5) of four 2 TB drives. That will give me about 6 TB usable in the second array.

Thanks for the kind words. It was a journey, but we are really enjoying movies in the theater. The SMX screen is wonderful and I'm so glad that I was able to make that happen. I was iniitally thinking DIY, but now that I've owned a professional screen, there's no way I'd go back.

Good luck with your build!

Sorry for the late response. I'm just getting around to finishing the research and ordering something. I can't find mention of the BBU. Do you know which ones support this?

OK, I'm in the middle of my research for a new SATA RAID controller and have run into a snag. I really like the Promise SuperTrak STEX8760EX card, but my MB and drives are not listed on the compatability list on the compatability list.

My equipment is as follows:

MB: Gigabyte GA-880-UD3H
Drives: Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9250410AS

What happens if the MB and drives are not on the compatability list? Is this just a "tested" list of is this a list of the items that will only work with the card?

EArly father's day present for me...new Behringer amp for the Buttkickers. Going to hook it up today and will post impressions after.

As you'll remember, I got an early Father's day present...I got a Behringer Europower EP4000 Professional 4,000-watt stereo amp. This dude is a beast. It is large (deeper than I expected) and heavy (37 lbs).



I got the amp installed and connected to the buttkickers. This required adding a shelf to the rack and rewiring the buttkickers in the theater.

I am running 3 buttkicker minis on the left side, and 4 on the right. There has been much tinkering with the setup, and I'm still not happy with the results. It seems to take a lot of power to get these rolling. I had to turn up the bass 12 dB and I dropped the volume on the sub. This seemed to get me the power that I needed to make the buttkickers working. I have the volume on the amp turned up pretty high, and the buttkickers don't seem over whelming. In fact, I think I need to tinker with the setup some more to get them to begin working at a lower volume point.

I don't know what I was thinking, but this seems to require a lot of tweaking to get them working properly.