pouët.net

sorry about my english. It reads like I were seriusly drunk writing that :D

I'd like to add something about Mindcandy. I think it's a great idea. Not so cool as seen demos nativelly on the system the were coded for, but absolutelly easier. I remember how hardware dependant were thoose "no gravis no demo" demos, and by the way, very frustrating for thoose like me who had a simple SB Pro ;D

I just cant wait for the dvd to arrive.

A couple of things people are missing:

- Regions suck -- which is why I made MindCandy region-free! Plays on all DVD players!

- Euro players and TVs support "60Hz PAL" -- so it should play on all players!

- DivX only handles 30fps, while these demos are 60fps! DivX sucks! Why else do you think we chose MPEG-2?

Consoles as DVD players: MindCandy was tested on a PlayStation2, so I think it will play fine on an XBOX. BTW, PlayStation2 is a SLOOOOW player...

PS: Yes, you can download and watch them. But we also have commentary, sometimes from the authors themselves (Future Crew, Statix, COMA, Moppi...)

PPS: DVDrip: please buy at least one -- if we don't break even there won't be any more :(

saffron: I use DivX. With all the bugs and limitations it's still better than the DVD pimping. Of course, that's my opinion.

Trixter: It actually works on a non-chiped ps2?? Before I chipped mine it didn't play regionfree dvd's. Ok, it played them but it was flickering in black and white.

es46: That's because your ps2 was probably outputting NTSC-signals your TV could not handle. That has absolutely nothing to do with the region of the DVD.

hooray, i just ordered one :)

Take a look at this dvd player compatibility list before you buy: http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers

some players support picture cds.

moT - divx eh? can you tell me where to buy for example seven samurai, amarcord, taxi driver in that format?
...oh, you mean I can't actually buy any real films in divx? silly me, for a moment I thought that compensating the filmmakers for their work would be a good idea, I guess I should have known better ;)

saffron: i don't think all filmmakers should be compensated for their work.:)

saffron - well, can you buy music as mp3 in any shop?

you can actually, you just have to know how to ask :)

saffron: I 'compensate' the filmmakers by visiting the local cinemas far too often. There, I often get stolen by watching movies that are purely crap. But who am I to complain? Not a big fat business man, just a little sheep in the crowd. But seing so many dead dvd roms around just doesn't feel right. I lost faith in that technology.

Oh, and don't tell me that you are the nice little civilian that pays for everything that he uses because I am not 12 any more :-)

trixter, wtf are you on about, really?

i'm not to sure i want to buy a dvd mastered buy someone who believes mpeg4 is inferior to mpeg2.

and who furthermore thinks his mpeg2 clips run at 60fps, when infact NTSC run at 29.xx fps. you're mixing this up with the fact that your clips are interlaced.

should you for example output a divx encoded clip through your tv-out, your card forces the signal interlaced (or 60fps as you bluntly call it), because your TV cant handle progressive frames.

there is a pretty good reason why divx/xvid only handle 23.xx(FILM)/25(PAL)/29.xx(NTSC) fps.
have you even seen a computer monitor outputting interlaced frames?

go figure...

ps. and please dont try to tell me your clips ARE 60fps, because
1. i doubt that's even possible concidering storage on the dvd.
2. then when interlaced you'd require a TV with a output capacity of 120hz, and afaik we only have 100hz available on the market.

saffron, you can buy atleast seven samurai and taxi driver from me, w/ custom made coversleeve! :)

stellan you don't know shit

stellan, since we have 50hz and 100hz in europe i guess there's 60hz and 120hz in the US.
... and atleast i've seen a computer monitor outputting interlaced frames (some crappy monitors in the 90s).

i recieved my mindcandy dvd right now :). the case looks great. but i still dont have a dvd player :( one cheap player would cost 100 euro. so ps2 would cost 150 euro more.. then i can even play mgs2:substance :) this cool? is the ps2 a good dvd-player?

ector, oh, care to elaborate on that intelligent comment of yours?

tsutomu, i stand corrected about the ntsc doublescan (120hz indeed). im talking about the current crt/tft/lcd monitors, not your old commodore monitors :)

trixter, i would love for you to prove to me that your mpeg2streams on Mindcandy run at 60 FPS, and not 30fps (standard NTSC framerate)

for those of you who wonder why im making such a big fuzz about this - here

stellan: mpeg2 *is* superiour to mpeg4 when the bitrate is high enough, and guess what? on a dvd the bitrate *is* high enough. furthermore, you are talking about 29.97 full frames per second, whereas mpeg2 can also encode 60 fields per second, as your tv likes it.

I suggest you actually figure out what you are talking about before you start flaming wildly.

Jeez, leave the scene for a few months and look what happens while you're gone... :) My order's sent in! Excellent stuff.

Question: is the audio commentary going to be in english?

stellan: If you'd've actually READ the divx.com guide you've linked to, you would know that Trixter is completely right with stating that the DVD runs at full 60fps.

Or to make it short:

PC frame 0 -> Video frame 0, odd field
PC frame 1 -> Video frame 0, even field
PC frame 2 -> Video frame 1, odd field
PC frame 3 -> Video frame 1, even field
PC frame 4 -> Video frame 2, odd field
PC frame 5 -> Video frame 2, even field
PC frame 6 -> Video frame 3, odd field
PC frame 7 -> Video frame 3, even field

etc pp.

These are REAL 60fps, it's just not 60fps at full resolution, but nobody here did claim that.

I think you should seriously consider our advice: FIRST know something, THEN flame.

Stellan: Feel free to IM me (MobyGamer on AIM and Yahoo, ICQ 58657721) if you'd like clarification. To whit:

- By 60fps I should have instead written "60 images per second". A frame contains two interlaced fields, each of which is a different moment in time.

- I do not believe MPEG-4 is worse than MPEG-2 -- what I wrote exactly was "DivX sucks", not MPEG-4. DivX is a very limited subset of all that MPEG-4 has to offer, but the #1 thing that really sucks about DivX is that it doesn't support fields. So the only way you're going to get the same 60 images per second as MPEG-2 out of DivX is to encode 720x240 (NTSC) or 720x288 (PAL) at 60fps -- which requires a 2GHz machine to play back, last I checked, and a player that can properly stretch the source vertically by 2x.

DivX is great for movies, but completely inappropriate for video. Unfortunately, most DVD software players are also horrible for interlaced video because they deinterlace the output before displaying it (it's an "optimzation" -- it's quicker than trying to split the fields and shift one of them a half-pixel upwards for full-motion progressive output) so that throws half the motion quality away.

PS: Twoflower: Yes, the commentary is in English.

yes. i can say too that divx sucks sometimes. i dont know why and dont know anything about the technical stuff. but i cant watch and *enjoy* 700mb divx porno on my k6 500, but mpeg2 is really fast, even seeking does take effect nearly realtime