Ronski finally starts his cinema room.

Phew! Just read your posts from start to finish over the last few days, what an incredible build, and your DIY skills are amazing, really inspiring, hats off your hard work.
One day I hope to have a go at something like that.
 
Hi Ronski, have just re-read this thread before planning my own atmos pelmet. Anything you wish you had done differently now you have lived with the room for a while?
 
Not that I can think of in regards to the pelmet, it works very well.

Only things I can think of in regard to room in general is to have made sure the window cill was completely flat, there is s slight bow which let's light through when the blind is down on the end which is visible when the screens down.

I still need to sort out a better control system for the blinds, and get the screen to work with my Harmony remote, and stop the door hinges from squeaking but that's about it.

I recently purchased an Nvidia Sheild TV and installed SPMC, which is based on Kodi and let's me pass through the audio, so I can stream Atmos and DTS X content from my server.

The room gets used every weekend for watching films, and you'll quite often find my daughter in there revising because it's so quiet.

PS it did get a bit warm through the summer, but it was quite bearable, so I don't regret not fitting aircon.
PPS. Just thought of one, and that is to have used different electrical sockets, I resorted to sticking one face plate on with blu tac after it fell off!

Also I have sockets behind the pelmet, currently I pop the pelmets off when I want switch these off which is rarely, and isn't difficult but it may have been better to have these sockets on a switched spur.
 
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Not that I can think of in regards to the pelmet, it works very well.

Only things I can think of in regard to room in general is to have made sure the window cill was completely flat, there is s slight bow which let's light through when the blind is down on the end which is visible when the screens down.

I still need to sort out a better control system for the blinds, and get the screen to work with my Harmony remote, and stop the door hinges from squeaking but that's about it.

I recently purchased an Nvidia Sheild TV and installed SPMC, which is based on Kodi and let's me pass through the audio, so I can stream Atmos and DTS X content from my server.

The room gets used every weekend for watching films, and you'll quite often find my daughter in there revising because it's so quiet.

PS it did get a bit warm through the summer, but it was quite bearable, so I don't regret not fitting aircon.
PPS. Just thought of one, and that is to have used different electrical sockets, I resorted to sticking one face plate on with blu tac after it fell off!

Also I have sockets behind the pelmet, currently I pop the pelmets off when I want switch these off which is rarely, and isn't difficult but it may have been better to have these sockets on a switched spur.
That's a good idea about the spur, wish I'd thought of doing that as I'd have to take off the bottom of the pelmet to get to the switch.
What are you looking at regarding the harmony control of blinds and screen as I've not purchased the blinds yet but was going to get something from tuiss with motor. I have a difficult box window though. My screen is rf so probably screwed with using the harmony.
 
Thanks, how are the JBLs doing as Atmos speakers, I wondered if they were be a bit underpowered compared to the rest of the speakers?
 
@jk330ci I currently have the harmony controlling the blinds by IR, but it doesn't work very well. I made up a control box which uses a set of four IR relays, unfortunately the manufacture wasn't very clever and made the IR as toggle rather than discrete, so it's easy to get in a muddle. My thinking is to make a controller using a Rasberry Pi, so I can build in a bit of logic control.

My screen is IR & RF, but I don't have an IR receiver for it, and some commands can only be done from the RF controller, so again I'm going to use a RPI to capture the RF signals and then use it to transmit them to control the screen. Not sure how I'll control the Pi from the Harmony, but worse case it'll be IR, but hopefully I can do it over the network. I've got the Pi, but that's as far as I've got!

Thanks, how are the JBLs doing as Atmos speakers, I wondered if they were be a bit underpowered compared to the rest of the speakers?

They're working great, Atmos speakers don't really need to as powerful as the main speakers, but I think on paper the JBL's stack up well to my main speakers. They're actually rated higher 150w v 110w, they're also 4 ohm, but the sensitivity is lower 87db v 92db.
 
That's good to hear. I did look at getting some open backed ceiling speakers and adding my own back box, but to be honest it was probably going to cost more and not work as well :-(
 
If you do not mind What Media/Streamer do you use?
 
@chaz
We have Netflix and Amazon prime for internet streaming, which I use with an Amazon Fire TV. Only problem with the Fire TV is it can't pass through audio when streaming from my server.

So I've just purchased an Nvidia Shield TV which is a big improvement over the Fire TV. SPMC which is a modified version of Kodi can pass through audio so Atmos and DTS X rips work correctly. I also use Emby and this can pass through Dolby Digital and DTS, but not True HD or DTS HD. Unfortunately you can't get Amazon Prime on the shield but I'll keep the Fire TV for that.
 
Thanks Ronski I do not need it to do apps as my Samsung TV does all the apps I want all I want to do is put all my BDs on a big external hard drive at least 8tb and chose them from the screen with top picture and top sound.But I do need all the sound systems & True HD Any ideas?
 
@chaz You might find something like a Mede8er will be suitable, I'm selling an MED1000X3D (have accepted an offer so it's sold). Never got around to setting it up so can't say how easy it is to use, the 600 is the same as the 1000, except you can mount a HDD in the 1000. These can apparently pass through audio, so you'd be able to enjoy all sound formats.

Other than that I'd recommend an Nvidia Shield TV with SPMC installed. I've recently started ripping and transcoding all my Blu Rays to H265, which ends up a lot smaller file size than H264. I can't notice any difference, but unless it was side by side or really bad I probably wouldn't.
 
Thank You Ronski For your help & advice
 
@chazI've recently started ripping and transcoding all my Blu Rays to H265, which ends up a lot smaller file size than H264. I can't notice any difference, but unless it was side by side or really bad I probably wouldn't.

Using Handbrake for that? If so how are you finding the encode times? I looked at X265 when Handbrake first introduced it and the encode time for the small filesize saving was too much for me.
 
@Navvie I'm using a proper program ;)

I use MakeMKV to extract the required video, audio, subtitles and chapters
I then use MKVToolnix to extract just the video
I then use Ripbot264 to turn that into an H265 file in about 2 to 3 hours, I'm sure I can improve that time as a fair amount of time is copying the data around. Ripbot has a feature called distributed encoding and it works really well once you suss out how to set it up. You can have up to 10 servers all working in parallel hence the decrease in time. I only use two computers, one is an old i5 750 running at 3.6Ghz, this has one server thread running on it. The other is an X99 6 core system running at 4.5Ghz, this can handle two server threads running.

Once Ripbots done it's magic I then use MKVToolnix to mux back the audio, chapters and subtitles.
 
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@Navvie I'm using a proper program ;)

I use MakeMKV to extract the required video, audio, subtitles and chapters
I then use MKVToolnix to extract just the video
I then use Ripbot264 to turn that into an H265 file in about 2 to 3 hours, I'm sure I can improve that time as a fair amount of time is copying the data around. Ripbot has a feature called distributed encoding and it works really well once you suss out how to set it up. You can have up to 10 servers all working in parallel hence the decrease in time. I only use two computers, one is an old i5 750 running at 3.6Ghz, this has one server thread running on it. The other is an X99 6 core system running at 4.5Ghz, this can handle two server threads running.

Once Ripbots done it's magic I then use MKVToolnix to mux back the audio, chapters and subtitles.
Hi Ronski
I've used handbrake before for ripping my DVD collection. I don't have a blu Ray drive at the mo. Sorry for being lazy and not finding out the answer myself but what is the advantage of you going through all those different stages and programs?
Cheers
Paul
 
@00Paul00 I don't blame you for be lazy, and it annoys me when people just say go look on the net because it takes so long and you still don't know if what you've found is right.

So I'll start by saying I'm no expert, and I might not be doing things the best way, but it's what I've managed to work out, and the way I do things give me more control.

MakeMKV turns the Blu Ray, or at least what you select from the Blu Ray into an MKV file, it's not compressed or transcoded, just extracted, so I get no annoying adverts or menus, just the film.

Ripbot compresses or transcodes the video, it will also copy audio, or convert it. Depending on how much you compress the video will affect the quality, H265 gives better quality at a smaller file size than H264, but it takes a long time to do, the more CPU's you can throw at it the quicker it gets with distributed encoding.

I've found it works better for me if I use MKVToolnix to extract just the video. I do this because I want to keep the audio as it is, and I also want to keep both audio tracks for player compatibility. So I let Ripbot do it's magic on just the video, I use H265 with a CRF setting of 22 this seems to give very good video quality with a great reduction in file size. The lower the number the higher the quality, and the bigger the file size.

I then load the resultant video only MKV file into MKVToolnix, and also the original MKV file, deselect the original video track and MKVToolnix merges the audio, chapters and subtitles from the original MKV with the shrunk video.

I now have a film that's stored on my server, and we can watch it on any device in the house, and it even looks great in the cinema, and sounds fantastic as I've kept the Atmos / DTS X tracks as well.
 
You can do all that in handbrake with one program and one waiting time
 
You can do all that in handbrake with one program and one waiting time

Please explain how Hanbrake can use up to ten seperate computers at the same time to vastly decrease encoding time? Or have they now added that feature?

You can do all the above from within Ripbot, especially if you have Any DVD installed, but it's just thd way I prefer to do it.
 
Alas, Handbrake doesn't do distributed encoding. But it can pass through HD audio these days.

My workflow is, BD/DVD ripped with MakeMKV (video, all english audio and subtitles). Quick play with VLC to identify audio tracks, if there's a descriptive audio one I'll drop that from my output file through Handbrake.

Load the MKV into Handbrake, pass through all the audio (HD, SD, commentary) and subtitles and tell Handbrake to scan for foreign audio subtitles. With X264, some crazy options and a RF of 19 I finish with a file that's at most 50% the size of the original and looks identical both on my monitor and TVs. My 4770K only manages a couple of encodes over night... but the files play back fine on my HTPC and Pi2.

I use MKVToolnix if I accidentally leave the descriptive audio track in, or if Handbrake fails to pick up the foreign audio subtitles - this was the case with the nightly builds for a long, long time - or if I want to join rips from two discs together. Lord of the Rings, King Kong etc.
 
How many are you doing at once for it to matter? It takes about 30mins per film on my htpc, what size files are you ending up with? Mine are on average 8gb with hd audio passtrhough
 
I can't see how it can take 30 minutes to process and shrink a blu ray even to h264 let alone H265, unless your using a low resolution and very low quality setting.
 
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To be honest I have no idea, this is a pic of the screen if that tells you. I couldn't tell the difference between the original bluray and the mkv on a 3m + screen
 
I don't know either, I thought I'd never used Handbrake before but it was installed on my computer. I'll give it a try on a film I've done recently and see what happens - I think I've set the options the same and it's currently showing 2hr 12 minutes to produce an H265 MKV. Average frame rate is around 20, with Ripbot using 2 pc's it's about 40FPS
 
James is using h264, I've used handbrake for years and stopped using it recently when encodes became painfully slow on my Mac. Didn't know it did hd audio format pass through.
 

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