Zedstrian

In the months since I deleted my Reddit accounts and joined Lemmy, the lack of user base growth has made it clear that we need some users to stay on Reddit as a means of shepherding more users over on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, Reddit simply got what it wanted: less users who make a fuss about how it manages its platform without losing users en-masse.

In doing so, however, does Reddit shadowban posts that mention or promote Lemmy? Googling mentions of Lemmy on Reddit mostly brings up posts from around the time of the blackout, suggesting that mentions of it since then have been suppressed. Before I return to Reddit to promote Lemmy, does anyone know for certain one way or the other?

In the past I've chosen I've often kept AC3 audio tracks thinking that their substantially higher bitrates made them better than the AAC tracks I compared them to. As I've since learned that AAC can be comparable to AC3 at a substantially lower bitrate, to have a means of comparing the two codecs, what would the AAC-equivalent bitrates be for 224kbps and 640kbps AC3?

To compile optimal video, audio, and subtitle track combinations of videos for my media library, I've found MPC-HC's millisecond counter and frame skip features useful for finding the exact offset between different video and audio tracks. After using MKVToolNix to combine the video track of an MP4 file with the delay-adjusted audio track of an MKV file, I noticed that the resulting MKV file was 0.143 seconds (about 3.5 frames in this case) shorter than the original MP4 file. As the frames of both videos remained in alignment until the end, it seems that the 0.143 seconds were taken off the end of the video.

Is there a difference between the two formats that affects video length?

Nearing the filling of my 14.5TB hard drive and wanting to wait a bit longer before shelling out for a 60TB raid array, I've been trying to replace as many x264 releases in my collection with x265 releases of equivalent quality. While popular movies are usually available in x265, less popular ones and TV shows usually have fewer x265 options available, with low quality MeGusta encodes often being the only x265 option.

While x265 playback is more demanding than x264 playback, its compatibility is much closer to x264 than the new x266 codec. Is there a reason many release groups still opt for x264 over x265?

Having gradually built up my media collection to near the capacity of my 16TB external HDD, I've reached the point where I'll probably need to build a RAID array to keep the collection in one place. Assuming the RAID array will be at least 32TB, I have a few questions:

1. From what I've read RAID arrays can help mitigate the risk of individual drives failing if extra space is allotted on the hard drives. Assuming a total capacity of 32TB, how much of that space would be reserved by the RAID array for data loss prevention?

2. Is there a certain type of hard drive I would have to use? Aside from my 16TB drive, I also have two 2 8TB drives that I'd ideally like to be able to re-use in the RAID array, but have left them in their enclosures for the time being.

3. If the hard drives in the array have different transfer speeds, does the array as a whole default to the slowest one?

4. Whether the hard drives I already have are compatible or not, what RAID enclosure and hard drives would you recommend?

While TorrentLeech is great, the demise of FileList makes me want to diversify my catalogue of tracker options in case something were to happen to it as well. Popular releases are usually available on public trackers for a while, with some releases findable on usenet as well, but are there any easily-joinable private trackers as worthwhile as TorrentLeech?

While many popular English language TV shows seem to be dubbed into other widely-spoken languages (looking for French, personally), the releases that include those audio tracks unfortunately often either have lower bitrates than their English-only counterparts (which only include subtitles for other languages) or only have one of several seasons that made its way from the scene to usenet or a torrent tracker. Therefore, to avoid needing to download two variants of the same content and merge the sought combination of their video/audio tracks, is there a simpler means of acquiring dubbed audio of movies and TV shows?

Language-specific public trackers (Torrent911 and YGGTorrent for French) seem to be a reliable means of acquiring alternate releases of movies containing dubbed audio that otherwise are identical in length to the original English releases, making them mergeable, but they seem to be lacking in terms of dubbed releases for anything but the most popular movies and TV shows. Usenet fills the gaps somewhat, but as language-specific private torrent trackers seem hard to gain access to, I haven't found a reliable source for most dubbed releases and dubbed audio tracks.

Having already configured a VLC-powered Google TV configuration with USB hard drives for a relative without the router or download speed needed for reliable streaming, I'm now trying to configure a similar setup for another relative with a non-smart TV and an even slower download speed.

The only requirements for such a device would be the ability to be controlled entirely with a remote, a USB-A or USB-C port compatible with USB hubs and media storage devices, and the reliable playback of videos of assorted codecs and file extensions. As Roku, FireTV, and Android/Google TV streaming sticks tend to be plastered with ads as a means of promoting content within their ecosystems, an alternative HDMI device that minimizes the number of button presses between turning on the TV and and reaching the navigation menu for videos on attached USB storage devices would be preferred.