eac3to - audio conversion tool

[Thunderbolt8]

reported this already, but its an ffdshow problem and has nothing to do with eac3to, since it plays fine with coreavc.

[rickardk]

Originally Posted by madshi

Ok, we have 2 decoders. The mkv plays fine with one but not so well with the other one. I think this is a case where it would make sense to test more decoders. This might help finding out where the problem is located. IIRC there are 3 more flac decoders out there, namely: Illuminable (or something like that), CoreFlac and the DCBass Source filter.

Tested Illuminable and DCBass Source filter but can't get them to work. Even if I set the merit high they will not connect (maybe they can't handle 6 channels). So as of now I really can't tell if it is something wrong with the eac3to muxing of H264 or a FLAC decoder problem.

One thing I forgot in last post is that the play time of the movie is not displayed in MPC or WMP when using ffdshow for FLAC decoding. But when I skip forward a seond or two the playtime is displayed.

Using madflac the playtime is there from start.

[act.anon]

Originally Posted by madshi

It shouldn't. But even if it did, it would not explain the eac3to error messages. It seems to me that either the rip is bad or that the disc is simply incorrectly authored. How did you rip? Did you use the AnyDVD HD ripping tool? Or did you simply copy the files via explorer (or with another file manager)?

I used the AnyDVD HD ripping tool, version 6.3.1.7.

[Tegeril]

Since installing Vista SP1, eac3to can no longer see the Nero 7 HD plugin's decoder. Still recognizes Sonic, Haali, and MKVToolnix properly

[Denner]

Quick question.

Should I apply the audio delay from a Dolby TrueHD track (-87ms, from HD-DVD source) when I encode it to FLAC with eac3to or should I wait until muxing it in with the video using MKVmerge ?

Does audio delay even apply to FLAC when encoding ?

[nautilus7]

Have you demuxed the TrueHD track? If not and is still in the .evo container, the delay will be applied automatically. If it's demuxed, then you have to do it manually.

[Denner]

It is still in the EVO.

So I should do nothing and it will be all right ?

Does this apply to all audio tracks, when coming from EVO an straight to eac3to ?

[nautilus7]

Yes... But it's not that difficult to find out by your self. Just run your command line without any delay values and you'll see a message like "applying truehd delay".

[frenchglen]

Hey madshi,
I'm going to try to attempt at transcoding stereo 24-bit 88.2kHz LPCM to WAV once more.
I have PM'd you with a sample as well as the WAV successfully converted by DVDAExplorer, to compare.

my code for the current attempt is:

eac3to.exe track1.pcm track1.wav -2 -24 -big -88200 -override
This might be a RAW/PCM file. Trying to figure out the details.
This will probably take a while. Please be patient...
The RAW/PCM file seems to have 6 channels.
Was not able to figure out all parameters of this RAW/PCM file.
Please specify channel, bitdepth and endian parameters via command line.

As you can see, it can't seem to read the file too well.

[Village Guy]

Originally Posted by madshi

Missed this one:


Don't really know why you're not getting smooth playback. Try muxing only video without any audio to MKV. Is the playback smooth then?


With the same media player and DirectShow filters?

Madshi Thanks for the suggestion.

I can confirm that the video is fine without muxing in the audio! It would appear that MKVtoolnix is having a problem. Is there a better way to mux the video & audio together?

[scarbrtj]

Madshi:

May have already been asked & answered, but I have a question re: 7.1 tracks. I, for my own purposes, always want to end up with AC3 or DTS files. As you know, DTS offers us (potentially) one more channel than AC3, i.e. DTS ES is 6.1 channels.

Will eac3to allow me to go from 7.1 PCM to 6.1 DTS? (On some DTS MA or DTS HD files, eac3to has given me 6.1 DTS files.) If not, what file format would you convert to in order to preserve the highest fidelity, most channels, and good PC/home theater compatibility?

Thanks.

[frenchglen]

Originally Posted by scarbrtj

Madshi:

May have already been asked & answered, but I have a question re: 7.1 tracks. I, for my own purposes, always want to end up with AC3 or DTS files. As you know, DTS offers us (potentially) one more channel than AC3, i.e. DTS ES is 6.1 channels.

Will eac3to allow me to go from 7.1 PCM to 6.1 DTS? (On some DTS MA or DTS HD files, eac3to has given me 6.1 DTS files.) If not, what file format would you convert to in order to preserve the highest fidelity, most channels, and good PC/home theater compatibility?

Thanks.

I have a feeling the DTS format can support 7.1ch although I'm not sure if any encoders have that ability.

[nautilus7]

DTS: up to 6.1, not with Surcode though

DTS-HD: up to 7.1

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Skinleech

Thanks for the reply. I have since tried with another mpeg2/flac combo & get the same thing.

Haali to Madflac to default direct sound device does play the audio on both files.

If I disable Haali & enable the internal MPC mkv filter the same thing happens with Hostel (the 1st file I converted). The Terminator is the most recent one I tried, and the audio plays, but no video filter loads!

Sorry for the late reply. I've just tried Terminator (you mean the mpeg2 USA Blu-Ray, right?). I've muxed the video to MKV by using eac3to and converted the PCM to FLAC also with eac3to and then combined both tracks with the latest mkvtoolnix version. The result plays just fine for me with MPC HC 1.1 and both madFlac and ffdshow FLAC decoding (XPSP2, VMR9). Now of course there are so many different combinations and versions of the filters that it's nearly impossible for me to know where the problem is coming from in your case. Here are a few suggestions:

(1) Try different renderers.
(2) Try different video decoders.
(3) Try different audio decoders.
(4) Try different media players.
(5) Try to manually setup the graph via GraphEdit.

If you can't find out why it's failing to work as expected please help me to reproduce the problem. Basically I'd need a sample with which I can reproduce the problem.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by rickardk

So as of now I really can't tell if it is something wrong with the eac3to muxing of H264 or a FLAC decoder problem.

One thing I forgot in last post is that the play time of the movie is not displayed in MPC or WMP when using ffdshow for FLAC decoding. But when I skip forward a seond or two the playtime is displayed.

Using madflac the playtime is there from start.

Sounds very strange. Of course it would be great if there was an easy way to reproduce the problem. We could then ask the ffdshow guys to check out what is happening. I think it's probably a bug in ffdshow.

Originally Posted by act.anon

I used the AnyDVD HD ripping tool, version 6.3.1.7.

That's too bad. The EVO is definitely damaged. Probably an authoring fault. You could try demuxing the tracks with EvoDemux and then using eac3to to deal with the raw tracks...

Originally Posted by Tegeril

Since installing Vista SP1, eac3to can no longer see the Nero 7 HD plugin's decoder. Still recognizes Sonic, Haali, and MKVToolnix properly

Does ShowTime still play E-AC3 tracks? Can you still use the "Nero Audio Decoder 2" in GraphEdit (after having renamed Graphedit.exe to Recode.exe)?

Originally Posted by frenchglen

I'm going to try to attempt at transcoding stereo 24-bit 88.2kHz LPCM to WAV once more.
I have PM'd you with a sample as well as the WAV successfully converted by DVDAExplorer, to compare.

my code for the current attempt is:

eac3to.exe track1.pcm track1.wav -2 -24 -big -88200 -override
This might be a RAW/PCM file. Trying to figure out the details.
This will probably take a while. Please be patient...
The RAW/PCM file seems to have 6 channels.
Was not able to figure out all parameters of this RAW/PCM file.
Please specify channel, bitdepth and endian parameters via command line.

As you can see, it can't seem to read the file too well.

You must be using a very old eac3to version. Here's what I'm getting with your sample:

C:\Desktop>eac3to track1.pcm track1.wav -2 -24 -big -88200 -override
RAW/PCM, 2.0 channels, 0:00:36, 24 bits, 88.2khz
Reading RAW/PCM...
Swapping endian...
Writing WAV...
Creating file "track1.wav"...
eac3to processing took 1 second.
Done.

Originally Posted by Village Guy

Madshi Thanks for the suggestion.

I can confirm that the video is fine without muxing in the audio! It would appear that MKVtoolnix is having a problem. Is there a better way to mux the video & audio together?

It could be a problem with mkvtoolnix, but I'm not convinced about that yet. I'd suggested trying different video/audio decoders. It might be a problem with the video decoder.

Originally Posted by scarbrtj

May have already been asked & answered, but I have a question re: 7.1 tracks. I, for my own purposes, always want to end up with AC3 or DTS files. As you know, DTS offers us (potentially) one more channel than AC3, i.e. DTS ES is 6.1 channels.

Will eac3to allow me to go from 7.1 PCM to 6.1 DTS? (On some DTS MA or DTS HD files, eac3to has given me 6.1 DTS files.)

eac3to itself can not encode in DTS. eac3to can only call Surcode to encode DTS - and Surcode is limited to 5.1 channels. Or with DTS Master Audio and High Resolution tracks eac3to can extract the core - which sometimes is 6.1. But there's nothing eac3to can do about it. So the short answer to your question is: No - unless the core of a DTS-HD track happens to be 6.1.

Originally Posted by scarbrtj

If not, what file format would you convert to in order to preserve the highest fidelity, most channels, and good PC/home theater compatibility?

FLAC. Of course (since it's lossless) it also consumes more space than the lossy codecs. But you can cut down bitdepth to 16bit. This may hurt audio quality ever so slightly (but probably less than doing a lossy encoding in AC3 or DTS) and a 16bit FLAC file will usually not consume more space than a 1.5Mbps DTS track.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt8

have a little problem with a TV mpeg2 source, its 29.97 fps (27.35 fps telecine), but the demuxed .mpg stream is detected as 1080p/24 by eac3to, so the resulting length of the video .mkv is ~15 mins too long and therefore out of sync with the audio. heres a sample of the .ts:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8jc5gp

There's definitely something funny going on with that sample. I'll put it on my todo list, but I'm not sure if I can fit this one it right now.

[madshi]

eac3to v2.32 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* added automatic "VPLST000.XPL" and "HVA00001.VTI" parsing
* "eac3to" or "eac3to ." inside of a HD DVD folder lists all title sets
* "eac3to someHdDvdMovieFolder" lists all title sets
* "eac3to someHdDvdMovieFolder whatever.mkv" converts the longest title set
* "eac3to someHdDvdMovieFolder x) whatever.mkv" converts the selected title set
* EVO report now contains the EVO display name (if "VPLST000.XPL" is available)
* added language to EVO audio track listing (if "VPLST000.XPL" is available)
* added EVO audio track display names (if "VPLST000.XPL" is available)
* sequence end codes are stripped from VC-1, MPEG2 and h264/AVC
* put "-stripPulldown" option back in on request
* option "-demux" now writes to "current directory" instead of source directory
* option "-demux" now creates files with meaningful names
* doing "eac3to src.evo dst.mkv" now creates audio files with meaningful names
* doing "eac3to src.evo dst.mkv" writes the audio files to same path as the MKV
* after successful (erroneous) processing "success.wav" (error.wav) is played

HD DVD remuxing just got even more comfortable.

The usual processing steps should now be these:

--------------------

(1) List all title sets, sorted by runtime. The title sets with the longest durations are listed first. Especially useful is that (unlike EvoDemux) eac3to always shows the language of every audio track. The title set listing can be invoked by using one of these possibilities:

- "eac3to c:\MovieFolder"
- "eac3to ."
- "eac3to"

(The latter two options only work if you call eac3to from inside of a HD DVD movie folder, of course. Doesn't matter whether you're inside of ADV_OBJ or HVDVD_TS or in the root of the movie folder.)

The listing will look something like this:

1) FEATURE_1.EVO+FEATURE_2.EVO, 1:55:06
   "Main Movie"
   - VC-1, 1080p (16:9)
   - VC-1, 480p (16:9)
   - E-AC3, 5.1, 48khz, Japanese
   - E-AC3, 5.1, 48khz, English
   - E-AC3, 5.1, 48khz, French
   - E-AC3, 5.1, 48khz, Italian
   - E-AC3, 5.1, 48khz, German
   - E-AC3, 5.1, 48khz, Spanish
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English, "Commentary"

2) M_BERLIN.EVO+M_PARIS.EVO+M_LONDON.EVO+M_MADRID.EVO+M_TANGIERS.EVO+M_BERLIN.EVO, 0:29:42
   "man on the move: play all"
   - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

3) DLS.EVO, 0:12:21
   "deleted scenes"
   - MPEG2, 480i (4:3)
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

4) NYCHASE.EVO, 0:10:46
   "new york chase"
   - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

5) M_BERLIN.EVO, 0:06:10
   "man on the move: berlin"
   - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

6) ROOFTOP.EVO, 0:05:39
   "rooftop pursuit"
   - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

7) M_TANGIERS.EVO, 0:05:21
   "man on the move: tangiers"
   - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

8) RUMBLE.EVO, 0:04:59
    "planning the punches"
    - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
    - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

9) M_LONDON.EVO, 0:04:14
    "man on the move: london"
    - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
    - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

10) M_MADRID.EVO, 0:04:06
    "man on the move: madrid"
    - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
    - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

11) M_PARIS.EVO, 0:03:41
    "man on the move: paris"
    - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
    - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

12) DRIVE.EVO, 0:03:23
    "driving school"
    - MPEG2, 480i (16:9)
    - E-AC3, 2.0, 48khz, English

(2) Select a title set you want eac3to to handle. Let's say you want a trailer to be converted which has the title set number 20 (the title set numbers are listed by eac3to in the first step). So you can do this now:

- "eac3to c:\MovieFolder 20) trailer.mkv"
- "eac3to . 20) trailer.mkv"
- "eac3to 20) trailer.mkv"

(Again the latter two options only work if you call eac3to from inside of a HD DVD movie folder.)

--------------------

If you know that you want the title set with the largest duration handled by eac3to you can skip step (1) and directly do the following which will tell eac3to to automatically choose the longest title set:

- "eac3to c:\MovieFolder 1) movie.mkv"
- "eac3to c:\MovieFolder movie.mkv"
- "eac3to . movie.mkv"

(The last option only works if you call eac3to from inside of a HD DVD movie folder.)

--------------------

Of course you can combine the new command line option possibilites with the "old" ones. So you could e.g. do this:

- "eac3to . 1: movie.mkv 3: English.flac"
- "eac3to 5) 1: movie.mkv 3: Englisch.ac3"

You can always only handle one title set at a time, though.

--------------------

All the new comfort options explained above only work if the "VPLST000.XPL" file is available. Without that file eac3to behaves just as it did before. If the "HVA00001.VTI" file is available, eac3to will make use of that file, too, to make the title set listing as detailed as possible. But the "HVA00001.VTI" is generally not needed for the new comfort functions.

P.S: If you don't like the event sounds, you can replace the two WAV files with your own. Or you can simply delete them. eac3to won't mind.

[nautilus7]

Very nice! Thanks!

So, only subtitle demuxing is missing now? Is it planned?

Do you plan converting eac3to to a gui application some time in the future? I believe it would become way to easy to use. No complaints though.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by nautilus7

So, only subtitle demuxing is missing now? Is it planned?

Subtitles and chapters are missing. Chapters are easy to deal with and will be added in the very next build. I don't know how subtitles are working exactly, though. I could demux them in the binary form they are stored in the EVO file but I don't think that would help anybody.

Apart from these rather small things I'm considering HD DVD support complete now. That means (unless there are more bugs being reported) I can finally move on to Blu-Ray in the next weeks.

Originally Posted by nautilus7

Do you plan converting eac3to to a gui application some time in the future?

At least not in the near future.

[nautilus7]

Demuxing subs in their original format (+ chapter support) would help getting rid of evodemux...
There's no need to use 2 programs, one for audio/video and one for subs. Pelican9's SUPread is able to convert .sup subs to .srt, so it would be useful.

I tested a HD DVD. It seems to work. And it's easy also.

(btw, TrueHD 96KHz tracks are recognized and decoded correctly - can't remember if this has been discussed before).