eac3to - audio conversion tool

[mochevolete]

thanks for reply, I'm making MKVs for the PC, so the "double pass" thru v1conv is useless ?

Nik

[nautilus7]

Yes, that's right.

[Momber]

I disagree. Those flags are just plain wrong and they need to go! Vc1conv processing is imperative imho, until madshi finds the time to implement the vc1conv code into eac3to.

[laserfan]

Originally Posted by nautilus7

Yes, sure. First type this command to get the available titles:

eac3to "F:\Rambo IV 2008 Blu-ray 1080p H.264 DTS-HD MA 7.1"
1) 00041.mpls, 2:00:22
   [112+127+115+128+117+129+119+130+121+131+123+132+125].m2ts
   - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, French, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

2) 00042.mpls, 2:00:22
   [112+127+115+128+117+129+119+130+121+131+123+132+125].m2ts
   - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, French, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

3) 00040.mpls, 1:31:32
   [112+114+115+116+117+118+119+120+121+122+123+124+125].m2ts
   - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, French, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

4) 00037.mpls, 1:10:56
   [87+88+89+90+91+92+93].m2ts
   - MPEG2, 1080i30 /1.001 (16:9)
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

5) 00056.mpls, 00125.m2ts, 0:25:16
   - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, French, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

6) 00046.mpls, 00115.m2ts, 0:22:32
   - h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (16:9)
   - DTS Master Audio, English, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, French, multi-channel, 48khz
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

7) 00011.mpls, 00087.m2ts, 0:19:45
   - MPEG2, 1080i30 /1.001 (16:9)
   - AC3, English, stereo, 48khz

Then add the title you want to the previous command:

eac3to "F:\Rambo IV 2008 Blu-ray 1080p H.264 DTS-HD MA 7.1" 1)
M2TS, 2 video tracks, 3 audio tracks, 2:00:22
1: Chapters, 17 chapters
2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
3: h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (20:11)
4: DTS Master Audio, English, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
5: AC3, French, 5.1 channels, 640kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
6: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB

Last step is to select the streams inside the title you wanna process:

eac3to "F:\Rambo IV 2008 Blu-ray 1080p H.264 DTS-HD MA 7.1" 1) 1: c:\rambo\rambo.chapters.txt 
2: c:\rambo\rambo.mkv 4: c:\rambo\rambo.flac 4: c:\rambo\rambo.dts -core 
5: c:\rambo\rambo.comm.ac3
M2TS, 2 video tracks, 3 audio tracks, 2:00:22
1: Chapters, 17 chapters
2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
3: h264/AVC, 480p24 /1.001 (20:11)
4: DTS Master Audio, English, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
5: AC3, French, 5.1 channels, 640kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
6: AC3, English, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Creating file "c:\rambo\rambo.chapters.txt"...
[v02] Extracting video track number 2...
[a04] Extracting audio track number 4...
[a04] Extracting audio track number 4...
[a05] Extracting audio track number 5...
[v02] Muxing video to Matroska...
[a04] Extracting DTS core...
[a04] Decoding with DirectShow (Sonic Audio Decoder)...
[a05] Removing dialog normalization...
[a04] DirectShow reports 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
[a04] Encoding FLAC...
[a04] Creating file "c:\rambo\rambo.flac"...
[a04] Creating file "c:\rambo\rambo.dts"...
[a05] Creating file "c:\rambo\rambo.comm.ac3"...
----------

Good grief, just when I think I've been paying attention here, this comes along and I think "where the heck did THAT come from?"!!!???

Wow, nothing about this that I can find in the /h info--if this is "tribal knowledge", how can I join the tribe, or does one have to be born into it!?

Re: demuxing, you said:

Yes, it can. Simply select the video stream and set .264 as output extension. Generally, it's not a good idea to demux video though, because it can lead to audio/video sync problems and other artifacts, but you can always try and see.

But if one needs to demux e.g. to run DGAVCDec on it, then...?

[rebkell]

Originally Posted by laserfan

Good grief, just when I think I've been paying attention here, this comes along and I think "where the heck did THAT come from?"!!!???

Wow, nothing about this that I can find in the /h info--if this is "tribal knowledge", how can I join the tribe, or does one have to be born into it!?

Re: demuxing, you said:

But if one needs to demux e.g. to run DGAVCDec on it, then...?

LOL, I know, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and it's got so little documentation about the power inside. The help file only seems to skim the surface of all the things it will do. You can use mkvextract to extract the 264 out of the mkv file, but I'm hoping to use the -demux option in the future, but I'm not sure of the syntax needed, according to the help file, it demuxes the first video track and all audio tracks.

[nautilus7]

Originally Posted by laserfan

But if one needs to demux e.g. to run DGAVCDec on it, then...?

If your source is blu-ray, you don't need to demux the video. Just load the .m2ts file (although this might not work for multiple files).

Do you want to encode the video? Demux it then. Set .264 as extension to the video stream. Alternative, you can use eac3to to convert to matsoska and then build a graph file using haali media splitter --> ffdshow and DirectShowSource() to load in avisynth.

[BLKMGK]

An odd error on Moody Blues: Lovely to See You (HD-DVD)

D:\Video\eac3to>eac3to y:\HVDVD_TS\L0_MainMovie.EVO+y:\HVDVD_TS\L1_MainMovie.evo 4: f:\moody\moody-aud.ac3 -640 -libav
The (E-)AC3 reader didn't receive the format information.
The (E-)AC3 reader didn't receive the format information.
EVO, 1 video track, 1 audio track, 1:45:26
"mainMovie"
1: Joined EVO file
2: Chapters, 22 chapters without names
3: h264/AVC, 1080i60 /1.001 (16:9)
4: TrueHD, English, 5.1 channels, 48khz, -66ms
This EVO/VOB file contains authoring faults. Will try to work around that.
[a04] Extracting audio track number 4...
[libav] FIR filter has state data specified
[a04] The libav decoder reported an error while decoding.
Aborted at file position 49152.

But it HAD other tracks:

D:\Video\eac3to>eac3to y:\HVDVD_TS\
1) L0_MainMovie.EVO+L1_MainMovie.EVO, 1:45:46
   "mainMovie"
   - h264/AVC, 1080i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, English, 5.1, 48khz
   - TrueHD, English, 5.1, 48khz
   - E-AC3, English, 2.0, 48khz

2) Tokuten.EVO, 0:29:26
   "Spesial"
   - h264/AVC, 1080i (16:9)
   - E-AC3, English, 2.0, 48khz

3) TaikiMenu.EVO, 0:01:00
   "Taiki_menu"
   - h264/AVC, 1080i (16:9)
   - DTS-HD, English, 5.1, 48khz

I'm not going to keep this one and HD-DVD is pretty much gone it seems but this was the first I'd ever seen such an error so thought I'd note it. Dumping this one Monday <shrug>

[nautilus7]

The 2nd screen/command takes the stream info from the .xpl file. Because of that it's quick and inacurate. It doesn't read any .evo files. When you load the evos (like you did in the 1st screen or by using title 1), 2), ...) you get the actual streams inside the evos.

So, in your case there's something wrong in the evos. Perhaps they are damaged or the eac3 streams have something different from the usual ones (that eac3to likes). Try only the 2nd evo file. If nothing changes, then it might be useful to make a sample and upload here, so madshi can take a look into it, when he show up (i guess he is too busy right now). Else, try re-ripping the disc.

[BLKMGK]

The L1 file throws errors but appears to be decoding and then errors, the L0 errors right away. IMO this is a bad authoring job - which is actually part of one of the errors I got. (lol) No biggie as this is a sort of fringe disk I think and I can get rid of it for someone with a "real" HD-DVD player to have <shrug>

[laserfan]

Originally Posted by rebkell

LOL, I know, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread...

Well, nautilus7 didn't respond to my wonderment so I guess I have to consider a new theory: that nautilus7 is actually madshi "in disguise"!

[saint-francis]

Originally Posted by rebkell

LOL, I know, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and it's got so little documentation about the power inside. The help file only seems to skim the surface of all the things it will do. You can use mkvextract to extract the 264 out of the mkv file, but I'm hoping to use the -demux option in the future, but I'm not sure of the syntax needed, according to the help file, it demuxes the first video track and all audio tracks.

If you know the basics of eac3to you can use the GUI and study the command line that it makes. Yraen certainly knows what he's doing and his tool does it's job well and has all of the options.

[nautilus7]

I am following this thread (and eac3to development) since July 2007. At that point the thread was already 100 pages long --> I read them too. Don't think i am a guru or something. I am here just a little longer than others. All these commands where well explained by madshi when he implemented them in eac3to, so probably were missed by some.

[mochevolete]

Hi again, real first trouble...

from the HD-DVD Im' dealing with, I'm extracting two audio tracks, both are DD+, the first is 1536kbs the second is 768kbs, with the last one no troubles getting an AC3 640kbs (just one tenth longer), but no way in convert it to DTS 768, it stutters like crazy and it's longer by almost two minutes (!).

But I could easily live with the AC3 640 result.

The big problem is the bigger one, the 1536kbs track (always DD+) I've tried everything:
- > DTS 1536
- > DTS 768
- > AC3 640

Using Surcode 1.0.21 and .23, Sonic 4.2 and 4.3, Win Xp and Vista, the closest duration of all my attempts is 3 seconds longer than the video, most of them are from 10 to 7 seconds shorter o longer.

After almost two days of "tests" I'm a bit skeptical...

What am I missing... ?

Nik

[madshi]

Originally Posted by tebasuna51

You can see the WriteHeader routine in Encoder.cs from last BeHappy source code, with support for wav, w64 and rf64 headers. Only the header change the audio data is the same.

EDIT: Docs:
w64
rf64

Originally Posted by menlvd

madshi
about wave64
tech doc http://www.radio.uqam.ca/ambisonic/sony_wave64.pdf
and small sample around 20 seconds desc - 48kHz/24bit/5.1/PCM
http://rapidshare.com/files/119613827/tristan.w64

Thanks. Will have a look at this later...

Originally Posted by Atak_Snajpera

eac3to is unable to demux MP2 audio from .ts
http://x264.nl/h.264.samples/force.p...xe.hd.ateme.ts
http://x264.nl/h.264.samples/force.p...e=./arte.hd.ts

Fixed. However, I've still trouble with the video in both cases. The luxe video seems to be very strange. The h264 bitstream seems to have a crazy framerate stored in it. Will need to check this properly later...

Originally Posted by earl

wine --version
wine-1.0-rc3

[v01] Starting DirectShow conversion failed.
Aborted at file position 1409024.

in a real windows it runs fine

I've no idea why that fails. I'm not a Linux expert at all. It seems to me that Haali's filter doesn't work well in wine. It could be a bug in wine. Or maybe Haali is doing some funny stuff. There's not much I can do about that, unfortunately...

Originally Posted by CiNcH

I am currently looking into MPLS parsing. What I want to find out for the time being is the m2ts files making up the playlist and to reliably detect the main movie MPLS. Do you have any information concerning that?

There is just no information available to properly detect the main movie MPLS. eac3to just lists all playlists with a runtime longer than 30 minutes (or something like that), sorted after runtime.

Originally Posted by rebkell

eac3to will not stripPullDown on HD-DVD AVC streams, only on VC-1, is that correct?

Correct. And the VC-1 pulldown stripping is only a partial strip and needs to be manually activated (via command line option).

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt8

the remuxing of the cinema paradiso blu-ray results in a problem, eac3to says "This doesn't seem to be a valid h264/AVC stream." and doesnt recognize the video stream.

Will be fixed in next build.

Originally Posted by jeffnoone

Q. 2. I know support of E-AC3 is optional in the BD world, I will be using PS3 to play, which I believe supports it.
BUT will a BD with a E-AC3 track only play properly more widely (eg if I was to burn to BD disc)
Or would I be better off putting both the AC3 and the E-AC3 onto the BD disc/folders

Blu-Ray and HD DVD E-AC3 tracks are *NOT* compatible (Blu-Ray E-AC3 tracks have an AC3 core, HD DVD E-AC3 tracks don't). You can not reuse HD DVD E-AC3 tracks for Blu-Ray authoring. At least not if you care about PS3 compatability. You'll have to transcode the HD DVD track to another format.

Originally Posted by jeffnoone

q.3 Any comments on why there are minor (probably negligible) differences between different demuxers?

There are differences. Some demuxers have bugs, others don't. Some demuxers make sure that audio is in sync, others don't. Some demuxers remove garbage data at the beginning of the demuxed tracks, some don't. Some demuxers patch audio/video tracks (e.g. removing dialnorm etc), others don't. Some fix audio overlaps/gaps, others don't.

Originally Posted by jeffnoone

Q4. What is best tool to give exact lengths of video and audio files, once demuxed? MediaInfo only gives to the minute for audio files

eac3to should give fairly precise information (rounded to seconds) about the runtime of the audio files it supports. Runtime of raw audio/video tracks with variable bitdepth is nearly impossible to "guess" right. A tool trying to find out the correct runtime would have to parse the whole video/audio stream to make sure that the runtime is exact.

Originally Posted by xkodi

ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre build 113 Trial:

http://www.arcsoft.com/support/downl...downloadid=384

can decode DTS-HD MA including DTS-HD MA 7.1 channels using GraphEdit:

FileSource (Async.) -> ArcSoft MPEG Demuxer -> ArcSoft Audio Decoder HD -> Dump.ax

still doing tests, but initial results look very promising, i.e. decodes are bit-perfect.

Originally Posted by xkodi

@madshi

FYI, "ArcSoft Audio Decoder HD" build 113 TrueHD 7.1 decodes are bit-perfect, byte-by-byte identical with libav.

so, looks like the ArcSoft decoder is very interesting.

Yeah, it really looks like that!! Will put that on top of my to do list.

Originally Posted by asarian

Just a quick question. When converting DTS to AC3, using eac3to and the Sonic Audio Decoder (which takes about 9 minutes), I see only 1 of my 4 cores is being used. Does eac3to have a multi-threaded switch by any chance? I couldn't find any. Or maybe the Sonic Audio Decoder is not muti-threaded?

eac3to is using multiple threads whenever it's easily possible. E.g. if you decode two audio tracks at the same time, usually one thread is used for one audio track. The Sonic Audio Decoder doesn't seem to do multi-threading on its own. eac3to cannot force it to do that.

Originally Posted by dorati

When demuxing a m2ts-File with MPEG2-VideoCodec the Videofile is defekt and not playing on Standaloneplayer.

The Problem ist - the Header is 2x at the beginning of the m2v-File.

Will be fixed in the next build.

Originally Posted by asarian

When demuxing a m2ts file (extracting DTS sound of "The Matrix"), eac3to reported a 600000ms offset (10 mins). That seems a bit excessive. I was able to correct it again by specifying a negative -600000ms delay to compensate. But any idea what might have caused this?

Could be a bug in the m2ts file. But it could also be a bug in eac3to. eac3to v2.46 used such crazy delays if it didn't detect any valid video streams. This will be fixed in the next build.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt8

madshi, would it be possible that you could output more of the undocumented switches (either here or in eac3to) ? I have a problem with a .m2ts file and am looking for that switch to ingore possible errors now, but since its not documented in eac3to I cant find it.

If an error occurs which you can skip, eac3to will tell you about the option you can use for skipping that error. A lot of errors can simply not be skipped in the current version.

Originally Posted by earl

what does pulldown flag mean ? what have i to do if i mux the video into .mkv ?

If you mux to MKV you can ignore the pulldown flags. They are not nice, but they don't harm much because eac3to writes proper timestamps (ignoring the pulldown flags) into the MKV file - and the video decoders only care about the timestamps coming from the container. However, if you want to demux video and mux it to another container with other tools you should better remove the pulldown flags.

Originally Posted by earl

"[a04] Applying (E-)AC3 delay..."
i convert the .eac3 to .ac3, and i will mux it with mkvmerge with the abc_movie.mkv file, what have i to do with the "-80ms delay" ?
.... i must set -80 ms in the mkvmerge(gui) ? or does eac3to change anything on the delay ?

As long as you feed eac3to with the original container (TS, m2ts, VOB or EVO) eac3to will automatically take care of any delays. You only need to worry about the delays if you use other tools for demuxing audio.

Originally Posted by odin24

I just tried to convert a LPCM track @ approx 7MB/s to DTS @1536kbps using eac3to with eac3toGUI. I used the sonic filter and Surcode is intstalled on my PC. Everything started fine, the single 5GB LPCM file was split to six single channels by eac3to then the recode began and finished after about 15 minutes. I then tried to load the file in tsMuxeR but it came back "cannot detect stream", any ideas?

Try running the DTS stream another time through eac3to ("eac3to your.dts anothertry.dts". That might fix the problem. The Surcode DTS encoder sometimes adds zero padding to the DTS stream, which many tools dislike. eac3to will remove the zero padding for you.

Originally Posted by G_M_C

Hi Madshi,

Just popped in to ask a question;

Lately i' m making some AVCHD-disk; And according to the standard the audio on those disks can only be AC35.1 (up to 640 kbps). Thats no problem, but teh standard also mentiones that the framerate for video can only be 24, 25 or 30 fps.

I' d like to ask if it is possible to implement a function like speedup is now, but only speeds up the audio to 24 fps. This way i can use EAC3to to make to convert the audio i need for my AVCHD disks, cause 24fps is closer to the original (23,976).

Are you sure that it's really 24.000 and 30.000? Often "24fps" and "30fps" is used when actually 23.976 and 29.970 is meant.

Originally Posted by kedoughty

I've been converting my hd dvd's for playback on appletv with the following steps:
1. anydvd to rip
2. eac3to to obtain .mkv video file and .ac3 multichannel audio
3. mkvmerge to create .mkv container file
4. visualhub to convert .mkv to .mov file (1280x720@24fps with .ac3 audio passthru)

i've been successful with many dvd's but encountered a few "problem discs" along the way. now that i've hit my 3rd problem disc, i've noticed a trend. all three (Anchorman, TopGun, and now Stardust) have h264/avc video streams. the discs i've been successful with are all vc-1.

the .mkv file created by mkvmerge won't even play on my computer (iMac with windows XP thru parallels). Multiple mkv players (VLC, mPlayer OSX and Media Player Classic). VLC gives the smoothest video playback but the audio falls out of sync. mPlayer OSX reports a progressively increasing a/v sync that maxes out around 4 sec and a larger dropped frame rate. MPC won't even play the files at all, immediately giving some error message.

consequently, the .mov file created by VisHub as played thru the appletv has a stuttering video with smooth audio playback.

the vc-1 discs (at least 10) that i've done all work fine.

thoughts?

All the h264 HD DVD movies I've converted to MKV played flawlessly for me. However, I'm using Windows. I rather guess that maybe your Mac software is confused by the pulldown flags. You could try remuxing the video, running it through h264info to remove the pulldown flags and then muxing it to MKV.

Originally Posted by mochevolete

from the HD-DVD Im' dealing with, I'm extracting two audio tracks, both are DD+, the first is 1536kbs the second is 768kbs, with the last one no troubles getting an AC3 640kbs (just one tenth longer), but no way in convert it to DTS 768, it stutters like crazy and it's longer by almost two minutes (!).

But I could easily live with the AC3 640 result.

The big problem is the bigger one, the 1536kbs track (always DD+) I've tried everything:
- > DTS 1536
- > DTS 768
- > AC3 640

Using Surcode 1.0.21 and .23, Sonic 4.2 and 4.3, Win Xp and Vista, the closest duration of all my attempts is 3 seconds longer than the video, most of them are from 10 to 7 seconds shorter o longer.

After almost two days of "tests" I'm a bit skeptical...

The audio doesn't have to be exactly as long as the video is. E.g. sometimes there's some scrolling info text at the end of the movie where no audio is available. Another problem is that when using DTS encoding sometimes the DTS tracks end up having zero padding in it. This confuses many DTS splitters. Remove the zero padding by running the DTS tracks another time through eac3to. That should fix that problem.

Generally don't look for trouble. Don't worry if audio and video runtimes do not match. Just play the movie and check if audio is in sync in the beginning and end of the movie. That's the only thing that is important.

[nautilus7]

ignore this

[Atak_Snajpera]

Madshi: Why eac3to does not like TSMuxer output (Blu-Ray). AVC stream not detected + huge audio delay.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Atak_Snajpera

Madshi: Why eac3to does not like TSMuxer output (Blu-Ray). AVC stream not detected + huge audio delay.

Should be fixed in next v2.47, I guess. If not, please let me know.

[madshi]

eac3to v2.47 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* improved detection of AC3/DTS tracks in TS/M2TS container
* added support for Blu-Ray style LPCM tracks in TS container
* fixed 44.1kHz AC3 tracks
* fixed crazy audio delay values when no video track was detected
* sometimes video/audio tracks were not properly detected in (M2)TS container
* MPEG2 demuxing/remuxing incorrectly output the first sequence headers twice
* sequence end codes are removed when demuxing video now, too
* MPEG2 pulldown removal is automatically activated only for EVO HD sources now
* MPEG2 pulldown removal can be manually activated by using "-stripPulldown"
* MPEG2 pulldown removal can be disabled by using "-keepPulldown"

I currently don't have much time for eac3to development. So I've just done some bug fixes for now. Maybe I'll have more time next weekend. Or not.

P.S: Most MPEG2 TV broadcasts and also most DVDs don't have a reliable pulldown pattern. As a result they work best if you don't remove the pulldown at all. Just keep them at 60i. If you're sure that your source has a reliable pulldown pattern you can force removal of pulldown - but then better check if audio is in sync with the final video/audio files. The HD DVD MPEG2 movies (which are extremely rare, though) should have a reliable pulldown, so for those eac3to removes the pulldown by default.

[laserfan]

Originally Posted by madshi

eac3to v2.47 releasedI currently don't have much time for eac3to development. So I've just done some bug fixes for now. Maybe I'll have more time next weekend. Or not...

Gonna try to be the first to say THANKS! It is appreciated.