HD-DVD (EVO files) to WMV HD

[zambelli]

Just FYI: WMV encoder is 4-way threaded. So if you can get a dual-proc-dual-core - you'd be getting the most out of your WMV encodes.

[wolly6973]

OK. Thanks for the info.
Still Encoding...
I think I may have to set up a separate machine to do encoding on. I can't be tying up my media center pc this much!

[pneffkell]

Ok here is where I am at. I am new to this so I want to give complete background.

My filter graphs look like this

audio:
dts/ac3/dd+ source => Sonic Cinemaster Audio decoder => Ac3 filter

Filter set to 5.1 pcm 16bit use spdif checked

When i render the pin and run it i get great audio out.


Video:
vc1 file => sonic hd demuxer =>sonic Cinemaster video decoder


Video is great no problem.



Audio I get nothing when I command line it.

I then oppened avs in vurtual dub and save the WAV file.
When I play this file it appears to be a 6 channel file as it registers ad DD on my receiver

However if I try to split it into 6 wav files with besweet I get a center channel with some good sound and all the other channels are screaching

If I try and encode the video using the wav file straight from virtualdub I get video but no audio?

What am I doing wrong here/

[olivierdb]

I've had a lot of trouble trying to obtain WMA with 5.1 channels. I used eac3to, besweet, tranzcode, Windows multichannel combiner. I followed instructions on other threads, but nothing worked for me! There sometimes is quite a gap between theory and practice! So I decided to create a simpler guide that would offer support for 2 channels only until some clever person comes up with an easier and more reliable way to transcode DD+ to 5.1 ch WMA Pro. From my point of view, if it takes a day to transcode, there has got to be a better solution. If I find that solution, I will be happy to share it, until then, maybe 5.1 channel support should be left to the real handymen out there!

[zambelli]

Originally Posted by olivierdb

I've had a lot of trouble trying to obtain WMA with 5.1 channels. I used eac3to, besweet, tranzcode, Windows multichannel combiner. I followed instructions on other threads, but nothing worked for me! There sometimes is quite a gap between theory and practice! So I decided to create a simpler guide that would offer support for 2 channels only until some clever person comes up with an easier and more reliable way to transcode DD+ to 5.1 ch WMA Pro. From my point of view, if it takes a day to transcode, there has got to be a better solution. If I find that solution, I will be happy to share it, until then, maybe 5.1 channel support should be left to the real handymen out there!

If you can get the DD+ decoded to mono WAVs - encoding to WMA Pro should be a piece of cake. As long as they are 16 or 24 bit mono PCM WAV files - WME9 will take them.

[shaolin95]

I think thats his problem (its been mine at least). No matter what I try I cant get any program to convert the audio to 6 mono wavs.
Ive been getting great help and just got two new pieces of info that hopefully will do the trick for me finally! :-)

If I do it I will report back.

Regards

[olivierdb]

Guide to convert HD-DVDs to WMV HD with 5.1 audio channels

Please note that this solution is by no means the only solution possible nor is it necessarily the best! It just happened to work for me!


Required software :

1) AnyDVD HD [Commercial] or BackupHDDVD [Free] or DVDFab HD Decrypter [Free]
2) EVO Demux [Free]
3) DTS/AC3/DD+ source filter [Free]
4) Sonic Cineplayer Decoder Pack 4.2 [Commercial]
5) AviSynth 2.5.7 [Free]
6) graphedit (which is part of the Windows SDK and should include the dump.ax filter) [Free]
6) WM Encoder 9 Series [Free]
7) Alex Zambelli’s Windows Media Encoder Command Line Script Utility (WMCmd.vbs ) [Free]
8) madshi's eac3to [Free]
9) SoX 13.0 [Free]
10) Tranzcode 0.40beta [Free]
11) Windows Media Mono to Multichannel Wave Combiner 9 Series (WavAviMux) [Free]


Install guide

Installations are quite straight forward with a few exceptions:

1) To install DTS/AC3/DD+ source filter, extract “dtsac3source-full.ax” to C:\Windows\System32 then register the filter using Start>Run and entering “regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\dtsac3source-full.ax” (without the quotes!)

2) WM Encoder 9 Series should install in C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Encoder. Rename the original WMCmd.vbs located there in and extract Zambelli’s WMCmd.vbs to this location.

3) Place Tranzcode in your C:\Windows\System32 folder and place eac3to and sox in the same folder as the audio and video source files you wish to transcode.


Conversion Guide

STEP 1: Rip HD-DVD
Use AnyDVD HD or BackupHDDVD or DVDFab HD Decrypter to rip the contents of your HD-DVD to your Hard Disk.

STEP 2: Demux main EVO files
In this step, you will demux the EVO files previously ripped into namely DD+ audio and VC-1 video.
Open EVO Demux and select the “Options” tab. Specify the following extensions respectively for video, audio and subtitles: vc1, ddp and sup. Then make sure “Count Frames” and “Continue with second EVO” are checked. Next, chose the “Status” tab, browse to and select your first main EVO file. Your file will first be analyzed and the total number of “calculated frames” will appear at the bottom. Write this number down.

STEP 3: Create GRF file for the VC-1 video file using the following sequence of filters in graphedit:

File Async(Video_Source.vc1) > Sonic HD Demuxer > Sonic Cinemaster VideoDecoder 4.2

(Save the file as Video_Only.grf for example.)

STEP 4: Create the corresponding Avisynth script file:

Directshowsource("C:\Path to\Video_Only.grf", fps=23.976, audio=false, seekzero=false, seek=true, framecount=xxxx)

where you should replace "xxxx" with the total amount of calculated frames obtained from EVO Demux. (Save the file as Video_Only.avs for example.)

STEP 5: Create the batch file containing the complete transcoding process detailed below

eac3to.exe "C:\Path to\Audio_Source.ddp" "C:\Path to\output.wav"
tranzcode.exe "C:\Path to\output.wav"
wavavimux -o audio.avi -iwav 6 output-FL.wav output-FR.wav output-C.wav output-LFE.wav output-SL.wav output-SR.wav -mask 63
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Encoder\wmcmd.vbs" -input "C:\Path to\Video_Only.avs" -a_input "C:\Path to\audio.avi" -output "C:\Path to\output.wmv" -v_bframedist 1 -v_bdeltaqp 1 -v_mslevel 1 -v_codec wvc1 -v_keydist 3 -v_mode 2 -v_quality 96 -v_mmatch 0 -v_msrange 0 -v_performance 20 -v_loopfilter 1 -a_codec wmapro -a_setting 384_48_6_16

Save the file with the extension ".bat". Be sure to have "Path to" pointing to the same folder in which eac3to and sox are located along with all your audio and video source files.

Doubleclick on the .bat file and... be patient!
(I have an Intel Core 2 Duo @2.4GHz and it takes approx. 10 mins to encode 1 min of movie, i.e. a 1 hour movie will take about 10 hours to encode! But I'm not sure if the process is linear so I guess it may take more or less time!)

Finally, just a word of thanks to Zambelli and all others who have made this small guide possible!

For those of you still encountering problems, I would also recommend keeping an eye on this thread.

[shaolin95]

I am trying this as soon as I get home...is this works you are going to be my hero!
One question, what is that AUDIO.AVI mentioned in the bat file?

Regards

[olivierdb]

@shaolin95: audio.avi (which could be any other name you wish but has to end with ".avi") is the name of the file created by WavAviMux and contains the combined multichannel audio. It is fed to wmcmd.vbs as audio input.

Good luck! It worked for me, so there's no reason it shouldn't work for you!

[vitodeluca]

Oliver, once again, great guide. Eac3to is the only way I found to correctly create 5.1 sound. I would however add a small note to your guide that the H264 demux still is slightly buggy, and will sometimes yield the wrong length, video that cuts off, ect. This has been mentioned in the huge evob demultiplexers thread but I did not know about it until I looked. I got around it by demuxing and then rebuilding to one evo with only the ddp sound, as I mentioned earlier. The only reason I mentioned it is that it took me several weeks to figure that out, so I wanted to possibly save others the hassle.

[olivierdb]

@vitodeluca: Just to make sure I understand you properly: are you saying that EVO Demux will not provide accurate data regarding the number of "calculated frames"? (not sure what you mean by "H264 demux")

@zambelli: I have tested the whole process once again and, although it works, using the Sonic Video Decoder still generates a whole series of "ContextException" errors of the follwoing sort:

ContextException thrown by BaseCertificate::GetField [.\BaseCertificate.cpp:903]
with context Field SAR_ActivationMode not found in certificate
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\Certificates8\cp42ppg.rxc

Would you know of a way to avoid these errors? (would be nice to keep things clean!)

[pneffkell]

Thanks for the new guide. We must be getting close to a perfect solution. When I run this script this is what I get

Getting "dump" instance failed

I however do have the DSDump filter installed as I see it in my graphedit. Anbody know what would cause this error?

[olivierdb]

@pneffkell: I'm not sure you have the right Dump filter. Try downloading this DUMP.AX file and save to C:\Windows\System32. Then register the filter by going to Start > Run and entering "regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\dump.ax" (without the quotes!).

[wolly6973]

The guide looks good so far. I have a slight problem though. When I run the encode it goes through the first 3 steps, and then when it goes to do the final step I get this:
Prepare to encode failed with error -2147220891 A DRM profile has not been set for the current session.
Any ideas? It looks like it should be something simple, but I don't know what it could be!

Edit: So after googling I am still clueless...I know that DRM is for protecting content, but why is it thinking that I am wanting to use it in the first place? I followed the guide to a T, copied and pasted the commands. Please help!

[shaolin95]

Is ffdshow or anything else important for this to work? I still cant get it to work and I am wondering is something else like ffdshow settings are the problem.
Also, what can I add to the bat file in order to be able to read what happened when it didnt work?
Regards


PS
Seems to be working right now! Just wrote a raw file and told me that sonic decode was set to 24bit and is now doing the wav. All I did was make sure the proper files were at windows/system32 and when I replaced the dump filter with the one linked a few posts above it did the trick!

[shaolin95]

Ok so the process stopped after it created the wav file and while I can hear the movie and seems to be perfect (encoded at 6 channels 24bit) I can not use it in Tranzcode to separate into 6 mono wav (not recognize format).
Any other way to use it in order to encode my wmv movie?

[wolly6973]

@shaolin - at the end of the line in the bat file add ">output.txt"
without quotes. You can name it anything, just replace output with whatever you want.

[shaolin95]

Its working...sorry about my stupidity lol Well the whole script didnt work but I got the audio in 6 mono wav files. Are they supposed to be perfect in the L , R, C etc or do I need to make sure? Now I just need to find the instructions to creat my first xbox 360 wmv!
I will try the output.txt to see what my error

[zambelli]

@Olivierdb:
Nice guide. Glad you incorporated the wavavimux in there. When used in a batch file like you described, it makes it very easy to go straight from AC3 or DD+ to WMA Pro without even thinking about the intermediate 6 mono WAVs.

[olivierdb]

Thank you, Zambelli. Also, sorry for insisting (I'm a bit of a maniac, I know!), but would you have any clue why using the Sonic Video Decoder with wmcmd.vbs still generates a whole series of "ContextException" errors of the follwoing sort:

ContextException thrown by BaseCertificate::GetField [.\BaseCertificate.cpp:903]
with context Field SAR_ActivationMode not found in certificate
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\Certificates8\cp42ppg.rxc

I guess those who absolutely want to avoid those errors could use Intervideo Video Decoder instead of Sonic, but I'd still like to know why the above errors are appearing and if it's possible to avoid them.