HD-DVD 2 HD-DVD9....no talk of it? [Archive]

ernysmuntz

21st January 2007, 15:50

The recent developments that have allowed the decryption of HD-DVD is great news, but I thought the intention of decrypting the stuff was to allow us to backup our collection to DVD9?

There was lots of talk of this a few months back before it was decrypted, now its main practical purpose isn't even discussed.

Maybe I'm missing something, are the tools not out there? Obviously to expect a 1 click solution right now is ridiculous, but I'm more asking if its possible at the moment to create a HD-DVD9 that follows the specs, from decrypted HD-DVDs.

I realise that a few people seem to be looking into demuxing the video, but their intetion seems to be to compress it for storage on the computer...A good idea sure, but with the price of DVD9s at a pretty low price, it would make sense to follow this up, no?

I'm not having a go here at all, and sorry if my manner appears rude, I'm genuinely just confused as to the lack of conversation on, in my opinion the best practical use for these developments and hard work. I'm not "expecting" anything, just asking about it so please don't jump the gun and misinterpret my post.

Sorry for my ignorance, and hope this is the correct forum.

bkman

21st January 2007, 16:50

Trahald

21st January 2007, 17:20

@bkman
thats not everyones opinion. commercial dvd9's are mpeg2 and SD. with modern codecs (vc-1 and h264) you can give a decent avg bitrate (say 4-6kbps) and set max to say 20k (allow for audio) and have it look excellent and at HD resolutions.

@ernysmuntz
its pretty early on in the game. but actually there have been lots of talk of mini hddvd(5 or 9) just from atsc/dvb sources. the hddvd is just another available source. tutorials will probably start cropping up soon once things are more streamlined.

Nasgul

21st January 2007, 17:28

Hi,

I think it´s not far away, if you follow the various threads here on doom9 and combine the pieces...

First you need to decrypt your original HDDVD - as we know from BackupHDDVD, a tool to decrypt AACS protected movies (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871).

Second, you need to demux the EVOBs, that´s also no problem anymore thanks to EVOB De/Multiplexers (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120652).

That´s where it starts to get tricky :rolleyes:
You need to re-encode the video (mostly VC-1) in an HDDVD-compliant form. This has also been done by some forum members using a patched x264, see x264, HDDVD compliance and HRD info patch (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120357) EDIT: Seems that x264 can´t do that yet, but Mainconcept 2.1 can, see below.
Some info on possible AVS-Scripts can be found in the Evob De/Multiplexers thread, too.

For the audio, you can leave the original track untouched (DD+) or try to take an AC3 track of the DVD... I´d go with the first, even if the bitrate takes up quite some space. I haven´t read about any method to convert the DD+ tracks to "normal" AC3.

Next, you need to mux it and author the HDDVD9s... The only tool right now able to do this seems to be the (very) expensive Sonic Scenarist 4.1, but it can be done. Look at Scenarist 4.1 avc/vc1 assets (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119392).

That should do the job, at least for the plain movie/feature without any menus or advanced content.

I´ve tried to follow this path but fail on re-encoding the video correctly, I couldn´t yet figure out the correct avisynth script and x264 parameters to reencode the 24fps vc-1 streams and be HDDVD compliant :(

Any help/hints on this would be greatly appreciated.

Nas

Morte66

21st January 2007, 17:36

If you mean to convert a HD-DVD to a DVD9 that will simply play in a DVD player, then that would be pretty pointless as a store-bought DVD(9) release would have similar if not better quality, since they have been made directly from the master.

I presume you're talking about MPEG2 DVD9? I think the original poster was talking about putting AVC on DVD9, either as compliant HD DVD structures or as mp4/mkv files.

[Actually, most commercial DVD MPEG2 encodes are godawful. I once made a mpeg2 DVD9 using hc for the encode, starting from an h264 HD transport stream, and it looked better than 99% of commercial DVDs. But that's probably OT.]

bond

21st January 2007, 18:09

i assume the guy talks about hddvd on dvd media. the official hddvd specs include dvd media with new codecs and SD resolution for sure. i am not sure whether you can store a HD video on DVD media in hddvd

ernysmuntz

21st January 2007, 18:38

Thanks for the replies, yes I was referring to storing AVC stuff in HD-DVD compliant format on a DVD9. Interesting reading, I did have a look about but got a bit confused when it comes to AVsynth scripts so might have to wait until someone comes about with a tutorial and some cheap\free software.

But yeah I'm basically intersted in preserving the DD+ track and the main feature really. Thanks for letting me know where the experts are up to :)

Sagittaire

21st January 2007, 18:50

Hi,
I´ve tried to follow this path but fail on re-encoding the video correctly, I couldn´t yet figure out the correct avisynth script and x264 parameters to reencode the 24fps vc-1 streams and be HDDVD compliant :(

Any help/hints on this would be greatly appreciated.

Nas

You can't actually make that with x264 ...

i assume the guy talks about hddvd on dvd media. the official hddvd specs include dvd media with new codecs and SD resolution for sure. i am not sure whether you can store a HD video on DVD media in hddvd

I will try to make the first HDDVD compliant movie with H264 (with VC1 and MPEG2 too) on DVD9 ...

Elephant Dream (Open Source Movie)
Video: H264 HP@L4.1 1080p24 at 6 Mbps, VC1 AP@L3 1080p24 at 6 Mbps, MPEG2 MP@HL 1080p24 at 6 Mbps
Audio: AC3 5.1 448 Kbps, MP2 5.1 912 Kbps, LossLess PCM 5.1
Subtitles: French, English, Spanich ... etc etc etc

With principal menu, languages menu, chapters menu ...

bond

21st January 2007, 19:19

Sagittaire , great stuff :)

Nasgul

21st January 2007, 19:29

Hi,

i am not sure whether you can store a HD video on DVD media in hddvd

That´s definitely possible and in the specs. I´ve already done a lot of discs with TV recordings and camcorder videos, but so far only mpeg2 encodes in 720p or 1080i (29,97fps)... You can author those as HDDVD with Uleads Videostudio 10+.

But I really don´t want to convert my HDDVDs to Mpeg2 :p

Sagittaire has made an excellent trailer Hddvd demo that plays fine on both software and hardware players... (Really awesome btw!)

You can't actually make that with x264 ...

Then I got you wrong in the x264/HDDVD compliance thread, sorry. I thought it was possible according to your and Lazyn00bs posts...

What encoder did you use for your "300" demo HDDVD?

Nas

Sagittaire

21st January 2007, 20:02

Then I got you wrong in the x264/HDDVD compliance thread, sorry. I thought it was possible according to your and Lazyn00bs posts...

Actual problem with x264:
- VBV don't work correctly in VBR mode
- SEI don't work correctly with the new patch
- No sequence End Code mode
- No pulldown flag for the 23.976 fps stream

What encoder did you use for your "300" demo HDDVD?

MainConcept H.264 Encoder v2.1
http://www.mainconcept.com/site/index.php?id=10372

Elecard Converter Studio can make that too certainely with better quality and speed but there are actually little bug in level selection. The recent Mainconcept/Elecard codec(insame mode) done IMO better visual quality than x264 (insame mode) with better speed. It's IMO at this time the best H264 codec available (HDDVD/BD compatibility, High speed encoding, Price is not too high for professional solution ...). There are not only oil and gas from Russia, there are good soft too ...

puntloos

22nd January 2007, 13:44

One 'big' question: would X264 (in 'H264/AVC compatibility mode') be good enough to compress the 20-ish gig source file to an acceptable 9Gb file? I'm sure a few compromises can be made compared to the 'compromise-less' (?) source versions..

Of course you can argue for a long time about what you consider 'acceptable' but at the very least it should look quite a bit better (overall) than a 720p version and of course (overall) better than the DVD-9 version. As we all know, higher resolution does not necessarily mean better quality. Artifactless DVD is better than 300x300 pixel artifacts at 1080p etc.

Morte66

22nd January 2007, 14:10

One 'big' question: would X264 (in 'H264/AVC compatibility mode') be good enough to compress the 20-ish gig source file to an acceptable 9Gb file? I'm sure a few compromises can be made compared to the 'compromise-less' (?) source versions..

Put it this way...

Sometimes I clean up (denoise and sharpen) HDTV and encode it with x264. That's probably a tougher source than HD DVD since it contains artifacts etc. I usually encode in constant quality mode at crf 22, which is the most I think is worth it. The last one I did was "Kingdom of Heaven", a fairly long movie which is full frame and has its share of motion and lots of complex textures. It came out at 4.45GB for the video and it looked way better than the source. I could probably have got ratefactor ~18 on DVD9, which is seriously good (similar to xvid at q=2).

However, if you want to encode grain (rather than generating noise to taste on playback), x264 doesn't do so well. That'll need the whole DVD9 for good quality.

I make these 1080p encodes from MPEG2 to improve the quality, not to save space. They let me do image processing that I couldn't run in real time during playback. I don't see the point in encoding HD DVD backups to DVD9, unless the HD DVD has some problem worth fixing. Why spend 3-4 days making an excellent backup on DVD9, when you can spend a couple of hours splitting the rip and burning a perfect backup over multiple DVD5s?

Of course you can argue for a long time about what you consider 'acceptable' but at the very least it should look quite a bit better (overall) than a 720p version.

Oh, no problem. Starting from 1080p, 1080p encodes look better than 720p at below DVD5 size. Assuming you have the 1080p display, that is.

puntloos

26th February 2007, 13:35

Put it this way...

A small disclaimer first: while in general I'm quite the nerd, Im definately not up to speed on some of the acronyms you use. (CRF22, ratefactor, specifically. I assume they are x264 encoder settings.)

Sometimes I clean up (denoise and sharpen) HDTV and encode it with x264.

How do you store this HDTV beforehand? I seem to recall it is MPEG2, but is it 1080p?

That's probably a tougher source than HD DVD since it contains artifacts etc. I usually encode in constant quality mode at crf 22, which is the most I think is worth it. The last one I did was "Kingdom of Heaven", a fairly long movie which is full frame and has its share of motion and lots of complex textures. It came out at 4.45GB for the video and it looked way better than the source. I could probably have got ratefactor ~18 on DVD9, which is seriously good (similar to xvid at q=2).

However, if you want to encode grain (rather than generating noise to taste on playback), x264 doesn't do so well. That'll need the whole DVD9 for good quality.

Makes sense so far, thanks. Hopeful sounds.

I make these 1080p encodes from MPEG2 to improve the quality, not to save space. They let me do image processing that I couldn't run in real time during playback. I don't see the point in encoding HD DVD backups to DVD9, unless the HD DVD has some problem worth fixing. Why spend 3-4 days making an excellent backup on DVD9, when you can spend a couple of hours splitting the rip and burning a perfect backup over multiple DVD5s?

Well, for one I despise 'disk swapping', but there are more reasons. Specifically:
1/ Im a bit of a perfectionist and I plan not to have any device with moving parts (say, a disk, fans, HDD) near my home cinema set. This means I will need to have some device (thinking of the PS3, or else some HTPC) that will decode it off network sources. (and also, I would want to store these sources on some non $100/piece media)
2/ If I choose the PS3, I will need to 'transcode/rip' all HD-DVD-only titles.

Oh, no problem. Starting from 1080p, 1080p encodes look better than 720p at below DVD5 size. Assuming you have the 1080p display, that is.
I don't, I plan to, when I am confident enough that I can actually make full use of it. What Im mildly confused about is that from your story, sure, a 20G MPEG2 1080p file could then be properly recoded to 1080p. But aren't the BD/HD-DVD people also putting out AVC-only titles? That therefore use a full 20G for a single movie? Are they just filling the space cause they can?

Im now very hopeful 1080p @ 9.0GB will be able to properly fit any movie. (Im not going for DVD-5 since I will probably regret it at some point in the future, when Im more observant/susceptible to the specific x264 artefacts etc)

Thanks for your reply so far

Morte66

26th February 2007, 16:06

How do you store this HDTV beforehand? I seem to recall it is MPEG2, but is it 1080p?

It would be a transport stream (.TS file), captured from a TV broadcast to a file on the hard drive, typically about 7-10GB/hour.

Well, for one I despise 'disk swapping'

Fair enough. I'd normally do all the swapping before hand, i.e. assemble the whole movie on my HD then watch it. And I wouldn't delete it from the HD until I was sure I wouldn't be wanting it again soon.

1/ Im a bit of a perfectionist and I plan not to have any device with moving parts (say, a disk, fans, HDD) near my home cinema set.

PS3s are noisy. You need a convection-cooled silent HTPC booting from flash (or maybe a 5400rpm laptop drive wrapped in sorbothane and hung from rubber bands). Put your video data on a server in another room, at the end of a network cable.

Visit www.silentpcreview.com

Or use long cables. My PC is quiet rather than silent, but it's in the hallway on the other end of a 7.5m DVI-D cable and keyboard/mouse extension cables. This is much cheaper and easier than building a silent PC.

2/ If I choose the PS3, I will need to 'transcode/rip' all HD-DVD-only titles.

Yep, that would be unavoidable.

Hmm... PS3 in another room, long HDMI cable, wireless repeaters or extension cables for the controller?

What Im mildly confused about is that from your story, sure, a 20G MPEG2 1080p file could then be properly recoded to 1080p.

A 20GB 1080p MPEG2 HDTV transport stream usually isn't very good by HD standards -- it's twice the bitrate of DVD for five times the pixels. Therefore you can clean it up (deblock, denoise, sharpen, deband etc) before encoding, and gain more in the cleanup than you lose in the encoding. You end up with a backup that looks substantially better then the original at 4-8GB.

A good 20-50GB HD DVD or Blu-Ray encode (and most are good these days) is a whole different animal. If there's nothing much wrong with it, there's nothing to gain by cleaning it up. And the x264 --> DVD9 encode will lose a little. Not much -- you might not realise if somebody switched versions on you -- but it cannot be perfect.

So you can make a very good encode to DVD9 in a few days, or a perfect split/copy to DVD5s in a few hours. Either is viable. I'd go for split/burn myself, but it depends on your circumstances and goals.

foxyshadis

27th February 2007, 01:09

There's a good chance that you could reauthor an HD-DVD as a Bluray, since afaik all the important specs are the same or higher in the latter. That could save a lot of time re-encoding just to play once or twice.

(And yeah, a PS3 makes an Xbox sound quiet. >( )

Yoss01

27th February 2007, 04:37

I'll have to be honest I'm surprised there isn't more interest in this ..especially with the popularity of x264 for hdtv and the advent of hd-dvd/bluray rips. I'm sure that many of us with xbox360 hd drives are salivating at the opportunity to burn h264 to a dvd9 for living room playback of backups, I know I am. My question is what the roadblocks are, a hd-dvd compliant codec for h264?? or is it that there is no good commercially available authoring solution that doesn't insist on using mpeg2? I believe I've read that scenarist is capable but I didn't see a price tag a sonic's website.... which generally means I can't afford it.

foxyshadis

27th February 2007, 05:50

How can you know it's not popular? A grand total of one million HD discs have been sold by the latest numbers, most of those to people with no interest in backups. A single movie can do more than that in a good week on DVD. Then people who are interested have been running into all the typical early adopter troubles - obtuse rickety command-line software, demuxers and decoders that won't interoperate, the lack of easily available authoring suites, and so on. It takes a special breed to put in the time and frustration that entails - and dropping good money on more software or hardware upgrades. Even so there are hundreds experimenting in the decryption and demuxing forums and thousands of curious lurkers. When this is all worked out and one-click backups like DVD-RB appear, interest will rise substatially.

Scenarist is firmly professional, yes, but Sonic, Ulead, Sony, and others will be coming out with authoring suites for prosumers and hobbyists as the format grows and catches on. Hopefully by the end of the year. (I might like a player by then to see what all the fuss is about...) All the codecs are ready, however; an HD-DVD profile for x264 has existed for a while, occasionally refined, and should work for Bluray as well, and WMV9 can be cajoled into producing valid streams.

Of course, now that Ulead/Intervideo is part of Corel, the great software graveyard in the sky, maybe it'll never come out after all. =p

Morte66

27th February 2007, 09:54

There's a good chance that you could reauthor an HD-DVD as a Bluray, since afaik all the important specs are the same or higher in the latter.

AFAIR some of the Microsoft guys at the AVS forums said that BluRay has a lower number of maximum consecutive b-frames than HD DVD, so it's not just a container change. They have a converter tool which sort of transcodes the affected stuff, which is given to authoring houses. Also HD DVD is encoded progressive with flags for telecine, whereas BluRay is encoded interlaced and needs IVTC for progressive use. Companies like Ulead could release software to cover all this, I guess.

You could rip/decrypt a HD DVD file structure, burn it to BluRay disc, and play it on a PC with a HD DVD software player. HD DVD plays fine from any disc it can read -- most standalones read DVDR, and Microsoft expect the low end porn industry to release stuff that way. But HD DVD standalones won't read BluRay discs.

Also, AFAICT BluRay blanks are about 60% of the price of movie discs. It costs about the same to buy 500GB hard drives, until you fill your case. Allegedly, the movie discs are subsidised so the blanks may not be substantially cheaper than the movie discs for quite a while.

foxyshadis

27th February 2007, 18:03

I was coming at it more from the direction of getting a HD-DVD into BD format just so the PS3 could natively decode it, whether that's on a disc, or pushed through a network or the attached hard drive. Burning it would be pretty wasteful. If they're incompatible, though, I guess there's nothing for it but a full re-encode.

And is the BD format interlaced, or is that just the only way Sony's lame encoder/authoring suite works? I can't believe it wouldn't have a progressive format, in the HD world, but stranger things have happened. (Not that it matters what the format supports if nothing can author it.)

Morte66

27th February 2007, 21:22

And is the BD format interlaced, or is that just the only way Sony's lame encoder/authoring suite works?

AFAIR it's in the disc spec.

[But not the player spec, they can output what they like. Some BD standalones do IVTC and output 24p, not that the vast majority of current HDTV sets can use it.]

hd1080p

27th February 2007, 21:56

there are several ways to author the final products. I want to focus in using red laser DVD players with support for HD DIVX and WMV9 HD to play 1080p movies. Have anyone tried it yet?

Toti

3rd March 2007, 04:26

Yes, it can be done. I been making standard HD-DVDs on 8.5 gigs then burning them to DVD+DL. However, all my source has been DirecTV HD not HD-DVD rips.

The beauty of authoring Scenarist 4 is that is nearly identical to authoring DVDs in Scenarist 3. Instead Bluray on Scenarist HDMV is totally different.

My Copies play fine on the PC, Xbox 360 and Toshiba HD-DVD first generation.

I use MainConcept H.264 to encode to .avc, audio is left untouched but scanned for errors with Delaycut.

I use DGindex to create a .d2v then avysinth to do the inversetelecine then encode at 23.976 but make sure you select 2:3 pulldown flags on MainConcept.

I do simple menus to dedicate as much data to the Main Movie, AVC is really efficient when compared to MPEG2. However, takes three times longer to compress. I haven't tried VC1 since I don't know an encoder. TMPGEnc Xpress 4 encodes in WMV9 Proffesional (I thought it was VC1) but Scenarist does not accepts it.

By the way, HD-DVDs made from DirecTVHD look identical to the original when encoded with AVC. The MPEG2 HD-DVDs you notice sometimes the compression. (I don't have a 1080p TV)

Hope this helps. If you need more info like my scripts and details let me know.

bennynihon

14th March 2007, 02:55

this is a great start, but have their been any other threads involving hd-dvd re-encode? Unfortunately the search engine for these forums doesn't make it easy to search for "hd-dvd". It'd be nice if there were a little guide on how to convert an hd-dvd to h.264 dvd-9, even if it is a manual process. thanks.

Clown shoes

16th March 2007, 14:28

A combination of this thread http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120652

and this thread
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119392

should be all you need to get you going. Like Toti, I am currently experimenting with ripping content from HD DVDs, re-encoding to h264 with mainconcept's encoder and then re-authoring with Scenarist 4.1. The results are excellent :)

Let me know if you need more assistance.

bennynihon

17th March 2007, 02:19

Thanks Clown Shoes. So you're just re-encoding the video? DD+/TrueHD Audio is kept in-tact and remuxed in with the re-encoded video? What about Chapter points, is that information retained? And the last question is in regards to menus. Although I don't care for the extras, it'd be nice if I could simply re-encode the menu and author that too.

Thanks!

nickolasemp

17th March 2007, 08:54

I don't know if this help to make myself clear but I will do it anyway.

View attachment below

Let's suppose we have the above table. When we had 4.5Gb DVDs we could (and still can) encode it to a 700Mb Mpeg-ASP codec and have similar quality. 700 Mpeg-AVC is almost unrecognisable from its source. That is almost a 6.5:1 compression ratio. Couldn't the same happen with HDDVD rips? I've already seen many 1080p HD rips that are encoded to 4.5Gb with almost no quality loss (at least I can't spot any). If someone specifies zones to it (weight above 100 in fast changing scenes, weight below 20 in credits), this whole thing gets even better.

Please, do tell me whether I am right or wrong and if I am wrong point out my mistake. I haven't done it myself because I don't have the time but theoretically it should be right.

P.S.: I really don't know know how to insert a table in fora...

foxyshadis

17th March 2007, 10:56

You could with MPEG2 encodings, like early Bluray, because they remove a significant amount of detail from some scenes anyway. Most use VC1 or AVC though, which can keep an enormous amount of detail, and recompression to a much smaller size will remove most of that. You can only get so much reduction by breaking the specs. Still, you'd probably only spot that difference if you compared the actual disc with the DVD5 encoding on a large screen. (In the same way most methods of encoding DVDs to CDs will remove a significant amount of detail from them. One problem with a lot of older, pre-AVC 1CD movies is that they tend to look more like good vhs than dvd, but it's something you don't really notice until you start watching the movies on DVD on a really good TV.)

If you're willing to go down to 720p, you could almost certainly get one amazingly detailed movie per DVD5, or two per DVD9, though. 720 is much easier to encode than 1080p, even within the disc specs. Frankly, it's what I'll be using for a long time.

nickolasemp

17th March 2007, 11:07

@foxyshadis

I've already encoded my DVDs to 720 x 288, which is the same as DVD. I frankly don't see any difference with x264 as video codec and aac as audio. Maybe I am not as picky as I should, but I don't see any details being removed -this is my opinion in my 1280x1024 screen resolution.

So you are telling me that this is not the case in HDDVD to DVD conversion... What if I were to encode it at a resolution smaller than 1080p, let's say 1920x900? It will still lose some of its details but the picture quality will remain good. Why go down to 720p?

I'm saying all that because I am thinking of buying a full HD lcd tv and I don't want for my PC to upscale the given resolution from 720p losing some of its potential...

By the way, thank you very much for your response.

foxyshadis

17th March 2007, 11:28

I think for most people it's enough, I've just found myself getting pickier the longer I stay at this forum. Occupational hazard I suppose. :p AVC is definitely able to deal with most DVDs without a sweat, it's just older codecs (and filters) that gave it that vhs-y look, to me.

By all means go with whatever looks the best in the least amount of space. I didn't mean to dissuade, I just got carried away, sorry.

nickolasemp

17th March 2007, 11:47

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! :D

Point well taken. No need to apologize, I completely understand... I've grown the same addiction I've just found myself getting pickier the longer I stay at this forum.
:p

justmen

25th September 2007, 19:42

Hi all,

Thank God I found this thread with all you Professionals in one place. I'm curious to know whether it's possible to make a 1:1 Backup copies of my HD-DVD movie discs into an HD-DVD-R or -R DL's (Blanks) which is already available in the market nowdays using HD-DVD burners ?

Something like doing an ISO Read and ISO Write in DVDDecrypter for Normal DVD's. Is there any tools like that for HD-DVD's ? Isn't there some kind of a protection (like CSS, Macrovision, Etc. for normal DVD's) in HD-DVD's ?

I mean that without any compressions or anything like that just 1:1 Backup's... Is it possible ?

Thanks in advance... :)