eac3to - audio conversion tool

[nautilus7]

Fair enough, but could you please add the remaining delay to the log output? For instance, if my source AC3 stream has a delay of -112ms, and eac3to corrects it to -16ms (+3 32ms frames), could that be added to the log somewhere so I know what value to use when I remux the streams? That would be extremely helpful. I, and probably most people, do not know the frame size of all stream types, so doing the math ourselves is not really feasible. In my example case, I know a -16ms delay is not much and might not even be detectable, but it would be beneficial to know this information. eac3to already has to do the calculations, I would think it would be incredibly easy to just append that value to the log output. Even if you have to add a little note next to it saying "It is not necessary to correct a delay less than XXms" so you don't get a bunch of questions.
What movie is that?

(Sorry, if you already answered that to any of your previous posts)

[bmnot]

What's the best way to redo 1088 mkvs I made long time ago with gdsmux? I wanna get rid of that gray line. Demux with mkvextractgui, then mux to mkv with eac3to, or mux to ts with tsmuxer and back to mkv with eac3to? or other?

[rebkell]

That's right. 70ms is the threshold for people without special training.

Not intending to hijack this thread, but it seems to be a main subject today, I found this interesting and it seems that we're much more acceptable of audio arriving after video than the other way around, we can see it before we hear it and it's not as distracting as hearing it then seeing it :D


In 1998, ITU-R published BT.1359, recommending the relative timing of sound and vision for broadcasting. Studies by the ITU and others have suggested that the thresholds of timing detectability are about +45ms to -125ms, and the thresholds of acceptability are about +90ms to -185ms. (See Figure 1.)

Other research shows similar but not identical results — and being a function of human perception, we should expect the results to vary. The ATSC Implementation Subcommittee IS-191 has found that under all operational situations, the sound program should never lead the video program by more than 15ms and should never lag the video program by more than 45ms (±15ms). According to the IS, BT.1359 “was carefully considered and found inadequate for purposes of audio and video synchronization for DTV broadcasting.”

http://broadcastengineering.com/audio/broadcasting_managing_lip_sync/

[ggking7]

I'm able to 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom' with a mounted Blu-Ray disc, but 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom 1)' doesn't work. Does that work for anyone else?

[Nullity]

What movie is that?

(Sorry, if you already answered that to any of your previous posts)

The post you quoted was just a made up example, but my original post asking about the -1001ms delay was from the King Kong HDDVD (US).

[nautilus7]

I have King Kong HD DVD. I think it's the US version (was there a different one?). I'll test and report about sync.

[Momber]

the thresholds of acceptability are about +90ms to -185ms.
Woooooaaah! Not to me they're not! :eek:

[laserfan]

Woooooaaah! Not to me they're not! :eek:Well then Momber you're obviously not "most people"! :)

(In fact I should probably add that many of the members here are not "most people" either!) ;)

[Nullity]

Woooooaaah! Not to me they're not! :eek:

I'm with you man, that would drive me crazy too.

[rebkell]

I'm with you man, that would drive me crazy too.

I agree completely, I would agree that the +15 to -45 would probably be acceptable, but no way would I not be irritated in a big way by nearly a tenth of a second early and nearly 2 tenths late.

[shanghai2004]

2nd pass processing can be very fast, depending on the circumstances. If eac3to says 2nd pass processing succeeded, then it most probably did.


Madshi,

Thanks a lot for the reply!
After your reply I listened to the EAC3 tracks carefully, especially around the overlap time, they sound correct.

[madshi]

Fair enough, but could you please add the remaining delay to the log output?
Ok.

question about the delay issue...is the delay only fixed if actual transcoding is done?
Delay is always fixed by eac3to, as has been explained in about every 2nd page of this thread...

Please it is possible somehow to pipe eac3 with e.g. mkfifo or another way?
I don't know mkfifo, but most probably the answer is "no".

What's the best way to redo 1088 mkvs I made long time ago with gdsmux? I wanna get rid of that gray line. Demux with mkvextractgui, then mux to mkv with eac3to, or mux to ts with tsmuxer and back to mkv with eac3to?
Hmmmm... I guess both should work. Don't know which is better. Alternatively you could wait for an eac3to build which allows MKV reading. But I don't know if that feature will ever come... ;)

I'm able to 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom' with a mounted Blu-Ray disc, but 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom 1)' doesn't work. Does that work for anyone else?
Is that Linux? I don't know why it doesn't work, I'm sorry...

[madshi]

[blatant advertising]

HDI has two new products which sound very awesome to me, namely:

- Dune BD Prime
- Dune HD Center

http://www.hdi.co.il/uploads/posts/2008-10/thumbs/1223398745_dune_bd_prime_wifi_front.jpghttp://www.hdi.co.il/uploads/posts/2008-10/thumbs/1223394802_dune_hd_center_wifi_front_01.jpg

http://www.hdi.co.il/fullhd_players/

Both are full standalone Blu-Ray players, but they also support playing Blu-Ray disc rips from a network resource - including full menu and Java support. Also they support virtually any container / audio codec combination I can think of. Plus they can both decode and bitstream DTS-HD High Resolution, DTS-HD Master Audio, E-AC3 and TrueHD with full 7.1 channels.

E.g. they can play the video track of a MKV/TS/m2ts file together with external (demuxed) AC3, DTS and FLAC audio tracks. Or in other words: With these devices you don't need to mux the audio tracks into the container, anymore. You can just use "eac3to someMovie movie.mkv" and the Dune players will play the result just fine as it is. LOVE that.

Furthermore there's an option for a Gigabit network card, which works around the Sigma Designs chip's bad network speed, so that playing even highest bitrate Blu-Ray movies over (NFS) network connection is not a problem, anymore. Finally, the developers seem to be very open for improvement suggestions. Much more so than I've seen from any other media player company. See here:

http://mpcclub.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=20060

This may finally be the product that can replace my HTPC for good. I'll order a HD Center with Gigabit card. The only thing I don't like is that there's a fan on the Sigma Designs chip... :(

[/blatant advertising]

Please don't discuss this topic further in this thread. I just wanted to show some support for HDI here, because I think such a promising product has earned it.

[Jom]

Hi.

Windows 7 has the ability to decode eac3 and ac3 natively using "Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder" aka msmpeg2adec.dll.

Could eac3to utilise this in place of nero / libav ?
I suppose this depends on whether or not it can deal with TrueHD?

I'm guessing these codecs might also make it into vista sp2.

[piratburner]

I have installed Windows 7, and tested eac3to but I can't get nero7 to work with eac3to. any advice to get it to work ?
everything else works, surcode, arcsoft ........

[Jom]

I have installed Windows 7, and tested eac3to but I can't get nero7 to work with eac3to. any advice to get it to work ?
everything else works, surcode, arcsoft ........

When you purchase the Nero HD pack they should email you a serial number you can enter in product license management.
The codecs are't active until you enter a valid serial.
Did you do that already ?

I just let eac3to use libav, the extra fluff installed with nero ain't worth it. Hopefully win7 users could avoid nero and arcsoft altogether if Windows 7 decodes Dolby* and DTS* out the box. (Which it appears to do at the moment - though i'm struggling to find samples of all the different formats in a container i can play)

[piratburner]

When you purchase the Nero HD pack they should email you a serial number you can enter in product license management.
The codecs are't active until you enter a valid serial.
Did you do that already ?



Yes I have serial number for....
Blu-ray/HD DVD Video plugin
HD-DVD plugin
BluRay DVD plugin

Is something missing ?

[pbjr]

I'm able to 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom' with a mounted Blu-Ray disc, but 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom 1)' doesn't work. Does that work for anyone else?

whats the error? I do '1)'.

[ExSport]

I don't know mkfifo, but most probably the answer is "no".
:(
And do you plan it for the future versions if it is easy to implement it? I mean piping.
Your application is one of few which can recode DTS properly:)
It will be great if it will be possible to use your eac3to in PMS application(PS3 media streaming)
LINK (http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/)
Anyway thanks for great app.:thanks:

[Devrethman]

I'm able to 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom' with a mounted Blu-Ray disc, but 'eac3to /mnt/cdrom 1)' doesn't work. Does that work for anyone else?

Parenthesis are bash operators. Try eac3to /mnt/cdrom 1\)


For some reason when rip blu-rays with eac3to mplayer thinks the end of file is about 4 seconds in. If I run the files through mkvmerge, they work, but if I try to go straight from eac3to to mplayer/mencoder, it always stops around 4 seconds in. Is this normal?

[mrr19121970]

I made a nice GUI to use eac3to...

eacto, tsMuxer & ImgBurn Made Easy (http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=25818)

Screen Shots

Select your default locations:
http://usera.imagecave.com/mrr19121970/GUI/New_Step1.jpg

eac3to is called, and the playlists are presented to you. Select one and proceed:
http://usera.imagecave.com/mrr19121970/GUI/New_Step2.jpg

eacto is called, and the video, audio and subtitle streams are presented to you. Select what you want and proceed.
http://usera.imagecave.com/mrr19121970/GUI/New_Step3.jpg

eac3to is called and saves all the streams you selected. a meta & BAT file for tsMuxer are created. If you selected a .ISO image, then ImgBurn is called after after tsMuxer is completed.

Finally a sound is played - especially usefull if you leave you PC unattended, so you can hear it from another room.

[Thunderbolt8]

would be great if there was a similar program which included eac3to and mkvmerge for even easier creation of that final movie .mkv which includes all. madshi, why dont you ask mosu to merge your 2 tools :D

but good work for that one^^

that "H" symbol though is taken from some russian mouse button key binding tool, isn't it? :P

[sidekick2]

I'm not sure if this is a format issue, eac3to, or tsmuxer... I've extracted the eac3 audio from Bourne Identity HD-DVD, and also created a normal ac3 conversion from the eac3.

No errors in any applications, but my dd+ track doesn't play on the disk in a stand alone or ps3.

In tsmuxer, I have the vc1 file, .ac3 file, .eac3 file, and subtitles. It sees it no problem as an dolby digital+ file, and everything works as it should, creating the blu-ray disk structure.

Is dd+ broken in tsmuxer as well, or is eac3to not outputting a flavor of eac3 that tsmuxer likes, or???

I'm using eac3to 3.03, and tsmuxer 1.8.8b.

According to the wiki, blu-ray supports dolby digital+. I have the dd+ as a 2nd track, and when I select it, the video stutters and no audio is output. Reading the wiki, it says dd+ for blu-ray needs the 640k core ac3 file. My extract line on eac3to was just a 5: h:\bourne\bi.eac3 (for the audio track) Is there a toggle for eac3+ac3 so it includes the core for blu-rays sake, or is it in there already by using the .eac3 tag?

Or is this a tsmuxer issue (I know it has issues with thd) again, or am I just nuts trying to get dolby digital+ working on blu-ray?

Playing the folder in arcsoft works fine on the pc, with both audio tracks.

Madshi, so far 3.03 is great! Thanks!

** update ** I just tried using older version of eac3to, with the same results. I guess tsmuxer doesn't like dd+ either?!?

[asarian]

Madshi,

I'm not even entirely sure eac3to is causing it (though I'm fair certain it does); but when extracting the VC-1 stream of the American Gangster Blu-Ray, which is annoyingly split over dozens of m2ts files, I get the movie just fine, but the 'total time' index is off. Which is to say, it is set to the length of the first part (~13 mins). Even though the movie plays/streams in full, I can't seek (PS3 = 'Go To') beyond the 13 minutes marker.

So, is there a way eac3to could set the correct 'total time' when having fully recompiled all the parts? Obviously, eac3to already knows the correct runtime length, as it indicates so when starting.

Thanks

[idbirch2]

I have installed Windows 7, and tested eac3to but I can't get nero7 to work with eac3to. any advice to get it to work ?
everything else works, surcode, arcsoft ........It didn't work for me either, in Nero licence management, it clearly shows the BluRay/HDDVD plugin being registered but eac3to just can't detect it. It detects Arcsoft, Sonic and Surcode just fine but something about the Windows 7 architecture is preventing eac3to from accurately checking Nero 7 status. To get around this, I am running eac3to in a WinXP virtual machine.

[~bT~]

^ could it be the environment variables thing again?

[DrNein]

I do not have experience with Windows 7 and Nero 7 however, confirm the following files exist and that the *.ax is registered (i.e. re-register it).

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter\NeAudio2.ax
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter\NeEacDec.dll

Also, the plugin license is not strictly required as other licenses encompass the audio functionality, such as Ultra Edition. As said previous, I think the best option is to install Nero 7 Micro with appropriate license and then add NeEacDec.dll as above. This achieves a minimal install of what remains a great disc writing program without the clutter.

[piratburner]

I do not have experience with Windows 7 and Nero 7 however, confirm the following files exist and that the *.ax is registered (i.e. re-register it).

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter\NeAudio2.ax
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter\NeEacDec.dll

Also, the plugin license is not strictly required as other licenses encompass the audio functionality, such as Ultra Edition. As said previous, I think the best option is to install Nero 7 Micro with appropriate license and then add NeEacDec.dll as above. This achieves a minimal install of what remains a great disc writing program without the clutter.

Checking my system..... and I don't have NeAudio2.ax on my windows 7 system disc ??

But NeEacDec.dll I have


???

[peterjcat]

According to the wiki, blu-ray supports dolby digital+. I have the dd+ as a 2nd track, and when I select it, the video stutters and no audio is output. Reading the wiki, it says dd+ for blu-ray needs the 640k core ac3 file.

DD+ on Blu-ray is entirely different from DD+ on HD DVD and there is really no way to convert between them. You'll have to make do with the AC3 track, or else expand the HD DVD DD+ out to LPCM.

[Jom]

DrNein - Good shout.

Extracting NeEacDec.dll from the retail CD package was a pain, but it worked.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter>regsvr32 NeAudio2.ax

C:\>eac3to -test
eac3to (v3.03) is up to date
Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 7) works fine
ArcSoft DTS Decoder doesn't seem to be installed
... etc

On a side note, the dlls are signed, and the certificates expire on the 28th June 2009.
If the nero filters break in June, it should be easy to replace the signatures using signtool in the .NET SDK.

[Snowknight26]

Would it be possible to add a new command line option, say -plain, that outputs chapters with only the timestamps, one on each line?

[Jeff Flowerday]

Strat Pack Concert on Blu-Ray has the multi-channel AC3 and DTS MA being reported as 5.0 by eac3to. Apparently missing LFE channel.

Madshi: Thought it was a little weird so I've attached a 40 MB clip, just so you could confirm.


http://www.flowerdayconsulting.com/Misc/strat.zip

I got around it by forcing 6 channels. madflac didn't like the result with only 5 channels.

[piratburner]

DrNein - Good shout.


C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter>regsvr32 NeAudio2.ax

C:\>eac3to -test
eac3to (v3.03) is up to date
Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 7) works fine
ArcSoft DTS Decoder doesn't seem to be installed
... etc



Thanks all for the tips ! :-) eac3to is up and running on windows 7 :cool:

[Chumbo]

@madshi,
Just fyi, I just grabbed the latest Matroska splitter and, after the install, decided to run -test and go this:Haali Matroska Muxer (2009-01-10) is installed
There's a new version (2009-01-11) available <WARNING>
http://haali.net/mkv <WARNING>
It may not even be an issue with eac3to, but wanted to let you know. Also, note the "<WARNING>" in the log. This is fine on-screen and only shows up in the log.

[LessThanJake]

madshi, does eac3to remove some for decoding unnecessary nal unit types, such as access unit delimiter, or multiple sps/pps nalus, when extracting an avc-stream from an BD-m2ts to a raw-stream, or is it a 1:1 extraction?

e.g.
eac3to src.m2ts 1: dest.h264

greets
LTJ

[Jeff Flowerday]

@madshi,
Just fyi, I just grabbed the latest Matroska splitter and, after the install, decided to run -test and go this:Haali Matroska Muxer (2009-01-10) is installed
There's a new version (2009-01-11) available <WARNING>
http://haali.net/mkv <WARNING>
It may not even be an issue with eac3to, but wanted to let you know. Also, note the "<WARNING>" in the log. This is fine on-screen and only shows up in the log.

Haali website and file dates are different. Nothing Madshi can do about this. It's been discussed a few pages back.

[n0mag!c]

Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00,960ms".
Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00.000,960ms".
Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00.001,960ms".
Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00.960,960ms".

command line: eac3to.exe g3.ac3 g4.ac3 -edit=0:00:00.961,960ms
----------------------------------------------------------------
AC3, 5.1 channels, 2:02:34, 448kbps, 48khz
Editing (E-)AC3...
Creating file "g4.ac3"...
eac3to processing took 11 seconds.
Done.

[Thunderbolt8]

perhaps you have to use '+' in that case, ',+960'

[Chumbo]

Haali website and file dates are different. Nothing Madshi can do about this. It's been discussed a few pages back.
Gotcha, thanks for the info. Missed that one.

[sidekick2]

DD+ on Blu-ray is entirely different from DD+ on HD DVD and there is really no way to convert between them. You'll have to make do with the AC3 track, or else expand the HD DVD DD+ out to LPCM.

Hmm... shouldn't this be a feature for the awesome eac3to? :D

Madshi, how about a conversion option from hd-dvd dd+ to bd version? I would assume it'd be similar to the thd+ac3, as it looks like dd+ for blu-ray needs the core as well. I would assume this would be loss less to convert from dd+ to dd+ blu-ray fmt.

Thanks!

[dat720]

madshi again awesome work, i cant praise eac3to enough, coupla quick questions:

Are you able to implement a version check? that at runtime checks your download site for a newer version and notifies with a beep or blue text or something...

And do you ever intend on implementing audio packing to mkv container with the video stream?

[peterjcat]

Hmm... shouldn't this be a feature for the awesome eac3to? :D

Madshi, how about a conversion option from hd-dvd dd+ to bd version? I would assume it'd be similar to the thd+ac3, as it looks like dd+ for blu-ray needs the core as well. I would assume this would be loss less to convert from dd+ to dd+ blu-ray fmt.

Thanks!

eac3to is indeed awesome but it relies on external encoders and as far as I know there isn't a freely available encoder for Blu-ray DD+, like there is for AC3 (unless you have a handy $2900 for the official Dolby encoder). If we could encode DD+/TrueHD/DTS-HD then the world would be a much better place!

[TM2-Megatron]

The external software is what's getting me, as well. Is there any alternative to the Nero HD-DVD/Blu-Ray plug-in... that's not even for sale, anymore.

I've been contemplating the Surcode DTS plug-in for a while, now; but the actual advantage over AC-3 (which I can already encode through Vegas) isn't worth the money, for what I do.

I agree, though, TrueHD and DTS-HD encoders would be great.

[tebasuna51]

For what TrueHD and DTS-HD if we have FLAC?

[dat720]

What about the AV recievers that can natively decode the DTS and AC3 varients?

Not everyone watches movies on a PC....

[madshi]

:(
And do you plan it for the future versions if it is easy to implement it? I mean piping.
Your application is one of few which can recode DTS properly:)
I don't plan that right now. Due to how eac3to is designed, it's difficult to implement input piping. Output is easy, but input is not.

For some reason when rip blu-rays with eac3to mplayer thinks the end of file is about 4 seconds in. If I run the files through mkvmerge, they work, but if I try to go straight from eac3to to mplayer/mencoder, it always stops around 4 seconds in. Is this normal?
Please try playing the file with Haali's MKV splitter. Does that play fine? If both mkvtoolnix and Haali's MKV splitter can read the files fine then it's probably a bug in mplayer/mencoder.

I'm not sure if this is a format issue, eac3to, or tsmuxer... I've extracted the eac3 audio from Bourne Identity HD-DVD, and also created a normal ac3 conversion from the eac3.

No errors in any applications, but my dd+ track doesn't play on the disk in a stand alone or ps3.

In tsmuxer, I have the vc1 file, .ac3 file, .eac3 file, and subtitles. It sees it no problem as an dolby digital+ file, and everything works as it should, creating the blu-ray disk structure.

Is dd+ broken in tsmuxer as well, or is eac3to not outputting a flavor of eac3 that tsmuxer likes, or???

I'm using eac3to 3.03, and tsmuxer 1.8.8b.

According to the wiki, blu-ray supports dolby digital+.
Blu-Ray does support DD+, but it's a whole different format compared to HD DVD. So HD DVD DD+ and Blu-Ray DD+ are not compatible and can not be converted into another.

I'm not even entirely sure eac3to is causing it (though I'm fair certain it does); but when extracting the VC-1 stream of the American Gangster Blu-Ray, which is annoyingly split over dozens of m2ts files, I get the movie just fine, but the 'total time' index is off. Which is to say, it is set to the length of the first part (~13 mins). Even though the movie plays/streams in full, I can't seek (PS3 = 'Go To') beyond the 13 minutes marker.
There's not enough information for me to help. What exactly did you ask eac3to to do and what other tools did you use to create a PS3 compatible file?

Would it be possible to add a new command line option, say -plain, that outputs chapters with only the timestamps, one on each line?
What would that be good for?

Strat Pack Concert on Blu-Ray has the multi-channel AC3 and DTS MA being reported as 5.0 by eac3to. Apparently missing LFE channel.

Madshi: Thought it was a little weird so I've attached a 40 MB clip, just so you could confirm.

http://www.flowerdayconsulting.com/Misc/strat.zip

I got around it by forcing 6 channels. madflac didn't like the result with only 5 channels.
What did madFlac do? It should play the file just fine - just as 5.0 and the audio renderer may not like this format. You can try chaining the ffdshow raw audio processor into your playback chain and letting is add an empty LFE channel or something like that...

madshi, does eac3to remove some for decoding unnecessary nal unit types, such as access unit delimiter, or multiple sps/pps nalus, when extracting an avc-stream from an BD-m2ts to a raw-stream, or is it a 1:1 extraction?
AUDs are not removed. The only thing removed by eac3to is padding. And I think I recently added some code to remove double sequence headers in the beginning of a h264 stream, but only there and it only occurred with a strange broadcast. I'd consider eac3to's h264 demuxing 1:1, except for removed padding.

Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00,960ms".
Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00.000,960ms".
Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00.001,960ms".
Invalid edit format "edit=0:00:00.960,960ms".
Doing "edit=0:00:00.000,960ms" is a weird way of doing "+960ms", just use the latter instead. The other two edits don't work because eac3to wants to loop audio to do a (positive) edit. For that to work the runtime after which you do the edit must be bigger than the edit duration, or else the looping buffers can not be properly filled.

Are you able to implement a version check?
It's already there, just do "eac3to -test".

And do you ever intend on implementing audio packing to mkv container with the video stream?
Maybe. Maybe not.

[madshi]

eac3to v3.04 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* video track framerates are now shown with up to 3 decimals, if necessary
* m2ts/TS framerate is determined by interpreting video track timestamps
* m2ts/TS framerate is displayed in the format description (if available)
* warning is shown if container timestamps don't match video framerate
* warning is shown if video bitstream has a non-standard framerate
* video without framerate information: container framerate is used
* video without framerate information: framerate can be set (e.g. "-23.976")
* video without framerate information: new framerate is written to bitstream
* remaining non-fixed audio delay is now shown in log
* command prompt colors are restored after eac3to has run through
* fixed: 2-pass processing for stripping zero bytes sometimes crashed
* fixed: CA (Conditional Access) tracks were shown as "Unknown audio track"

[starkhouse33]

would it be possible to add a switch into eac3to that can reset/change the video full range flag? some .ts files display the wrong black levels when played on nmt.
Thanks

[n0mag!c]

perhaps you have to use '+' in that case, ',+960'
Presence of "+" makes no difference.
Doing "edit=0:00:00.000,960ms" is a weird way of doing "+960ms", just use the latter instead. The other two edits don't work because eac3to wants to loop audio to do a (positive) edit. For that to work the runtime after which you do the edit must be bigger than the edit duration, or else the looping buffers can not be properly filled.
Presence of "-silence" makes no difference. Is this a bug?

[Snowknight26]

What would that be good for?

Can't recall fully (I'm just the messenger), but I think it had something to do with tsmuxer only accepting chapters in that format.

I know, 'stop being and edit the chapters yourself' is probably what you'd (or I'd) say, but I promised I'd ask. :p