eac3to - audio conversion tool

[madshi]

you're right, doesn't work with sonic either
Supposedly fixed in MPC HC r404 (see MPC thread).

[madshi]

eac3to v2.23 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* fixed bug which made some DTS tracks appear dirty although they weren't
* fixed extremely big gap detection with Fantastic Four 2
* fixed non cleaned up gaps file bug
It's a bugfix release. Gap detection should be working pretty well now, I hope. At least I fixed all problems that were reported to me.

[Thunderbolt8]

thanks!

[shambles]

Supposedly fixed in MPC HC r404 (see MPC thread).

this doesn't really belong in this thread anymore but not fixed with r404.. i get image now instead of just blocks but keep getting extreme graphic corruption.. i'll let casimir know

[Chumbo]

eac3to v2.23 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* fixed bug which made some DTS tracks appear dirty although they weren't
* fixed extremely big gap detection with Fantastic Four 2
* fixed non cleaned up gaps file bug
It's a bugfix release. Gap detection should be working pretty well now, I hope. At least I fixed all problems that were reported to me.
Wow, that was fast. Thank you. :) I'll run ff4 2 through this version and report back.

[Rat Killer]

Any chance you could add 384k bps as an option for ac3 encoding? Its the max bitrate that a TivoHD supports for ac3 audio.

Thanks:thanks:

[Chumbo]

Any chance you could add 384k bps as an option for ac3 encoding? Its the max bitrate that a TivoHD supports for ac3 audio.

Thanks:thanks:
Why don't you try -384 on the command line?

[nautilus7]

All valid ac3 bitrates ( 192, 224, 384, 448, 640) are accepted. They are just not mentioned to the 1st post to keep it sort.

[Chumbo]

@madshi,
Here's the result of FF4 2 with 2.23. :) How about that?- EVO, 1 video track, 5 audio tracks, 1:31:49
1: Joined EVO file
2: VC-1, 1080p24 /1.001
3: DTS Hi-Res, 5.1 channels, 16 bits, 2082kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -4dB
4: DTS Hi-Res, 5.1 channels, 16 bits, 2082kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -4dB
5: AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
6: AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
7: AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Extracting primary video track...
Muxing video to Matroska...
- Added fps value to MKV header.
Video track 2 contains 132086 frames.
eac3to processing took 2 hours, 21 minutes.
Done.

Nice!!!

[bmnot]

With eac3to v2.22 I was unable to extract a DTS-MA track from a HD-DVD, because of the false detection of it being dirty. With v2.23 I was able to successfully extract it.

However when converting this extracted track to FLAC with eac3to v2.23 and Sonic 4.3, I was unable to because of dirty track detection again:
This track is not clean. Processing aborted.
Please clean the track with delaycut and then retry eac3to.

I loaded it in DelayCut 1.3, and it said "File is unknown"

Thanks for any help madshi and community.

[nautilus7]

Be 100% sure that you have v2.23 (just type eac3to). There's always the possibility that the bug was not totally fixed in v2.23 (but i don't know this, just speculating) or the track is actually dirty. If the second case, you can't do much as delaycut can't read dys-hd tracks.

[Chug a Bug]

Brilliant tool madshi. Simply couldn't do without it it's saved my bacon on more than one occasion. Many thanks.

[bmnot]

Be 100% sure that you have v2.23 (just type eac3to). There's always the possibility that the bug was not totally fixed in v2.23 (but i don't know this, just speculating) or the track is actually dirty. If the second case, you can't do much as delaycut can't read dys-hd tracks.

It's definitely 2.23. If it extracted with out issues, does that mean it could still be dirty?

[nautilus7]

Sorry, i didn't realize you extracted it with eac3to... It should be fine then unless the bug fix isn't working well. You can demux it again and then do the flac conversion or you can try converting to flac direct without demuxing first.

Which movie is that? Maybe someone can try it also.

[flyersfan1970]

I have Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 which includes the Sonic 4.3 audio and video dlls. Despite everything working fine, including using the codec successfully in Media Player Classic by setting its merit to preferred, eac3to still won't see it. I get the following from a codec test:

Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 7 or older) doesn't seem to be installed
Sonic Audio Decoder (4.3.0.192) is not working correctly
Haali Media Splitter (2007-12-29) is installed
Surcode DTS Encoder (1.0.21.0) is installed
MkvToolnix (v2.1.0) is installed


Any thoughts? It's driving me nuts.

[madshi]

With eac3to v2.22 I was unable to extract a DTS-MA track from a HD-DVD, because of the false detection of it being dirty. With v2.23 I was able to successfully extract it.

However when converting this extracted track to FLAC with eac3to v2.23 and Sonic 4.3, I was unable to because of dirty track detection again:
This track is not clean. Processing aborted.
Please clean the track with delaycut and then retry eac3to.
That's strange. If the track was really dirty, extraction should have failed already. Where in the track does the complaint appear? Is it right the beginning of the track?

I've tried to reproduce the problem with my DTS-HD samples and they all transcode just fine to FLAC. I can only guess that either there's something special about your track, or extraction failed to work correctly.

Could you eventually upload a little sample of the original EVO file for me? Of course it's important that the problem can be reproduced with that sample, or else it won't really help much. Thanks!

I have Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 which includes the Sonic 4.3 audio and video dlls. Despite everything working fine, including using the codec successfully in Media Player Classic by setting its merit to preferred, eac3to still won't see it. I get the following from a codec test:

Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 7 or older) doesn't seem to be installed
Sonic Audio Decoder (4.3.0.192) is not working correctly
Haali Media Splitter (2007-12-29) is installed
Surcode DTS Encoder (1.0.21.0) is installed
MkvToolnix (v2.1.0) is installed


Any thoughts? It's driving me nuts.
"is not working correctly" means that eac3to was able to contact the decoder - but the decoder output was not matching eac3to's expectations. I don't know right now why that is the case for you. Maybe the decoder shipping with Easy Media Creator is limited in some way? Does it connect to E-AC3 and TrueHD tracks in GraphEdit?

[bmnot]

The conversion to FLAC stops about 1/3 through the encoding. I'll try and get a sample up soon.

[trcolka]

Excellent tool, madshi!

Do you think it's possible for you to implement AOB-demuxing as well?

Regards

[madshi]

Do you think it's possible for you to implement AOB-demuxing as well?
I don't even know what that is!

[G_M_C]

I don't even know what that is!

VOB -> DVD Video -> Video Object.
AOB -> DVD Audio -> Audio Object.

;)

Dont think it will be easily possible with the MLP + watermarking of many DVD-A's.

[madshi]

VOB -> DVD Video -> Video Object.
AOB -> DVD Audio -> Audio Object.

;)

Dont think it will be easily possible with the MLP + watermarking of many DVD-A's.
I will not add any decryption logic to eac3to. Is that what you were asking for? Or do you have unprotected AOB files which you want to demux?

[madshi]

eac3to v2.24 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* Haali Splitter replaced with internal splitter for EVO MPEG2 tracks
* external raw MPEG2 tracks can now be muxed directly to Matroska
* timestamps for MPEG2 MKV videos don't need to be rewritten, anymore
* gaps/overlaps in MPEG2 track of EVO files are detected now
* VC-1 and MPEG2 aspect ratios are detected and written into MKV now
* fixed bug with "-down2" option
MPEG2 support should hopefully be on the same level as VC-1 support now. That means: Please try it with all HD DVD MPEG2 movies (rare) and extras (lots of) that you want to keep. Hoping to get some feedback on whether everything works fine. Please especially check whether motion is smooth. There have been several reports that MPEG2 -> MKV muxes judder when using Haali's filters. Also there have been reports that MPEG2 files also judder when playing them with Haali's Media Splitter. These problem should be totally gone when muxing the MPEG stuff to MKV by using eac3to. But as it's a brand new feature, of course it needs a lot of testing. I'll work on h264 muxing next - but only when MPEG2 muxing is proven to be working well. So by testing MPEG2 muxing you can help getting h264 muxing quicker... ;)

[G_M_C]

I will not add any decryption logic to eac3to. Is that what you were asking for? Or do you have unprotected AOB files which you want to demux?


Hmmm, it wasn't me that asked about this feature

Excellent tool, madshi!

Do you think it's possible for you to implement AOB-demuxing as well?

Regards

It was trcolka ;)

Me personally, i dont care about this feature since i use eac3to on HDDVD/BR/MKV only.

[madshi]

Hmmm, it wasn't me that asked about this feature

It was trcolka ;)
Sorry for the confusion.

Me personally, i dont care about this feature since i use eac3to on HDDVD/BR/MKV only.
Well, if AOB is similar to VOB then it would probably be no big thing for me to support it. But it makes sense only if there are unprotected AOB files out there.

[baudi]

madshi, thank you very much for your efforts.

It would be great to release an external madshi splitter to replace Haali´s one.

[rickardk]

Thank you very much for your efforts with this tool madshi!!!

Is mpeg splitting supported with VOB or just EVO?

Anyone knows how to cut a small sample from a raw mpeg file?

I have one that eac3to can't mux properly...(it may be a splitter problem...but both haali and mpc fails in giving me smooth playback)

[Thunderbolt8]

thans for the new version. but I guess I dont have any mpeg2 HD DVDs so far, only blu-rays, so I wont be able to test (at least no main movies) :P

is mpeg2 .ts also supported as input? or only .evo files?
if not, can I then demux ac3 audio and the video mpeg2 stream from .ts files and mux them to .mkv with eac3to? which advantages should this give over using mkvmerge?

from what I saw 'heros DC' and 'resident evil' are mpeg2 HD DVD and also 'Chronos', which is said to be 1080i and therefore could be interesting.

regarding that shuttering of the haali filter which can appear with some movies, im not sure in how far this can be tested here, because when I demux the track with xport and remux them with mkvmerge then they are fine afterwards. so if that problem is already solved at the demuxing stage, which we'll have to do if .ts input is not accepted, then we cant see if a possible problem was treated correctly, if it doesnt occur.

[nautilus7]

Only EVO & VOB input and raw mpeg-2 are supported.

Madshi, thanks again for the new version.

[madshi]

It would be great to release an external madshi splitter to replace Haali´s one.
That's not planned because my splitter is very limited. It's written specifically for muxing. A real splitter needs much more functionality like e.g. seeking support etc. I have reported to Haali all problems/improvements I've found, so there is hope for an improved splitter from Haali sooner or later.

Is mpeg splitting supported with VOB or just EVO?
VOB is supported, too, but not tested very much.

Anyone knows how to cut a small sample from a raw mpeg file?
Do you mean MPG container? Or do you mean mpeg2 video file? IIRC MPG containers consist of blocks of 2048 bytes. So just cut on such a boundary. For raw video streams (MPEG2, VC-1, h264) look for "00 00 01" in a hex editor. These are start codes for all video formats. You can cut there...

I guess I dont have any mpeg2 HD DVDs so far, only blu-rays, so I wont be able to test (at least no main movies) :P
Well, you can test extras... ;)

is mpeg2 .ts also supported as input? or only .evo files?
Raw mpeg2 streams demuxed from TS are supported, but eac3to doesn't support TS yet.

if not, can I then demux ac3 audio and the video mpeg2 stream from .ts files and mux them to .mkv with eac3to?
Yes.

which advantages should this give over using mkvmerge?
None, I think. The end result should be more or less similar.

regarding that shuttering of the haali filter which can appear with some movies, im not sure in how far this can be tested here, because when I demux the track with xport and remux them with mkvmerge then they are fine afterwards.
Correct.

so if that problem is already solved at the demuxing stage, which we'll have to do if .ts input is not accepted, then we cant see if a possible problem was treated correctly, if it doesnt occur.
You can compare (1) the original TS/EVO file played through Haali's Media Splitter with (2) the MKV file created by eac3to. If you have stuttering in (1) and no stuttering in (2) then everything is fine. Of course if you don't have any stuttering anywhere, then that's fine, too.

[rickardk]

www.earselect.se/astoria.mpg

plays perfect...but when muxed into mkv with eac3to I get a strange pause-play-pause-play going..

[nautilus7]

I tested a small mpeg-2 evo file that gave me stuttering mkv output. It's fine now. Well done madshi!

[Thunderbolt8]

You can compare (1) the original TS/EVO file played through Haali's Media Splitter with (2) the MKV file created by eac3to. If you have stuttering in (1) and no stuttering in (2) then everything is fine. Of course if you don't have any stuttering anywhere, then that's fine, too.
what if both works fine in some cases, from what you mostly said you prefer remuxing over de- and remuxing to have the chains somehow untouched or something like that. so you think i'd be better to use gdsmux in these cases?

[madshi]

www.earselect.se/astoria.mpg

plays perfect...but when muxed into mkv with eac3to I get a strange pause-play-pause-play going..
Thanks, that was a helpful sample. Problem fixed in v2.25.

what if both works fine in some cases, from what you mostly said you prefer remuxing over de- and remuxing to have the chains somehow untouched or something like that. so you think i'd be better to use gdsmux in these cases?
gdsmux is the safer bet for keeping proper audio sync, but timestamps are not always perfect with gdsmux. Maybe gdsmux + rewriting timestamps with mkvtoolnix is the way to go? Of course you could also wait until eac3to adds TS support.

[madshi]

eac3to v2.25 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* fixed MPEG2 muxing for interlaced content

[rickardk]

Wow you're fast!
...and good!

I just tested mkvmerge and gdsmux with this DVD.
gdsmux hangs and mkvmerge ouputs a mkv that plays in slow motion.

eac3to v2.25 makes a mkv that plays perfect!

[bertox]

@Madshi:

Well, if AOB is similar to VOB then it would probably be no big thing for me to support it.

Yes, please add support for it. I have AOBs of music that i was record, and i want to demux some ones.

Thanks.:D

[madshi]

I just tested mkvmerge and gdsmux with this DVD.
gdsmux hangs and mkvmerge ouputs a mkv that plays in slow motion.
Wow, I didn't have these problems with the sample you uploaded for me. Both h264tsto (which uses the same technique as gdsmux) and mkvmerge were able to handle the file relatively fine. Well, both muxes were playing with stuttering, but at least muxing succeeded for me - and the muxes played with the right speed. Do you have the latest mkvtoolnix installed?

http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/pre/

eac3to v2.25 makes a mkv that plays perfect!
That's what I like to hear... :)

[madshi]

if not, can I then demux ac3 audio and the video mpeg2 stream from .ts files and mux them to .mkv with eac3to? which advantages should this give over using mkvmerge?
I have to correct my earlier statement. It seems mkvmerge doesn't always mux correct timestamps for some MPEG2 clips. Don't know the exact circumstances when things go wrong, but I guess it has to do with interlaced content (music concerts, TV shows). eac3to handles all MPEG2 samples I have perfectly fine. So it seems to me that it's the best way to mux MPEG2 to MKV today.

Of course there's not enough testing done yet. So maybe there will be more MPEG2 samples which make problems. But it should be no big problem to fix those, I think...

[TheSof]

Madshi,

Sometime ago you spoke of the possibility of perhaps making the nero decoder bypass drc in realtime within any dshow player. Is this still something you are still looking into? If not thats fine, but would hate to eac3to a huge stack of material and then find out it was unnecessary.

Cheers.

That's on my to do list. Actually I was hoping to get it done yesterday, but time was too short. Might take another 1-2 weeks.

Just wondered if this release was still in the Cards?

Cheers, keep up the great work Madshi.

[madshi]

Just wondered if this release was still in the Cards?

Cheers, keep up the great work Madshi.
Ah well, I could do that. But my programming time for home cinema use is limited. So I have to set priorities. Right now my priority is to make HD DVD de/remuxing as perfect as possible. I'm about 80% done with that. Afterwards I was planning to tackle Blu-Ray. If I worked on Nero decoder tweaks for real time playback I'd have to push eac3to programming back...

[rickardk]

I'm not very interested in extra/bonus material from HD DVDs. And I don't know of any title that uses MPEG-2 for the main feature.

But I have quite a few Blu-rays that uses MPEG-2.
Should we mux the raw MPEG-2 stream with eac3to to test if the new MPEG-2 muxing is working ok. Or should we wait and use thoose titles when (if) eac3to gets m2ts support?

I think I asked the same thing when eac3to got VC-1 muxing. And I think you told me to save blu-rays with VC-1 for later. But we had plenty of HD DVDs with VC-1 for testing VC-1 muxing.

[madshi]

I'm not very interested in extra/bonus material from HD DVDs.
Understood. Personally, I don't care that much about most bonus material, either. However, I'm always collecting trailers and some movies only come with SD trailers. That's where I got some MPEG2 EVO files from...

But I have quite a few Blu-rays that uses MPEG-2.
Should we mux the raw MPEG-2 stream with eac3to to test if the new MPEG-2 muxing is working ok. Or should we wait and use thoose titles when (if) eac3to gets m2ts support?
The Blu-Ray MPEG2 titles are rather "simple" cases, so testing them wouldn't help much right now, anyway. Although maybe you can test one, just to be sure. The more problematic cases are all those SD MPEG2 EVOs (HD DVD extras) and VOBs (DVDs) cause there are so many of them and there are many different encodings and stream formats. Especially interlaced EVOs/VOBs would be interested to test.

Maybe you have some DVDs (*.VOB) you want to convert to MKV? That would be a good candidate for eac3to's MPEG2 muxing. Especially music concerts, music videos, sports, TV shows, but also some SD movies would help.

[rickardk]

I have like 35-40 concert dvds. I did rip them to VIDEO_TS.
But I did test remuxing some with pgcdemux/mkvmerge.
Gave up because AR got screwed up on some of them when muxed with mkvmerge

I guess I can remux them all with eac3to...

[madshi]

I have like 35-40 concert dvds. I did rip them to VIDEO_TS.
But I did test remuxing some with pgcdemux/mkvmerge.
Gave up because AR got screwed up on some of them when muxed with mkvmerge
Well, if you want to have them remuxed to MKV then now is your chance... ;) I tried to get the aspect ratio stuff right, but who knows. That would be a good thing to test. If you run into problems, just let me know. Did you get your quicker upload connection in the meanwhile? :D

[rickardk]

Yes...No problem uploading samples with this connection

I will start with the ones that gave me problem before

[madshi]

Yes...No problem uploading samples with this connection

I will start with the ones that gave me problem before
Great - looking forward to your results... :)

[keysersose]

I will not add any decryption logic to eac3to. Is that what you were asking for? Or do you have unprotected AOB files which you want to demux?


Yes we can get the AOB files unprotected but am unable to demux them..

DVD-A Explorer lets you extract MLP files from the AOB's but there is something wrong with the headers as no program is able to recognize the files and convert them back to wave files..

[madshi]

Can you upload a little AOB sample? Just the first 20MB should do.

[keysersose]

Can you upload a little AOB sample? Just the first 20MB should do.

The AOB files are 1 GB - how do I just get the 1st 20MB?

The shortest extracted MLP file is 120 MB - I could upload this one..

[rickardk]

Bo Kaspers Orkester - Live DVD

eac3to can't find video in VOB.
"This doesn't seem to be a valid (E-)AC3 file."

And audio tracks have xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ms delay on them.


Anyway I demuxed vide with pgcdemux.


VOB->Sonic->ffdshow(libmpeg2)->YUY2
Correct AR

RAW->Sonic->ffdshow(libmpeg2)->YUY2
Incorrect AR

MKV (eac3to 2.25)->Haali->ffdshow(libmpeg2)->YUY2
Incorrect AR