Encode EVO HD files to AVI/MKV/MP4/MPG 1/2 etc.?

[laserfan]

After removing the audio [from evo files], I have had great success using Haali -> WMVDecoder DMO and passing that into x264.Thanks for your reply Tegeril. Haali just doesn't work for me w/vid only; I must not be holding my mouth right or something. :confused:

[rory83]

Thanks for your reply Tegeril. Haali just doesn't work for me w/vid only; I must not be holding my mouth right or something. :confused:
Use eac3to.

[laserfan]

Use eac3to.AFAIK eac3to only makes MKV files.

[rory83]

AFAIK eac3to only makes MKV files.
It will do the split and then you can remux with whatever tool you care to.

[Tegeril]

eac3to can also demux to the principle video and audio streams. And it reports calculated frames! From split files! Ahh I love it. A Planet Earth episode was giving me grief with EVODemux.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hmm... Well I've been chugging along successfully with Planet Earth.

However, I recently tried to backup my latest addition to my HD-DVD collection - The Deer Hunter.

I was able to strip the audio (DDP) (using EVODemux), and re-encode it using eac3to down to AC3 448kbit.

I was also able to rebuild the two EVOs down into a single video-only EVO. In Graphedit, I can do Haali splitter -> WMV Decoder DMO -> Haali Renderer, and it works fine. Seeking is good.

Unfortunately, when I remove Haali Renderer, and just leave the output pin open (as you're supposed to do when creating GRFs for encoding), the resulting avisynth script doesn't work properly.

It will open (for example) in virtualdub, and I can play the video, but seeking is broken. MeGUI hangs when I feed it the avisynth script. The framecount is correct.

It's a long video - 3hrs roughly. Still, shouldn't be a problem?

Suggestions?

GRF is just Haali Splitter -> WMV Decoder DMO

AVS is just

directshowsource("G:\HD-DVD Rips\Deer Hunter\deer.grf", audio=false, fps=23.976, framecount=264219)

~MiSfit

[Tegeril]

What format are you encoding to?

Wait, saw your signature. Why MeGUI?

Also, what method did you use to rebuild the two EVOs to a single EVO? If you used EVODemux, I have had a case where it just doesn't work correctly (Planet Earth Disc 2 Episode 2 - irreparable audio sync problems and missing frames and a grey flicker at the file split and and and). If you did put the two together with EVODemux, might I suggest --> eac3to.exe firstEvo.EVO+secondEvo.EVO combinedEvo.EVO

Eac3to will create a new EVO and even fix a variety of issues it runs into.

[Tegeril]

AFAIK eac3to only makes MKV files.

It also combines EVOs... To my surprise when I decided to try it for the heck of it.

[Sephiroth0000]

Hello everyone,

It has been awhile since my last posting on here but now I present to you an even easier means of backing up your HD DVDs to many various formats

-AnyDVD HD (Rip film to HDD)
-EvoDemux (REBUILT Video/Audio into one single stream)
-RiverPast Video Cleaner Pro (load up REBUILT Video/Audio file and convert to desired format)

Now I know it seems too easy to be true but just so everyone can have a go please follow this link to their website help where it tells you how to convert to what format

http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/evob/

I have done 3 encodes so far and I have to say that the Big Robot Movie looks mental on the PS3! Any queries let me know :)

EDIT: Oh and also depending on what format you wish to desire to means other programs will need to be downloaded but are FREEWARE and available from the website itself (some are free but not all)

[BLKMGK]

Hello everyone,

It has been awhile since my last posting on here but now I present to you an even easier means of backing up your HD DVDs to many various formats

-AnyDVD HD (Rip film to HDD)
-EvoDemux (REBUILT Video/Audio into one single stream)
-RiverPast Video Cleaner Pro (load up REBUILT Video/Audio file and convert to desired format)

Now I know it seems too easy to be true but just so everyone can have a go please follow this link to their website help where it tells you how to convert to what format

http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/evob/

I have done 3 encodes so far and I have to say that the Big Robot Movie looks mental on the PS3! Any queries let me know :)

EDIT: Oh and also depending on what format you wish to desire to means other programs will need to be downloaded but are FREEWARE and available from the website itself (some are free but not all)

Okay, now THAT has MY attention! I spent a good bit of time trying the tutorial on the first page only to end up with awesome video and scratchy audio. <sigh> This tool may make this easy enough for me to do this without having to spend too many hours figuring out issues. I'm not sure that I'll be able to get to my"target" of MKV using X.264 but anything is worth trying at this point to get a consistent easy to use workflow. I have to say that the video was quite nice when I followed the intial tutorial posted in this thread using X.264. My thanks for pointing this software out - downloading their trial now!:thanks:

Question - which package are you using - their Pro or Standard? Any big differences between them to push you towards the Pro? Looks like Pro edits video?:confused: I do not think I'll need any "boosters" at least. I'll try their Pro trial first but hope that the lesser works fine as it's a good bit cheaper.

They do not appear to handle combining EVO files but that has been discussed here a good bit so no worries there. I will report how this works when done, I have a PILE of HD-DVD to convert! :D

[Blue_MiSfit]

What format are you encoding to?

Wait, saw your signature. Why MeGUI?

Also, what method did you use to rebuild the two EVOs to a single EVO? If you used EVODemux, I have had a case where it just doesn't work correctly (Planet Earth Disc 2 Episode 2 - irreparable audio sync problems and missing frames and a grey flicker at the file split and and and). If you did put the two together with EVODemux, might I suggest --> eac3to.exe firstEvo.EVO+secondEvo.EVO combinedEvo.EVO

Eac3to will create a new EVO and even fix a variety of issues it runs into.


I'm using MeGUI because it has a nice setup for x264 profiles, and will automatically calculate bitrates for me. It's my general purpose encoding GUI.

I used EVODemux to merge the EVOs (without audio). I understand that eac3to can merge EVOs now, but can it do this video only? I would like to avoid wasting hard drive space if at all possible...

In fact, I guess I don't know the "current" workflow for using eac3to 100% of the way. How does it work?

~MiSfit

[BLKMGK]

Sephiroth0000 - when you encode how are you maintaining surround sound? Are you converting to 2 channel stereo?:confused:

Heh, I'd be interested in the workflow for MeGUI too if it's straightforward...

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well, it's straighforward after you build an AviSynth script (which requires a GRF file of course).

Then you just load the AviSynth script into MeGUI, select a profile, and have it automatically mux with the AC3 if you want.

Then set it and forget it (tm).

I need to get the preprocessing workflow down better, and I think eac3to can help a lot - possibly even replace EVODemux.

~MiSfit

[BLKMGK]

Well, it's straighforward after you build an AviSynth script (which requires a GRF file of course).

Then you just load the AviSynth script into MeGUI, select a profile, and have it automatically mux with the AC3 if you want.

Then set it and forget it (tm).

I need to get the preprocessing workflow down better, and I think eac3to can help a lot - possibly even replace EVODemux.

~MiSfit

heh, okay slow down:eek: Single syllables helps:rolleyes: I've actually built a GRF file following the tutorial at the start of this thread, mostly understood it too! but I'm still mostly at the walking pace having just passed crawling stage. I do sort of get the idea of separating out the video from the audio but the whys confuse me. From the sound of it you're still doing that with MeGUI as part of the preprocessing, yes? I too used EVODemux when I did this and need to better understand EAC3to. Honestly the process laid out up front would have probably worked fine for me, although labor intensive, except man my sound came out crappy:eek:

Anyway, I'm still at the step by step newb stage I guess. the words made sense but didn't exactly equate into my understanding how to follow along. <sigh> That's why the River Past stuff is interesting to me, fairly straightforward except that as of right now I'm only seeing the option for stereo output. I'm fairly certain that's a function of software installed on my system or rather not installed but I'm still poking at it. It does seem to rely heavily on DirectShow so I'm not sure hwo to integrate things like X.264 which seem to be standalone executables.

Anyway, any further explanation you're willing to give would be appreciated and in the meantime I'll head for the MeGUI site and try to learn a bit about the program so I can at least ask somewhat smarter questions about it...:thanks:

Edit: Whoops, just spotted THIS -> http://forums.riverpast.com/index.php?showtopic=12016 Crap!

[jmrenrav]

I'm using MeGUI because it has a nice setup for x264 profiles, and will automatically calculate bitrates for me. It's my general purpose encoding GUI.

~MiSfit

Can you explain where you go for it to automatically calc bitrates? I'm using a bitrate calc to figure out what bitrate I need on my video's to be able to store on a DVD9, but the calc I'm using maxes out at around 9140 even when the video would go higher.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Okay, here's my current workflow in a nutshell:

1) Rip HD-DVD using AnyDVD HD
2) Run EVOs through EVODemux, and separate (demux) the audio track(s) that I'm interested in
3) Run EVOs through EVODemux again, and build a single EVO (with video only)
4) Convert E-AC3 track(s) to AC3 using eac3to
5) Build GRF of the single, video only EVO
6) Write an AviSynth script like this:

DirectShowSource("c:\movie.grf", audio=false, fps=23.976, framecount=1234) #the real framecount goes here, get this number from EVODemux

7) Load this AviSynth script into MeGUI, and select an x264 profile that meets my requirements
8) Click "auto encode", specify target file size (I usually do DVD9 size), and check box to mux additional content.
9) Add the AC3 track I created with eac3to, and begin the process. MeGUI will adjust the bitrate to take the AC3 track into account.
10) Encode

The areas I see as needing improvement are the preprocessing steps (with EVODemux). It seems like eac3to can now do most of this for me. It can rebuild the EVOs, and encode AC3 audio straight from the EVOs without having to demux E-AC3 first. I'll be trying it tonight as soon as I get home :)

That may be confusing, so ask if you have any questions.

To be clear, the pre-processing doesn't happen in MeGUI. MeGUI just automates the encoding process.

~MiSfit

[Tegeril]

Okay, here's my current workflow in a nutshell:

1) Rip HD-DVD using AnyDVD HD
2) Run EVOs through EVODemux, and rebuild an EVO with just the video in it (when I run into problems, I instead combine the EVOs with eac3to and then run the rebuild process with EVODemux to isolate the video - I don't know if eac3to can strip out audio and make a video only evo at this point, but if it can, I might eliminate EVODemux from my workflow entirely)
3) Run eac3to on the original EVO files and tell it to export 640kbit ac3 (eac3to.exe evo1.EVO+evo2.EVO 4: audio.ac3 -640) - Replace "4:" with the audio stream information in question(1:, 2:, 3:, etc). You can run eac3to.exe evo1.EVO+evo2.EVO to get information to learn the track numbers
4) Build GRF of the single, video only EVO (Haali Media Splitter --> WMVideo Decoder DMO)
5) Write an AviSynth script like this:

DirectShowSource("c:\movie.grf", audio=false, fps=23.976, framecount=1234) #the real framecount goes here, get this number from EVODemux or eac3to

6) Run x264 from the command prompt with the EXACT specifications from the advanced x264 profile on the first page in this thread, except with my bitrate at 12288 (12Mbit) instead of 8000
7) Mux the resulting MKV that x264 generated with the ac3 file from eac3to using MKVMerge for my final MKV.


Edited to show you my current workflow. I do not target a specific file size, but x264 comes within about 50kbit of the target bitrate in a two pass encode everytime. So far, with this method Planet Earth episodes clock in around 4.3GB, Corpse Bride was in the 7GB range, and the largest file so far came very close to 13GB. Doing the math, I think King Kong will clock in around 18GB. Ultimately, I'm after indistinguishable HDDVD quality with slightly lesser bitrate, in a single file, playable on any computer in my house (I have to upgrade my media center computer's CPU from the e6300 because playing these files back sometimes bursts up to 50% usage on my qx6700 and would thus max the e6300 and cause dropped frames).

[BLKMGK]

Alright, I'm trying this on the big robot movie this time :D

Have the EVO files, no problem. Bring them into EVOdemux with the option for it to grab the second EVO. It's not clear to me if Demuxing will separate out the audio from both EVO and it sounds like I'll want a single EVO later. So, I'm going to Rebuild with the H.264 stream and the DD+ steam0 which appears to be the soundtrack. I will then Demux to pull that single audio track out. This is much the same as what Blue_MiSfit did in his setup I think just bassackwards. I think I can handle the AC3 conversion using the EAC3to GUI program or I'll use Tegeril's commandline ;) Tegeril's step #4 elaboration is enough to allow me to do that step in conjunction with the tutorial on the first page I hope. Likewise the AVIsynth part is explained in the tutorial on the first page I think.

At this point I get a bit fuzzy but I will try to muddle through. The two of you diverge at this point which is okay. I think I'll get through this and will post back if I get stuck. Seeing the steps you guys took and especially the detail Tegeril added for his is a big help!

Tegeril, take a look at the new Intel 45nm CPUs. The one in this box is an E8400 and it's having no issues at just a hair over 4Ghz.:eek: I did have to bump voltage to 1.345 but it's hanging in there fine with an aftermarket Zalman cooler. After the monkey movie took 80 HOURS to process I decided it was time to move up and now games fly too!:p

[Blue_MiSfit]

yeah I feel your pain on the massive encode times. My X2 3800+ was going to take 40-60 hours.

My q6600 @ 3Ghz does it in under 18 hours :)

I will post more when I get home and can try some things.

~MiSfit

[Blue_MiSfit]

I do not target a specific file size, but x264 comes within about 50kbit of the target bitrate in a two pass encode everytime


Targeting a specific filesize or bitrate is exactly the same thing, it just depends how you look at it. Filesize = bitrate * length. You can encode at an arbitrary bitrate - say 12 mbit, or you can just make every movie fit in a specific filesize. You're still targeting a specific bitrate, but that bitrate will change depending on your content.

~MiSfit

[BLKMGK]

I'm slowly working along Tegeril's path. When I did what I'd planned I ended up with an EVO, an MPA file, and a bunch of subpictures that confused me. One odd thing, when I "rebuild" an EVO and only check off the video portion opening the results in EVOdemux still shows some audio in the results window but not under the Video\Audio tab - weird. I'm at the point of pulling out the audio with Eac3to now.

Edit: and just that quick a brick wall!
D:\Video\eac3to>eac3to f:\Transformers\FEATURE_1.EVO+f:\Transformers\FEATURE_2.E
VO 3: audio.ac3-640
EVO, 2 video tracks, 5 audio tracks, 2:23:27
1: Joined EVO file
2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001
3: VC-1, 480p30 /1.001, -84ms
4: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 1536kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
5: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
6: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
7: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
8: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -111ms
This video conversion is not supported.

Doh!

[tyee]

Just got a new computer too, with Q6600. Just loaded windows and have to reinstall all apps. However, the video card is an ati 3650, only about $100, and totally offloads VC1 and AVC/x264 processing from the CPU. Haven't tried it yet but that's why I got it. May be a lot cheaper than CPU upgrade!

[Blue_MiSfit]

True, but keep in mind the hardware decoding is only guaranteed to work within an approved player application. It does work in vanilla DirectShow (media player classic), but not with all streams. You have to stick to some pretty strict requirements, and I've heard getting it working is tricky.

It was working fine for me when I was borrowing a radeon 2400 pro for awhile, but not when I got an eVGA 8800gt, which supposedly also has hardware acceleration. *shrug* who knows.. I think the guys in the media player classic home cinema edition thread are more in on this stuff than I am.

I don't really care, q6600 eats any video decoding alive you throw at it.

~MiSfit

[Tegeril]

One caveat to non-hardware-accelerated decoding:

I had occasionally gotten frame dropping and audio stuttering during playback of my files. I was using the latest stable FFDShow tryouts (12/24). It's worth noting that the 12/24 build is not multithreaded with regard to utilizing more than one CPU/core. Upon updating to a more recent nightly, I was able to get FFDShow to decode everything smoothly and perfectly.

[Tegeril]

BLKMGK, you're missing a space and giving it the wrong stream.

Try: eac3to f:\Transformers\FEATURE_1.EVO+f:\Transformers\FEATURE_2.EVO 4: audio.ac3 -640

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well that's not hardware accelerated. That's pure software.

I use CoreAVC for H.264 decoding, and it f$*(ing flies! :)

~MiSfit

[Tegeril]

Yeah, I haven't decided what I'm going to do about decoding options. I've always been an FFDShow user...the media center computer as an 8500GT, so if CoreAVC will hardware decode my files, I'll be all over that and not upgrade the CPU.

[BLKMGK]

BLKMGK, you're missing a space and giving it the wrong stream.

Try: eac3to f:\Transformers\FEATURE_1.EVO+f:\Transformers\FEATURE_2.EVO 4: audio.ac3 -640

Stupid question, how did you determine is was stream 4 and not 3? 3 appears to be higher bitrate so I ASSumed that would be it... Error I'm getting now trying to decode what I thought was the right audio stream only is in regards to Nero not being available - I hadn't installed it on this machine yet so I'm doing that now...

Edit: am really confused now. I fI run EAC3to with no commands just to view the audio streams it's #3, when I run ti with a full commandline then the entry for "joined EVO" shows up and pushes #3 to #4 - argh!

[Tegeril]

From what you posted:
1: Joined EVO file
2: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001
3: VC-1, 480p30 /1.001, -84ms
4: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 1536kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
5: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
6: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
7: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
8: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -111ms

4: corresponds with the 1536kbit audio track which is absolutely the primary language track on the disc. You don't give it the VC-1 track because that is just video only. Also, Nero 8 is not compatible with eac3to so you need 7. I'm pretty sure it also requires the HD-DVD/Blu-ray plugin (for eac3 conversions - eac3to can do TrueHD conversions with libav and can do them perfectly, I have yet to try a DTSHD track, but I have a movie with one, so it's a matter of time).

Edit: Oh, that's interesting...huh. Next time I'm using eac3to I'll have to look into whether I see that behavior about the appearing/disappearing joined EVO file.

[BLKMGK]

Ya, I chopse 3 because that corresponded to the higher bitrate when EAC3to is run by itself ->

D:\Video\eac3to>eac3to f:\Transformers\FEATURE_1.EVO
EVO, 2 video tracks, 5 audio tracks, 1:11:54
1: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001
2: VC-1, 480p30 /1.001, -84ms
3: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 1536kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
4: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
5: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
6: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
7: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -111ms

I did get it to just run to completion with the commandline given earlier though! However I'm not sure where it put it's output file?!

Extracting audio track number 4...
Removing dialog normalization...
Applying (E-)AC3 delay...
Decoding with DirectShow (Nero Audio Decoder 2)...
Disabling DRC for Nero (E-)AC3 decoding...
The last (E-)AC3 frame is incomplete and thus gets skipped.

Heh, and I knew enough not to use Nero8 but thanks! I own Nero7 Ultimate and thus far it doesn't look like I need the HD plug-ins. I did nearly buy them when I thought they might help me in this endeavor but concluded they wouldn't - at least not yet.:rolleyes:

Looking at the EAC3to commandline options, seems I needed to specify an output or it just churns I guess? I did spot one interesting example though since I think you had asked about it combining .EVO files -> "eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo movie.mkv" Looks like that will combine them?

Edit: looking closer no the commandline looks right. Ran it again with Perfmon up (64bit Vista) and I see heavy reads on the EVO files but zero output anywhere. I'm stumped. Hrm, looks like doing the MKV combination thing also has th eresult of writing out all of the audio tracks as separate files, perhaps that will be usable when done if the files aren't erased. It splits them and then writes out the MKV file.

[BLKMGK]

Alright, I think I might have found some cause for the issues. Thanks to a REALLY good, but deleted, Wikipedia article on EAC3to that I read from Google cache I found out about a test sequence you can run on the product, yes documented here in the EAC3to thread as well. ->

D:\Video\eac3to>eac3to -test
Sonic Audio Decoder (2.22.0.0) doesn't seem to be installed
Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 7 or older) is not working correctly
Haali Media Splitter (2007-12-29) is installed
Surcode DTS Encoder doesn't seem to be installed
MkvToolnix (v2.1.0) is installed

Nero7 IS installed and I just double checked it's installation, seems I was wrong about needing the Nero HD/DVD plug-in. <smack> -libav may do the trick for now, I might still go commercial though.

Edit: -libav worked, I now have an AC3 file for my test trailer and my main movie that seem to work. GrphEdt is now giving me the finger. I give up, time for bed! Says that the Haali splitter filter and the WMVideop filter cannot agree on a connection. Grr, tomorrow is another day. Hope to heck some other poor newb can learn something from this head banging.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Okay, so here's my new workflow, sans EVODemux:

1) Rip with AnyDVD (no change)


G:\HD-DVD Rips\Deer Hunter>eac3to FEATURE_1.EVO+FEATURE_2.EVO 3: deer_hunter.ac3
-448

EVO, 1 video track, 3 audio tracks, 3:03:40
1: Joined EVO file
2: VC-1, 1080p24 /1.001
3: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 1536kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
4: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 384kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
5: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Extracting audio track number 3...
Removing dialog normalization...
Decoding with DirectShow (Nero Audio Decoder 2)...
Disabling DRC for Nero (E-)AC3 decoding...
DirectShow reports 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
Encoding AC3...
Creating/writing file "deer_hunter.ac3"...
The last (E-)AC3 frame is incomplete and thus gets skipped.
Video track 2 contains 264219 frames.
eac3to processing took 18 minutes, 56 seconds.
Done.

G:\HD-DVD Rips\Deer Hunter>eac3to FEATURE_1.EVO+FEATURE_2.EVO 2: deer.mkv

EVO, 1 video track, 3 audio tracks, 3:03:40
1: Joined EVO file
2: VC-1, 1080p24 /1.001
3: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 1536kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
4: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 384kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
5: E-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 264219 frames.
eac3to processing took 20 minutes, 19 seconds.
Done.

G:\HD-DVD Rips\Deer Hunter>


This gives me an AC3 and an MKV containing only the video. This MKV plays perfectly - with seeking and everything. Hell, since the names of the MKV and the AC3 matched, it even synced the audio in media player classic. Nice.

HOWEVER... my original problem still remains.

When I wrap this MKV (or an EVO with a precise filter graph) in an AVS script, I can't seek in VirtualDub. MeGUI still hangs when I try to open it.

WTF is going on here???

~MiSfit

[primerump]

Hello everyone,

It has been awhile since my last posting on here but now I present to you an even easier means of backing up your HD DVDs to many various formats

-AnyDVD HD (Rip film to HDD)
-EvoDemux (REBUILT Video/Audio into one single stream)
-RiverPast Video Cleaner Pro (load up REBUILT Video/Audio file and convert to desired format)

Now I know it seems too easy to be true but just so everyone can have a go please follow this link to their website help where it tells you how to convert to what format

http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/evob/

I have done 3 encodes so far and I have to say that the Big Robot Movie looks mental on the PS3! Any queries let me know :)

EDIT: Oh and also depending on what format you wish to desire to means other programs will need to be downloaded but are FREEWARE and available from the website itself (some are free but not all)


Hi, I'm new here, been monitoring this forum for a while now...
but I'd would be interested to know the version of RiverPast..
I purchased 7.5, followed the guide on their site, but I cannot open the evo file.. it refuses point blank.. !!

BW: I tried nero 8 with hd pugin and it sux a$$ dude.. lol

thank you ..

[BLKMGK]

<snip>

This gives me an AC3 and an MKV containing only the video. This MKV plays perfectly - with seeking and everything. Hell, since the names of the MKV and the AC3 matched, it even synced the audio in media player classic. Nice.

HOWEVER... my original problem still remains.

When I wrap this MKV (or an EVO with a precise filter graph) in an AVS script, I can't seek in VirtualDub. MeGUI still hangs when I try to open it.

WTF is going on here???

~MiSfit

I can get to the same point actually, the standalone video and AC3. However when I attempt to create a path using GraphEdt I get an error trying to connect the two filters mentioned on the first page - I can do it in XP. I *do* have WMP11 since this is Vista. I'd LIKE to get this done on the far faster machine so I'm open to ideas - switching to 32bit Vista or XP won't fly though:p I'd love to get to the point where you are and try seeking with LinuXBMC though! doesn't proper seeking ni many products require some sort of timing information to be embedded? Could that be getting lost? Could you somehow add it back in after the fact through post processing? I seem to recall seeing something to that effect when I used to work on TIVO extraction so I could be way off :(

As for the RiverPast software - IMO it's a lame duck. Even if it worked 100% as designed you're limited to stereo soundtracks. The issue I've had all along had been getting good AC3 audio with ffmpeg, EAC3to solves that. Now I just need to get back to being able to get video working right in Vista. 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. I know these other steps are more complicated than the RiverPast software appears but their unwillingness to do sound correctly ends my interest and probably many others...

[BLKMGK]

Okay, managed to create a video only MKV from a trailer, a standalone AC3 of same, and them mux them together - played and appeared synched fine. I think I remember how I did it:eek: I found that neither Vista 64 nor XP (which worked previously) would allow me to build anything with Graphedt using the Ironman trailer from Transformers. I think I might know what the issue is, at least with the robot movie. Looking at the video properties in Graphedt I see that it's listed as being H.264 video, the monkey movie is WVCI. I'm thinking this is where the thing falls apart. I'm thinking that the WMVideo decoder isn't right for this (duh). I may test the monkey movie on my Vista setup to see what other issues I might have since I'm finding dire refrences to needing things like a 64bit splitter, 64bit codecs, and a 64bit Graphedt when I Google. I sure hope that's not the case!

Anyway, looks like we might need multiple paths depending on how the movie is encoded. Does it sound like I'm on the right track?:scared:

[Blue_MiSfit]

Definitely.

If you have an H.264 movie, you have to use an H.264 decoder like ffdshow or CoreAVC.

Don't worry about using 64 bit encoding tools on Vista x64. They're simply not mature.

The 32 bit versions work just fine on Vista x64.

~MiSfit

[BLKMGK]

Definitely.

If you have an H.264 movie, you have to use an H.264 decoder like ffdshow or CoreAVC.

Don't worry about using 64 bit encoding tools on Vista x64. They're simply not mature.

The 32 bit versions work just fine on Vista x64.

~MiSfit

:thanks: That was very timely. I just tried playing the H.264 video in an MKV on both my Vista box and under XBMC - both pretty ugly with dropped frames and I'd yet to add sound. I'm headed for bed now but you've given me the direction I need to cut the bitrate down I think! I will poke at this again tomorrow after doing some additional research and if I can find a good way to do this I'll point it out. I cannot wait for tools that are newb friendly to mature for this process! :p In the meantime I get to learn lots and I truly appreciate the tips along the way!

Oh and thanks for the 64bit comment. I'm hoping I can do this without adding still more uncertainty and being able to use more mature 32bit code will help.

[Sephiroth0000]

Hi, I'm new here, been monitoring this forum for a while now...
but I'd would be interested to know the version of RiverPast..
I purchased 7.5, followed the guide on their site, but I cannot open the evo file.. it refuses point blank.. !!

BW: I tried nero 8 with hd pugin and it sux a$$ dude.. lol

thank you ..

Right first of it is version 7.6.6 (sorry should of mentioned) and you also do have to have certain other packages with it to read the EVOB. Providing it is REBUILT EVOs you are trying to load up it should work. Their website will state what other installers you need (if any). I also have Cyberlink PowerDVD (BluRay/HDDVD) so I do not know if that has any effect. I also have VistaCodecs installed.

[Sephiroth0000]

Sephiroth0000 - when you encode how are you maintaining surround sound? Are you converting to 2 channel stereo?:confused:

Heh, I'd be interested in the workflow for MeGUI too if it's straightforward...

For short trailers and testing videos I did do 2 channel but in order to maintain surround sound I suggest only REBUILDING the video without any audio and then muxing the audio in after you have done your encode. I am looking into it but do not get a great deal of time at the moment.

[sbcale]

Hey,

I have been converting Blu-ray and HD DVDs to WMV with wmcmd.vbs with pretty good success. I am now trying to do the same thing but to Divx and running into some problems. My biggest problem is processing an Avisynth avs script to VirtualDub, TMPGEnc, or the Windows Media Encoder front end. All of those programs either crash or throw an error when I try to convert to WMV or Divx. The avs opens fine in all of them, even getting the correct run time in TMPGEnc. They just bomb when I start the conversion. I really want to use a graph so I can specify what decoder to use because certain decoders work far better than others with certain video files. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Here is my graph and avs file, the avs file opens and plays perfectly in Windows Media Player.

Graph:
http://scale.smugmug.com/photos/254701013_2gewW-L.jpg

avs script:
http://scale.smugmug.com/photos/254701015_oC5cW-L.jpg

:thanks:

[Tegeril]

Ya, I chopse 3 because that corresponded to the higher bitrate when EAC3to is run by itself ->

D:\Video\eac3to>eac3to f:\Transformers\FEATURE_1.EVO
This is because you didn't give eac3to both EVOs when you look for track info...it would show the joined EVO if you hadEVO, 2 video tracks, 5 audio tracks, 1:11:54
1: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001
2: VC-1, 480p30 /1.001, -84ms
3: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 1536kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
4: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
5: E-AC3, 5.1 channels, 768kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
6: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -84ms
7: E-AC3, 2.0 channels, 192kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB, -111ms

I did get it to just run to completion with the commandline given earlier though! However I'm not sure where it put it's output file?!eac3to puts its output files in the directory where it exists unless you specify a non-relative path

Extracting audio track number 4...
Removing dialog normalization...
Applying (E-)AC3 delay...
Decoding with DirectShow (Nero Audio Decoder 2)...
Disabling DRC for Nero (E-)AC3 decoding...
The last (E-)AC3 frame is incomplete and thus gets skipped.

Heh, and I knew enough not to use Nero8 but thanks! I own Nero7 Ultimate and thus far it doesn't look like I need the HD plug-ins. I did nearly buy them when I thought they might help me in this endeavor but concluded they wouldn't - at least not yet.:rolleyes:

Looking at the EAC3to commandline options, seems I needed to specify an output or it just churns I guess? I did spot one interesting example though since I think you had asked about it combining .EVO files -> "eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo movie.mkv" Looks like that will combine them?I actually played around with it, and you can do "eac3to evo1.EVO+evo2.EVO 3: combined.EVO" -assuming the video track is 3. It muxes the two VC-1 tracks together. When you use eac3to to mux into MKV directly, you're still putting a VC-1 video file into that MKV and as such it will be less portable. Unless of course the HDDVD in question is an h264/avc video file, and that is something I have yet to run into.

Edit: looking closer no the commandline looks right. Ran it again with Perfmon up (64bit Vista) and I see heavy reads on the EVO files but zero output anywhere. I'm stumped. Hrm, looks like doing the MKV combination thing also has th eresult of writing out all of the audio tracks as separate files, perhaps that will be usable when done if the files aren't erased. It splits them and then writes out the MKV file.

[BLKMGK]

Okay, I've got creating audio tracks down pat now I think, eac3to is way easier than the bugged ffmpeg! Using eac3to I've also managed to combine two H.264 EVO files into a monolithic MKV file with no additional compression, then mux in the audio track. It appears to work well but the result is a file with no additional compression from what was on the original disk and I drop frames during playback. I'd like to cut file size in half downto say 11Gigs if I can retain quality. I can see with Graphedt that ffdshow is the decoder for playback of this file etc. Where my understanding fails is is the path for trying to compress the H.264 file further:confused:

I attempted to build a graph using ffdshow as the decoder akin to what's on the first page but AVIsynth says no go. I have a feeling this is something basic I'm not understanding but looking around for tutorials on H.264 or x.264 compression yields nothing but format conversions and not simply taking a file and compressing it further. Could someone give me another hint?:rolleyes: I have a feeling that the AVI in AVIsynth is a clue:eek:

I think with what I've learned I can get my monkey movie setup fine and if I encounter another EVO with that same encoding I'll be fine. I need to conquer H.264 and I think there's a 3rd encoding out there too I've not yet seen.

I will probably take a second look at the RiverPast software. Fixing the audio with eac3to might not be so bad but it stings to purchase a piece of software that cannot do the job that I really need. Speaking of purchasing - is it worthwhile to get the CoreAVC decoder and Nero HD/DVD decoders?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Okay, you're at the same point I am. I can get an MKV with just video in it, and an audio track how I want.

It's easy to build a GRF that works for the MKV that eac3to creates.

Haali splitter (for the MKV) -> ffdshow.

Or CoreAVC. Both work. Then you make the AviSynth script like the guide on page 1 suggests. That should work fine. Then you can feed MeGUI this script, and have it handle H.264 encoding.

Mine works, but seeking is still broken lol... *bangs head against wall* This was all working fine for me before I rebuilt my machine last weekend... WTF am I missing??

~MiSfit

[BLKMGK]

Okay, you're at the same point I am. I can get an MKV with just video in it, and an audio track how I want.

It's easy to build a GRF that works for the MKV that eac3to creates.

Haali splitter (for the source) -> ffdshow.

Or CoreAVC. Both work. Then you make the AviSynth script like the guide on page 1 suggests. That should work fine. Then you can feed MeGUI this script, and have it handle H.264 encoding.

Mine works, but seeking is still broken lol... *bangs head against wall* This was all working fine for me before I rebuilt my machine last weekend... WTF am I missing??

~MiSfit

So, JUST Haali splitter to ffdshow? Well heck, I can do that in about two secs then! I will try that in just a moment, was about to fix my monkey flick ;-) I'll update this with how it works out and what I did if I find anything weird. Oh and I'll let you know if seeking works!

Edit: okay the encoding process is now working for the robot movie, w00t! I will be tweaking monkey movie on my other machine. I'll let you know how the end result works out WRT to seeking in "awhile".:thanks:

[Blue_MiSfit]

You got it.

I'm interested to see if seeking works for you.

It's definitely not just the movie I'm currently working on (Deer Hunter), because I tried one of the EVOs from Planet Earth (that were working perfectly before I rebuilt my computer), and they have the same seeking problem. It's some stupid configuration option somewhere, or some missing piece of software - I know it is...

~MiSfit

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well, it's not the end result I'm worried about. It's the avisynth script.

That's what's not seekable in VirtualDub or MeGUI.

In Graphedit it seeks just fine (if I add Haali renderer to the end and use GraphEdit's seek bar)

~MiSfit

[tyee]

One quick question for you Graphedit experts --
Is there any way to force the operating system to use the graph we build for decoding all files with certain file extensions??

Like the example above - Let's say my system won't play x264/avc files but I want to use ffdshow to decode them.

Ah, something came to mind just now. ffdshow has a config utility to turn on/off it's decoders for windows, so how does it do this without graphedit?

If I want to play a .264 file with ffdshow after making the .grf file how do I tell windows to always use that graph without using the ffdshow config utility??

[Blue_MiSfit]

Good question. I want to do the same thing :)

[BLKMGK]

Okay, I was using one of the profiles on the first page, the better quality of the two, and it crashed 26% through the 2nd pass - argh!

So, I decided to try MeGUI! Blue_MiSfit, what profile are you using? The one I chose (HQ-Slower) is predicting a final file size of about a Gig! IMO that's waay too small! I'd like to go from about 23Gigs to about 11Gigs. I'm not trying to cram this onto some DVD9 disk, I'm trying to simply make the size more reasonable without having to go through 90 hours of processing - currently I'm looking at about 6hours for this one.

I've got over 7TB of disk space on this server holding my regular DVDs (no compression), space to grow, and a second server I can use if I must so larger is okay. I'm really trying to keep a good looking video image, surround sound, and playback that can be done by mortal CPUs like the one in my LinuXBMC box. I think I have the process down for at least these two encoding types but it seems I need to tune the H.264 a it better - suggestions welcome. I think I may abort this and practice on the trailer. <sigh>

Edit: Whoops, Vista says X264.exe just puked again so yeah I'm back square one.

Edit2: Okay, looks like I can set the rate in MeGUI so I will try that. I managed to encode a trailer successfully although it still drops frames on my computer and has one error in it, has sound though and is compressed! I'll try the feature again, I've slowed my CPU down a bit as I suspect it was simply pushed too far too long for stability.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Sounds like reducing the overclock was a good idea.

x264 is kind of the ultimate stability test.

HQ-Slower is a great place to start for H.264 backups. I typically use the custom adaptive quantization build of x264, but the default is very good.

I usually try to go to ~9GB (including audio) since I would like to put backups on a DVD9 at some point.

~MiSfit