Blu-Ray~DVD Backup & Conversion

[jdobbs]

It keeps all the subs... I have the ability to remove, but I've disabled it (for my own reasons). Right now I have it reencoding all video to AVC regardless of the original format. It also converts all retained audio to AC-3 -- but later versions will allow you to keep them in their original format as well. Mainly I did that to keep audio size reasonable for fitting on BD-9/5 discs. Reencoding the audio also gives you the option of adjusting the output volume of the newly encoded AC-3 audio.

Like I said previously, the only real limitation right now is the time it takes to reencode. Today I've been playing with using CRF mode on extras to speed things up -- then I use two-pass for the main feature. It cuts time significantly -- especially since you have to reencode all video (to get the max bitrate down to what will play on a BD-9 without stutter/freeze).

[magic144]

can you at least remove foreign/other subs?

"gives you the option of adjusting the output volume of the newly encoded AC-3 audio"
oh, by that do you mean removing the infamous "dialogue normalization" or something more? and if so, what and why...?
and yeah, I think AC-3 is the only way to go for freeware options at the moment - as far as I know, DTS encoding is $$$
(and yes, I think keeping any kind of HD audio would remove a lot of space for video within the confines of a BD-9)

and will there still be a movie-only option? - it must take a lot of time and effort to handle menus, but personally I just like the main feature :-)

AVC is probably the way to go for sure - that's how I've been reencoding all my own BD's so far too (even if they start out life VC-1 or MPEG-2)

[jdobbs]

Like I said, I've already added subtitle removal. I just disabled it (when you see it, you'll see that it is a simple check-to-keep list similar to DVD Rebuilder).

The only options I plan to ever offer are either AC3 reencoding or retention of the original (except LPCM -- which in my opinion is a ridiculous waste of space).

The audio reencoding will allow you to boost the volume by whatever amount you want. Of course you have to be careful so you don't cause clipping. I find that about a 10% boost is nice. That way the volume control levels closely match those on my television. I added that because I hate it when I switch back from a disc and the television blows my ears off...

Yes there is a movie-only option. Frankly that ws so easy that I added it more as an afterthought. The only thing you have to do of any consequence is scan the MPLS files so you don't miss any portions of it (e.g. if there is a "director's cut")... but for the vast majority of discs the whole movie is contained in one M2TS file.

[magic144]

"it is a simple check-to-keep list"
oh well that sounds cool

so have you investigated this dialogue normalization business? - I don't know too much about it myself, except that madshi (eac3to guru) swears by removing it I think :-)
from all I've read so far, it's not anything that interferes with the actual encoded audio, just some kind of post-decode adjustment

don't think I'll play around with volume too much otherwise

[jdobbs]

Yeah, I'm familiar with it -- I played with it a couple of years ago as a possible enhancement for DVD-RB. It's pretty easy to adjust, and you don't have to reencode to make the adjustment. But, from my experience, it didn't have much of an impact (noticable, but not significant).

In BD-RB you will actually reencode -- and literally boost the volume of the source (as opposed to normalization, which does an analysis and only raises to a point at which the peak stays within bounds). I will probably add normalization at some point as well.

[turbojet]

Will it be possible to keep AC3 and DTS cores instead of encoding to AC3 every time?

[jdobbs]

From post #451: "...later versions will allow you to keep them in their original format"

[turbojet]

Oh by original I thought you meant TrueHD or DTS-HD if exists.

[jdobbs]

Oh, I see what you mean. Unfortunately those formats might fill a BD-5 or BD-9 by themselves (never mind the video). Right now I'm converting TrueHD into AC3 and DTS-HD into DTS for all streams (even before I reencode to AC3). I have no intention of changing that for BD-5/9 but I'll make it an option for BD-25 in a future version.

Personally I think those formats (along with LPCM) are a waste of space. People can't really tell the difference -- unless they are told what format to which they are listening. But I'll allow the option just so I don't have to argue about it. ;)

[turbojet]

TrueHD into AC3 and DTS-HD into DTS is what I meant originally and what I'm interested in. 'core' coming from eac3to --core to process it. Original that you mentioned I took as whatever is on the original BD, whether it be HD audio or AC3\DTS.
From reading, it looks like you are requiring encoding to AC3 because of normalizing. This really hurts quality on DTS -> AC3 conversion. AC3 -> AC3 is also noticable on a decent system with decent ears.
Could you initially put in an option to use AC3 or DTS from the BD or extracted from an HD audio stream instead of losing alot of quality?

[oRBIT]

@jdobbs: Do you have some sort of featurelist for an upcoming beta of BD-Rebuilder? And what timeframe are we talking about before a public beta? Days, weeks, months?

Anyway, thanks for your amazing job! I'm really looking forward to BD-Rebuilder! Recoding BD's are really a pain today so your tool will be very welcome! :)

[OrigCasshern]

Please please forgive me for this post, but what I'm reading is perhaps of interest to what I'm trying to accomplish. Please tell me to get lost (or tell me where to post) if need be. Newbie? Almost.

I currently use StaxRip to encode main movie DVD/VOB files to ac3/h264 files. Then I use txRemuxer to create an m2ts file from the two files.

My goal is to:

1. Do the above for multiple VOB files
2. Create an AVCHD DVD5/DVD9 with multiple files (movies) as the STREAM files in the folder...

...hoping I'll end up with 3-5 movies on a single AVCHD DVD5/9 disc that my PS3 will think is a regular AVCHD with multiple files in the STREAM folder.

I've read that the PS3 will only upscale from disc and not from streaming m2ts files or reading as ISO files from the hard drive or DVD.

Any thoughts? Is this a pipe dream?

Thanks for your time. I can see you all have experience and talent in such areas.

[jdobbs]

Could you initially put in an option to use AC3 or DTS from the BD or extracted from an HD audio stream instead of losing alot of quality?
Not in the initial beta, but soon afterward. The implementation methodology is incremental so I can catch bugs. It's not my opinion that the quality loss is noticable, though. But, I'm not the only user...



I'm not doing the reencode for volume as much as for space. The normalization is just a nice addition.

[jdobbs]

Please please forgive me for this post, but what I'm reading is perhaps of interest to what I'm trying to accomplish. Please tell me to get lost (or tell me where to post) if need be. Newbie? Almost.

I currently use StaxRip to encode main movie DVD/VOB files to ac3/h264 files. Then I use txRemuxer to create an m2ts file from the two files.

My goal is to:

1. Do the above for multiple VOB files
2. Create an AVCHD DVD5/DVD9 with multiple files (movies) as the STREAM files in the folder...

...hoping I'll end up with 3-5 movies on a single AVCHD DVD5/9 disc that my PS3 will think is a regular AVCHD with multiple files in the STREAM folder.

I've read that the PS3 will only upscale from disc and not from streaming m2ts files or reading as ISO files from the hard drive or DVD.

Any thoughts? Is this a pipe dream?

Thanks for your time. I can see you all have experience and talent in such areas.You'll need something to distinguish betwen the M2TS files and a way to access them.

[OrigCasshern]

jdobbs, thanks for your post. Seems I've much to research and figure out. Does it even seem like something possible, or is there a better way I can be doing things?

[G_M_C]

Please please forgive me for this post, but what I'm reading is perhaps of interest to what I'm trying to accomplish. Please tell me to get lost (or tell me where to post) if need be. Newbie? Almost.

I currently use StaxRip to encode main movie DVD/VOB files to ac3/h264 files. Then I use txRemuxer to create an m2ts file from the two files.

My goal is to:

1. Do the above for multiple VOB files
2. Create an AVCHD DVD5/DVD9 with multiple files (movies) as the STREAM files in the folder...

...hoping I'll end up with 3-5 movies on a single AVCHD DVD5/9 disc that my PS3 will think is a regular AVCHD with multiple files in the STREAM folder.

I've read that the PS3 will only upscale from disc and not from streaming m2ts files or reading as ISO files from the hard drive or DVD.

Any thoughts? Is this a pipe dream?

Thanks for your time. I can see you all have experience and talent in such areas.

I see you have only made 2 posts on this board, so it might be that you dont know / or have missed this.

There are many places on this board covering small parts of the whole DIY BD / BD9 subject. To bad all this info is frangmented and spreaded all over the place. I've tried starting a post/thread where we could start to try to get all info centralized, but it seems there was no interest. So my tip is that you browse around a few times, and see what you can find.

I've seen something that might help you come around in this part of this board;
http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=39

Specifically in this thread;
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1184425#post1184425

It might be of interest to jdobbs too.

[turbojet]

What bitrate is being used for AC3 encoding?
1509 kbps DTS and 640\448 kbps AC3 are typical streams with the core I'm talking about. So even with forcing 448 kbps AC3 encoding you are gaining a maximum 1051 kbps. My personal opinion is that 7000 vs 6000 1080p video bitrate with most video you won't notice much of a difference. but everyone with a DTS receiver will be able to tell the difference in the audio.

With AC3 encoding 640 -> 448 isn't gaining much video bitrate and with 640 -> 640 lossy encoding for normalizing only?
I honestly haven't seen a bluray that didn't have 'good enough' normalization.

While I do like to prioritize video over audio, DTS vs AC3 is a huge difference especially with action movies. I realize encoding to 768 DTS would be optimal but that's not free, and I see jdobbs mentions that for the future.

There's already code for coring, wouldn't having the option to use the core be a few lines of code at the most?
Is the different overhead for DTS vs AC3 an issue?

[jdobbs]

1509 kbps DTS Exactly my point. If you try to do a movie-only backup to a BD-5 (which can be done with very good quality) you'd have already thrown away almost a quarter of the available disc space on audio alone...

I'm not as impressed with DTS as others apparently are.

[turbojet]

In all cases they would have the choice to encode or not. I just don't see a reason to be forced to encode the audio in the examples I mentioned. I guess all I can hope for is a workaround outside of the program?

[GZZ]

First version is just a beta, all those features will be added along the way, just like DVD rebuilder has evole. :)

[Sophocles]

I'm not as impressed with DTS as others apparently are.

It depends on the quality of the mix. Sometimes on a DVD that has both DD and DTS, DD could be the better of the two because of a superior mix-down. One also needs to have a very good sound system to distinguish between competing formats. I'm content to go with AC3 640 or when necessary 480 kbps because the quality is still very good.

[jdobbs]

In all cases they would have the choice to encode or not. I just don't see a reason to be forced to encode the audio in the examples I mentioned. I guess all I can hope for is a workaround outside of the program? What part of "it will be included -- but not in the first beta release" don't you understand? :( It's a matter of keeping the complexity down for debugging... if it is that important to you, wait for a later release.

[OrigCasshern]

G_M_C, thanks for that. I'll have a look.

jdobbs, thanks for all in this post.

[G_M_C]

G_M_C, thanks for that. I'll have a look.

jdobbs, thanks for all in this post.

np,

I m looking for a tool to parse /edit the MPLS. Or if it not the MPLS, i'm looking for another way of making tsMuxeR's output stop "repeat seamlessly". Cause i'd like the drive/player to simply "stop" after te movie is played ;)

[jdobbs]

I think BDEdit is about as close as you're going to get to a full-function editor. Have you tried it?

[G_M_C]

I think BDEdit is about as close as you're going to get to a full-function editor. Have you tried it?

I've looked at it (i've searches more after my previous post), and i'll download + try it tonight.

Don't know exactly where to look for the playabillity that i want (i.e. edit it so that it stops after playing); But it looks like that is the right tool. Thx for the tip :)

[jdobbs]

There are flags that can be set with it (each corresponding to a set of bits starting at offset 0x30 in the MPLS file -- but nothing tells you what they relate to...

[G_M_C]

There are flags that can be set with it (each corresponding to a set of bits starting at offset 0x30 in the MPLS file -- but nothing tells you what they relate to...

Yeah, i was expirimenting with a copy of a small project. Screwed it up a few times allready :p

Too bad there is no good faq or quide on how to use it provided with the package :rolleyes:
Seems i have to expiriment a lot to find out how it really works.

[GZZ]

Hey Jdobbs

When can we expect to see a Beta release. I would really like to start beta testing it ? :D

[jdobbs]

As soon as I think it it ready. I've been spending a lot of time on it... and it's close. But there are a couple of things I have to get smoothed out before posting the beta.

[GZZ]

Its ok by me. As a Delphi developer I know it can take time. :)

Keep us updated. :)

[Sharc]

@jdobbs:
Will BD Rebuilder support backups of BluRay Discs with VC-1 video streams?

[Sophocles]

As soon as I think it it ready. I've been spending a lot of time on it... and it's close.

We can wait! I know that it's important to have a decent working prototype from which to get feed back. It makes no sense for us to bombard you with issues that you are already aware of.

[jdobbs]

@jdobbs:
Will BD Rebuilder support backups of BluRay Discs with VC-1 video streams?
Yes. It converts them to AVC.

[moviefan]

If I may contribute to your amazing project, jdobbs, I would like to suggest an option, if not yet planned, to be able to completely specify the encoding settings for every part of a Blu-ray, meaning I can exactly set encoding settings for the menu, for extras and for the main movie, including the capability of making a sample encode to try out the settings without actually starting the entire process (includes Avisynth). I have come across Blu-rays with extremely compressible menus where there was wasted so much bitrate without ANY difference in quality at all - and I'm talking of really no difference (and I'm very picky...). When it comes to compressing a complete Blu-ray to a DVD-DL size, an extremely compressed menu (or even if possible resized to 720p?) could contribute to a noticeably improved quality for the main movie from my point of view. Also I would love to see an option to resize at least extras, since they are viewed not so often and do their job also in 720p/i or 576/480p/i.

I'm aware of the development status of BD Rebuilder and that you are focusing on only main aspects for now, but these suggestions are rather meant for later development.

Thanks for your effort and I'm thrilled to see the first beta!

[magic144]

(the M2TS file has about 6-7% overhead)

wow, I've only really just noticed this point (and experienced it first hand) - that seems to push me back towards the .mkv camp!

I will still join everyone in awaiting BD-Rebuilder with keen interest

[jdobbs]

Overhead is a necessity... mkv has it's share too. You just have to account for it.

[magic144]

Well it must be needed for some aspect of BluRay playback functionality for sure. I'd be curious to know exactly what it gets you :-) ... possibly something to do with error correction/resilience?

I'm just surprised that, from what you had said and in my own test encodes yesterday, .m2ts is 6-7% bigger than the exact same audio/video streams encoded into an .mkv container. That's nearly 300MB of a DVD5, or 530MB of a DVD9 that could otherwise be reinvested in the h.264 video stream's bitrate.

Anyway, I can of course still see that the obvious benefit of the BD-9 (and the up-and-coming BD-Rebuilder) is NOT to have this reliance on an HTPC - and to have playback capability across a much wider range of hardware :-)

[jdobbs]

We're a couple days out. The problem is that every time you want to test something -- it's hours before you see the result. :p Just got past another obstacle in the multiplexing.

[magic144]

Great news jdobbs.
Of course, it will never be 'finished'. Once it's out there, the improvements will begin!

Hours? - What, you mean you haven't invested in a Cray super-computer just yet?! :p

I wonder how long the encode would take if you could run it natively (i.e. not via the virtualization restriction of something like a Linux install) on all of a PS3's 8 cores??? :eek:

[GZZ]

I wonder how long the encode would take if you could run it natively (i.e. not via the virtualization restriction of something like a Linux install) on all of a PS3's 8 cores???

Properly not that well, because the ps3 only got 512 mb memory (256 mb reserved for the ps3 main OS) and the rest is avaliable.

X264 use around 600-1.3 GB of memory on my system, so limiting it to 256 mb will properly slow down the data feat to the cell cpu on the ps3. But it could be funny to see how fast it is compared to a 4 core CPU (Intel/AMD). :)


To Jdobbs:
Looking forward to see the beta release, maybe doing small 10 min samples instead of full movie for testing will result in the same ?

[G_M_C]

We're a couple days out. The problem is that every time you want to test something -- it's hours before you see the result. :p Just got past another obstacle in the multiplexing.

Did you find a solution to the standard "seamless" repeat of tsMuxeR ?

Cause i really dont understand BDEdit, so i have no clue

And another option to consider for future versions; An option to select (1 of the) subtitles to play "automatically" (without having to switch them "on" with the remote).

[Fishman0919]

Hours? - What, you mean you haven't invested in a Cray super-computer just yet?! :p

AMD 9950 OC'ed to 3.5ghz takes about 6 hours. :p

Converting Ironman to 720p DVD-R 2nd pass (http://i467.photobucket.com/albums/rr37/fishman0919/Encoding.png)

Edit: Sorry, I was wrong, I have it OC'ed to 2.8ghz right now (from 2.6ghz)

[jdobbs]

Looking forward to see the beta release, maybe doing small 10 min samples instead of full movie for testing will result in the same ? Unfortunately not. For example, short entries never would have found the TSMUXER bug I reported in that thread (that causes incorrect navigation). I put code into BD-RB that corrects it. It just takes the patience of a saint... :)

[magic144]

@Fishman
yeah, h.264 2-pass 720p movie-encodes using x264 via megui have taken 10-12 hours on a stock Dell XPS420 w/ Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz.

This isn't an impatient person's game :-)

[GZZ]

Unfortunately not. For example, short entries never would have found the TSMUXER bug I reported in that thread (that causes incorrect navigation). I put code into BD-RB that corrects it. It just takes the patience of a saint...

Yea - just got it. Will try and see if it fix my problem. I will do a movie with and without. First without to see what chapters that will hang (picture freeze sound play) in powerdvd 8 and then apply the patch and see if the same chapter still have this issue. I hope it works. :)

@Fishman
yeah, h.264 2-pass 720p movie-encodes using x264 via megui have taken 10-12 hours on a stock Dell XPS420 w/ Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz.

Yea - I get around 20-25 fps in 1 pass (depends how large the black borders are) and around 7-11 fps in 2-pass on a 1920x1080 progressiv movie (no filter applied). I got a Intel Core2Quad 2.66 Ghz, 12 mb cache (not overclocked - yet)and 6 GB ram. So a normal 2 hour movie is around 2½-3 hour for 1 pass and around 6 hour for 2-pass...

[jdobbs]

Yea - I get around 20-25 fps in 1 pass (depends how large the black borders are) and around 7-11 fps in 2-pass on a 1920x1080 progressiv movie (no filter applied). I got a Intel Core2Quad 2.66 Ghz, 12 mb cache (not overclocked - yet)and 6 GB ram. So a normal 2 hour movie is around 2½-3 hour for 1 pass and around 6 hour for 2-pass... That's about the same speeds I see with my Phenom Quad.

[JJB]

I am really enthused about the possibilities here and I am now considering purchasing a stand alone BD player and PC player\burner. Brands not withstanding the only requirement is a unit with digital audio out (coax) as optical has never worked with my older Panasonic SA-HE70 5.1 receiver, an upgrade in the future is possible but I don't think it is needed now as 5.1 works great with me with an Oppo unit and 55" Sony LCD. Any suggestions on brands of BD players?

Will there be a requirement concerning the stand alone ability to play a specific format (VC-1, MPEG2, H.264, et al) from BD to DVD or will any brand play back the converted disc in any BD player.

Thanks

[mech61]

Ive ordered my player a Panasonic DMP-BD35 , my burner is ready to install LG GGW-H20N/L , what size discs are we going to need.

[magic144]

@mech61 - good question

I've seen a lot of 720p conversions requiring no more than DVD5 discs, on the other hand this may not apply to 1080p conversions - in fact I've seen some 1080p Scene release .mkv's that span more than the capacity of a DVD9 (dual layer)...

On the other hand, nothing I've yet read talks definitively about the relationship between quality and disc size (for both 720p and 1080p end-product scenarios). Maybe others can contribute to answering this question...

m