Blu-Ray Video into Adobe Premiere?

[DonPMitchell]

I've been able to rip a blu-ray disk using "AnyDVD HD", which leaves me with a huge .m2ts file. But Premiere and all the various players I have cannot read that format.

Can you recommend a simple way to convert m2ts into a more familiar format?

Should I buy SONY Vegas and try using that instead of Premiere? Thanks.

[Guest]

The procedure depends upon what kind of video you have in the M2TS file. What is it: MPEG2, AVC, or VC1?

[DonPMitchell]

I'm just testing this with a commercial blu-ray disk. It's MPEG-2.

[Guest]

Use DGMPGDec to serve it into VirtualDub. Save as AVI. Is AVI "more familiar" to you?

[DonPMitchell]

Thanks, that was helpful. The ability to save frames was handy, something that PowerDVD bends over backwards to prevent.

The problem I have is about what is "familiar" to Premiere. Why does Adobe think we will use this editor if it cannot read or write Flash Video (for web content) or the HDTV formats?

Are there similar players that can deal with the other two encodings, AVC and VC1?

[Southstorm]

Which Premiere version are you using? Premiere CS3 will output many formats including Flash, H264, etc...

[smok3]

The problem I have is about what is "familiar" to Premiere. Why does Adobe think we will use this editor if it cannot read or write Flash Video (for web content) or the HDTV formats?
this are all final formats and not meant to be edited again, basically (if by HDTV you mean mpeg2,vc1,h264).

[B4tm4n]

Premiere CS3 will edit H264 files, I did one a few days ago.
If I remember correctly you have have the right extention, I think its 264 you need or avc.

[DonPMitchell]

I installed the latest K-Lite codec package, and WMV 11 can now play M2TS and many other formats. Premiere seems to be using these new codecs too, but it won't open any new formats, unsurprisingly.

Somewhere along the line, PowerDVD stopped working, and both it and MPC crash with an exception when trying to open a .vob file. WMV simply refuses to play them. Is this what people mean when they talk about "codec hell"?

[Ranguvar]

Arrrrgh. Most likely, yes. Avoid codec packs at all costs.

Uninstall all codecs except VFW encoders you need (and DEFINITELY K-Lite). Then install a recent ffdshow tryouts build and Haali Media Splitter. Set them up to decode everything (make sure ffdshow uses libmpeg2 to decode all MPEG-2 formats). If you need QuickTime, use QuickTime Alternative Lite, not the official Quicktime if you can. If you need Real formats, use Real Alternative Lite if you can.

There you go, all set up for lean, mean decoding. And using mostly FOSS to boot.

(You may need Codec Sniper to help remove K-Lite remnants. System Restore would be best)

[DonPMitchell]

Thanks much. This would make a great newbie FAQ entry, how to set up a clean and powerful environment. Even a little overview of what is going on, how you are plugging things in to handle encoding/decoding and container formats.

I understand quite a bit about predictive coding and image processing (which is my profession) but know practically nothing about the software platforms that embody that theory. I'll have to look into this just to know how to set up these codecs to do what you suggest (i.e., make sure it uses libmpeg2, etc).