Problem when converting DTS-HD track to AC3 from The Simpsons Movie (Blu-ray)

[QuadcoreHD]

Hello All,

I've done some fairly exstensive searching but cannot seem to find a clear answer on the following issue:

I've ripped my blu-ray copy of The Simpsons Movie to my HD with AnyDVD 6.4.0.0. Problem arises when attempting to demux/covnvert the feature .m2ts files - when playing them from my Hard Drive they play in the spanish audio track by default and cannot be changed to english in power dvd - ok no big deal.

However, when I demux and attempt to convert the English audio track, which appears to be DTS-HD (as indicated by TSmuxer) , I'm unable to convert this to .AC3 with eac3to. I demux using the .dtshd extension, but keep getting an error message from eac3to saying "the file type cannot be recognized". I've tried demuxing to .ddp (thinking maybe TSmuxer was indicating at DTS-HD audio track in error) as well and get the same message.

Command im using is below:

eac3to simpsons.dtshd simpsons.ac3

or

eac3to simpsons.ddp simpsons.ac3

Has anyone run into this problem? Should i be using a different file exstension when demuxing? Any help wound be much appreciated.

Thanks all.

[nautilus7]

Simpsons BD has DTS-HD. You 're doing evrything right.

It is very possible that your track has some "garbage" at the begging before the actual audio data. Open it in a hex editor (like HxD (http://www.mh-nexus.de/hxd/)) and delete all data before the first 7F FE 80 01 sequence.

[QuadcoreHD]

Thanks very much Nautilus. I'm at work at the moment so I cannot try this right now, but I will take a crack at this in the next few hours. I have never used a hex editor before, so I have a couple questions.

Can i directly open the .m2ts file with hex editor, or just the demuxed .dtshd file? I'm assuming its the latter but just want to make sure. In addition, will i literally be looking for "7F FE 80 01...." in the text file?

Thanks again.

[nautilus7]

You have to open the demuxed dts-hd file, then look for exactly the sequence is told you. DTS files (and ac3 also) consist of independent audio frames. In dts each frame start with that specific sequence. If your file has "garbage" in front of that sequence (or the 1st frame is incomplete, thus missing that sequence), simply eac3to won't recognize it.

If your file wasn't dts-hd you could use delaycut (it drops incomplete frames), but since it doesn't support dts-hd, it will drop all -hd extensions and keep olny the dts core, which isn't what you want because it's better to decode all information included in your source file to make an ac3.

[QuadcoreHD]

Nautilus,

I demuxed to dts-hd again, opened the file in HxD but was not able to locate the sequence you describe (7F FE 80 01).

Nothing like that is in the file.

Any ideas?

[nautilus7]

What? Anywhere in the file? Not even half of it (7F FE)? I can't explain it... Does the file playback?

EDIT: If you used search in HxD, make sure you checked "hex values".

[QuadcoreHD]

No, nothing...not even one part. However, i solved the problem!!! at least in this case. I belive the issue was that the version of Tsmuxer i was using was demuxing a corrupted DTS-HD file...it was only 5 minutes long while the .m2ts stream was over 10 minutes. And wouldnt you know it...I found my solution on the news page of doom9..."tsMuxer 1.5.1 fixes problems when demuxing TrueHD audio tracks"...sure enough i downloaded v. 1.6.3 (the news page is from 3/20 so its a few days old) and it worked! eac3to now didnt throw any errors and i converted the dts-hd track to ac3!

clearly im not an expert, but id be willing to bet that i couldnt find the sequence you described because the track demuxed with my older version of tsmuxer was completely corrupt..

Now if only i can get these .m2ts's joned with synced audio and no stutter..well keep your fingers crossed : )

Thanks again for your help Nautilus.

[madshi]

Btw, with the latest eac3to version you can directly demux + transcode to AC3. That should save you some time cause everything is done in one step.

[QuadcoreHD]

Madshi you are the freaking man!