Will x264 videos play from Blu-ray Discs on TV

[hurry]

Hello. I have four questions regarding x264 and Blu-ray compatibility. I have tried to search for this but cannot find the answer.

(1) If I burn x264 videos (encoded with MediaCoder for example) on Blu-ray discs, would they play on a TV from a Blu-ray Player?

(2) And if the x264 video on a Blu-ray DVD contains audio in the Nero HE-AAC V2 (parametric format), will the Blu-ray player play the audio properly? Does Blu-ray support Nero HE-AAC V2 audio?

(3) If not, then which audio format should I use for encoding the x264 videos, so that the audio plays properly from a Blu-ray disc on a TV?

(4) Could you guide about the list of MP4 codecs which are fully supported in Blu-ray? Is x264 one of them?.

Thank you for your help.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Blu-ray supports VC1 , Mpeg2 , H264
Audio should be DTS , DTS-HD , AC3 , EAC3 , PCM , TrueHD.

[hurry]

(1) Thanks Atak. Just to make it doubly sure since I don't have a Blu-ray player here to test, since x264 is a H.264 codec, x264 videos will play in TV Blu-ray players if the audio encoded with the video is in the AC3 format. Is that correct?

(2) What about if the audio is in AAC format instead of AC3?

(3) Has anyone successfully tried playing x264 videos from a Blu-ray disc inside a standalone Blu-ray player on a TV?

I hope I can get a clear reply on this so that I can fix x264 as my standard of video encoding for the future. Thank you so much in advance.

[cacepi]

What about if the audio is in AAC format instead of AC3?
AAC is not supported by Blu-ray.

[hurry]

Thanks cacepi. Has anyone successfully tried playing x264 videos encoded in the Baseline profile from a Blu-ray disc inside a standalone Blu-ray player on a TV?

Does anyone know of a free or an economical GUI which can encode the video in x264 and audio in AC3 which can be played on standalone Blu-ray players? But I guess then these files will not play in the Adobe Flash Player or the Silverlight as they do not support AC3 audio.

Is there any way I can produce x264 video which can be played both on the web (Flash Player) and on Blu-ray like the VC1 video which can be played both on Blu-ray as well as on web via Silverlight?

WMV VC1 video contains WMA audio if I am correct? So since Blu-ray supports VC1, does it mean it supports the playback of WMA audio in the VC1 video also?

Does Blu-ray support MP3? It is not mentioned in Atak's list of supported audio codecs for Blu-ray dics in the second post in this thread.

[Dark Shikari]

Is there any way I can produce x264 video which can be played both on the web (Flash Player) and on Blu-ray like the VC1 video which can be played both on Blu-ray as well as on web via Silverlight?

Does Blu-ray support MP3? It is not mentioned in Atak's list of supported audio codecs for Blu-ray dics in the second post in this thread.No and no; not only is it an issue of audio formats but Blu-ray has its own container format (M2TS).

[hurry]

No and no; not only is it an issue of audio formats but Blu-ray has its own container format (M2TS).

So do all videos have to be in the m2ts container to be played back on a Blu-ray standalone TV player? Will it not playback H.264 encoded files with mp4 or mov containers on the TV? Also if that is the case, then how does Blu-ray support VC1 playback as I don't think VC1 can be produced in the m2ts format. I am sorry if I am getting this wrong. Thanks.

Does anyone know of a free or an economical GUI which can encode the video in x264 and audio in AC3 which can be played on standalone Blu-ray players?

[Dark Shikari]

So do all videos have to be in the m2ts container to be played back on a standalone TV player?Not just that, it has to match the Blu-ray spec (though some drives also accept AVCHD).Will it not playback H.264 encoded files with mp4 or mov containers on the TV?Not unless it explicitly says on the box that it does.Also if that is the case, then how does Blu-ray support VC1 playback as I don't think VC1 can be produced in the m2ts format.Of course it can, you can put nearly anything in m2ts.

[hurry]

Thanks Dark Shikari. Does anyone know of a free or an economical GUI which can encode the video in x264 and audio in AC3 and wrap it up in a m2ts container and which can thus be played universally on standalone Blu-ray TV players without problems?

[Atak_Snajpera]

google is your friend

[hurry]

I cannot find anything similar on Google. I guess the only option is that I have to somehow get a standalone universal Blu-ray player for testing. Can someone on doom9 who has a standalone Blu-ray player test this for us? It would be a very valuable help and info for all the video encoders and publishers worldwide. Thanks.

[Dark Shikari]

Doesn't MeGUI have profiles for Blu-ray?

[Sharktooth]

yup, but doesnt "still" mux to m2ts.

[Comatose]

tsmuxer? or whatever it's called

[hurry]

So guys anyone with a Blu-ray willing to help on this one? Someone reported that only the Sony PLAYSTATION 3 (40GB) and Sony PLAYSTATION 3 (80GB) directly play VC1 files in the wmv container and most others do not but we don't know for sure. Will they also play x264 files in the MP4 container with AC3 audio? Or any other Blu-ray player model which does? Is the final standard of these Blu-ray players supposed to support both (vc1) wmv and (x264) mp4 containers? Thanks.

[hurry]

Dark Shikari, can x264 add support for some encoding profile which will make the encoded videos play on standard Blu-ray players as well as in Flash player simultaneously or at least the first one? Thanks.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Dark Shikari, can x264 add support for some encoding profile which will make the encoded videos play on standard Blu-ray players as well as in Flash player simultaneously or at least the first one? Thanks.

It's not the job of x264 to add support for "profiles". If you need to comply with a certain profile (Blue-ray, Flash, whatever), then configure x264 accordingly and that's it!
Pre-defined profiles for all kinds of Hardware players are already provided by various encoder front-ends, so you even don't need to figure out the proper x264 settings yourself.
You should definitely have a look at MeGUI, for example...

[hurry]

yup, but doesnt "still" mux to m2ts.

Any plans to add m2ts container support for MeGUI in the near future with x264 video and AC3 audio? Also it would be really great if MEGUI can add some video filters like Sharpen Video and audio filters like Increase Stereo (steroizer) like what MediaCoder has.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Also it would be really great if MEGUI can add some video filters like Sharpen Video

Again it's not the job of MeGUI to implement video filters (like Sharpen). MeGUI and it's encoders use Avisynth as input.
And with Avisynth you already have access to a great number of video filters. Simply add the required filters to your script and that's it!

BTW: If you are new to Avisynth, try the "Avisynth Script Creater" in MeGUI. This way you should be able to get a basic script...

[hurry]

Thanks Mulder, I am trying out MeGUI right now. Never used Avisynth. Is there any automated program which can make a Avisynth file from an original mpg video source file or a batch of mpg files?

I just hope that someday I can publish one common x264 encoded video file which will play both in either Silverlight or Flash for the web and on the standalone Blu-ray players so that I don't have to maintain to big HD video files for each video I produce. As Dark Shikari said, if I use AC3 as the audio codec, it most probably will not play in Flash Player. What if I use Lame MP3 as the audio codec with x264 video? I guess the standalone Blu-ray players will have to eventually support mp3 to be backwards compatible to DVD players and they will also have to eventually support the MP4 container also as it most widely used, much more than m2ts. I will do some research on the future of mp4 container support in standalone Blu-ray players and see what I can come up with.

[Dark Shikari]

Thanks Mulder, I am trying out MeGUI right now. Never used Avisynth. Is there any automated program which can make a Avisynth file from an original mpg video source file or a batch of mpg files?

I just hope that someday I can publish one common x264 encoded video file which will play both in either Silverlight or Flash for the web and on the standalone Blu-ray players so that I don't have to maintain to big HD video files for each video I produce. As Dark Shikari said, if I use AC3 as the audio codec, it most probably will not play in Flash Player. What if I use Lame MP3 as the audio codec with x264 video? I guess the standalone Blu-ray players will have to eventually support mp3 to be backwards compatible to DVD players and they will also have to eventually support the MP4 container also as it most widely used, much more than m2ts. I will do some research on the future of mp4 container support in standalone Blu-ray players and see what I can come up with.M2TS is much more widely used than MP4; it is basically the only format used for broadcast television. Also, DVDs didn't support MP3 as a format either.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Is there any automated program which can make a Avisynth file from an original mpg video source file or a batch of mpg files?

Avisynth is a scripting language. So you don't convert your MPEG file to an Avisynth file, but you load the MPEG file in your Avisynth script.
To load an MPEG file in Avisynth you first index the MPEG file with DGIndex and the you load the index file (.d2v) with the MPEG2Source() command.

Here is a tutorial to Avisynth scripting:
http://labs.divx.com/node/6992#Section_3

DGIndex can be found here:
http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html

[hurry]

Dark Shikari wrote: M2TS is much more widely used than MP4; it is basically the only format used for broadcast television.

Then I hope the m2ts container option is added to MeGUI real soon and also that Flash Player or Silverlight support m2ts playback pretty soon so that I can produce one x264 encoded m2ts file which will play on the web, on the standalone Blu-ray players and also for broadcast.

Also, DVDs didn't support MP3 as a format either.

Ok. But when I burn a data DVD of mp3 files, they are detected and play in almost all DVD players in the market even the outdated ones. Is that because mp3 is supported inofficially?

[hurry]

To load an MPEG file in Avisynth you first index the MPEG file with DGIndex and the you load the index file (.d2v) with the MPEG2Source() command.

Thanks Mulder. Will I need to make the .d2v index file with DGIndex, if I already have the NVIDIA PureVideo MPEG decoder already installed on the system?

[hurry]

Oh I found the GUI MediaCoder which transcodes a mp4 or m2ts (.ts) with x264 video and lame mp3 audio. Even if I select the mp4 container for the encoded video, I can rename the final .mp4 file to .ts and it still plays fine in the VLC Player. If I encode to .ts and I rename it to .mp4, it still plays fine. Now the only thing left to check is if this .mp4 renamed as .ts plays on a standalone Blu-ray player with the lame mp3 codec for the audio and if the .ts renamed to .mp4 plays in the Adobe Flash Player. Oh, how I wish I had a Blu-ray player to check this! I am trying with lame mp3 audio with the x264 video since it has much more of playback on standalone Blu-ray players than aac since aac is also not officially supported. I have also found the MainConcept H.264 is nowhere close in quality to x.264.

[Dark Shikari]

Oh I found the GUI MediaCoder which transcodes a mp4 or m2ts (.ts) with x264 video and lame mp3 audio. Even if I select the mp4 container for the encoded video, I can rename the final .mp4 file to .ts and it still plays fine in the VLC Player.Well obviously, since VLC doesn't use the filename to determine what type of file it is. Renaming it doesn't magically change the file format!If I encode to .ts and I rename it to .mp4, it still plays fine. Now the only thing left to check is if this .mp4 renamed as .ts plays on a standalone Blu-ray player with the lame mp3 codec for the audio and if the .ts renamed to .mp4 plays in the Adobe Flash Player.Somehow I doubt this :)I have also found the MainConcept H.264 is nowhere close in quality to x.264.Surprise surprise :p

[hurry]

Will x264 video with ffmpeg AC3 audio in the .ts container burned as a data Blu-ray, properly play on standalone Blu-ray players? Mediacoder has an option for ffmpeg ac3 for audio. MeGUI has another Ac3 option in the form of Aften AC-3. What is difference in both AC3s? Are both AC3s Blu-ray compatible? Thanks.

[cmw]

Under normal circumstances, it never matters which encoder you use to encode a certain format. There are rare exceptions when a encoder will not produce specification-compliant files, but you can expect that such an encoder would never be included in MeGui or any other popular GUI here on Doom9.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Will I need to make the .d2v index file with DGIndex, if I already have the NVIDIA PureVideo MPEG decoder already installed on the system?

Yes! There is absolutely no relation between DGIndex/MPEG2Source and "NVIDIA PureVideo MPEG decoder".
MEPG2Source() has got it's own "built-in" MEPG-2 decoder, no additional software is required/used. Simply open the index file (as created by DGIndex) and that's it!
Try to avoid DirectShowSource(), unless there is no other way...