kaid
16th September 2008, 15:59
Okay, so I made it (and I'm quite proud! ;-): I've hacked my own menu driven AVCHD-DVD with several completely different H.264-tracks that plays beautifully on my PS3.
You get the full (PS3)AVCHD-featureset with all its pros and cons (as compared to playing H.264 in .mp4, .m2ts or .vob from the PS3 XMB):
Pros: Supports multiple audiotracks, DTS, AC3 (no AC3 in MP4, yes in m2ts/vob), subtitles and chaptermarkers
Cons: Video needs to be exactly 1280x720 or 1920x1080 and a certain framerate. I've verified 720p in 23,9 and 59,9fps, though 24, 50 and 60fps should also be possible according to the spec (http://www.avchd-info.org/format/index.html). I also verified 1080p to work with 24 and 23,9 fps, no go on 25fps in either 720p or 1080p! I could not find any material in 1080i that would work, though theoretically it should (in 60/50fps).. I have a creeping suspicion that tsMuxer's BD muxer is broken for 1080i, since I tried 3 different 1080is (25p/50fps, which is in the spec!) and all of them resulted in a black screen (PS3 needs to be reset)...
Update: I have seen 25fps AVCHDs play fine on PS3s connected via component (720p) and on composite on a normal TV. So the black screen seems to be a HDMI/HDCP issue, I'll try on other HDMI-monitors/TVs, maybe it's just mine! How is 25fps working out for you guys? Still no beef on 1080i AVCHDs, anyone ever got that to work with TsMuxer (or TsRemux)?
Of course the video itself must be playable on the PS3 (Levelflag set to 4.1 max, not too many reference frames), but the totally awesome tsMuxer (http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html) does a fantastic job in making everything but a few idiotic encodes (15 ref-frames for 1080p - right!) playable..
The Problem
Since H.264/AVC is pretty damn efficient, you can fit a lot of HD-content even on a good old DVD (even more so with DVD-DL). It's so efficient, that sometimes you would like to put multiple tracks onto one DVD because one does not fill it up (e.g. several documentaries or several episodes of a TV series).
Unfortunately tsMuxer's "BD mux" feature leaves a lot to be desired (especially in the Linux-version, where it simply does not seem to work!), since you cannot put multiple tracks onto one AVCHD. You can append tracks, but then they would have to have the same resolution and you'd need to set the chapter markers exactly right, it's not very pretty..
With my solution you can integrate several tracks with 1080p, 720p, AC3 and DTS to nicely fill up that DVD, DVD-DL or FAT32 volume to your heart's content - as long as the material is AVCHD-ready in general! You can now also use it to overcome the limitations of the XMB (no DTS/subtitles/multiple audiotracks) by using it as an intermediate to integrate your videos on a FAT32 volume! Split streams (see tsmuxers "split" tab) are now supported, so tracks over 4GB on FAT32 volumes are working..
Hacking your own menu driven AVCHD
I knew you guys would want to do the same thing, so I spent the last 2 days compiling a nice little package for you! ;-) It contains empty menu structures for AVCHDs with 2 to 6 tracks and a shellscript that chooses the right menu, creates the AVCHD-structure and does the integration of the single-track AVCHD/BD-structures that tsMuxer generated. Unfortunately very little is known about crafting your own AVCHD menues, so I don't know how to generate individual labels for buttons, title etc. So, for now, it's a generic menu (Track 1, Track 2 etc), but I spent some time to make it look nice. It's just a single static screen with overlays, but hey, it's in HD and has fancy shmancy alphablended overlays! ;-) Just write on the DVD itself which track is what...
The shellscript should be pretty foolproof and I went to great lengths to include many checks, good documentation and I extensively commented it. It runs under MacOS X, but Linux should be no problem (may need some minor tweaks)... Basically what it does is choosing the right menu for you and copying the .mpls/.clpi/.m2ts files where they belong (and naming them correctly). The .mpls files need a little binary tweaking to change the video they point to, hence perl is required (couldn't get sed to NOT add that stupid $0a linebreak at the end, sorry!)
Here's what you do: download the zip and extract it. Do NOT extract the menu tarballs (tgz), the script will do that for you when you need them!
Put the script and tarballs wherever you want to (preferrably somewhere within your $PATH), if the script does not find the tarballs it will ask where they are.
Start the script from a folder that contains one directory for each track you want to include. Make sure the total of all your videos fits onto one DVD/DVD-DL (or your FAT32 volume), and remember that muxing anything into .m2ts adds some extra padding! Right now anything from 2 to 6 tracks is supported, which should cover most needs.
Each directory should contain an AVCHD ready track (such as tsMuxer's "BD mux" generates, but stuff from your AVCHD-camera should work nicely, too - as long as it's numbered sequentially!), more specifically: The script is only looking for sequentially named .mpls, .clpi and .m2ts files within each track directory, and it does not matter where exactly they are and what they're called (well, as long as they still have the correct file extension and no spaces or other weird characters in the filename!)
After the script has done its job, either burn the contents of the generated avchd-Xitems folder onto DVD/DVD-DL with the burning program of your choice that supports UDF 2.5. Make sure the BDMV and CERTIFICATE folders are on the root level, otherwise it will not work. Or, if you chose FAT32, copy the AVCHD folder into the root of your FAT32 volume.
Here's what it looks like:
http://www.koolex.net/deekay/AVCHDmenu-prv.jpg
Enjoy your menu-driven AVCHD on your PS3! ;-) Press Square to switch between menu and video, when a track is finished it will jump back to the menu automatically. So far the PS3 is all I could test on, but it should work on other BD-players, too (especially those from Sony and Panasonic, since they mainly specified the AVCHD format). If you have a regular BD-player, please let me know if it works for you...
Update v0.2: I added support for FAT32 output. Split file support will come soon. Is there any need to accept FAT32 AVC input, too, e.g. from a Flash-based camera? If so, I must know if the .MPL files do reference MTS or M2TS (right now I did not change the M2TS to MTS within the MPL for the output, it works nonetheless! The PS3 seems to have some fault-tolerance built in there! ;-)
Update v0.3: Added split stream support as promised, so the 4GB limit of FAT32 volumes should not be an issue anymore. Up to 16 chunks per track are supported, which covers tracks up to 64GB at 4GB per chunk. Quite often there's a pause and/or the PS3 skips a few seconds when going from one chunk to the next (sometimes over 20 seconds!), but I've verified this to be the exact same behaviour with the original tsMuxer BD-muxed structure, so it's not my fault. But maybe that's just my 1GB FAT16 USB-stick, or I just split my testfiles too small (30MB).. Feel free to try this with larger files and on other media and let me know your findings!
Download AVCHD-menugenerator v0.3 (for anything that can run bash-scripts) (http://www.koolex.net/deekay/avchd-menu-generator-v0.3.zip)
Version History
v0.1 - 16th Sep 2009:
initial release
v0.2 - 19th Sep 2009:
-support for FAT32 AVCHD folders
-minor updates (tarball-dir endslash irrelevant, cannot enter wrong path)
v0.3 - 22nd Sep 2009:
-support for split tracks (up to 16 chunks) to compensate for the 4GB FAT32-limit
-minor improvements
You get the full (PS3)AVCHD-featureset with all its pros and cons (as compared to playing H.264 in .mp4, .m2ts or .vob from the PS3 XMB):
Pros: Supports multiple audiotracks, DTS, AC3 (no AC3 in MP4, yes in m2ts/vob), subtitles and chaptermarkers
Cons: Video needs to be exactly 1280x720 or 1920x1080 and a certain framerate. I've verified 720p in 23,9 and 59,9fps, though 24, 50 and 60fps should also be possible according to the spec (http://www.avchd-info.org/format/index.html). I also verified 1080p to work with 24 and 23,9 fps, no go on 25fps in either 720p or 1080p! I could not find any material in 1080i that would work, though theoretically it should (in 60/50fps).. I have a creeping suspicion that tsMuxer's BD muxer is broken for 1080i, since I tried 3 different 1080is (25p/50fps, which is in the spec!) and all of them resulted in a black screen (PS3 needs to be reset)...
Update: I have seen 25fps AVCHDs play fine on PS3s connected via component (720p) and on composite on a normal TV. So the black screen seems to be a HDMI/HDCP issue, I'll try on other HDMI-monitors/TVs, maybe it's just mine! How is 25fps working out for you guys? Still no beef on 1080i AVCHDs, anyone ever got that to work with TsMuxer (or TsRemux)?
Of course the video itself must be playable on the PS3 (Levelflag set to 4.1 max, not too many reference frames), but the totally awesome tsMuxer (http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html) does a fantastic job in making everything but a few idiotic encodes (15 ref-frames for 1080p - right!) playable..
The Problem
Since H.264/AVC is pretty damn efficient, you can fit a lot of HD-content even on a good old DVD (even more so with DVD-DL). It's so efficient, that sometimes you would like to put multiple tracks onto one DVD because one does not fill it up (e.g. several documentaries or several episodes of a TV series).
Unfortunately tsMuxer's "BD mux" feature leaves a lot to be desired (especially in the Linux-version, where it simply does not seem to work!), since you cannot put multiple tracks onto one AVCHD. You can append tracks, but then they would have to have the same resolution and you'd need to set the chapter markers exactly right, it's not very pretty..
With my solution you can integrate several tracks with 1080p, 720p, AC3 and DTS to nicely fill up that DVD, DVD-DL or FAT32 volume to your heart's content - as long as the material is AVCHD-ready in general! You can now also use it to overcome the limitations of the XMB (no DTS/subtitles/multiple audiotracks) by using it as an intermediate to integrate your videos on a FAT32 volume! Split streams (see tsmuxers "split" tab) are now supported, so tracks over 4GB on FAT32 volumes are working..
Hacking your own menu driven AVCHD
I knew you guys would want to do the same thing, so I spent the last 2 days compiling a nice little package for you! ;-) It contains empty menu structures for AVCHDs with 2 to 6 tracks and a shellscript that chooses the right menu, creates the AVCHD-structure and does the integration of the single-track AVCHD/BD-structures that tsMuxer generated. Unfortunately very little is known about crafting your own AVCHD menues, so I don't know how to generate individual labels for buttons, title etc. So, for now, it's a generic menu (Track 1, Track 2 etc), but I spent some time to make it look nice. It's just a single static screen with overlays, but hey, it's in HD and has fancy shmancy alphablended overlays! ;-) Just write on the DVD itself which track is what...
The shellscript should be pretty foolproof and I went to great lengths to include many checks, good documentation and I extensively commented it. It runs under MacOS X, but Linux should be no problem (may need some minor tweaks)... Basically what it does is choosing the right menu for you and copying the .mpls/.clpi/.m2ts files where they belong (and naming them correctly). The .mpls files need a little binary tweaking to change the video they point to, hence perl is required (couldn't get sed to NOT add that stupid $0a linebreak at the end, sorry!)
Here's what you do: download the zip and extract it. Do NOT extract the menu tarballs (tgz), the script will do that for you when you need them!
Put the script and tarballs wherever you want to (preferrably somewhere within your $PATH), if the script does not find the tarballs it will ask where they are.
Start the script from a folder that contains one directory for each track you want to include. Make sure the total of all your videos fits onto one DVD/DVD-DL (or your FAT32 volume), and remember that muxing anything into .m2ts adds some extra padding! Right now anything from 2 to 6 tracks is supported, which should cover most needs.
Each directory should contain an AVCHD ready track (such as tsMuxer's "BD mux" generates, but stuff from your AVCHD-camera should work nicely, too - as long as it's numbered sequentially!), more specifically: The script is only looking for sequentially named .mpls, .clpi and .m2ts files within each track directory, and it does not matter where exactly they are and what they're called (well, as long as they still have the correct file extension and no spaces or other weird characters in the filename!)
After the script has done its job, either burn the contents of the generated avchd-Xitems folder onto DVD/DVD-DL with the burning program of your choice that supports UDF 2.5. Make sure the BDMV and CERTIFICATE folders are on the root level, otherwise it will not work. Or, if you chose FAT32, copy the AVCHD folder into the root of your FAT32 volume.
Here's what it looks like:
http://www.koolex.net/deekay/AVCHDmenu-prv.jpg
Enjoy your menu-driven AVCHD on your PS3! ;-) Press Square to switch between menu and video, when a track is finished it will jump back to the menu automatically. So far the PS3 is all I could test on, but it should work on other BD-players, too (especially those from Sony and Panasonic, since they mainly specified the AVCHD format). If you have a regular BD-player, please let me know if it works for you...
Update v0.2: I added support for FAT32 output. Split file support will come soon. Is there any need to accept FAT32 AVC input, too, e.g. from a Flash-based camera? If so, I must know if the .MPL files do reference MTS or M2TS (right now I did not change the M2TS to MTS within the MPL for the output, it works nonetheless! The PS3 seems to have some fault-tolerance built in there! ;-)
Update v0.3: Added split stream support as promised, so the 4GB limit of FAT32 volumes should not be an issue anymore. Up to 16 chunks per track are supported, which covers tracks up to 64GB at 4GB per chunk. Quite often there's a pause and/or the PS3 skips a few seconds when going from one chunk to the next (sometimes over 20 seconds!), but I've verified this to be the exact same behaviour with the original tsMuxer BD-muxed structure, so it's not my fault. But maybe that's just my 1GB FAT16 USB-stick, or I just split my testfiles too small (30MB).. Feel free to try this with larger files and on other media and let me know your findings!
Download AVCHD-menugenerator v0.3 (for anything that can run bash-scripts) (http://www.koolex.net/deekay/avchd-menu-generator-v0.3.zip)
Version History
v0.1 - 16th Sep 2009:
initial release
v0.2 - 19th Sep 2009:
-support for FAT32 AVCHD folders
-minor updates (tarball-dir endslash irrelevant, cannot enter wrong path)
v0.3 - 22nd Sep 2009:
-support for split tracks (up to 16 chunks) to compensate for the 4GB FAT32-limit
-minor improvements