TsMuxer 1.8.30 Still wont work with Panasonic

[deank]

Well my player recognises VC-1/Mpeg2 as AVCHD.

Yes, Playstation3 does recognize it, too, but the fact doesn't change the standard - it is manufacturer's decision to step outside it's limitations as a way to attract customers to their products.

[rotty]

The most I would compress a Blu Ray file would be (if needed) to compress enough to fit on a 25G disc. (after discarding unwanted streams of course)

[Ghitulescu]

LOL well im bailing out of this one, I can only say that the paste from the standard I did earlier and the full info that DEAN wrote says AVCHD is MPEG4(H264) transported using MPEG2 data stream but what do I know.
Well fellas im even more confused.
Actually not, but I know it's very confusing.
It's a transport stream (which is different from the program stream used in DVDs but similar to the transport stream used in DVB/Sattelite) that may comprise any acceptable video but the video substream should have an AVC header irrespective of its actual codec.

[turbojet]

BD5 and BD9 are standards that haven't been used in the retail market, so they don't really have much reason to support them, luckily almost all still do except they aren't expecting menu's. AVCHD camcorders almost always come with proprietary software that manages AVCHD, outside of this software and nero, AVCHD software support is nearly non-existent. These AVCHD streams are often played from USB devices (supported by most players) but can also be burned on DVD and BD (with less support, much more so then BD5/9)

Some players display AVCHD if it's BDMV and played by red laser you can put that disk in another player and depending on the player it could say BD(MV) which is correct. You put that same content on a BDR and play on your player it will show BD(MV)

So you get confusion between AVCHD and BD from all sides, I think this forum could really use a sticky describing the differences between the 2 so people don't keep misusing the words. AVCHD word would almost be non-existent on this forum if everyone was using them properly.

[rotty]

Hi TURBOJET
Now thats the best idea by far.

[Ghitulescu]

BD5 and BD9 are standards that haven't been used in the retail market, so they don't really have much reason to support them, luckily almost all still do except they aren't expecting menu's. AVCHD camcorders almost always come with proprietary software that manages AVCHD, outside of this software and nero, AVCHD software support is nearly non-existent. These AVCHD streams are often played from USB devices (supported by most players) but can also be burned on DVD and BD (with less support, much more so then BD5/9)

Some players display AVCHD if it's BDMV and played by red laser you can put that disk in another player and depending on the player it could say BD(MV) which is correct. You put that same content on a BDR and play on your player it will show BD(MV)

So you get confusion between AVCHD and BD from all sides, I think this forum could really use a sticky describing the differences between the 2 so people don't keep misusing the words. AVCHD word would almost be non-existent on this forum if everyone was using them properly.
My knowledge in BD is quite limited and I always tried to find the right concepts.

So far I understud the issue, there have been two standards at the begining: BDAV and BDMV. I think you refered to BDAV when you said "no menus" since that's BDAV, blu rays with no menus. On the other hand, BDMV can hold menus, java applets and the whole world. Funny is that the producers drop now BDAV in favour of BDMV, sometimes they refer to them as BD-R ver. 1 and 2.

[turbojet]

However currently I don't think there's enough known information about AVCHD to really define what it is. Some things are known, but there are unknowns like directory structure (does it need /PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV or /AVCHD/BDMV or /BDMV) and does it need 8.3 file names.

[rotty]

Just out of interest, would any of you convert down to a 5 or DL DVD to backup your Blu ray. I know that BD media is not cheap compared to DVD. I have tried this with Iron Man and the result was a thousand times better that I thought it would be I must admit but it does seem a shame to downgrade a High Def film. Just wondered if anybody does do this.
Dont know if I can ask this on here but where cheapest Blu Ray media

[Ghitulescu]

However currently I don't think there's enough known information about AVCHD to really define what it is. Some things are known, but there are unknowns like directory structure (does it need /PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV or /AVCHD/BDMV or /BDMV) and does it need 8.3 file names.

That's true, the specifications kept changing over time. And remained secret.

However, as I said before, the players that played my BD5 played it irrespective of presence o a CERTIFICATE folder, and for those which didn't it was the same. This behaviour can be of course changed in firmware if they want to.

[deank]

If AVCHD is recorded to SD card media then:
/PRIVATE/AVCHD/ is the root for BDMV folder

If recorded to USB/MS /AVCHD/ is the root for BDMV folder

If recorded to optical media, / is the root for BDMV folder

***

SD/MMC: /PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/INDEX.BDM
USB/MS: /AVCHD/BDMV/INDEX.BDM
DVD DISC: /BDMV/index.bdmv

8.3 names are required only for FAT32 media as SD/MMC/USB/MS.
4GiB limit is for all media by standard. FAT32 does not support larger files anyway.
Optical media (as by standard) should be 8mm DVD, which also can't hold files greater than 4GiB.
Outside the standard - using DVD5/DVD9 it is possible to put 4+GiB files on the optical media. It however is outside the standard and may break playback functionality in AVCHD compatible players.

[turbojet]

As long as you either you have a Sony BD player or don't care about menus and extras, movie only BD5/9's are quite good.
Even most movies with menus and extras look good on BD9, few even look really good on BD5 but some are loaded with really too many extras. I've seen some with over 4 hours of extras and you are lucky to achieve halfway decent results on a BD9 in those cases.

I'm in USA and over the past 5 years have only bought taiyo yuden and verbatim from meritline (http://www.meritline.com/) or newegg (http://www.newegg.com/). They aren't always the cheapest but quite competitive and their customer service, if something was to happen, more then makes up for spending a few more cents on a disk.

[turbojet]

If AVCHD is recorded to SD card media then:
/PRIVATE/AVCHD/ is the root for BDMV folder

If recorded to USB/MS /AVCHD/ is the root for BDMV folder

If recorded to optical media, / is the root for BDMV folder

***

SD/MMC: /PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/INDEX.BDM
USB/MS: /AVCHD/BDMV/INDEX.BDM
DVD DISC: /BDMV/index.bdmv

8.3 names are required only for FAT32 media as SD/MMC/USB/MS.

and the headers are the only other thing?

what do you think about maintaining a bd vs avchd thread that hopefully a mod can sticky?

[rotty]

Thanks Turbojet

I have to say I was amazed at the quality and was expecting bad results. I never keep or create menu's, just want film only so woukld be good for me using DL.
The big but for me is the time it takes, even a pretty fast machine takes a while.

[deank]

No, headers (0100/0200) have nothing to do with AVCHD. 0100 is a bluray header, too as per BD-ROM standard.

REAL AVCHD CLPI/MPLS/BDMV files may contain extended information that has nothing to do with the same files in BD standard. It is like the BDAV files that have completely different structure.

I would be glad to prepare a thread with all the information I can gather and everything I know. Once I'm ready I'll post it and we can ask a moderator to make it sticky.

Did you test with the patched file?

[Ghitulescu]

Just out of interest, would any of you convert down to a 5 or DL DVD to backup your Blu ray. I know that BD media is not cheap compared to DVD. I have tried this with Iron Man and the result was a thousand times better that I thought it would be I must admit but it does seem a shame to downgrade a High Def film. Just wondered if anybody does do this.
Dont know if I can ask this on here but where cheapest Blu Ray media

What do you mean by "convert down" a BD?
You mean the same principle that is used eg in DVD Shrink or Nero Recode or do you mean "downsampling" eg from 1080i/p to 576i or 480i?
The downsampling is not a good idea, better buy the DVD.
The first alternative would be a great idea and I've actually seen some "shrunk" movies on some foreign fora ... What I do not know is whether these movies have been recoded or just transcoded?

[rotty]

Hi
what I meant was does anybody use say Ripbot etc so film fits to a DVD 5 or DL or do you all backup using Blu ray media

[turbojet]

No, headers (0100/0200) have nothing to do with AVCHD. 0100 is a bluray header, too as per BD-ROM standard.

REAL AVCHD CLPI/MPLS/BDMV files may contain extended information that has nothing to do with the same files in BD standard. It is like the BDAV files that have completely different structure.

I would be glad to prepare a thread with all the information I can gather and everything I know. Once I'm ready I'll post it and we can ask a moderator to make it sticky.

Did you test with the patched file?

OK thanks that will hopefully stop a lot of these discussions.

Nope, I have to go over there and guy isn't home, maybe I'll get over there later today but if not hopefully this weekend.

[turbojet]

Hi
what I meant was does anybody use say Ripbot etc so film fits to a DVD 5 or DL or do you all backup using Blu ray media

Yes RipBot is a very popular program for doing mainly this also BD Rebuilder is gaining ground for doing this, but I think it's real strength is full backups for players that support it.

Instead of jumping right to DVD9 you might want to try out 720p / 1080p on DVD5 too, you might be amazed what your eyes see. Personally while I'm not a complete quality freak and I sit a reasonable distance away from the computer a lot of non-action movies less than 2 hours look fine on a BD5 at 1080p, I did both Kill Bill movies like this and they looked 'almost' like the original BD. Judging compression of a movie for BD is kind of tough, I use gknot xvid compressibility test to help me judge what to encode to and what resolution to use.

[Ghitulescu]

Hi
what I meant was does anybody use say Ripbot etc so film fits to a DVD 5 or DL or do you all backup using Blu ray media

I do not currently own a BD player - I did the test to check them up.

But you can see that the EU models having :) can play blu ray content with menus (!!!) on red laser (DVDR). So pick one of them and be happy :)

[turbojet]

I do not currently own a BD player - I did the test to check them up.

But you can see that the EU models having :) can play blu ray content with menus (!!!) on red laser (DVDR). So pick one of them and be happy :)

I have a feeling this has to do with something not being done with current full backups from BD-RB, maybe something in bdmv files. But it's been pretty well tested that most of these players won't play the current BD-RB full backup output.

I'm still waiting to find out if the LG BD370 can play current BD-RB full backip if so that player plays just about everything for less than your average BD player.

[deank]

I think that it is quite the opposite.

When using movie-only (which works always) bdrb uses it's own bdmv files just like multiAVCHD does.

On the contrary - with full backups bdrb uses the original bdmv files without modifications and this is the way things to be done. I believe it is the media that brings the limitation to most players which refuse to play bdrb output.

[Ghitulescu]

I have a feeling this has to do with something not being done with current full backups from BD-RB, maybe something in bdmv files. But it's been pretty well tested that most of these players won't play the current BD-RB full backup output.

That's what I've said before: if these players can play a copied original BD on a DVD with no tampering, then must be something wrong with the current software.

I've specially picked this HQV disc, because was not converted, not shrunk, not even muxed/demuxed/remuxed.

So the ability of a player to play such BD5/BD9 not be influenced by badly written software (no offence intended - read on). If I would pick up a player that played a BD obtained by an imaginary software called say 1Click-Super-HDTVCamcorder-BD-Copy, the result not being 100% compliant due to bad programming, insufficient knowledge etc etc, then I will have a big problem later on, when people like you develop the good software, but hey, may player cannot play good BD5s just the non-standard ones, and I have to find a solution to patch somehow good BDs to make them my-player-compliant. Or I have to change my player.

[turbojet]

Comparing the 'working on most players' bdmv files or maybe some other files to files from BD-RB output would be a sensible approach wouldn't it?

[deank]

I think jdobbs is well aware of all this and he's willing as much as we all are to find a solution for all these strange behaviors. I have no bd-recorder nor other bd-player except the ps3, but we'll get there I'm sure. It's been just 3 months since we all started to work on this blindly.

[alluringreality]

As I stated earlier TSMuxer doesn't output AVCHD.

TsMuxer uses the same .bdmv files as tsRemux. tsRemux took the files from the Nero AVCHD output. See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=126620&d=1229061547 for the files and you'll see tsRemux only changed a couple letters and numbers that Nero uses to label the version. If you were to restrict tsMuxer "Blu-ray" option to AVCHD audio and video streams I can't come up with any reason (besides the headers and empty folders) that wouldn't fall completely within the definition of AVCHD, compared to how commercial authoring software creates their AVCHD outputs. On the other hand the TsMuxer output certainly doesn't seem to be Blu-ray because it will play on the PS3 from DVD media, while all commercially authored Blu-ray outputs will not play on the PS3 from DVD media. My main point is that the tsMuxer index.bdmv file appears to include information only found in commercial authoring AVCHD outputs, but of course tsMuxer allows for more audio and video streams than are allowed within stated AVCHD specs.

[Ghitulescu]

:helpful:
Well, I will do another test (it should have been done by now but I've got the wrong DVD with me :mad: ).

I went to Saturn with a virgin SD card and recorded on two different Panasonic camcorders in two resolutions: 1920 and 1440. It was however too late to notice that the Panasonic burner VM-BN1 that might be bought as a standalone accesory to any HDTV-Camcorder will record only on DVD-R, DVD-RW or DVD-RAM and not on DVD+RW (which I had on me). So the second part of the test will be done another day.

Methodology:
1. record various clips with a Panasonic HDTV camcorder in various HDTV resolutions.
2. keep the SD card intact for camparison. Eventually issue an image from it
3. burn the content of the SD card with VM-BN1
3a. only 1 clip
3b. all the clips
4. compare both SD and DVD in terms of what are the differences
5. play the DVD on all available BD players and notice the playability
6. should anyone be interested in, I will post the files on RapidShare or alternative filesharing services.

Purpose:
1. that helps understanding the way an AVCHD is created.

Reasons:
1. I can assume that the DVD so created MUST work on any Panasonic BD player (and probably on others).
2. Therefore the information should be CONFORM to what a Panasonic BD player would expect.
3. I can also test my future Pioneer on this DVD, since I'll intend to buy one of these Pana camcorders.

[Ghitulescu]

:helpful:
I did over the past weeks a sort of a tests.

So I downloaded for this special purpose a copy of a ripped BD off the net and burned it onto a DVD. Then I took this DVD and test every BD-Player I found along.

Here are the results:

Not a single Panasonic and their clones (or Uniphier based players) were able to play the disc. The Pannies recognised the DVD as an AVCHD one but refused to cooperate.

On the other hand, all Pioneers, all Sonies, all Samsungs, all LGs could do this easily.

Now the list:
:mad:
Panasonic - 30, 50, 35, 55
Onkyo - 606 (Funai made upon Panasonic basis)
Yamaha - the only model (Panasonic basis)
Denon - 1800, 2500, 3800 (all Funai made on Panasonic basis)
Sharp - 20 and 21
Loewe - (it's a Sharp 20)

:)
Pioneer - 70, 71, 51, lx08, 91
Sony - 300, 500, 350, 550
Samsung - all models (about 5 or 6)
LG - all models (about 3)
JVC - the only model (that with loudspeakers)

---===---
I don't know anything about Marantz (they were not connected and the salesmen were not there during my visit).

All the players are EU models, those currently sold in Germany (Saturn, Mediamarkt, Conrad).

Ghitulescu

Turbojet suggested me to add 2 empty directories: BDMV/AUXDATA and BDMV/BACKUP/AUXDATA. So I did and I went for a second round.

Interesting results:
Pioneers, Sonys, Samsungs performed as usual, they accepted and played the disc. :)
The old (30,35,50,55) Pannies were not there, but the new ones, 60 and 80. They refused to play the DVD. :(
Yamaha 2900 (the only model) did not play the disc (incompatible).
Loewe (Sharp 20 in disguise) did not play it. :(
The JVC loaded the disc and played a while then it ejected the disc (was not connected to a TV so I had no input). :sly:

However, both Denons (1800 and 2500) played the disc. :) Thank you Turbojet!

Conclusions:
Apparently the Pannies are different than the other players. If one wants to create DVD with BD content for Panasonic, then the regular software has to be patched somehow according to their "special" needs.

[deank]

BD standard requires these folders to be present even if empty... along with meta/bjdo/java...

[Ghitulescu]

BD standard requires these folders to be present even if empty... along with meta/bjdo/java...
Thank you Deank,

I had no idea of what the requirements might be. Nevertheless, the Panasonic 60 and 80 (which I assume you know are the latest additions) still refuse to play the disc. Of course they recognize it as an AVCHD but no image. At least Sharp and Yamaha say "Not compatible".

According to my experience with electronics, video and computers for about 20 years, it's the firmware that decides what to do in case of a non standard case and this has nothing to do with an alleged standard. And the asians (Koreans I meant) managed to do all these, as a marketing issue. And Pioneer, at the other end of the scale (also Denons, after the modification).

Why do you, BD guru, people that know more than the average user, download the BD, and have a short look at it. It might help!

[deank]

Take a look at what?

I agree about these products that have a relaxed understanding of 'complying with the standards'...

I think Panasonic and Sony present an interesting point in this... Both companies are founders of BD/AVCHD standards but most Sony players are allowed to play almost everything, but Panasonics will follow the standard almost to the letter.

[Ghitulescu]

Take a look at what?

I agree about these products that have a relaxed understanding of 'complying with the standards'...

I think Panasonic and Sony present an interesting point in this... Both companies are founders of BD/AVCHD standards but most Sony players are allowed to play almost everything, but Panasonics will follow the standard almost to the letter.

At HQV

[ps3hacker]

BD standard requires these folders to be present even if empty... along with meta/bjdo/java...

I just checked my Batman blu ray If this is disk is compliant (which we have to assume it is) then Tsmuxers output folders are compliant. The only folder that needs added is JAR in BACKUP

[turbojet]

Does tsmuxer 1.9.4 using avchd output create a working vc-1 disk for panasonics?

[Ghitulescu]

I just checked my Batman blu ray If this is disk is compliant (which we have to assume it is) then Tsmuxers output folders are compliant. The only folder that needs added is JAR in BACKUP

Even if empty?