HD-DVD encoding help

[slipstream3d]

So I've got a bunch of HD-DVDs (yep, I bought lots of 'em, good call on the format war here!).

I've managed to decrypt a disc off of the original disc and onto my computer using my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. Unfortunately, now I'm stuck. I was planning on using Handbrake but I don't see any good way to turn the "FEATURE1.EVO" file into something Handbrake can process into a lovely h.264 MKV file so I can play them on my Linux media center PC (XBMC-based, fwiw).

Tips? I've been searching around here for 30+ minutes so far, no luck. Thanks!

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Just drop them into "tsMuxeR GUI" (Drop the first into "tsMuxeR GUI" and then select "Join" to load the second part of the movie [NOT "ADD"] ) and select "BluRay" (at the BOTTOM of the window) - and in a very few short minutes, you'll have a standard BluRay "package" for further processing.

[slipstream3d]

Thanks for the reply.

I had already been playing with tsMuxer, but with no real success.

It produced a decent looking folder structure with a m2ts file in it, which is exactly what I needed, but unfortunately Handbrake just barfed and crashed after sitting there doing nothing for 30+ seconds.

The m2ts file appears to play alright in VLC 1.1.0-rc on my Windows 7 computer. It's a bit jerky, but I haven't really played with getting hardware acceleration working properly. The picture looks fine though.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Tried eac3to? It makes parsing EVOs and demuxing streams VERY simple!!

Derek

[A.Fenderson]

Tried eac3to? It makes parsing EVOs and demuxing streams VERY simple!!

+1, especially when using with HD-DVD / Blu-ray Stream Extractor GUI. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141829)

See this guide (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145024&highlight=guides+for+tools) for an incredibly easy way to extract the streams from your HD-DVD rips, then you can remux to MKV from there. Skip down to "HD DVD -> Bluray (main movie only)". Of course you may need to tweak the audio extraction based on your needs and I don't know if you can use tsmuxer for MKV muxing, but I'm guessing you already have a way to do that.

[slipstream3d]

Alright... using DumpHD, eac3to, and tsMuxer, I have a perfect-looking m2ts (plays back great in Media Player Classic). It contains 23.997 FPS VC-1 video and 5.1 channel AC3 audio.

The only real problem it's 11 GB and I'm looking to squash it down a bit. I'm not sure what level of quality I'm going for, but fitting on a DVD9 at least would be a good start.

I'm familiar with Handbrake as an x264 frontend but it doesn't seem to be working for me today. I can pick the .m2ts and it loads everything up (video resolution, audio track). I pick passthrough and constant quality (RF: 22.25) and try to encode and... nothing happens.

I wonder if HandBrake is broken or if I'm doing something wrong to create my m2ts file.

Any suggestions for alternative x264 frontends or perhaps HandBrake tips?

[setarip_old]

You can use MultiAVCHD to compress the .M2TS and then use MakeMKV to convert to .MKV...

[slipstream3d]

I replaced Handbrake with VidCoder (based on Handbrake) and now everything is working.

My process is DumpHD->eac3to->tsMuxer->Vidcoder.

I get beautiful looking H.264-encoded videos with multichannel AC3 audio all wrapped up in a MKV file. My copy of "A Scanner Darkly" compresses from 11.4 GB raw VC-1 to 2.76 GB H.264... and that's without dropping to 720p! Nice.

This will allow me to watch my HD-DVDs without having to put a second optical drive in my media center PC. Thanks for the tips everyone!

[setarip_old]

My copy of "A Scanner Darkly" compresses from 11.4 GB raw VC-1 to 2.76 GB H.264... (Only half-kidding) Considering the tremendous (intentional) lack of detail of that particular video, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that if you compressed it to 1Gig it would still yield excellent results ;>}