Questions: DVD audio + BD video project

[ikantspelwurdz]

There's a project I'm working on, and I have a whole bunch of questions about the best practices in accomplishing it.

I have a copy of a movie on Blu-Ray. The Terminator, 2013 remastered edition if you are curious. The movie was filmed in 1984 with a mono soundtrack. The Blu-Ray uses a 5.1 upmix/remix, which I do not like, and lacks the original mono.

I also have a copy of the movie on DVD, which was produced in 1997. It has the mono track, encoded as 2.1 PCM at 44.1khz.

The goal is to have a Blu-Ray with the mono track. To ensure video quality, I will not alter the BD video at all, which does have some issues, but correcting them is outside the scope of my project.

So here's a broad overview of the steps.
Step 1: Extract copies of the movie from both discs
Step 2: Convert the DVD video to a format that can be easily edited frame-by-frame
Step 3: Edit the converted video frame-by-frame to match the editing of the BD video. This will involve blank frame insertion where the BD video cuts are longer, and frame deletion where the DVD video cuts are longer.
Step 4: Extract the audio from the edited video
Step 5: Author a new BD using the original BD video and the extracted audio

Step 1 is done. The DVD video is a VOB file, and the BD video is an MKV file. There was no video or audio conversion.

Step 2 is where I have the bulk of my questions. If at any place I look like I am answering my own question, I want to know if I am right, or if there is a better answer.

First, what video format? Although I don't care about preserving video quality here, lossy codecs seem to be unfriendly for frame-by-frame editing. So I'm thinking HuffYUV.

Second, do I need to resample the FPS? When I use VLC to check the video frame rates, the DVD video is reported as 29.97, and the BD video as 23.97.

Third, what audio format? Is AC3 edit friendly? I'm guessing not, in which case, I'm thinking PCM.

Fourth, do I need to resample the audio frequency? The source is 44.1Khz, and I think I read somewhere that BD doesn't support that. So should I resample it to 48Khz during this step?

Finally, what container? I've tried AVI, but it doesn't seem to support PCM 2.1. I've tried MKV, and it plays fine, but AviDemux takes forever to load the MKV and it seems to be crashy.

Thanks in advance, and I am likely to have more questions once I move on to step 3.

[Ghitulescu]

If made for NTSC land, the length of the movie on both DVD and BD should be the same (excluding of course the studio logos and stuff).
Problematic would be if the DVD is for PAL. In your case it seems that the DVD was NTSC (according to VLC). Use an audio editor, or even a video editor (that allows two audio tracks) to align both sounds, and remux the whole stuff together.

[wonkey_monkey]

First, what video format? Although I don't care about preserving video quality here, lossy codecs seem to be unfriendly for frame-by-frame editing. So I'm thinking HuffYUV.

I'd suggest MJPEG, as I think it's faster to encode/decode and will use less space (which also means faster reading from disk).

[jj666]

I already did the same with PCM audio from the Laserdisc. Instead of messing with the video, I compared the audio waveforms manually in Adobe Audition and adjusted the PCM track to match the BD audio (of course the voices are still in the same places). You can do this easily with EAC3TO, and AUDACITY which are both free utilities.

Your synced PCM track should then be muxable with the video into a new BD structure with TSMUXER, this would then be able to be burned with IMGBURN or similar.

Cheers,

-jj-

[ikantspelwurdz]

If made for NTSC land, the length of the movie on both DVD and BD should be the same (excluding of course the studio logos and stuff).
It is NTSC, and you would think that, but it appears that the editing is slightly different. Accounting for studio logos, the BD is about three seconds longer, IIRC.

I'd suggest MJPEG, as I think it's faster to encode/decode and will use less space (which also means faster reading from disk).
Just tried that - it failed with the error "Cannot setup codec. Bitrate too low?" Tried a bunch of container formats, both available color codings, though I left the quantizer at 2 for all tries. I am using AviDemux 2.6.3 r8518, 32-bit build.

I already did the same with PCM audio from the Laserdisc. Instead of messing with the video, I compared the audio waveforms manually in Adobe Audition and adjusted the PCM track to match the BD audio (of course the voices are still in the same places). You can do this easily with EAC3TO, and AUDACITY which are both free utilities.
I just think it would be easier for me to use frames as my timing cue. I can look at a frame from one video, and find the matching frame in a second video, and be 100% confident that I'm right. I don't think I could align wave forms perfectly with 100% confidence, especially when I know one of them has been sweetened.

I am curious about the LD's audio quality, though. Do you have any idea how it compares to the 1997 DVD? I've heard that the 2001 DVD's audio suffers from heavy compression, which is why I tracked down a 1997 edition.

[ikantspelwurdz]

Ok... the frame by frame method is proving a lot harder than expected. Converting the BD's MKV file to AVI affects its runtime. Opening the VOB in Avidemux or VirtualDubMod shows differing runtimes. Will try the audio extraction method next.