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Old 21st January 2018, 05:56   #1  |  Link
thejollyfatman
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A desperate question regarding MPEG2 use in a blu-ray

I'm very sorry if this question is answered elsewhere. I did do a pretty good search, but couldn't find an answer. I'll try to describe the problem in detail.

I made High Quality DVDs of a laserdisc series back in the day - "The Golden Age of Loony Tunes," as it happens. All five sets, with set two being the uncensored one. These were my own captures at one hour per disc, so they ended up being about the best quality I can imagine. 48 discs total.

I work in the Mac environment, but own a nice PC and can buy any applications needed to finish this vexing project.

Extracting all of the discs to 48 files should be simple enough for me. I've done that with my PC before, although if anyone could recommend a Mac app to do the same, that'd be cool.

I then run into my problem. I want to take those files and make some blu-rays - ones that me or any friends could use in any stand-alone blu-ray players. Probably five BD-50s. Ideally with each disc containing one "volume" or ten DVDs (or 10 laserdisc sides).

In my searching, almost everyone invariably cuts the questioner off and says they should just reencode video.

I really don't want to do that. Aside from the fact that it doesn't seem necessary, I think it would just add a bunch of garbage to the image and take a way from that clean, "five disc set" feel.

I'm pretty sure I can do this, as the blu-ray format supports the codec fine, but...I sure can't find any guides on how to do it.

In short - has anyone does this? Can you recommend a application/program? Tell me if I'm insane and if so - why?

Any help would be really appreciated. This unfinished project has been driving me mad for years!
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Old 21st January 2018, 10:16   #2  |  Link
manolito
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Sounds like MultiAVCHD can do what you need...
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.p...44#post1228044

Development of this software has stopped some time ago, and there is a certain learning curve. But certainly worth a try...


Good luck
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Old 22nd January 2018, 16:33   #3  |  Link
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The problem isn't with the codec. IIRC, the problem is that SD streams on an authored-to-video-spec Blu-ray either cannot be a main title, or - for NTSC regions - have to be 29.97i (at which point I can't remember if the Blu-ray specs supported MPEG-2's pulldown flagging so film content could be stored the optimal way they are on DVD).

In many cases, this is just moot though: standalone Blu-ray players generally are fine playing video files straight off a data disc or USB flash drive, and those video files don't have to adhere to the strict requirements of the Blu-ray Disc spec (seeing as they'll also happily play MPEG-4 ASP or WMV9-that-aren't-VC1 files). You could probably just rip the files as-is, use the BD-50s as data archive discs full of the ripped .mpg files, and the players would be perfectly fine with it. You'd only need to author as a Blu-ray specifically for a fancy Java menu, since the menu stuff is completely different and significantly more complex than DVD (just as DVD menus were completely different from VCD menus).
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Old 28th January 2018, 11:25   #4  |  Link
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AFAIK, DVDs of all regions could be imported into a BD project without reencoding.
And I did this many times (it's so comfy to have a whole season on a single media )
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Old 28th January 2018, 12:21   #5  |  Link
thejollyfatman
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Thanks for your responses.

Thank you for your kind responses.

Manolito, thanks for the link. It does look like an advanced program, but I may give it a try. Back in the day I used to muddle around with DVD Studio Pro, so maybe I could get the knack.

qyot27, thanks for your insights, although I must admit it's a bit too technical for me. I'm not sure of a few of the terms. The DVDs were made with NERO in NTSC mode, so I'd be surprised if they aren't 29.97.

I should have been more precise in my reasoning for these; two of my friends really want a copy, and just putting the files on the disc isn't really an option for them. I can hear their confusion now; with seven cartoons in a single file, and ten files on each Blu-Ray. With no chapter stops and without a menu to detail what is where, they just wouldn't be as happy as I would like to make them.

Don't get me wrong, they would still be appreciative, but I'd really like to do this one project really well. Then perhaps I could acquire enough knowledge to move on to my Russ Meyer laserdiscs, with their wealth of extras.

Perhaps I could look at losslessly breaking apart each file and putting seventy of them on each disc, but I'm not sure what that sort of menu screen would look like or how many characters could be in the file name. I suppose it would be differently displayed on different players.

Ghitulescu, can you give me the name of a good authoring program you have been using? I own Toast and Nero 2014, but am curious if you have a "go to" application.

Thanks again!
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Old 28th January 2018, 17:11   #6  |  Link
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Being no expert for BDs I searched the web a little bit, and there are a couple of methods to achieve your goal...

But first of all you must know that there is no way to keep your original DVD menus. If you create a BD or AVCHD structure which plays on any BD player then you either have no menus, or you need to make your own new menus.

(The following method does NOT work: Create a new DVD structure with a huge custom size without reencoding, then burn this DVD structure on a BD blank. Since BD players support standard DVDs, maybe they they will also play this large non-standard DVD. BUT THEY DO NOT. The resulting "DVD" on a BD will only play on some software players on your computer).


Many commercial software products can probably do what you need (DVDFab, DVD Architect, DVD-Cloner), but if you are only considering free solutions then you probably only have the choice between MultiAVCHD and BD-Rebuilder. Here is a forum post from VideoHelp about using BD-Rebuilder:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...BD#post2445444


Good luck
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Old 30th January 2018, 09:32   #7  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by manolito View Post
But first of all you must know that there is no way to keep your original DVD menus.
That's false. The trouble is that, for amateurs and their purchase power, there is no software to modify them, like for DVD. One either has the whole structure or not. One point of caution: VCD-like resolutions, while allowable for DVDs are no longer accepted in BD. Should the DVD have some extras or even main features in VCD-like formats (for instance the budget 8-in-1 movie compilations) the conversion will fail.
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Old 30th January 2018, 14:50   #8  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghitulescu View Post
That's false.
I woukd like to see that...

IMO this could only be possible if you burn a working DVD structure on a BD blank, and according to several posts at VideoHelp such a "DVD on a BD" is not recognized by standalone BD players.

Cheers
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Old 30th January 2018, 17:26   #9  |  Link
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https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=155834

And I used it.
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Old 30th January 2018, 21:41   #10  |  Link
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I assume you are talking about DVDtoBD Express by DVD-Logic. I installed the free version 2.0 and converted a commercial DVD to the BD format without problems. I could not test if the original menus worked because I do not own any BD players (neither hard nor soft), but the single m2ts files played nicely.

But this is probably not what the OP wants. To get 10 DVDs on 1 BD you would first have to author a huge DVD structure from those 10 source DVDs. This would include creating a new top menu which lets you select which one of those 10 source DVDs should be played. And ideally after clicking on one of the source DVDs the original DVD menu of the source DVD should pop up.

I have not found a way to achieve this. I tried PGCDemux (which can add menus to already authored DVDs), but this does not work for source DVDs with menus.


So my point stands:
If you want to put several DVDs on a BD without reencoding, then your original DVD menus will be lost.


Cheers
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Old 30th January 2018, 21:59   #11  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by manolito View Post
But this is probably not what the OP wants. To get 10 DVDs on 1 BD you would first have to author a huge DVD structure from those 10 source DVDs. This would include creating a new top menu which lets you select which one of those 10 source DVDs should be played. And ideally after clicking on one of the source DVDs the original DVD menu of the source DVD should pop up.

I have not found a way to achieve this.

So my point stands:
If you want to put several DVDs on a BD without reencoding, then your original DVD menus will be lost.
Yes.
It's very simple in principle, just time consuming.
False.

I did this with 12 (short) DVDs. Hard work, but I have now all of them on a single BD. The only difference was the addition of a simple TOP menu, like the ones any DVDrecorders or even multiAVCHD create.

Anyway, philosophically seen, putting more content on a BD than the original means, automatically, that there are changes. With a bit of work, all eg Subtitle menus could be reduced to a single one for all of them (I assume this is possible, with mine it was, because it was a series). This saves space but requires a bit of work and a changed flow. But, of course, the menus can also be kept.
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Old 30th January 2018, 23:35   #12  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thejollyfatman View Post
I should have been more precise in my reasoning for these; two of my friends really want a copy, and just putting the files on the disc isn't really an option for them. I can hear their confusion now; with seven cartoons in a single file, and ten files on each Blu-Ray. With no chapter stops and without a menu to detail what is where, they just wouldn't be as happy as I would like to make them.

Don't get me wrong, they would still be appreciative, but I'd really like to do this one project really well. Then perhaps I could acquire enough knowledge to move on to my Russ Meyer laserdiscs, with their wealth of extras.

Perhaps I could look at losslessly breaking apart each file and putting seventy of them on each disc, but I'm not sure what that sort of menu screen would look like or how many characters could be in the file name. I suppose it would be differently displayed on different players.
DVD menus are so annoying.
I'd second the suggestion not to bother authoring Bluray discs unless you have to. I wouldn't even burn the files to disc if you don't need to (except for a permanent backup copy). If your friends have a Bluray player with a USB input you can copy the files to a USB stick or a hard drive. Most Bluray players have them these days. Most TVs manufactured this decade have a USB input and a built in media player.
If not, a laptop with a HDMI out can be used as a media player, or a tablet, or a smartphone etc.

You can rip your DVDs with a program such as MakeMKV and it'll put the audio and video in an MKV container without re-encoding it and you should be able to output an individual MKV for each cartoon. Naming them isn't an issue and you can use folders to sort them. Whatever characters a PC supports for file names will be fine. I haven't seen a player with file name limitations in a long time and that would've been an old DVD player.

Admittedly, not all players support mpeg2 video in an MKV but once the DVDs are ripped it's easy enough to losslessly put the contents into a different container if need be.
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