I watched my first ripped Blu-ray movie on SageTV

[BFisher]

Well done!

Can you comment on the picture/sound quality? Is it is comparable to the original Blu-ray? Or does it look like it's been down converted?

Do menus work or do you just do the movie only?

[Deacon Crusher]

1 audio and 1 video stream.

Video is definitely not quite as clear as original blu-ray, but looks better then my uncompressed DVD rips.

No menus, extras or anything. Just the movie is available at the end of this process.

Good luck.

[mkanet]

FYI Deacon, actually the video and audio is EXACTLY the same as the original blu-ray disc. That's the whole point of ripping without re-encoding. If the quality is any different from the original blu-ray disc, you are definitely doing something wrong.

I'm sure this goes without saying, but its not common for anyone to actually go through the extra features of the disc; and, just watch the movie. But, yeah... it would be nice to navigate through all the extra features inside SageTV.

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

1 audio and 1 video stream.

Video is definitely not quite as clear as original blu-ray, but looks better then my uncompressed DVD rips.

No menus, extras or anything. Just the movie is available at the end of this process.

Good luck.

[Humanzee]

Once TSmuxer'd, what audio video codecs are you using for playback? I ripped a movie with DTS and again ripped it with AC3. One worked for me playing back the ts file and the other had no audio at all. The audio gets progressively off the further into the playback you go with the other. Don't remember which was which.

In the system tray I see I have something called the Hali media splitter handling the audio. Don't remember installing that but was wondering what people are using. I have not tried cyberlink codecs etc.

[mkanet]

I think the problem youre having is with Hali media splitter and whatever other codecs you have installed on your machine. My system is pretty clean, I only have the latest Cyberlink decoders installed (from version 8). SageTV's AC3 audio filter also works as well. I dont think there's anything more reliable (and better performing) than Cyberlink's video/audio filters currently.

I would try uninstalling any video/audio packages that you dont use. You might have to use graphedit to see what decoders your system is trying to use for H.264 playback.

Originally Posted by Humanzee

Once TSmuxer'd, what audio video codecs are you using for playback? I ripped a movie with DTS and again ripped it with AC3. One worked for me playing back the ts file and the other had no audio at all. The audio gets progressively off the further into the playback you go with the other. Don't remember which was which.

In the system tray I see I have something called the Hali media splitter handling the audio. Don't remember installing that but was wondering what people are using. I have not tried cyberlink codecs etc.

[Deacon Crusher]

My goal has always been extender playback. Don't work with clients at all so have no way to test with clients.

mkanet, the first 2 steps in my process are both absolutely clean perfect blu-rays rips that will play in powerdvd, but won't play on the extender.

As I said, I'm going for extender (not client) playback and that's why you have to get to an mkv (or at least that's how it seems currently.) I'm sure that my third step is definitely cutting into quality (not good, but it's not effecting it to much,) size, (good, making it smaller,) and playability, (great, can play on an extender.)

I've seen references to just putting the files into an mkv with no transcoding, haven't successfully got that working and don't know if I did if it would work on extender but do plan to keep working on that.

Thanks

[Humanzee]

There is an audio offset setting in tsmuxer, what should this be set to? I set it to 0 after the first rip had audio problems. Now I'm not sure if I should a had a not a changed that.

[tmiranda]

My process for watching blu-ray on the extender:

There are two HD muxing programs you may need, tsremux and tsmuxer. One will completely demux into elementary streams and the other has DTS to AC3 conversion capabilities. I always use AC3 audio because I do not have a DTS capable receiver.

1. If the blu-ray has DTS audio use tsremux to remux the .m2ts to .ts with AC3 audio. If the blu-ray has AC3 audio skip this step.

2. demux the .m2ts (or .ts) into elementary streams using tsmuxer.

3. use mkvmerge to put video and AC3 audio into .mkv container. Make sure you specify the proper frame rate for H.264 files or the audio will be out of sync.

4. move to Sage import directory and enjoy. No reencoding at all so video is perfect blu-ray. No menus of course.

[Deacon Crusher]

tmiranda, that's great news.

on 3/23 in this same thread you said that same process (more or less) wasn't working for you.

What changed?

thanks

Originally Posted by tmiranda

My process for watching blu-ray on the extender:

There are two HD muxing programs you may need, tsremux and tsmuxer. One will completely demux into elementary streams and the other has DTS to AC3 conversion capabilities. I always use AC3 audio because I do not have a DTS capable receiver.

1. If the blu-ray has DTS audio use tsremux to remux the .m2ts to .ts with AC3 audio. If the blu-ray has AC3 audio skip this step.

2. demux the .m2ts (or .ts) into elementary streams using tsmuxer.

3. use mkvmerge to put video and AC3 audio into .mkv container. Make sure you specify the proper frame rate for H.264 files or the audio will be out of sync.

4. move to Sage import directory and enjoy. No reencoding at all so video is perfect blu-ray. No menus of course.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

tmiranda, that's great news.

on 3/23 in this same thread you said that same process (more or less) wasn't working for you.

What changed?

thanks

I fixed my network. I put the extender, the server and the NAS all on the same gigabit switch and replaced a crappy hub.

[Deacon Crusher]

Confirmed. With some tweaks and questions.

The newest txMuxer can take True_Hd and convert to AC3 and DTS-HD and convert to DTS, so may still need tsremux or something to make dts into AC3, but you can extract both streams with tsmuxer and then mux back to an mkv with mkvmerge and it plays on the extender. spidey2 ended up as a 24.5 gig movie.

Had a few pauses while watching, but looked great.

Here's the extra info and some questions.

So, tsmuxer can now read playlist (mpls) files so with a little luck you can easily get multi-m2ts file based movies like spiderman 2 (and ratatouille I hear) to be merged together into one file while demuxing.

However, I did this with spidey2 and some where part way into the movie my audio gets ever so slightly out of sync.

Is there any easy way to fix that?

Do I need to demux each m2ts seperately and then mkvmerge each pair of streams back together as I merge the whole thing into one movie, will that keep the audio in sync??

Also, how are you (or are you) dealing with chapter points and subtittles?

thanks

Originally Posted by tmiranda

My process for watching blu-ray on the extender:

There are two HD muxing programs you may need, tsremux and tsmuxer. One will completely demux into elementary streams and the other has DTS to AC3 conversion capabilities. I always use AC3 audio because I do not have a DTS capable receiver.

1. If the blu-ray has DTS audio use tsremux to remux the .m2ts to .ts with AC3 audio. If the blu-ray has AC3 audio skip this step.

2. demux the .m2ts (or .ts) into elementary streams using tsmuxer.

3. use mkvmerge to put video and AC3 audio into .mkv container. Make sure you specify the proper frame rate for H.264 files or the audio will be out of sync.

4. move to Sage import directory and enjoy. No reencoding at all so video is perfect blu-ray. No menus of course.

[BFisher]

Does anybody know if the HD Extender can output the newer improved sound formats? (ie DTS-HD, TrueHD, etc)

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Confirmed. With some tweaks and questions.

The newest txMuxer can take True_Hd and convert to AC3 and DTS-HD and convert to DTS, so may still need tsremux or something to make dts into AC3, but you can extract both streams with tsmuxer and then mux back to an mkv with mkvmerge and it plays on the extender. spidey2 ended up as a 24.5 gig movie.

Had a few pauses while watching, but looked great.

Here's the extra info and some questions.

So, tsmuxer can now read playlist (mpls) files so with a little luck you can easily get multi-m2ts file based movies like spiderman 2 (and ratatouille I hear) to be merged together into one file while demuxing.

However, I did this with spidey2 and some where part way into the movie my audio gets ever so slightly out of sync.

Is there any easy way to fix that?

Do I need to demux each m2ts seperately and then mkvmerge each pair of streams back together as I merge the whole thing into one movie, will that keep the audio in sync??

Also, how are you (or are you) dealing with chapter points and subtittles?

thanks

Cars is a "seamless branching" movie made up of many .m2ts files. I combined it into one big .m2ts file using tsmuxer and then followed my normal procedure of demuxing and then remuxing to .mkv. Audio sync is perfect. The hardest part was figuring out which playlist to use as there were many that looked promising.

As for chapters and subtitles - I did not use any.

[mtyme]

How were you able to figure out which one to use? Trial and error or is there a program that lets you look at the playlist contents?

[Deacon Crusher]

tmiranda

If the movie is mpeg2 are you still putting into an mkv (like FF4) and what are you using/doing to convert DTS HD Master Lossless Audio (primary soundtrack on FF4) into AC3?

thanks

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by mtyme

How were you able to figure out which one to use? Trial and error or is there a program that lets you look at the playlist contents?

Sorry I did not reply sooner. I'm on vacation and did not have internet access for some time.

TSmuxer allows you to "load" a playlist and see what files are played (and it what order). Look for one that has a lot of files in it, trial and error I'm afraid.

@Deacon Crusher - Yes, I put the MPEG2 into .mkv as well. I used the same process as I previously outlined to convert the audio.

PS. Another reason I love Sage. I'm sitting in a hotel in Nice, France watching a recording on my Sage server in Orlando of the Formula 1 practice I watched live a few hours ago in Monaco.

[Whitey]

Great Thread guys!

Has anyone managed to playback a VC1 based BR rip on a sage client (not extender)?

I have read through this thread and most people are quoting H.264 AVC based video rips. When I try a VC1 rip, I get a playback decoder error. The file plays perfectly in WMP.

AIUI VC1 is an advanced codec based on WMV9 advance profile so the codec is part of windows media player.

Thanks

Whitey

[camens]

Originally Posted by Whitey

Great Thread guys!

Has anyone managed to playback a VC1 based BR rip on a sage client (not extender)?

I have read through this thread and most people are quoting H.264 AVC based video rips. When I try a VC1 rip, I get a playback decoder error. The file plays perfectly in WMP.

AIUI VC1 is an advanced codec based on WMV9 advance profile so the codec is part of windows media player.

Thanks

Whitey

Same question here....anybody play a VC1 rip on the extender?

[Rob]

I've played a VC1 on the extender, but I had to re-encode it with MeGui to reduce its size by about 20% before it would play smoothly.

[tmiranda]

No problem with VC1 on the extender for me. If I recall I had to use a program called VC12AVI since mkvmerge does not accept VC1 directly. Maybe I've just been lucky enough to get rips that have lower bit rates?

I know I sound like a broken record but I've had nothing but success playing VC1, MPEG and H264 (untouched video) as long as I convert the audio to AC3 and put it all in a mkv container.

I can now stream these rips from a NAS through several GB router "hops" between my NAS, Sage server and HD100.