I watched my first ripped Blu-ray movie on SageTV

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Rob are you running WHS or XP or??

Thanks

XP.

[Rob]

Originally Posted by killervette

just got done re-encoding Ironman with x264.exe. Took like 7 hours on an Overclocked Quad Core! Anyway, looks just like the un-encoded version but does not skip at all now. I used Rob's settings on the top of this page.

The first version was 25GB, after encoding it ended up 17GB.

Now i have to go through all my Blurays I think I will do them all so i never have skip/studder issues.

Glad to hear it worked for you too. It does take a while, but it is usually running overnight on mine anyway. I also cannot tell the difference in PQ.

Before you wholesale redo all your blu-rays, be aware that the VC-1 encodes may need a little higher crf value in the parms to play smoothly relative to the other types of blu-rays. Not sure what you used. I still had some studder at 18, and a little studder on VC-1's at 18.5 and I've run into no studder (so far) using a value of 19.

[Deacon Crusher]

Folks, please go to the extender forum and vote in the poll I just created.

I'm really trying to figure out why some of you are having a much better experience then me and many others.

Thanks

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Folks, please go to the extender forum and vote in the poll I just created.

I'm really trying to figure out why some of you are having a much better experience then me and many others.

Thanks

I voted (same as your vote). The poll is a good idea. Maybe it will shed some light on the variables that make playback on the extender work. I can't wait to find out who is getting studder free blayback without re-encoding and how they are doing it.

[Deacon Crusher]

Just watched Iron Man tonight with the family through extender after doing your megui process.

Worked like a charm.

Thanks Rob.

Originally Posted by Rob

I started using MeGui ...

[popechild]

Originally Posted by killervette

i am not sure since i have to image it frist from the PS3. i do think that you can select the individual audio track with eac3to. try eac3to.exe /? to see the command list. usually the first audio track is the best english track.

What are you using to image from the ps3? I've held off on getting a BD drive because my server's not beefy enough to play back BDs I'm guessing, but I do have a ps3 and an HD100 and I'd love to try this. I stumbled on the possibility today of imaging from the ps3, and searching for info lead me to this thread. Do you use a full linux install? What about SAK? I've read a number of places that say that works great, and it sounds simple, but I've also heard that a Sony firmware update may have killed it awhile back? Would you mind detailing your process for getting the image from the ps3 to your computer?

Thanks!

[killervette]

Originally Posted by popechild

What are you using to image from the ps3? I've held off on getting a BD drive because my server's not beefy enough to play back BDs I'm guessing, but I do have a ps3 and an HD100 and I'd love to try this. I stumbled on the possibility today of imaging from the ps3, and searching for info lead me to this thread. Do you use a full linux install? What about SAK? I've read a number of places that say that works great, and it sounds simple, but I've also heard that a Sony firmware update may have killed it awhile back? Would you mind detailing your process for getting the image from the ps3 to your computer?

Thanks!

I installed Yellow Dog Linux on it. I then just use dd to image the disc. I tried sak and it didnt work for me, but i didnt give it much time.

[popechild]

Can you image over the network to a drive, or do you have to do it to a usb drive and then transfer?

[killervette]

Originally Posted by popechild

Can you image over the network to a drive, or do you have to do it to a usb drive and then transfer?

either one will work. if you use a external harddrive, you will need to format it either fat32 or ext3 for linux to see it. I use fat32, so i can plug into my windows machine. but you will need to split the images into 4GB chunks since thats the limit of fat32. I just started doing network transfers this weekend, alot easier

[popechild]

Cool. I'm gonna try to give it a shot and I might hit you up again if I run into trouble...

[killervette]

Originally Posted by popechild

Cool. I'm gonna try to give it a shot and I might hit you up again if I run into trouble...

no problem.

[popechild]

Wow, that was easy! Okay, now I'm bummed that I've been sitting here all along with the capability to rip/play my blurays through Sage and didn't know I could do it. Every time I tried to read the threads on it, it all seemed very confusing, with all sorts of muxing/remuxing/converting/etc. Given that my server doesn't have enough processing power for playback, I hadn't gotten a BD reader, which I assumed I would need to rip the discs. So between all the various stumbling blocks, I assumed it would be quite awhile before I could store my BDs and play them back through Sage alongside all my other DVDs.

For anyone reading who might be like I was, thinking it was an extremely convoluted, confusing process, I'll detail my workflow, which worked flawlessly on the first try using a PS3 and a 3500+ single core AMD server over a 10/100 network to the extender. (Caveat: From the looks of things around here, it looks like certain discs are easier to play back than others, and some seem to *need* all the extra steps and mkv container stuff in order to get the audio working or something. I must've just gotten lucky with the first disc I tried...)

1. Installed Swiss Army Knife (SAK) on the PS3. This is a tiny little Linux program that is extremely simple to install using a simple USB stick. It's not a full blown Linux OS that requires Linux knowledge. It basically just loads and gives you about a half dozen options. One of those options is...

2. Ripped the BD to my windows machine over the network. Just tell SAK the IP and folder name of a shared folder on a networked Windows machine and press Enter. The end result for me was a roughly 18gb .iso file of Michael Clayton. (Obviously you can skip this step if you have a BD drive. I don't, but now I know I don't need to buy one.)

3. Mounted .iso as a drive and ripped/extracted it to a new folder called "Michael Clayton" using AnyDVD HD.

4. Pointed my HD100 to the big fat .mt2s file in the Streams folder and hit play, fully expecting some sort of problems, the kind that would make people go through all sorts of muxing/demuxing/mkv'ing. But it just worked! No stutters, no glitches, beautiful picture, it was all there! (This is a VC-1 1080p disc from what I can tell. It sounds like VC-1 movies are the kind that tend to give people the most trouble, so I don't know why this seemed to work so easily for me. It makes me wonder if for some reason the HD100 is better at playing .mt2s files than .mkv files?)

So I don't need a BD drive for the computer, and I don't need to go throwing money at a new mobo, processor, ram, etc. etc. AND I don't need to buy a blu-ray player for the living room TV in order to watch my BD movies on it!

Oh, and if my gut assumption is correct that I kind of got lucky by picking Michael Clayton as the first movie to try, and if I'm going to realize how it's actually very complicated, and time consuming, and all that as soon as I try to do additional films, please don't let me know. I'm just going to enjoy the initial success for a while...

[popechild]

Last night marked my follow-up attempt to watch a second BD through the extender. This time I chose No Country For Old Men (1080p AVC, Uncompressed PCM 5.1) thinking maybe this one would trip me up, especially given that it's another AVC, and that I thought I'd read somewhere in this thread that the extender can't playback PCM or something.

Regardless, I ripped the disc, pointed the extender at the biggest m2ts file, and it's playing without a hitch again!

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by Rob

I started using MeGui and used it enough to create a custom profile based on the CE High profile that comes with it. I changed that profile to be constant quality with a value of 18 and then reviewed the resulting command line shown in the MeGui tool. Now I really do not use MeGui, I just execute x264.exe with the command line parms MeGui was using:

--crf 19.0 --ref 3 --mixed-refs --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --subme 6 --trellis 1 --partitions all --8x8dct --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "D:\moviename_19.mkv" "moviename.avs"

Where did you get your x264.exe? I've tried a few versions, and each and every time I feed it the command line params you have above, it craps out on many of them (--b-rdo for example).

I've also tried just playing the .m2ts on some movies, and it seems to be totally hit or miss if it can play stutter free, doesnt seem to depend on VC-1/AVC enociding (found some of each that will and wont play).

[popechild]

As a follow-up, I've done a handful of disks now, and every one has worked well for me as .m2ts files. I've yet to encounter one that didn't play smoothly or didn't have audio.

One thing I have found is that the "original" .m2ts file often plays better for me than if I use something like tsmuxer to strip out the additional audio tracks and stuff. Or both will play okay, but the original will hold up better when skipping around during playback. Sometimes the tsmuxer version will freeze when I try to jump forward/backward.

Again, this is just ripping the disk and playing the resulting .m2ts file directly off the NAS through the extender. I'm not sure why others are having problems or having to jump through so many hoops to get smooth playback.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by popechild

As a follow-up, I've done a handful of disks now, and every one has worked well for me as .m2ts files. I've yet to encounter one that didn't play smoothly or didn't have audio.

One thing I have found is that the "original" .m2ts file often plays better for me than if I use something like tsmuxer to strip out the additional audio tracks and stuff. Or both will play okay, but the original will hold up better when skipping around during playback. Sometimes the tsmuxer version will freeze when I try to jump forward/backward.

Again, this is just ripping the disk and playing the resulting .m2ts file directly off the NAS through the extender. I'm not sure why others are having problems or having to jump through so many hoops to get smooth playback.

Have you tried any of the POTC movies? All I have done for testing is plop in a BD disc, rip with the latest Anydvd HD, move the largest .m2ts file to someplace viewable on the network, and renamed it to the movie title. These were all sitting on a Vista machine, 1 gbit LAN backbone to a switch where the sage server is connected as well as the extender. Server is also 1 gbit lan.

[Rob]

Kirby, I use the version of x264 that came with the megui download. I'll see if I can dig up version information when I get home tonight.

Popechild, Have you been able to try any disks that are Dolby True HD or DTS-HD. I did not think the extender could handle these without converting the audio. Iron Man and Golden Compass are examples.

[Kirby]

I tried that x264.exe as well, unless I was using an outdated Megui install file? I guess I will have to try and find where I grabbed MeGui from.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Have you tried any of the POTC movies? All I have done for testing is plop in a BD disc, rip with the latest Anydvd HD, move the largest .m2ts file to someplace viewable on the network, and renamed it to the movie title. These were all sitting on a Vista machine, 1 gbit LAN backbone to a switch where the sage server is connected as well as the extender. Server is also 1 gbit lan.

No, I don't have any of the POTC movies. I'll see about renting one sometime to test.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Where did you get your x264.exe? I've tried a few versions, and each and every time I feed it the command line params you have above, it craps out on many of them (--b-rdo for example).

I've also tried just playing the .m2ts on some movies, and it seems to be totally hit or miss if it can play stutter free, doesnt seem to depend on VC-1/AVC enociding (found some of each that will and wont play).

This is a rather late reply, but the reason it "crapped out" on some of those settings is there is a new revision of x264 out. --subme now controls on the b-rdo/psy-rdo settings (it goes up to 9 now).

Also, I've had success with CRF at 20 for DVD and Blu-ray movies. Under 19 is generally just wasteful.