I watched my first ripped Blu-ray movie on SageTV

[Rob]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

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

That is my experience too. I cannot tell the difference in PQ between non re-encoded, CRF 18, 18.5 or 19. The only difference is the level of studdering and the size of the file.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

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.

So could you point me to where this latest x264 version is that you are using? And I assume that I will then be able to force the long command line string given above to it, setting CRF at 20, and should I also set --subme to 9? Thanks!

[Kirby]

Well I would love to know what build of x264 you guys are using, because I have tried the latest stable and experimental versions from Sharktooth's thread at doom9, as well as Jarod's 11-27-2008 build, and I get "unknown option --b-rdo" errors on all of them. I've got to be missing something simple, but I dont know what it is.

[Rob]

I (hopefully) attached the x264 version I've been using.

By the way. Last week I upgraded my server's xp to sp3. It seems that playback is less reliable now at the crf factors that I've used (they were working fine before).

I have more testing to do, but if anyone else noticed this, I'd like to hear from you.

[Kirby]

Thanks Rob. Got it and running an encoding job with it right now. Cant wait to see the results in about 10 hours.

[lobosrul]

Kirby:

Latest x264 build can be found @ http://x264.nl/ . Click "Mirror 1" on the line that says x264.exe .

[Kirby]

Well that x264 from Rob works wonders! I've done two movies with it so far, and everything worked quite well. A third movie (POTC 3) seemingly hung around 70% completion (cpu usage was at 0% for a few hours) so I killed it. Will have to try it again and see what happens. Sure am glad I am encoding on a quad core!

[Rob]

Glad to hear it. I've gotten so much help over the years from people on this board that it is great to be being a little bit helpful.

I've not yet had a movie hang, but have not done any of the POTC movies. Hopefully, the second attempt will work for you!

[Kirby]

Ok this one has got me. I re-did my POTC 3 rip, first running the m2ts file through the x264 with all the command line options. Then I ran eac3to on the same file, and grabbed the english AC3 file. Put both into mkvmerge, and wound up with good sound, good video, but horribly out of sync! The video is easily 1 to 1.5 seconds ahead of the audio. I get this in Sage and in VLC, so its not the extender/sage freaking out. When I ran eac3to, it showed:

M2TS, 1 video track, 4 audio tracks, 5 subtitle tracks, 2:48:30
1: h264/AVC, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
2: RAW/PCM, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
3: AC3, 5.1 channels, 640kbps, 48khz, -13ms
4: AC3, 5.1 channels, 640kbps, 48khz, -13ms
5: AC3, 5.1 channels, 640kbps, 48khz, -13ms

Well its definitely not a 13 ms difference. So how do I go about fixing this? Should I redo the attempt using the PCM stream (converting it to AC3 or DTS)? My other encodes have not had a time delay listed in eac3to, and were all in sync.

[Rob]

I have not had any audio sync issues and I've done about 10 movies. Deacon Crusher can probably shed more light on this that I can. I seem to remember him having some sync issues before he worked out his process.

Here is the process my script goes through:

1. eac3to against the movie to list the playlists
2. eac3to against the longest playlist to list the tracks
3. eac3to against the longest playlist to extract the chapters, video (to an 4mkv), audio and subtitles.
4. mkvmerge to assemble a complete non re-coded mkv
5. create the avs file
6. x264 against the non re-coded mkv created in step 4 to create the encoded video
7. mkvmerge to merge the re-coded mkv video with the audio and chapters extracted from the third step above.

I have been creating two versions of each movie in hopes that someday, the extender will not need re-coded movies (at which time I can delete the re-coded version).

However, I'm starting to change the process to make step 4 optional (creation of the non recoded movie) and do step 6 using the mkv file created in step 3 instead of step 4. I have modified the process and created one movie using it, but have not played the resulting files yet to determine if it has any issues. I'm making this change because I'm beginning to think I'll need to re-do all my blu rays sometime in the future anyway since sage is starting to talk about supporting the newer audio formats and since I do not yet have working subtitles.

[Deacon Crusher]

transcoding no longer needed????

Just tested playback on my new 200 of a couple of movies that studder badly on my 100s and so far they look great. No studdering.

Still testing but so far looking pretty good.

thanks Sage. (except I'd really rather not have to replace my 3 100s so may still transcode for now.)

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

transcoding no longer needed????

Just tested playback on my new 200 of a couple of movies that studder badly on my 100s and so far they look great. No studdering.

Still testing but so far looking pretty good.

thanks Sage. (except I'd really rather not have to replace my 3 100s so may still transcode for now.)

That is great news, but I'll be trancoding for a while. Cannot justify replacing three boxes that are all less than a year old (not yet anyway).

[Kypp]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

transcoding no longer needed????

Just tested playback on my new 200 of a couple of movies that studder badly on my 100s and so far they look great. No studdering.

Still testing but so far looking pretty good.

thanks Sage. (except I'd really rather not have to replace my 3 100s so may still transcode for now.)

Can I ask how big the files are. When I copy over my DVD files using DVDShrink Sage will not load files much larger than about 4gigs... is this an issue with the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD rips? For DVD's I broke the .vob files into 1gb chunks and they play fine as a whole movie like it is a single file but would this work the same with HD/BR?

[popechild]

Originally Posted by Kypp

Can I ask how big the files are. When I copy over my DVD files using DVDShrink Sage will not load files much larger than about 4gigs... is this an issue with the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD rips? For DVD's I broke the .vob files into 1gb chunks and they play fine as a whole movie like it is a single file but would this work the same with HD/BR?

I've played rips as big as 20gb without a problem.

[Kypp]

I am curious why I can't get mine to playback files above about 4 gigs. If I rip a DVD (full DVD no compression) in DVDShrink the menus load fine and everything works on the extender until it tries to go to the main movie and then the system just hangs. I suspected it might be the file size so I broke them into chunks and everything works well. I am going to try and do a Blu-Ray tonight and see what happens (if I can get around to it )

[toony]

Thought I would chime in here...

I just ripped my first bluray from my collection... Transformers.
Anydvd, then stripped out the nonsense and used tsremux... about 2 hours total time and ended up with about 34gig ts file... runns beautifully on my extender hd100.

I was playing around trying to remux to an mkv with various tools, but the shortest time I got it down to was 16hrs, it's an older proccessor. This computer is not the same as my server. If I upgrade it to a quad four what kind of time would I be looking at to get it to an mkv?

[toony]

Originally Posted by Kypp

I am curious why I can't get mine to playback files above about 4 gigs. If I rip a DVD (full DVD no compression) in DVDShrink the menus load fine and everything works on the extender until it tries to go to the main movie and then the system just hangs. I suspected it might be the file size so I broke them into chunks and everything works well. I am going to try and do a Blu-Ray tonight and see what happens (if I can get around to it )

I am not sure that the hanging has much to do with the size of the file as it does sage. Size seems to play no factor in any hiccups it seems to be the movie or the rip it's self. Some dvd's will hang at the menu or just as it's going through the previews before the menu. I have no explanation as to why, but I seem to get around it by hitting various dvd controls on the remote. There does not seem to be any method to the madness, I seem to be able to get it going if I stop and play stop and restart, hit the menu button before it hangs... just weird.

I know that's not helpfull but what will be interesting is if you can play a ripped bluray without hanging and it's just the dvd's giving issue. No doubt the bluray will be much larger, as compared with a dvd. If this does run smoothly then you will have duplicated the same issue I have. Not sure what to do about it then.

[Kirby]

Well I watched my first full rip onmy new HD200 today! POTC 3. Just played the .m2ts file from the rip, and it picked the english AC3 track. Played perfectly. Something the HD100 could not do, at least on this title. I think I am done encoding, and just going to rip and save the m2ts files. In case anyone wants to know, I am running the latest beta server and HD200 firmwares, and have the audio on the HD200 set to 'hdmi bitstream'. I do have the optical cable hooked up though, so I need to check and see if it was going over the HDMI or not.

[MarkV]

Originally Posted by Kypp

I am curious why I can't get mine to playback files above about 4 gigs. If I rip a DVD (full DVD no compression) in DVDShrink the menus load fine and everything works on the extender until it tries to go to the main movie and then the system just hangs. I suspected it might be the file size so I broke them into chunks and everything works well. I am going to try and do a Blu-Ray tonight and see what happens (if I can get around to it )

I use anydvd to rip dvds to .iso (full) and mount them on the sagetv server for playback thru a hd100 and hd200. The only issue I have seen was when I had the output set to use native res and 480i wasn't enabled on the hd200. I have had dvdshrink fail to rip some dvds and moved to anydvd (have dvdfab and nero8 as well and use anydvdhd exclusively for rips).

I believe the filesystem hosting the isos is a 4TB partition on Vista64 with a single 4TB filesystem if you're looking for filesize/filesystem boogymen. And the ripped isos are typically well above 4GB.

[toony]

Originally Posted by MarkV

I use anydvd to rip dvds to .iso (full) and mount them on the sagetv server for playback thru a hd100 and hd200. The only issue I have seen was when I had the output set to use native res and 480i wasn't enabled on the hd200. I have had dvdshrink fail to rip some dvds and moved to anydvd (have dvdfab and nero8 as well and use anydvdhd exclusively for rips).

I wonder if that is the reason I have the problems with the dvd's freezing. I don't rip to iso, just rip the files out and leave everything in the video_ts folder. I still usr dvd decrypter. It's not a huge isue only happens on a few dvds out of a hundred or so.

As for the bluray I was thinking of just keeping the m2ts file without stripping eveything out. HDDs are so cheap now, the extra 10 gig or so I am not sure it's worth the 2nd hour of muxing.

Is there any advantage upgrading to the hd200 in terms of picture quality for the 1080p rips?