I watched my first ripped Blu-ray movie on SageTV

[mikejaner]

Gotcha

[mkanet]

I just realized the reason I'm able to playback these filetypes and other H.264 videos so well is because I think I'm using Cyberlink's H.264 decoder. I don't think SageTV's decoder even supports hardware acceleration.

I just changed my SageClient.properties to include the below setting:

videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD8)

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I just realized the reason I'm able to playback these filetypes and other H.264 videos so well is because I think I'm using Cyberlink's H.264 decoder. I don't think SageTV's decoder even supports hardware acceleration.

I just changed my SageClient.properties to include the below setting:

videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder

That goes without saying.

[mike1961]

OUCH 19GB! Unless you have a 200" screen for me I would just convert the entire thing to MP4. With my DVD's I can take 7gb and convert to mp4 at very good video quality at around 500 mb for a 2 hour movie. That means I can get 1000 movies on a 500gb hard drive or 38 movies for your one 19gb movie. I suppose the file would be larger if I kept all the sensurround effects quad or 6 speakers or whatever the DVD's are but I don't care for that and have a basic 46" LCD client setup. Video looks great to me even with that.

But, for those that want every ounce of quality with all the effects, what you did sounds good and you could always argue even at 20 gb that is still 50 movies per TB drive. But, the other possible advantage I have is probably less traffic and CPU overhead at a light 4-5 mb/minute.

Mike

[mkanet]

Mike, blu-ray is already mp4 format... they are mpeg4 AVC; and, already extremely compressed. It's not possible to make these movies smaller without losing significant picture quality. It's not the same as converting mpeg2 (VOB's to old fashioned mpeg4). It really depends on the quality of your 46" TV and how far you sit in order to see this difference. There's a HUGE difference between picture quality of blu-ray and smaller format on my 1080p Sony Bravia 46" display via HDMI. However, I have the luxury of sitting 5.5 feet from it. I'm guessing sitting any further away from it, you wouldn't be able to see the full detail in the picture of blu-ray movies; in that case, you're right, you would need a bigger TV for more distance. Basic rule of thumb for distance between you and your 1080p screen. You should be able to read standard Windows 10 point font at that 1920x1080 with that distance. If you can't read the fonts, you wont be able to see the full detail in these movies; in that case, you can even watch lower res movies or more compressed without noticing a difference.

Originally Posted by mike1961

OUCH 19GB! Unless you have a 200" screen for me I would just convert the entire thing to MP4. With my DVD's I can take 7gb and convert to mp4 at very good video quality at around 500 mb for a 2 hour movie. That means I can get 1000 movies on a 500gb hard drive or 38 movies for your one 19gb movie. I suppose the file would be larger if I kept all the sensurround effects quad or 6 speakers or whatever the DVD's are but I don't care for that and have a basic 46" LCD client setup. Video looks great to me even with that.

But, for those that want every ounce of quality with all the effects, what you did sounds good and you could always argue even at 20 gb that is still 50 movies per TB drive. But, the other possible advantage I have is probably less traffic and CPU overhead at a light 4-5 mb/minute.

Mike

[mikesm]

If you like Mkanet's method, you get pretty efficient disk space. 19GB is less than it would be to store the whole ISO with all the misc addons they put on the disk.

Storing HD takes lots of disk. I have an R5000-HD and HBO, so I archive a ton of movies. I have 5 TB of recordings, though converting them to h.264 would save a lot of space since the cable guys ship everything in MPEG2.

My HD-DVD rips and future BR rips will tax the NAS even more. It's good that the TB disks only cost $200 now.

[chrisc983]

mkanet I was able to copy the movie to my hard drive with anydvd but I'm not sure what to do with tsmuxer. When I looked at their guide on their website it talked about two other programs that I need to use. Is that what you had to do or did you just use tsmuxer. If so how??? Thanks.

[mkanet]

Chris, you dont need anything else. The file you want to select is in your ripped folder in the "streams" subdirectory. Just choose the biggest .m2ts file in that directory... just drag and drop that file into TSMuxer.
and uncheck all the streams except for the AVS and AC3 english, choose destination name and location (ie.. final.ts) and press the Edit button... and whala...

Originally Posted by chrisc983

mkanet I was able to copy the movie to my hard drive with anydvd but I'm not sure what to do with tsmuxer. When I looked at their guide on their website it talked about two other programs that I need to use. Is that what you had to do or did you just use tsmuxer. If so how??? Thanks.

[alphatango]

Originally Posted by Lucas

Thanks!

On the other hand the HD Extender sits there trying to load it to no avail.....

In my experience the only things, h.264 related that play well on the extender are 720p x.264 reencodes.

Hi Lucas, I wanted to make sure I understood. You are saying *all* HD 1080formats to the extender do not play well or ??? Thanks

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by alphatango

Hi Lucas, I wanted to make sure I understood. You are saying *all* HD 1080formats to the extender do not play well or ??? Thanks

Depends on what type of 1080 format we are talking about.

For me,

1080p h.264 .ts files play well

most 1080p mkv h.264 files don't play smoothly

some (10%) 1080i mpeg2 .ts files don't play smoothly

I believe the major factors are what tools and how well(according to the standard) the files were authored. The extender seems to be picky.

I am talking with support and I am confident that the issues will be ironed out eventualy as usual.

[chrishallowell]

Many thanks to everyone for all of the info in this thread.
SageTV plays the video perfectly. But I have no sound.
1. SageClient.properties Added:
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder
2. Ripped Spiderman 3 to HDD using AnyDVD-HD
3. I dragged and dropped the largest m2ts file into TSMuxer.
4. I unchecked all the streams except for the AVS and True-HD.
5. I highlighted the True-HD stream and checked the downsample True-HD to AC3 option.
6. Choose extract to ts file
7. Choose destination name and location: final.ts

Spiderman 3 has these options as far as sound streams:
1. LPCM (I can't remember if it was 7.1 or 5.1)
2. True-HD
3. AC3-eng 2.0

Any suggestions on how to get the LPCM or True-HD sound in the ts for SageTV? Or I guess I would settle for any sound at this point.

Thanks,
Chris

[sleonard]

If you're downsampling the True-HD to AC3 then why not just choose the AC3 option to begin with?

S

[chrishallowell]

Because it looks like it's only 2 channels according to TSMuxer (Look at option #3)

1. LPCM (I can't remember if it was 7.1 or 5.1)
2. True-HD
3. AC3-eng 2.0

Thanks,
Chris

[sleonard]

Ahh, sorry, didn't notice that.

S

[chrishallowell]

I do get sound with PowerDVD Ultra. I must be missing something in SageTV...

I'm using SageMC. I tried setting the:
Audio render to CyberLink Audio Renderer (PDVD7.x)
MPEG2 audio Decoder to Cyberlink Audio Decoder (Also tried AC3Filter)
DVD Audio render to CyberLink Audio Renderer (PDVD7.x)
DVD audio Decoder to Cyberlink Audio Decoder (Also tried AC3Filter)

Is there a property like the below for audio?
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris

[mkanet]

EDIT: I thought I had missed putting in a setting. But, there is no setting. I "think" sageTV uses the audio setting from mpeg2 for H.264.

Have you tried more than one rip?

Originally Posted by chrishallowell

I do get sound with PowerDVD Ultra. I must be missing something in SageTV...

I'm using SageMC. I tried setting the:
Audio render to CyberLink Audio Renderer (PDVD7.x)
MPEG2 audio Decoder to Cyberlink Audio Decoder (Also tried AC3Filter)
DVD Audio render to CyberLink Audio Renderer (PDVD7.x)
DVD audio Decoder to Cyberlink Audio Decoder (Also tried AC3Filter)

Is there a property like the below for audio?
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris

[chrishallowell]

No, I have only tried this one. The confusing thing is that the audio works in PowerDVD Ultra but not in SageTV.

I'll try another movie/rip tonight and report back.

Thanks.

[mkanet]

Yeah, SageTV accesses the audio decoding in a different way than Cyberlink's own player.

Originally Posted by chrishallowell

No, I have only tried this one. The confusing thing is that the audio works in PowerDVD Ultra but not in SageTV.

I'll try another movie/rip tonight and report back.

Thanks.

[Deacon Crusher]

So, been playing around with this for a while and I think I have a replicateable process.

This works with SpiderMan 3. Now that I have a working process I'll start to test on other disks.

Use Any-DVD (HD version) to extract a copy of your Blu-ray disk to your hard drive.

40 + gigs. (takes an hour or so)

Run the main m2ts file through tsMuxer and create a m2ts file with just the audio file you want. You can use this tool to convert the TrueHD stream (on those disks that have it) to AC3 which I recommend. Some disks have multiple m2ts files making up the whole main movie (apparently Ratatouille is like this) you have to use tsmuxer to put them altogether into one file in the right order.

New file around 30 gigs. (takes an hour or so)

Now run this through ripbot264 with the blu-ray 4.1 profile and have it just XXcopy the AC3 stream and create an MKV file (I set quality to 20 (highest).) Ripbot264 can be a little finicky especially if you have any extraneous codecs installed (like from big codec packs) so if you have problems you may want to uninstall those. The best ripbot installer is probably the one put together by Ajax_undone in this thread, http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127611&page=61 though you may need to reinstall the latest ripbot on top of that once it's installed to be current (Ajax's installer gets the other apps/utils that ripbot needs to work.)

Final product is about 16 gigs and looks great and plays great on the Extender. (this is an overnight job on a fast computer, I have a quad core 6600 and it took 12 hours or so.) Didn't check to see if is in fact AC3 5.1 if I output to stereo, but should be.

I'd just as soon be able to use the original m2ts but that doesn't work with the Extenders, though there's rumors it may some day, would be nice. Or, just be able to convert/mux whatever the proper term is the m2ts into an mkv that has no quality loss at all and some have said they can do that. Haven't succeeded myself yet. However, it is nice to save the disk space and may be that you could live with cq22 (slightly lower quality) which cuts file down to 10 gigs.

Hope others find this helpful.

[chrishallowell]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Run the main m2ts file through tsMuxer and create a m2ts file with just the audio file you want.

Do you mean just the 1 audio stream or the 1 audio stream and the video stream?

.m2ts -> tsMuxer -> .m2ts(audio and video?) -> ripbot264 using blu-ray 4.1, XXcopy the AC3 stream -> .mkv

I'll try this when I get home. Thanks for sharing your success!
Thanks,
Chris