HD-DVD to .mkv

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

That MakeMKV looks interesting. I hope it works well with my smallish collection of HD-DVDs. I'd still prefer to rip to the folder structure, but Sage doesn't yet support that in the client software.

tsMuxer will import the mkv file and build a Blu-ray structure when you are ready.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I actually find it a bit humorous that people, somewhat understandably, want to keep the ability to play HD audio. The reason it's funny is because DVD audio at 448Kb/s is already better than what you'd get by going to the theatre. The DD track encoded into the edge of the film is at a fixed bitrate of 320Kb/s. Barring the difference in the actual audio hardware, unless the threatre is using the extra DTS discs that may be available, actual audio quality at home is already better than you get at the theatre.

This means that even the 640kb DD available on BD is already twice the quality you get at the theatre. Not to mention the differential lossless encoding used by TrueHD and DTS-HD MA.

Hehe... yeah, I know what you're saying. I figured someone was going to mention this fact. But, I've learned that if you're going to spend the time to do something, do it right the first time. I felt I wouldn't hear the difference re-ripping my CD's using a lossless codec, so I'm not going to. But, new CDs will be ripped that way... just because.

As far as the theaters, though. Their sound systems are garbage. There's no possible way you can hear the correct surround channels from EVERY seat in the theater at the precise time you're supposed to. It's impossible. So, yes, my home theater's sound is definitely much better than theirs.

Beyond that, however, who's to say that in 5 years time some speaker manufacturer won't come up with a process that truly "takes advantage" of the clarity in HD audio but at a reasonable price I can afford? I'd rather be ready now--just in case--rather than wanting to re-rip my (hopefully, soon-to-be) huge collection of movies.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by babgvant

You might want to check out DTB's ConvertVideoFile action for transcoding to MKV with h.264. The action gives you a lot of control for the quality and attributes of the transcode, one caveat is that AC3 encoding doesn't work right (because the filter I use doesn't map channels correctly) but if your doing an audio stream copy anyway, that won't be a problem.

Out of curiosity, why are you converting the audio streams to AC3? You should be able to bitstream DTS to anything that supports AC3.

Oh and the next rev will support h.264 in ts if you prefer that to mkv.

Hi Andy,
Just installed 1.2.1.7 and cannot find anything called ConvertVideoFile anywhere in profiles. I also poked around in the Process Condition Editor looking for something and did not see it there, albeit, that particular app scares me a bit when I go into it

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

Hi Andy,
Just installed 1.2.1.7 and cannot find anything called ConvertVideoFile anywhere in profiles. I also poked around in the Process Condition Editor looking for something and did not see it there, albeit, that particular app scares me a bit when I go into it

it's an advanced action and not currently included in any ootb profiles. you'll also want to regsvr32 the h264 filter in the filters dir to make it work.

if you can't figure out how to make it go let me know and I'll write something up.

some of the things are scary because no one but me uses them

[Skirge01]

I've starting ripping the first couple of Blu-rays to get my feet wet in this arena and I finally feel like I've got a handle on the process. It definitely helps to understand what's going on with the command line when you're using the GUI. Currently, I'm using eac3to via the command line and then using the MKVMerge GUI to pull them all together. I'm also using SupRip to create both regular subtitles and forced subtitles. (If anyone wants specifics on what I'm doing, just ask.)

I do have a question regarding DTS-[HD MA, HD HR, etc.] audio and the associated DTS core. If I rip the a DTS-HD Master Audio track and don't extract the core separately, then mux the DTS-HD MA track into an MKV with the video, will Sage and my (non DTS-HD audio) receiver be able to play back the DTS audio core via the SPDIF cable or is the core now "missing" from that DTS-HD extract?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I do have a question regarding DTS-[HD MA, HD HR, etc.] audio and the associated DTS core. If I rip the a DTS-HD Master Audio track and don't extract the core separately, then mux the DTS-HD MA track into an MKV with the video, will Sage and my (non DTS-HD audio) receiver be able to play back the DTS audio core via the SPDIF cable or is the core now "missing" from that DTS-HD extract?

That will work.

[stanger89]

For the extenders at least, I think it's a little trickier on the PC side, depends on the decoders you're using (and I'm not really that familiar with that).

[Skirge01]

Darn... two different answers! Okay, guess I'll try it out tonight and report back. I did 3 movies extracting and muxing both the DTS-HD and the DTS core and they work just fine and then I starting thinking about whether I was needlessly doing more work and inflating the size of the files.

[babgvant]

It works on both. Haali presents the audio pin as DTS, so until they update the splitter you only get core.

If you're going to consume the content on a PC w/ HDMI, IMO FLAC is the way to go. I mux in an AC3 track just to make sure, but place it second because sage doesn't support alternate audio tracks on the PC yet (if you want that feature ask for IAMStreamSelect support - Jeff will know what you mean )

[Skirge01]

Thanks for the additional info. I hear (no pun intended) you on FLAC, but I want to keep my rips as close to original as possible in both quality and format. I'm also not currrently using HDMI from my PC. For simplicity with my MKVs, I can turn them back into Blu-rays without any loss in quality or conversion in format. This gets back to my wanting to only do this once. I'm not saying there aren't valid reasons for going a different direction, but this is what I've decided after doing that MP3 thing way back when.

[stanger89]

Wild curiosity, have you tried making them BDMV structures? If you rebuild them (ala TSMuxer or Clown_BD) you end up with a single M2TS file in a folder. I think Sage should play m2ts files just fine on the PC side. Though I don't know if having them in a folder breaks things, ie importing them a "Blu-ray Disc"s and then refusing to play them...

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Thanks for the additional info. I hear (no pun intended) you on FLAC, but I want to keep my rips as close to original as possible in both quality and format. I'm also not currrently using HDMI from my PC. For simplicity with my MKVs, I can turn them back into Blu-rays without any loss in quality or conversion in format. This gets back to my wanting to only do this once. I'm not saying there aren't valid reasons for going a different direction, but this is what I've decided after doing that MP3 thing way back when.

FLAC is lossless compression and if you do it right so is the transformation from LPCM/DTSMA/etc. Right now there aren't many good solutions for getting lossless audio out of a PC, FLAC is the best/most flexible/future proof that I've found.

If you don't have HDMI, it makes sense to do what you're doing. Should your HW change in the future you haven't lost anything by sticking with the DTSMA track.

Curious why you'd want to put it back on a disc once it's liberated?

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Wild curiosity, have you tried making them BDMV structures? If you rebuild them (ala TSMuxer or Clown_BD) you end up with a single M2TS file in a folder. I think Sage should play m2ts files just fine on the PC side. Though I don't know if having them in a folder breaks things, ie importing them a "Blu-ray Disc"s and then refusing to play them...

The full software client won't play back BDMV structures. I even emailed support about it and it's on the scheduled to be added, but no ETA.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by babgvant

FLAC is lossless compression and if you do it right so is the transformation from LPCM/DTSMA/etc. Right now there aren't many good solutions for getting lossless audio out of a PC, FLAC is the best/most flexible/future proof that I've found.

If you don't have HDMI, it makes sense to do what you're doing. Should your HW change in the future you haven't lost anything by sticking with the DTSMA track.

Curious why you'd want to put it back on a disc once it's liberated?

Some of my movies are on HD-DVD, so those I may very well burn to a physical Blu-ray disc. I don't intend to burn the Blu-ray movies, but I just like having things in their original format. You generally don't run into problems when trying to play them back when that's the case. Granted, Sage is currently the black sheep at the moment and proving this theory wrong (Thanks, Sage! I love being wrong! ), but Blu-ray playback itself is still somewhat of a "new" thing, particularly on the PC.

My theory is that--eventually--the standard Blu-ray structure will be supported by just about everything and I won't have to worry about converting hundreds of movies to another format because whatever I chose today (MKV at the moment) isn't supported by something in the future, is no longer being developed, or doesn't support some future feature that I want/need. It's an attempt at "future-proofing" my collection.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

My theory is that--eventually--the standard Blu-ray structure will be supported by just about everything and I won't have to worry about converting hundreds of movies to another format because whatever I chose today (MKV at the moment) isn't supported by something in the future, is no longer being developed, or doesn't support some future feature that I want/need. It's an attempt at "future-proofing" my collection.

I'll wager that MKV will outlive BD

[Fuzzy]

I'd put in another vote for just buying another harddrive for your HD-DVD rips, even a cheap/crappy external would work. with tsmuxer, and anydvdhd, you should be able to remux directly from the EVO file on the disc to a BDMV structure on the drive. Your rip times would be MUCH faster, and you'd be able to fit about 40 HD-DVD movies (movie only) on a 1TB drive that costs less than the purchase price of 4 of those movies.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

The full software client won't play back BDMV structures. I even emailed support about it and it's on the scheduled to be added, but no ETA.

Yeah, I know it won't play a BDMV, but I wasn't sure if you could still play the m2ts therein or not.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Yeah, I know it won't play a BDMV, but I wasn't sure if you could still play the m2ts therein or not.

In that case, yes, you can. You can browse through the folders and play back the m2ts file you want to. Not very pretty, though.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'd put in another vote for just buying another harddrive for your HD-DVD rips, even a cheap/crappy external would work. with tsmuxer, and anydvdhd, you should be able to remux directly from the EVO file on the disc to a BDMV structure on the drive. Your rip times would be MUCH faster, and you'd be able to fit about 40 HD-DVD movies (movie only) on a 1TB drive that costs less than the purchase price of 4 of those movies.

I've got plenty of storage space already that I can store them on. I prefer to have multiple backup methods, however. I work in IT, so I don't believe in a single backup solution for every circumstance. Sometimes, a single copy isn't enough.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I've got plenty of storage space already that I can store them on. I prefer to have multiple backup methods, however. I work in IT, so I don't believe in a single backup solution for every circumstance. Sometimes, a single copy isn't enough.

well, owning the discs, but using the rip, IS a pretty good backup methodology. Blu-Rays left in the case are about as safe as you can get.

Another thing to point out... BluRay's are MUCH less susceptible to scratching than DVD's were, due to their extra protective layer (in my eyes, the ONLY thing that made BD superior to HDDVD).