I watched my first ripped Blu-ray movie on SageTV

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Interesting. I don't write the whole disk to disk, I just run eac3to against the disk and works great. Other then that our processes are the same until you get to the avisynth script, I think that was the step that scared me away from mequi, I tried ripbot264 and got pretty good results at one point, I'll have to try the megui route again. I'd love to see what your script does at the avisynth and megui stages if you wouldn't mind sharing.

Thanks

Well with the memory replaced, the Harry Potter movie no longer studders. Iron Man still studders, but not as badly.

I did not reallize I could do it without first writing the disk to my hard drive. Nice to know I can eliminate a step.

Don't let the AviSynth script scare you off, here is the one I have used use for everything so far (just have to change the movie name):

DirectShowSource("D:\moviename.mkv",fps=23.975985,audio=false)
#deinterlace
#crop
#resize
#denoise

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"

My objective was to do as little compressing as needed to get smooth playback. I started re-encoding using the value 18 (supposed to be a very high quality re-encode). Still got some studdering in the VC-1 movies, so I bumped it to 18.5 which still studdered once or twice on very high detail scenes in Golden Compass. So, now I'm using 19 (as reflected in the command line above) and have had no more studders.

[Deacon Crusher]

Interesting on memory,

what, mobo, cpu, ram type/speed and nic do you have?

No writing to disk works if you are either running vista or you have the toshiba UFS or some such file system driver installed on XP.

Avisynth/megui doesn't look bad, thanks for the guidance. You were going for the same goal, best quality with no stuttering that I'd be going for.

Thanks Rob.

Originally Posted by Rob

Well with the memory replaced, the Harry Potter movie no longer studders. Iron Man still studders, but not as badly.

I did not reallize I could do it without first writing the disk to my hard drive. Nice to know I can eliminate a step.

Don't let the AviSynth script scare you off, here is the one I have used use for everything so far (just have to change the movie name):

DirectShowSource("D:\moviename.mkv",fps=23.975985,audio=false)
#deinterlace
#crop
#resize
#denoise

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"

My objective was to do as little compressing as needed to get smooth playback. I started re-encoding using the value 18 (supposed to be a very high quality re-encode). Still got some studdering in the VC-1 movies, so I bumped it to 18.5 which still studdered once or twice on very high detail scenes in Golden Compass. So, now I'm using 19 (as reflected in the command line above) and have had no more studders.

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Interesting on memory,

what, mobo, cpu, ram type/speed and nic do you have?

Thanks Rob.

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L/S3L mobo, Q6700 cpu, DDR2 1066 ram, RTL 8111B nic (comes on the motherboard and I wonder it it is my weakest link)

[OldPCGUY]

Deacon Crusher and the rest of you guys have sufficiently convinced me not to buy a blue ray drive yet.

I just performed a wireless network test for OTA HD where a 1 hour MPEG2 Capture was about 7.9GBytes. So it needs about 17mbps sustained flow of data from source to player.

I put the file on another computer and went to Fry's and purchased a bunch of wireless hardware.

I have two computers. HTPC down stairs with old PCI 54G Card and a PC upstairs with the same PCI54G card.

For the media extender I have to focus on Game port or Access point.

Here's what I found out.
Case 1:
HTPC PCI Card(54Mbps) to Router(108Mbps) to Upstairs PCI Card (54Mbps) - Effective Transfer Speed 7Mbps

Case 2: HTPC 100Mbps Wire to Router(108Mbps) to Upstairs Access Point(108Mbps) - 100mbps wire to Upstairs PC - Effective Transfer Speed 15 Mbps

Case 3: HTPC 100Mbps wire to Router(150Mbps N) to Upstairs Acces Point (300 Mbps) - 100mpbs wire to Upstairs PC - Effective Transfer Speed 28 Mbps.

Case 3 states that If I can play a file perfectely on my HTPC then I should be able to play that same file on the upstairs PC provided the wrieless link does not slip below the reqired bandwidth for the file being played. In this case it is a 7.9 GByte file.

So I played the CSI episode and FF stop play pause play FF and went through the whole movie with no probem.

Then I decided to try and copy a large file while the CSI episode was playing and it choked on this with big studder, start, stop, skip,play, stop, skip, play.

I estimated the file transfer rates with large file transfers 1GB and timed how long it took in each case. This does not garuntee that wireless transfer rate will be sufficient through the whole playback so you need alot of margin.

I know you guys are using wired transfers and so that should cover the largest of Blue Ray files. Just wanted to warn anybody following this discussion that a wireless network can be marginal depending on the physical distance and other noise factors that vastly reduces the transfer rate of all the Wireless options out there.

I will be rechecking with a 300 N router later tonight.

All this in preperation for my media extender purchase. Which is now pushed out beause they don't have any. Cry Cry Cry

[killervette]

i have ironman and it played on the hd100. It hiccuped every now and then, but overall playback was smooth.

i used eac3to to extract the tracks and then mkvmerge to pack it back. I cant remember if the track was hd 5.1, but if it was i used eac3to to convert the flac to ac3.

i am trying robs x264 compression trick right now to see the quality and to see how the playback is.

[KarylFStein]

I've seen this asked a couple times, but haven't found a response...

If my audio/video receiver is hooked up to the HD extender via HDMI and can decode all the possible audio formats, do I need to worry about messing with the audio stream?

[killervette]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I've seen this asked a couple times, but haven't found a response...

If my audio/video receiver is hooked up to the HD extender via HDMI and can decode all the possible audio formats, do I need to worry about messing with the audio stream?

i think so...i tried using the hd audio stream and some dts tracks, and it never worked for me.

[briands]

Finally getting around to giving this a try... can someone point me towards a simple step by step.
I have a BD/HD-DVD drive and already purchased AnyDVD HD.

I have several HD-DVDs as well, so if you could point to those instructions as well.

Thanks!

By the way, I've never done anything more complicated than ripping DVD with DVDshrink and ripping/converting CDs.

[killervette]

Originally Posted by briands

Finally getting around to giving this a try... can someone point me towards a simple step by step.
I have a BD/HD-DVD drive and already purchased AnyDVD HD.

I have several HD-DVDs as well, so if you could point to those instructions as well.

Thanks!

By the way, I've never done anything more complicated than ripping DVD with DVDshrink and ripping/converting CDs.

Ok, this is what i do. It results in just the movie, no extras, only the main movie with 5.1 AC3 Sound. most of them play on the hd100

1. put bluray in, rip to disk using anydvd hd.
2. Go to the bdmv\stream folder. look for the largest m2ts file. its usually 16-25gb or so. some say this doesnt work as the movie is split into multiple files....i have not seen it yet after 14 blurays.
3. run "eac3to.exe bluray.m2ts bluray.mkv" this will break the audio and video into seperate files.
4. run mkvmerge.exe -o FINAL.mkv bluray.mkv bluray.ac3" This will mux all the files together.

Now here is the hitch, when you first run eac3to on the m2ts, it will result in several audio tracks. most will be ac3, some may be flac. the flac would be DTS audio or even HD audio. I have not been able to get these to work on the HD100. you will need to run "eac3to.exe bluray.flac bluray.ac3" to convert the audio.

This is how i do it and it works for me. I use the ps3 for the first step, since i dont have a bluray drive. I am sure others will chime in, and maybe even tell me a better way to do it.

[Deacon Crusher]

I'm running a wireless link for one extender using draft N and it works fine for recorded shows including from HD PVR, but can't handle blu-ray rips.

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

Deacon Crusher and the rest of you guys have sufficiently convinced me not to buy a blue ray drive yet.


I will be rechecking with a 300 N router later tonight.

All this in preperation for my media extender purchase. Which is now pushed out beause they don't have any. Cry Cry Cry

[Deacon Crusher]

Interesting.

I see you are running WHS, I have XP. Wonder if there's a difference there?

What nic in your server?

Thanks

Originally Posted by killervette

i have ironman and it played on the hd100. It hiccuped every now and then, but overall playback was smooth.

i used eac3to to extract the tracks and then mkvmerge to pack it back. I cant remember if the track was hd 5.1, but if it was i used eac3to to convert the flac to ac3.

i am trying robs x264 compression trick right now to see the quality and to see how the playback is.

[Deacon Crusher]

Extender is HDMI 1.1 (I think) as opposed to 1.3 so it doesn't have the bandwidth to pass the really high end audio formats so you have to downconvert.

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I've seen this asked a couple times, but haven't found a response...

If my audio/video receiver is hooked up to the HD extender via HDMI and can decode all the possible audio formats, do I need to worry about messing with the audio stream?

[Deacon Crusher]

Rob are you running WHS or XP or??

Thanks

Originally Posted by Rob

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L/S3L mobo, Q6700 cpu, DDR2 1066 ram, RTL 8111B nic (comes on the motherboard and I wonder it it is my weakest link)

[killervette]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Interesting.

I see you are running WHS, I have XP. Wonder if there's a difference there?

What nic in your server?

Thanks

built in nic on a Intel DQ35JO LGA 775 Q35 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard.

[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.

[r00st3r]

I can stream 720p blu-ray from my freenas server in the other room no problem. It's the 1080 ones that stutter and freeze. The freenas server only has a 10/100 card in it connected to a GB switch. I think if I upgrade the NIC in the freenas to GB as well, I shouldn't have issues with the 1080 (unless my Video card isn't beefy enough).

[killervette]

Originally Posted by r00st3r

I can stream 720p blu-ray from my freenas server in the other room no problem. It's the 1080 ones that stutter and freeze. The freenas server only has a 10/100 card in it connected to a GB switch. I think if I upgrade the NIC in the freenas to GB as well, I shouldn't have issues with the 1080 (unless my Video card isn't beefy enough).

not sure on that one...i am streaming all 1080p blurays to a hd100. most of them dont stutter at all. on occasion i will have a blip throughout the movie. the hd100 is not gigabit, just a 10/100. Might be your video card in your client is have some decoding issues.

[briands]

Originally Posted by killervette

Ok, this is what i do. It results in just the movie, no extras, only the main movie with 5.1 AC3 Sound. most of them play on the hd100

1. put bluray in, rip to disk using anydvd hd.
2. Go to the bdmv\stream folder. look for the largest m2ts file. its usually 16-25gb or so. some say this doesnt work as the movie is split into multiple files....i have not seen it yet after 14 blurays.
3. run "eac3to.exe bluray.m2ts bluray.mkv" this will break the audio and video into seperate files.
4. run mkvmerge.exe -o FINAL.mkv bluray.mkv bluray.ac3" This will mux all the files together.

Now here is the hitch, when you first run eac3to on the m2ts, it will result in several audio tracks. most will be ac3, some may be flac. the flac would be DTS audio or even HD audio. I have not been able to get these to work on the HD100. you will need to run "eac3to.exe bluray.flac bluray.ac3" to convert the audio.

This is how i do it and it works for me. I use the ps3 for the first step, since i dont have a bluray drive. I am sure others will chime in, and maybe even tell me a better way to do it.

Tried this last night... (Using PotC 3) and the rip to disk seemed to work OK, but the eac3to hung on one of the alternate language (French if I recall) subtitle files...

Is there not an option to do this directly from the disc? I don't have much hard drive space in the "working" PC.

[killervette]

Originally Posted by briands

Tried this last night... (Using PotC 3) and the rip to disk seemed to work OK, but the eac3to hung on one of the alternate language (French if I recall) subtitle files...

Is there not an option to do this directly from the disc? I don't have much hard drive space in the "working" PC.

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.

[Deacon Crusher]

Briands

takes a few steps but you can use pretty little disk space.

assuming E is your blu-ray or hd dvd drive do something like the following.

start with

C:\eac3to>eac3to E:\

eac will enumerate the contents of the disk. (mostly what you'll see is the different master chapters on the disk.)

Then do this (assuming that chapter 1 is what you want)

C:\eac3to>eac3to E:\ 1)

eac will enumerate the details of master chapter 1 (not the right nomenclature, but will make sense when you are doing it.)

Then do this

C:\eac3to>eac3to E:\ 1) 1: "L:\movies\Iron man\Iron Man-chap.txt" 2: L:\movies\iron man\iron man.mkv" 3: "L:\movies\Iron man\Iron Man.ac3" 6: "L:\movies\Iron man\Iron Man.sup"

eac will take piece 1 of master chapter 1 on drive E and copy it (chapter info) to a txt file. take piece 2 (the video file) and mux it into an MKV file, take piece 3 (if that's the audio selection you want, this is where you choose which audio stream you want, could be 4 or 5 or whatever) and convert it to AC3 (best for extender playback) and take piece 6 (a subtitle stream) and save to a subtitle text file.

You then have to use mkvmerge to merge the mkv video file and the audio file and so at this point you will have two 20 or so gig mkv files on your disk, but as soon as you are done, you can delete the smaller one and your audio file and down to minimal disk usage.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by briands

Tried this last night... (Using PotC 3) and the rip to disk seemed to work OK, but the eac3to hung on one of the alternate language (French if I recall) subtitle files...

Is there not an option to do this directly from the disc? I don't have much hard drive space in the "working" PC.