How to play m2t files on HD extender

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by gveres

why do you use TSmuxer on your R5000 recordings? What benefit do you get from doing that?

Thanks - I just recently got an R5000 and I am having issues with some recordings where the HD100 will get out of sync when it skips commercials. If I skip back 7 seconds it gets back in sync. I also have tried converting to h.264 but the audio gets out of sync by a fraction of a second.

My TVs don't do 480i over HDMI, so SD gets de-interlaced by the Sage box no matter what I do. The de-interlacer is purely flag based (no cadence detection), and the SD Dish network stream is flagged as "Progressive or Interlaced", which the extender seems to interpret as "Progressive", which gives me HORRIBLE combing. Spectacularly bad.

So, if I demux, strip the progressive flag, and remux I get decent video (or at least eliminate the combing). unfortunately I'm having a hell of a time automating this while keeping audio in sync, so I'm still in jaggies-hell unless I want to manually fix a file.

[gveres]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

My TVs don't do 480i over HDMI, so SD gets de-interlaced by the Sage box no matter what I do. The de-interlacer is purely flag based (no cadence detection), and the SD Dish network stream is flagged as "Progressive or Interlaced", which the extender seems to interpret as "Progressive", which gives me HORRIBLE combing. Spectacularly bad.

So, if I demux, strip the progressive flag, and remux I get decent video (or at least eliminate the combing). unfortunately I'm having a hell of a time automating this while keeping audio in sync, so I'm still in jaggies-hell unless I want to manually fix a file.

I was wondering if there was a way to sort of "fix" the R5000 mpeg files so that other programs like VLC understand them fully. I am using the setting that stips the "filler" out and I think that is what causes the problems. However, if I don't use that setting the files are tooooo big.

I think the extender has some problem with the R5000 files as well when you skip the commercials.

So I was wondering if this program let you pull the file apart, put it back together and fix the issue.

Greg

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by gveres

I was wondering if there was a way to sort of "fix" the R5000 mpeg files so that other programs like VLC understand them fully. I am using the setting that stips the "filler" out and I think that is what causes the problems. However, if I don't use that setting the files are tooooo big.

I'm stripping the filler as well, and didn't have any problems getting the SD files to play in VLC when I was investigating the jaggie issue. Is your R5000 with Dish Network, or a cable/FIOS STB?

I think the extender has some problem with the R5000 files as well when you skip the commercials.

I don't have too many problems with the extender aside from the jaggies. I've had a couple of recordings which acted weird, but I think that was more due to droppouts in the bitstream (satellite fade) than something inherent in the R5000. I've had pretty good luck running files through VideoReDo's quickstreamfix tool when it happens. I'm almost done automating that so it runs on everything I record.

So I was wondering if this program let you pull the file apart, put it back together and fix the issue.

If you haven't tried VideoReDo yet, download the demo and see if the quickstreamfix tool helps with your issues. You could also try demuxing and then remuxing to MKV or something, but I'm not sure how to make Sage pickup the new filename if you change the extension. I haven't tried it, so I don't even know if it does it automatically or not.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[gveres]

Thanks. VideoReDo worked - well sort of.

The QuickFix did nothing. I mean, it didn't create any output at all. It skipped over the file like it was invalid or didn't need to do anything.

But, I tried letting it detect the commercials, then told it to cut the commercials and create a new file. I assume that the trial version only processes the first 15 minutes of a file because the resulting file was only the first 15 minutes. It didn't seem to really cut the commercials.

However, the file that it generated seemed to be a very well behaved mpeg, as opposed to what came out of the R5000 app. VLC saw a timeline and could seek around in it with ease (this was a high def file too).

So, now I need to see if I can script its commercial detection and use it instead of com skip. Although, I am leary of automatically cutting commercials. I really just want it to pull the file apart and put it back together again.

Thanks for the pointer!
Greg

[gveres]

I just installed the trial key that they sent me and now the QuickFix tool works perfectly. I can now load up an R5000 video in VLC and VLC can tell how long the file is and can seek around in the file.

This is fantastic!!!

Thanks again for the pointer.

Greg

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by gveres

I just installed the trial key that they sent me and now the QuickFix tool works perfectly. I can now load up an R5000 video in VLC and VLC can tell how long the file is and can seek around in the file.

This is fantastic!!!

Thanks again for the pointer.

Glad it helped!

[Rob]

I'm trying this out, but am stuck. I've used tsmuxer and have a .vc1 file and a .ac3 file, but when I try to open the files in mkvmerge, it sees the .ac3 file, but not the .vc1 file. I tried selecting "all file types" and opening the .vc1 file, but it says the file type is unsupported.

What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[stanger89]

I think mkvmerge doesn't understand elementary vc1 streams, vc12avi will mux/convert an elementary vc1 stream to an AVI with VC1 that mkvmerge will understand.

[Motofreak75]

Have you tried EAC3to ?


You can also use EAC3to to mux the vc1 and what ever your audio stream you have to a mkv file on the fly

Its a great tool

[Rob]

Thanks for the help. Two new tools to play with.

I tried the vc12avi last night and it created a 4GB output file from a 15.7GB .vc1 file. I see now that there is a newer version than the one I downloaded. I'll try the newer one tonight.

Haven't had a chance to play with EAC3to yet. I hope to try it out tonight as well.

[bialio]

eac3to is a pretty slick tool. Just pass it the source file (.m2ts / .evo) and it will pull the video out untouched and put it in a mkv.

btl.

[Taddeusz]

I've tried my darnedest to create m2ts files that play through the HD100 and so far am unsuccessful. Even on H.264 SD DVD conversions. I just get a blank screen and end up having to flip the power switch to get it back up. In my testing at least the HD100 doesn't seem to like transport streams. I can't get it to work anyway.

I tried using meGUI to convert the one BD movie I have from VC-1 to H.264 in order to make it smaller. But for some reason I ended up getting these sections where the video would freeze and then a few seconds later start again but be all blocky and colored wrong until the next key frame. Kind of weird. The raw movie without all the extra audio tracks is 15GB. It would be nice to be able to crunch that down to at least half the size. I know I'll be losing some quality but I can always pull out the original if I want to.

[Motofreak75]

then submit a bug report. I have already submitted month ago and even again two weeks ago about the lack of AVC and VC1 playback and gave them a lot of samples.

They said that they will get cracking on it, when they get some other bigger issues resolved. Which is understandable considered all the new hardware coming soon.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

then submit a bug report. I have already submitted month ago and even again two weeks ago about the lack of AVC and VC1 playback and gave them a lot of samples.

They said that they will get cracking on it, when they get some other bigger issues resolved. Which is understandable considered so new hardware coming soon.

Meh, it's not really that huge of a deal to me. As it stands I'm pretty happy with MKV. All my existing movie conversions are in MKV container and play perfectly. I just bought a BD-ROM drive though and am wanting to find a way to back those up reasonably. VC1 seems to be somewhat of a hurdle due to the fact that it doesn't really seem well supported tool wise. VLC also has problems with VC1 playback from a transport stream. It's a little infuriating.

[mtyme]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

There are two HD muxing programs you may need, tsremux and tsmuxer (I may have the names wrong, there are two programs with very similar names). One will completely demux into elementary streams and the other has DTS to AC3 conversion capabilities. I always use AC3 audio because I do not have a DTS capable receiver. Here is what I do.

1. If the blu-ray has DTS audio use tsremux to remux the .m2ts to .ts with AC3 audio. If the blu-ray has AC3 audio skip this step.

2. demux the .m2ts (or .ts) into elmentary streams using tsmuxer.

3. use mkvmerge to put video and AC3 audio into .mkv container. Make sure you specify the proper frame rate for H.264 files or the audio will be out of sync.

4. move to Sage import directory and enjoy.

I'm away from my primary computer and can't confirm the names of the two HD remux programs so somebody please correct me if I am wrong.

I tried this exact thing. Everything seems to be ok except the video "hiccups" every second or two. What can I use outside of sage to view the mkv to see if it's the video or something else?

Also, are you guys that are getting good playback using the 6.4.x beta or one of the previous releases?

[valnar]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

My TVs don't do 480i over HDMI, so SD gets de-interlaced by the Sage box no matter what I do. The de-interlacer is purely flag based (no cadence detection), and the SD Dish network stream is flagged as "Progressive or Interlaced", which the extender seems to interpret as "Progressive", which gives me HORRIBLE combing. Spectacularly bad.

So, if I demux, strip the progressive flag, and remux I get decent video (or at least eliminate the combing). unfortunately I'm having a hell of a time automating this while keeping audio in sync, so I'm still in jaggies-hell unless I want to manually fix a file.

Does your TV support 480i over component? You could just do that and let the (better?) TV deinterlace.

Robert

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by valnar

Does your TV support 480i over component? You could just do that and let the (better?) TV deinterlace.

when the resolution changes over component there is a spectacular visual disruption that lasts for a few seconds. Not acceptable to the wife.

[sigma957]

Originally Posted by bialio

Glad I'm not the only one.

So to clarify a previous question, what does a Sage Client need in order to play back MKV with VC1 video? I don't have anything other than Sage / NVidia Drivers / Power DVD 7 on my client, so if it needs more stuff installed to make a MKV watchable - what?

I haven't seen this question answered clearly, so I thought I would contribute my experience. In order to get VC-1 playback to work in Sage, I had to install WMP 11, set always_use_dshow_player = true, and make sure the microsoft video decoder (WMVideo Decoder DMO) has higher merit that any other other VC-1 decoder on my system. I also have PowerDVD and Arcsoft TMT installed. Playing around in graphedit, I found that I could not get the Cyberlink VC-1 filter to connect to the Haali splitter. The Arcsoft video decoder would connect, but I wouldn't get any picture. The microsoft decoder is the only one I've found that works outside of it's own product. Also, since the microsoft decoder is the reference implementation anyway, I find the that the video quality is just as good as PDVD or TMT.

[sigma957]

I just got a new HD100 and I've had mixed success playing my Bluray and HDDVD rips on it. I simply extract the video and audio (AC3 or DTS) untouched with eac3to, and then mux it to an mkv with mkvmerge. Here are my results:

1) VC-1 files (Shrek the Third, I Am Legend) start to play, but the video is so pixelized that it is hardly even recognizable.
2) MPEG2 files (Predator) play, but the video pauses occaisionally. (Enough to be annoying.)
3) Some H264 files play OK (Spiderman), but most (Spiderman 2, Enchanted) stutter and pause constantly, so much that they are basically unwatchable.

These files all play perfectly in Sage on my PC. One intersting thing I noticed is that if I change the output resolution on the extender to 480i, the H264 titles all play smoothly. It's when I try to use an HD resolution (720p or 1080i) that they start to stutter. This tells me that Sage has no trouble streaming the file to the extender and that the extender has no trouble decoding it. Somewhere after that, however, the video hardware has trouble displaying it at HD resolution.

Anyone have any thoughts? In particular, those who are able to play VC-1 OK, any suggestions of what I should do differently?

[Taddeusz]

I've come to the conclusion that, at least in my case the way my network is setup, that either the server can't stream the video fast enough or the HD100 just can't handle the high bitrate of direct Blu-ray rips. I've been transcoding my Blu-ray discs with MeGUI using x264 in cq mode set to a quality setting of 23 and then cropping the black borders, no resizing so it keeps the 1920 width. This gives me a fairly decent picture and keeps the file size to a more manageable level than with the direct rip. I know hard drives are cheap now days but keeping videos that are 15-35GB each is just a bit crazy.

The only problem I've had is with the one VC-1 movie I have. Having problems transcoding it. I'll see what I got when I go home this evening but the last time I tried I was getting these weird glitches in the video. Hopefully it will be good this time.