Anybody here understand the details of transcoding video?

[sdsean]

So I've gotten pretty handy at using eac3 and handbrake.
I'm able to convert blu-ray videos fairly easily into mkvs that are smaller (although having to sift through the playlists in blu-ray folders to figure out what files are needed for the main movie is a huge pain).

Anyway typically what I do once I know what the structure of the files is to use eacto to take all the m2ts files and demux / concat the h264/vc1 file into one big file (video), and the same for the dtshd (audio).

Then I remux these to files into one giant ts file.

Then I use handbrake to conver the video (even if its vc1) to h264 at ~3000 bit rate (video), and convert the audio to ac3 (b/c I could care less about dtshd and my HD200 doesn't support it anyway).

The process works great but is of course pretty time consuming. Extracting/figuring out the files takes anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 depending on the disk structure.

Demux/Concat of video and audio takes ~20 minutes with eacto.
Remux takes about ~10 minutes

But then the transcode and creation of the mkv takes a whopping 3 hours or so .. . I usually force the handbrakecli process to only use 4 (out of 8) cores, and "Below Normal" priority, just so my CPU isn't completely pegged.

But this is pretty stout machine / processor and I'm suprised that it takes that long. . . I mean I know these files are huge, but still. . .

handbrakecli runs at around 9-15 fps. If I let it go full throttle then its more like 15-22.

I guess I was wondering if there is anything I can do to speed up the process. Especially the handbrake part. Handbrake seems to only use the CPU for the transcoding. . .could it not use the video card as well?

Thoughts?

[stanger89]

There really isn't anything you can do to speed the video encoding process, unless you look for something like Badaboom or another that use CUDA for the video encoding. Though there's some debate that the GPU accellerated encoding is not a high quality as x264's H.264 encoding.

[sdsean]

yeah kinda what i figured...well if anyone knows how automatically extract the correct list of m2ts files for a main movie with some tool like handbrake that would at least save me the manual step of weeding through the playlists... right now that step is manual for me, so that i can have one big string list of the correct files to hand into eacto

besides i have an ati card anyway so CUDA is out...

[stanger89]

You might want to try Staxrip, it can transcode Blu-ray directly, though I've never tried that functionality.

[sdsean]

Ok cool. . .i also just realized that I could use BDInfo to at least make the playlist discovery easier. . (duh don't know why I didn't think about that before).

I did try to use Handbrakes "main movie" feature, but for Blu-Rays it doesn't seem to work very well so I have to still do seperate tasks with eac and what not. . . but I'll try staxrip. . .see what I can find

[Fuzzy]

MakeMKV and TSMuser also both make the playlist slection easy, and automatically gather up just the tracks you want, and output them to single files (MKV or M2TS, respectively). Then just take that file and do whatever transcoding you want to do with it.

[sdsean]

I don't see how tsmuxer helps with figuring out which playlist/files to use, perhaps I just don't know how to use it properly? I just use it to figure out the streams inside each m2ts and what not, or to remux back. But I hate that I can't drag/drop multiple files. . .

So evidently cyberlinks media espresso is the only thing out there worth a crap that will hardware accellerate that transcoding process with ATI video cards (found that out via this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...pgpu,2335.html)

I'm testing it now, it does appear to be blindly fast. . . a 2 hour 30 minute blu-ray takes an hour too transcode using 3000kps that I use. Handbrake is taking me like 3-5 hours.

But we will see what the quality is like. . . plus media espresso costs money, and I can't output to mkv (so dumb). . .I'll let you know. . .

[sdsean]

well figures, i had this exact same problem with the ati avivo transcoder. . . no freaking audio. its like it can't handle dts hd or something. . . in media espresso there the audio settings are a bit weird, i can only select dolby digital or LPCM .. . not sure which would apply since i usually use ac3. Also, it seems that it letterboxed the output eventhough the original was not. . . grr. . .

[Taddeusz]

If you run eac3to from the bdmv/playlist folder and use the mpls file for the main movie it will automatically stitch all the m2ts files together for you. I'm sure there is a more automated program but I haven't found a better conversion program than MeGUI as far as quality is concerned so I still use eac3to to demux the main movie for transcoding.

[sdsean]

Oh sweet! I didn't know it would parse out the playlist auto-magically!! Nice! Now at least my steps are compressed a bit. Look up running time of movie, find correct playlist using BDInfo, use eactools to create h264/vc1 and dts files, then handbrake to transcode (which is still too slow but at least it works). Cool!! thanks for that.

[razrsharpe]

or use dvdfab, do a main movie copy, pick the right playlist, (usually (always) self evident by comparing the chapters, length, and main audio track... no need for bdinfo), check the convert hd audio box, let it go. Will end up with 1 m2ts file (even if original playlist was not) that you can feed into handbrake to do the conversion.

I'm also reasonably confident that tsmuxer will do the same thing because i used to use that with anydvd hd to remove the encryption

EDIT: it also looks like dvdfab makes a all in one program that will transcode the movie to other formats... and it uses cuda technology. I haven't used any of there transcoding tools so cant speak to their quality but it might be worth checking out too...

[sdsean]

i guess i need to mess around more with tsmuxer. . i have only used to to re-mux stuff back together. . .

I've been just using BDInfo to figure out which playlist. . . perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see how tsmuxer can do this, and I don't see how its very "self-evident".

I say this b/c I'm not playing the movie 1st. . . I'm just looking at the playlists raw.
Before I used to go and actually read them myself. . .but with BD Info that's a lot easier
But even then. . .often times there are multiple versions of a "main movie" playlist with added crap like menus, previews and the like. . . so BDInfo with the running time info in hand seems like the best option too me. . .

[sdsean]

Still sux that I have to use Handbrake though. . .but it does seem to do the best job, just slowly. . .but hey its free so I guess i can't complain too much. . .

Cyberlink's crapware did the exact same thing ATI's AVIO transcoder did. . .no sound (doesn't seem to handle DTS-HD properly)

All the other ones use CUDA, which won't really help me since i'm using an ATI video card.

[stanger89]

I think in TSmuxer you open the playlist, rather than the individual files, but it's been a while since I mucked with it directly.

Of course the easiest way to make it go faster is to not waste your time making the quality worse

[sdsean]

LOL i know, but i'm saving hdd space as well. . .i really could care less about true HD 1080p res. . .

interesting about tsmuxer, but again you still have to know what playlist to select, which bdinfo seems to be the only tool capable of helping with that other than just reading them raw myself.

[Fuzzy]

hard drives are so cheap, you can backup your blurays for $1.44 a piece (45GB on a $65 2TB drive), and that's keeping all menus/special features, etc. It's just not worth the time mucking with transcoding. The most I would do, is if the movie had no features i wanted, I'd rip down to the main movie and single audio track with MakeMKV, but I certainly don't see the need to transcode to anything else, unless I'm going to a mobile device.

[RocKKer]

BD-Rebuilder makes it easy to pick a playlist, supports batch encoding, and converts to ac3 all in one step. I rip multiple movies and set em up to encode in batch mode and go to sleep. You can throw all 8 cores at them at night.

The encode can take as long as other encoding tools, it uses tsmuxer, H264, etc. with custom code wrapped around - it's a single process from the user perspective.

I have also experimented using the automatic encoding mode where it picks the encoding method and can use a single pass to encode, which is faster and gives me an "I can't the difference" result.

It also outputs to MKV, I encode to BRD so I haven't used this feature.