beginner questions

[lsx7mike]

Hello, I am trying to search but work limits me and no internet at home right now because Verizon customer service blows.

Here is what I want to accomplish.

1) I want to make backups of Blu-rays onto my PC with a smaller file size than the original keeping as much picture quality as possible and keeping the DTS tracks and/or Dolby digital tracks.
2) I don't need them to be portable. my PC is connected to my TV via HDMI, so I want the full resolution of the picture (1920x1080) with the best bit rate. I also have a PS3 which is where I play the Movies connected to the TV.
3)Audio is handled by a seperate receiver (Acurus ACT3) which is capable of decoding DTS and dolby digital. I assume the processor down converts disc with DTS master audio and/or Dolby true digital to the corresponding 5.1 version. When played from the PS3, I have always been able to listen to dts 5.1 and/or dobly 5.1

4) optimally I don't mind having a file as big as 10gb if that's what it takes but a balnce is needed. If mp4 is the way to go that works fine since I guess the PS# plays that as well and could be streamed or played internally?


Heres what I have.

Windows 7 64bit
dvdfab 6.0.7.0
ripbot264
ffdshow
haaili spliter
tmuxerr
avisynth.

I have ripped a blu-ray using Blu ray to blu ray, and then used the PS3 setting in file to mobile to shrink it,which uses mp4 container and h.264 for video but the aac for audio confuses me. There is no setting for audio copy and the 128kb aac wouldn't play 5.1. Conversly, the other mobile settings don't have the video resolution settings like the ps3 one does. They are limited to arond 5000kbs.

what is the best way to accomplish my goals? I can work with mounting a smaller iso that contains the good picture and 5.1 sound. Playing the .m2ts file direct I guess. Or bundling it into a mp4. but keeping the high pq and high bit 5.1 sound

[Complication]

Given what you are doing and what you know, I don't think you can classify yourself as a beginner.

FYI, the PS3 does not support DTS either streamed or in a file, only from a disc. Also, the PS3 will not play VC1 encoded video from within a file (purposely left out I've read).

With a custom profile, you can bump the H264 output to 10000kbs and change the encoding profile from Basic to Main but I don't have an example to show you at the moment.

[lsx7mike]

I am a quick learner. I have actually only tried to back up one disc, GI Joe. I don't remember what audio I picked as I am at work, but I am sure it was the best one. I just finished reading the information in this link.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1064

From what I gather, when I play a disc on the PS3 that has a regular dts 5.1 soundtrack, all works fine as it will transmit dts 5.1 in bitstream over toslink. Same happens when I play a movie with DD5.1 (ac3). What I didn't realize, (that was going on in the background), is what happens when playing a movie with Dolby truehd. The player can't play this over toslink so it changes to the mandatory ac3 track instead, even if I pick the DD true hd before playing the movie. Same happens for DTS master audio except one big difference. DTS master audio is a core + extension; meaning that the player can downgrade to 5.1 regular dts if it can't transmit the full bandwith which is what happens over spdif. you need HDMI cables to get anything over the basic 5.1 tracks. Unlike DTS master audio, Dolbly true HD is not core + extension format and the disc has to have the extra standard dd 5.1(ac3) track as a back up.

So what does this mean. Well if we are making a movie file (mp4) and select only 1 audio track for our file and its Dolby true HD. the player will have nothing to fall back on for 5.1. assuming audio is done over spdif. With DTS master audio, it can down grade from the master audio tract to standard 5.1 for transmission over spdif.

Now I still don't know how this affects things if I try to encode the original track into aac format. I would like a PS3 setting with audio copy instead of aac. Is that possible? One just has to know not to pick DD True hd for their sound track if they plan to use coax or toslink (spdif) to send the bit stream to a receiver or you may get no sound or just 2 channel stereo.

I hope I am correct with all this.

[GregiBoy]

Try the generic.avi.h264.audiocopy profile instead of the PS3 ones and select the audio track you want.

[lsx7mike]

I looked at that but the bit rate for video is maxed out at 5000kbs compared to 10000kbs in the ps3 setting. Interestingly enough, if I pick generic mp4, it is also maxed out at 5000kbs. Why is the PS3 the only one that allows for a higher bitrate on video. Is there going to be a perceiveable difference between 5k and 10k encoding in h.264. I will have to play around with it.

Thanks

[GregiBoy]

I use around 1100 to 1500 bitrate with normal DVD's, not Blu-Ray, and I (and about 50 friends that I have used as testers) can't pick the difference but I can't say for Blu-Ray so you will bave to do some subjective testing.

If you wish to raise the bitrate in that profile, you can always edit the profile with a text editor to change the defaults or create a custom profile from it which I have already done for my new Samsung TV which plays files direct from an attached USB hard drive.

Custom profiles are usually listed in the "New Proflies" sub-forum.

[lsx7mike]

thanks gregiboy for the info. two more questions.

1) what is the difference between audiocopy and aac. I know that avc h.264 is the codec for vieo on blu-ray disc and aac is the standard codec for audio. does that mean that audio is already in an acc format on the disc. This is where I get confused.

2) I see the new version allows for different disc sizes when ripping blu-ray to blu-ray. (bd50 100%, bd25, dvd9, and dvd5.) If I back up a bd 50 disc (approx 40gig) using dvd9 setting, what comes out on the other end? Is it still in the same file structure just smaller or does it convert it to something else? Will I be able to create an iso the same way. For example, take a blu-ray movie that is roughly 40gig and create an iso that is now 8gig (dvd9 size) with main movie and audio and subtitle that I can mount with daemon tools.

[GregiBoy]

Audiocopy means just that. It copies the audio stream that you select UNTOUCHED into the resultant file. For DVD's, I ALWAYS select the AC-3/5.1 (Dolby Digital) for the best compatibility.

I understand that there are limitations on what the PS3 will play from file rather than the original disk.

I am not into Blu-Ray and I think it will take me some considerable time before I do because I am currently not convinced that the cost/benifit ratio is there.

That said, I understand that the BD9 conversion actually converts the BD to a min Blu-Ray which contains H264 compressed files with obviously a reduction in quality from the original BD disk.

Mounting, etc, etc, I do not have any knowledge on as the players that I use play ISO's natively.

[lsx7mike]

I was doing some more reading. Yes aac is part of the Mpeg-4 standard but is not the format used for audio on blu-ray. The audio is either Dolby ac3 or dts or PCM or one of the lossless dd/dts formats. They are native on the disc. So audio copy would keep them native. This is what i would want. I have a ps3 for playback but don't plan to play my files from the PS3. It is a nice bonus but not as important as video/audio quality. here is some info on audio bitrates.

For audio, BD-ROM players are required to support Dolby Digital (AC-3), DTS, and linear PCM. Players may optionally support Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio as well as lossless formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.[57] BD-ROM titles must use one of the mandatory schemes for the primary soundtrack. A secondary audiotrack, if present, may use any of the mandatory or optional codecs.

The quality for AAC stereo is satisfactory to modest requirements at 96 kbit/s in joint stereo mode; however, hi-fi transparency demands data rates of at least 128kbit/s (VBR). The MPEG-2 audio tests showed that AAC meets the requirements referred to as "transparent" for the ITU at 128 kbit/s for stereo, and 320kbit/s for 5.1 audio.

From this info, if one is trying to encode 5.1 into aac, we need a higher bitrate than the 128kb in the preset profile.

So off the make a custom menu. Either modify the ps3 setting to do audiocopy, or increase the aac bitrate to at least 320kbs. Or use the AVI container and loose PS3 direct playability and increase the video bitrate.

Wow, I got nothing done at work today

[GregiBoy]

I understood the PS3 as being able to play AVI files but you could always modify an MP4 profile to suit.

The AAC audio in the PS3 profile is only 2 channel.

I suggest that you open up the actual profiles and inspect them. There is also readme doco under the profiles directory.

[lsx7mike]

The AAC audio in the PS3 profile is only 2 channel.

You know, I saw that in the profile and was wondering how that corresponded to the fact that the drop down box in the ps3 menu shows 5.1 as being an option. I guess the drop down is wrong. That would explain the reason for only 128kbs in the bitrate box as max and why I only got stereo out. Anyway to add 5.1 to the aac profile or does the ps3 not support 5.1 in aac.

I modified the ps3 profile to be mp4(h264 + audiocopy) keeping the 10000kbs bitrate. I will see if that does the trick.

[GregiBoy]

In my opinion, the 10000 bitrate will always be too high.

If I were you, I would do some objective testing to see if you can pick the difference say between 5000 & 10000.

Just do a couple of chapters.

[lsx7mike]

well I spent the weekend trying a few things. Nothing successful so far. Here is what I found.

1) I can rip the disc in main movie mode with either dts,dobly digital or PCM uncompressed (in some case a combination of audio formats) and subtitles to an iso and when I mount it with daemon tools, it plays fine with power dvd 7.3 (came with LG blu-ray player). I can toggle subtitles on and off and switch between sound tracks. It's the same as having the actual disc in the drive. The only problem is the file is huge (20 - 35 gig)

2) I can rip the movie to a file/folder structure but when I load the stream m2ts file, only the dolby digital audio track will play. That's fine for some movies that have a dd english 5.1 soundtrack, but some movies with DTS don't carry a DD 5.1 auxiliary track. As in Flight of the Phoenix which has DTS HD master audio and the only dd 5.1 track is in French. Once again huge file size.

3) I tried to compress the disc using the new feature on the latest release of dvdfab to a dvd9 1080p file size. It tried to transcode straight from the disc to an ISO of 8.1gig. I ripped it to the hard drive as an ISO and then transcoded it to a dvd9 1080p file size ISO and I also ripped it to a folder structure and then transcoded it to the 8.1gig ISO. In all 3 cases, Power DVD reported an unsupported format when I tried to play the disc. The ISO is mounted with daemon tools and playback is with powerdvd 7.3. The original ISO plays fine just not the compressed one. If I explore the compressed ISO and go to the stream folder, the video plays using poweredvd but with no audio. Same as above because I did not include the dd 5.1 french soundtrack and it seems powere dvd will not play DTS from a file.

4) I tried to copy the original rip to a generic avi(h264+auidosource). File was around 4gig and won't play with powerdvd. It opens but the video is blank even though the information screen says video mpeg-4 avc. Also no audio track. It plays with windows media player and outputs the dts stream correctly but it is out of sync with video. I played it back with VLC and the dts stream is screwed up completely.

5) I copied the original rip to generic mp4(h264+aac). WMP played the video but no audio and power dvd wouldn't even open it.


So, nothing worked 100%. the one I would like to get to work is option #3. To create a nice little ISO that I can load with Daemon tools and play back with power dvd. Any idea why it won't play? the next option is the AVI(h264+audiocopy) without lip sync issues. Or a profile for mp4(h264+audio copy) which i have been unable to create and get to work.

I will post what I tried to do to get a profile in the software section.

Mike

[Complication]

So, nothing worked 100%. the one I would like to get to work is option #3. To create a nice little ISO that I can load with Daemon tools and play back with power dvd. Any idea why it won't play? the next option is the AVI(h264+audiocopy) without lip sync issues. Or a profile for mp4(h264+audio copy) which i have been unable to create and get to work.

Welcome to the bleeding edge of video. Converting a Blu-Ray disc to smaller while trying to maintain the quality is still be worked out. This is because for a long time you couldn't even rip a BD very easily. My recommendation would be to just keep the original main movie rips for now if that works and start buying big hard drives.

In my opinion, the 10000 bitrate will always be too high.

If I were you, I would do some objective testing to see if you can pick the difference say between 5000 & 10000.

I did exactly that using the BBC Planet Earth BDs. At 5K the heards of animals looked like a bunch of blobs on the screen. At 10K it was watchable but obviously not as good as the original VC-1 at 25K. The lower bitrates might become more viable if and when DVDFab supported the High profile in H264.

[champracer29]

Hi, and sorry guys, I am not able to follow and figure how to upload the Gregiboy's samsung profile into dvdfab folder.

I was able to get in profile folder on C drive/program file/dvdfab 6/ and save it as .xml file.

now closed the folder and opened DVDFab and tried to find samsung profile and couldn't find anywhere.

Can you show me where I can find it?

Thanks in advance!