BD Rebuilder Beta - Bug Reports Only

[jdobbs]

If I understand you correctly... yes, but it takes a couple steps. You can point BD-RB to the discs (one at a time, with AnyDVD running) and select the episodes during import. Then you put the imported structures together in a folder, and re-import (combining them into an entire season).

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by jdobbs

If I understand you correctly... yes, but it takes a couple steps. You can point BD-RB to the discs (one at a time, with AnyDVD running) and select the episodes during import. Then you put the imported structures together in a folder, and re-import (combining them into an entire season).

Ah, good, that will save some time!

So, if I understand correctly... I import, say, one episode from season 1. Will that supposedly just be one m2ts file on the disc, do you think? And then BDRB will create a BDMV folder for THAT episode, right? And then I do this with whatever episodes I want and then combine (import) the BDMV folders for each episode into what BDRB will then create as a playable disc with however many episodes, right?

And, I can do ALL this simply while AnyDVD is running in the background...? That would be awesome, thanks!

[MrVideo]

Originally Posted by Lathe

I import, say, one episode from season 1. Will that supposedly just be one m2ts file on the disc, do you think?

Normally, for TV season release, it is one M2TS file per episode. I've yet to see a release that has seamless branching for episodes.

And then BDRB will create a BDMV folder for THAT episode, right? And then I do this with whatever episodes I want and then combine (import) the BDMV folders for each episode into what BDRB will then create as a playable disc with however many episodes, right?

A Blu-ray disc can only have a single BDMV directory. All of the wanted M2TS files will have to be combined into a single directory. Sounds like BDRB will handle that just fine.

Keep in mind, after recompressing to a decent value, you'll only get about 4-5 episodes per disc. You can double that if you really recompress.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by MrVideo

Normally, for TV season release, it is one M2TS file per episode. I've yet to see a release that has seamless branching for episodes.



A Blu-ray disc can only have a single BDMV directory. All of the wanted M2TS files will have to be combined into a single directory. Sounds like BDRB will handle that just fine.

Keep in mind, after recompressing to a decent value, you'll only get about 4-5 episodes per disc. You can double that if you really recompress.

Thanks kindly for the further details. Good to know that the episodes are single m2ts files, that helps!

Being such a TREK fan, I probably won't be compressing at all, and I will be keeping full HD audio. I'll likely just do 2 full episodes per single layer disc, maybe 3 if the single episodes come to about 7-8 Gigs each.

I'm just relieved that I don't HAVE to rip the whole dang 45 Gig disc just to get a few episodes. That first season is a real stinker, and the 2nd one isn't a whole hell of a lot better (NOT a real Pulaski fan... )

[MrVideo]

Originally Posted by Lathe

I'm just relieved that I don't HAVE to rip the whole dang 45 Gig disc just to get a few episodes.

But you pretty much do. A majority of a disc is the episodes. If you want all of the episodes on a particular disc, you will be ripping pretty much all of it. If you only want a single episode, then ya, a lot less work.

Not sure why it is called ripping when all you are really doing is copying files from the disc to the HDD. Unlike CDs, where you have to convert from the CD data content to a WAV file (or other audio format). With Blu-ray discs, what you see is what you get.

Good thing they tend to have the episodes on a disc in sequence, from lowest M2TS number to the highest M2TS number. To be safe, you will need to look at the M2TS file and look for the episode name. At least TNG has episode titles in the episodes.

[jdobbs]

Good thing they tend to have the episodes on a disc in sequence, from lowest M2TS number to the highest M2TS number. To be safe, you will need to look at the M2TS file and look for the episode name. At least TNG has episode titles in the episodes.

There are many discs where the M2TS sequencing doesn't match the order. BD Rebuilder does analysis to determine and present episodes in the proper order wherever it can -- such as using "Play All" playlist ordering, or the order they are found in navigation command lists. It does similar analysis on DVD imports. No algorithm is perfect -- but it does pretty well.

Will that supposedly just be one m2ts file on the disc, do you think?

Episodes don't have to be in a single M2TS for BD-RB, it constructs them into one when it imports.

Not sure why it is called ripping when all you are really doing is copying files from the disc to the HDD.

That certainly isn't true with a BD-RB import (as opposed to a traditional "rip"). You have to create a new menu, new playlists, and even reconstruct the M2TS when they are segmented. It's even more true when importing from DVD to BD format. BD-RB also can combine multiple discs into a single structure.

I'll likely just do 2 full episodes per single layer disc, maybe 3 if the single episodes come to about 7-8 Gigs each.

Of course it's up to you, but I'd recommend reencoding them to fit more on a disc. You'll find that in most cases the original discs are poorly coded and use way too much bitrate. Often it's just to require a double layer disc (to make it harder to copy). People are also easily impressed with "sets" of BDs that look like they're getting a lot for their $100+. BDs are cheap to manufacture after they've been authored. Run an episode through X264 using a low CRF (like 18) and you'll find that they shrink considerably without noticeable loss.

[MrVideo]

Originally Posted by jdobbs

Of course it's up to you, but I'd recommend reencoding them to fit more on a disc. You'll find that in most cases the original discs are poorly coded and use way too much bitrate. Often it's just to require a double layer disc (to make it harder to copy). Run an episode through X264 using a low CRF (like 18) and you'll find that they shrink considerably without noticeable loss.

I agree. I do a lot of x264 encoding using 4Mbps and the results are very impressive. That lets you put a lot onto a Blu-ray.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by jdobbs

Of course it's up to you, but I'd recommend reencoding them to fit more on a disc. You'll find that in most cases the original discs are poorly coded and use way too much bitrate. Often it's just to require a double layer disc (to make it harder to copy). People are also easily impressed with "sets" of BDs that look like they're getting a lot for their $100+. BDs are cheap to manufacture after they've been authored. Run an episode through X264 using a low CRF (like 18) and you'll find that they shrink considerably without noticeable loss.

Hmmm, that's right; I seem to remember you saying this before about television episodes particularly. I had forgotten. Appreciate the reminder. It WOULD be interesting to see how an 18 CRF encode would turn out. I didn't realize that they 'Pad' the bit rate so much!

[jdobbs]

I wouldn't be surprised if it is less than 1/4 the original size. I personally did some of the STNG discs -- and put an entire season on one DL Blu-Ray with excellent results. When I reencoded for my Serviio streaming server at a CRF of 23 -- an entire season took about 25GB.

[KaraokeAmerica]

So.....because I don't really understand.....the higher the CRF, the higher the quality and the less compression is used? Am I using the right terms here?

[HWK]

Originally Posted by KaraokeAmerica

So.....because I don't really understand.....the higher the CRF, the higher the quality and the less compression is used? Am I using the right terms here?

Nope, it is other way around. CRF values range from 0-51. closer to 0 higher quality and less compression applied.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by jdobbs

I wouldn't be surprised if it is less than 1/4 the original size. I personally did some of the STNG discs -- and put an entire season on one DL Blu-Ray with excellent results. When I reencoded for my Serviio streaming server at a CRF of 23 -- an entire season took about 25GB.

Wow, that is quite impressive; thanks for letting me know!

Originally Posted by KaraokeAmerica

So.....because I don't really understand.....the higher the CRF, the higher the quality and the less compression is used? Am I using the right terms here?

From what I've read, for HD sources about 18 is considered pretty high quality without getting too extreme or having huge file sizes. As JD mentioned above, he used 23 and was happy with it. I would say that within that range is probably what most people use for fairly high quality. I think I read somewhere that 16 is supposed to be perceptually identical. But, I'm quite SURE that a lot of this also depends on the source and other factors too...

[Sharc]

Originally Posted by jdobbs

I wouldn't be surprised if it is less than 1/4 the original size. I personally did some of the STNG discs -- and put an entire season on one DL Blu-Ray with excellent results. When I reencoded for my Serviio streaming server at a CRF of 23 -- an entire season took about 25GB.

I usually put 6 episodes on a BD25, with nice quick menus.
Or even a full season (10...12 episodes) on a BD25 at 1440x1080 or 1280x720 resolution. No family member (blind tetst) has ever complained about inferior quality in any respect

Since lately I have also been trying x265@CRF 23...25 for streaming from the NAS to the SmartTV. Results are surprisingly good, with another 30 .... 40% reduction in file size.

[jdobbs]

Originally Posted by Lathe

Wow, that is quite impressive; thanks for letting me know!



From what I've read, for HD sources about 18 is considered pretty high quality without getting too extreme or having huge file sizes. As JD mentioned above, he used 23 and was happy with it. I would say that within that range is probably what most people use for fairly high quality. I think I read somewhere that 16 is supposed to be perceptually identical. But, I'm quite SURE that a lot of this also depends on the source and other factors too...

18 is really close to a perfect reproduction. The default CRF for X264 is 23 -- which is generally considered the best balance of compression and quality. So if you are using 18, you are leaning heavily toward quality.

[Knightmire]

I've been waiting a while on this "bug" report and since there is still no mention of it here I decided it's my turn to bring one up. I'm honestly not sure if it's an actual bug or just incompatible files but hopefully there's a simple answer I just haven't figured out. So here goes...

While trying to make a disc of some 1080p shows with BD50.11, I found I kept getting this "demuxing error". Log of the error here:

[00:22:32] Importing MKV: 01._BKNY
- Collecting audio/video streams from source...
- Converting codec to compatible format...
[00:37:16] ERROR: Incompatible stream (1920x1088) detected. Aborted.

As you see, it took 15 mins to process this file only to spit it out at the end where it would normally proceed to the next file or build the temp structure. I thought perhaps one of the other helper tools needed updating so I've since tried new copies of LAV and even tinkered with FFDSHOW but always getting this same error. When BD50.12 came out I tried these files yet again and same error. Not sure what to do with these things as other encoding programs just throw out different errors, even though the files play perfectly fine.

These videos are HEVC MKV and they are indeed at a resolution of 1920x1088 with an AC3 audio track. Is know that's sort of an odd resolution but is it causing the problem? I seem to see a lot of small variations like this on shows and movie MKVs lately but this is the first time BD has rejected them in this manner. I am using the latest bdrebuilder and the helper programs that are currently linked on the first post here. I can follow up with more info if you'll tell me what you need to know.

Any help appreciated, even if it's just some alternate program to convert these files to something BD can handle. Thanks!

[gonca]

Can you post a mediainfo report of the MKV so we can see the stream types

[jdobbs]

The 1088 height is definitely the reason it failed. BD-RB will accept 1920 with values less than 1080p and assumes black borders have been removed, but not 1920 with a height of greater than 1080.

The time is likely in the extraction (using MKVEXTRACT), although that seems like a lot.

[Knightmire]

Alright, managed to track down an h265->264 re-encoder that worked and fixed the resolution on these files. I had to do the first 8 of them on this show but the other 5 were a lower resolution (1904x1017) and they had no problems. Well beside the odd 15 minute "Converting codec to compatible format..." step per file. Everything working as it should now. Thanks for the help and this is still some great software, thanks jdobbs!

PS..
If anyone reads this and has a similar issue; I ended up using a program called SuperC to re-encode these MKVs to 1920x1080. It's a pretty decent free program and only took about 10 mins per file. Once you get passed the horrendous mine field of an installer anyways! I think it tried to install like 10 different pieces of additional unwanted software, so I had to really read each screen to make sure I didn't allow anything. Made it through unmolested.

[KaraokeAmerica]

Originally Posted by Knightmire

PS..
If anyone reads this and has a similar issue; I ended up using a program called SuperC to re-encode these MKVs to 1920x1080. It's a pretty decent free program and only took about 10 mins per file. Once you get passed the horrendous mine field of an installer anyways! I think it tried to install like 10 different pieces of additional unwanted software, so I had to really read each screen to make sure I didn't allow anything. Made it through unmolested.

Is this the program?

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

If not, can you please share a link?

Also, SuperC doesn't seem to be an option, but Ninite is a pretty good service to get many "freeware" packages without the junkware usually bundled. Perhaps they will add this to their stable at some point:

https://ninite.com/

[Knightmire]

Originally Posted by KaraokeAmerica

Is this the program?

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

If not, can you please share a link?

Also, SuperC doesn't seem to be an option, but Ninite is a pretty good service to get many "freeware" packages without the junkware usually bundled. Perhaps they will add this to their stable at some point:

https://ninite.com/

That's the one alright. Yeah, it took me a little hunting to find the download link too. Had to go to products and download then follow another link from there. Anyways, it's on this page here. It's a blue link near the bottom. It's not pretty but did what I needed. Hopefully I won't need it very often. Good luck

http://www.erightsoft.com/Superdc.html