Captain Khajiit's Basic Guide to Decoding Video and Audio

[Gatos]

As do I.

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

awesome thread. thanks for putting this together captain

 

[RollWave]

If you do not have access to a commercial DTS decoder, select DTS as your stream extraction type ("Extract As"). If you are dealing with DTS-HD MA or DTS-HD HR, you must add the -core switch to the + Options box, as shown below.
...
This will extract the DTS core. If you do not already know, DTS-HD audio is made up of two parts: a lossy “SD” core and a residual stream that contains the additional data that makes the audio HD. What we are doing here is discarding the residual stream (because no free decoder that can process it is available) and leaving the core, which should still contain high-quality audio. Proceed to the next step.

When copying a blu-ray, DVDfab has an option that says "remove hd audio". Here is a link with a screenshot and their description:
http://www.dvdfab.com/manual/settings/blu-ray-copy

Does checking that box essentially function as this '-core' step? ie, if I check the box, I will get DTS audio, not DTS-HD audio, so I won't need to just extract the core. But if I copy the disc without checking the box, I will get DTS-HD audio, and I will need to use '-core' here?

Is there any reason to do one vs the other? That is - is it better to have eac3to do this step or have DVDfab do it or would they do exactly the same thing with equal quality?

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

When copying a blu-ray, DVDfab has an option that says "remove hd audio". Here is a link with a screenshot and their description:
http://www.dvdfab.com/manual/settings/blu-ray-copy

Does checking that box essentially function as this '-core' step? ie, if I check the box, I will get DTS audio, not DTS-HD audio, so I won't need to just extract the core. But if I copy the disc without checking the box, I will get DTS-HD audio, and I will need to use '-core' here?

Is there any reason to do one vs the other? That is - is it better to have eac3to do this step or have DVDfab do it or would they do exactly the same thing with equal quality?

it is my understanding that it just removes that track, not extract the core from it. i.e., if there is no other track, you get no audio.

 

[Captain Khajiit]

I anxiously await the good Captain's return and completion of this section

The VC-1 section has been completed.

RollWave
I shall defer to Throw on what the box that you mentioned does. I always rip the whole disc and advise others to do the same.

 

[TV's Frink]

The VC-1 section has been completed.

:clap2:

 

[TV's Frink]

Halp!

I'm trying to use the HD DVD/Blu-Ray Stream Extractor GUI with Eac3to in order to demux my HD m2ts to mkv. This is the error I get:

eac3to v3.26
command line: "C:\Editing Tools\eac3to\eac3to.exe" "C:\MainMovie\AP_MAN_OF_MYSTERY_BD01\BDMV\STREAM" 1) 2:"C:\MainMovie\AP_MAN_OF_MYSTERY_BD01\BDMV\STREAM\1_2_video.mkv"  -progressnumbers
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M2TS, 1 video track, 2 audio tracks, 1:29:35, 24p /1.001
1: Chapters, 24 chapters
2: VC-1, 1080p24 /1.001 (16:9)
3: AC3, English, 5.1 channels, 640kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB
4: TrueHD/AC3, English, 5.1 channels, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB
   (embedded: AC3, 5.1 channels, 640kbps, 48kHz, dialnorm: -27dB)
[v02] Extracting video track number 2...
[v02] Muxing video to Matroska...
[v02] Getting "Haali Matroska Muxer" instance failed.  <ERROR>
Aborted at file position 1048576.  <ERROR>

Note that I can demux to VC-1 without incident.

 

[RollWave]

do you have haalimediasplitter installed?

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Rollwave is right. Frink, check that Haali Media Splitter's installed and up to date by running this.

Eac3to -test

 

[TV's Frink]

Thanks guys, I will check when I have more time.

By the way, does it mention this in the guide? I know it's listed in the tools section, but you might want to make it more clear in the demux section (unless I missed it somehow).

 

[Captain Khajiit]

^ I have updated the guide as suggested.

 

[TV's Frink]

Well, it worked. Thanks for the tip, guys.

 

[TV's Frink]

Ok, this might be a really dumb question, but once I have it in virtualdub, do I save as lagarith avi and import into Vegas?

 

[TV's Frink]

As a follow up question...I went ahead and converted to lagarith avi, and the resultant file is 175 gb for a 90 min movie :shock:. That's over twice the size of the lagarith avi that I got following Throw's guide originally. Is this right?

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Ok, this might be a really dumb question, but once I have it in virtualdub, do I save as lagarith avi and import into Vegas?

Yes. Take the script into Virtualdub and render a lossless AVI. Make sure that you select fast recompress. This should be your script.

DirectShowSource("wherever\whatever.grf", fps=23.976, audio=false)
Assumefps(24000,1001)
ConverttoRGB(matrix="Rec709")

RGB files are bigger than YUV files. Your first AVI might have been YUV.

 

[TV's Frink]

Isn't YUV or RGB dependent on the source? I used the same source to get the smaller file the first time.

Also, what does the fast recompress and the converttoRGB do? I seem to have the same result after that.

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Isn't YUV or RGB dependent on the source?

No.

Also, what does the fast recompress and the converttoRGB do?

The former means that Virtualdub does not process your video, and the latter is a line in the script that converts your file to RGB properly, so that it is ready for editing in Vegas. If you received the same file-size as before, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[TV's Frink]

Looking back through my original workflow with Throw's guide, I realized that I resized to 1280x720 using a filter in vdub. I suspect if I do the same here, I'll get much closer to the 85gb file I had originally...

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Yes. The file-size does not sound at all unusual to me, Frink. I think everything is fine.

 

[TV's Frink]

Yep...final size 91.5 GB

Side note - I couldn't do a fast recompress because that disables filters.