Problem remuxing blu-ray rip using MKVtoolnix

[Odaik]

Hello

I am attempting to rip the main title on my copy of the Inception blu-ray to an MKV container using MKVToolnix.

I use BDinfo to identify the proper playlist, and simply drag and drop the playlist file in the MKVToolnix GUI. I select the tracks I want and start muxing. I've done this for hundreds of blu-ray playlist files, but with this one there seems to be an issue in the muxing process (even though I get no errors or warnings).

At certain points in the final muxed MKV, I get visual corruption in the image:



It turns out these correspond to the points at which the various M2TS files specified in the playlist are joined. Whenever there is a join, the same kind of corruption occurs. This is first time this has happened, any ideas what could be causing it?

I've added no intermediate steps to modify the files from the blu-ray disc, just adding the playlist straight to mkvtoolnix. Furthermore, the issue occurs whether I play the MKV file in Media Player Classic HC or in Windows 10 Windows Media Player. However, the issue does not occur if I just load the playlist directly in MPC:HC.

Would appreciate any help!

Thanks

Odai.

[aedipuss]

if they are real commercial blu-rays none of them should have worked. they are all encrypted and you would need to get rid of the copy protection or use a memory resident decryption program to be able to create mkvs.

[Odaik]

Sorry, I forgot to mention I am using AnyDVD HD to get around the copy protection. :P

The files come straight from the disc after it has been decrypted.

[Kerry56]

One of the consistent pieces of advice from the AnyDVD folks is that if you have a problem using AnyDVD HD as a background decrypter, rip the entire movie to the hard drive before trying to use any other tools.

[Odaik]

Hi

Thanks for the response. I can confirm I have done this also - the entire BDMV folder is copied (using the rip to hard drive function of AnyDVD) and all muxing etc is done from the files in the local copy of the folder. Trying to remux direct from the disc in the drive would be a nightmare with a max transfer rate less than 10MB/s!

[johns0]

Use makemkv,it will rip your disk/folder to an mkv file.

[Odaik]

Will look into it, thanks for the tip!

However, I would prefer if at all possible to stick with MKVtoolnix - most of all because it's free (makemkv I understand is shareware for blu-ray content).

Any idea what could be causing the issue? I assume it has to be the muxing process as just launching the original .mpls file gives flawless playback. Could there be some settings I have missed in MKVtoolnix that could lead to this?

[johns0]

Makemkv isn't shareware,it's still in beta mode so it's free until it goes retail,as to your issue i never use mkvtoolnix for initial muxing,i use txmuxer,then i use mkvmerge to mux.

[_Al_]

Use ClownBD, (AnyDVDHD is running in the background, as you do now)

Basically you do not have to copy the whole BDMV on hardisk. Instead, start ClownBD and select title (movie) and particular streams you want to keep. Then ClownBD (using eac3to) starts to copy demuxed streams to your hardisk, and then creates m2ts(tsMuxer). What you can do is skip that tsMuxer muxing and just manually put those demuxed streams into MKV.

[Odaik]

Thanks again for your response.

On your suggestion I decided to try and demux the blu-ray files first before muxing with mkvtoolnix GUI. I used to do this exact same process but since I discovered I could do everything using mkvtoolnix I've just been using that more recently.

So I demuxed using txmuxer GUI, and then added the raw files to mkvtoolnix GUI. It recognised the files and muxed OK, and the resulting file doesn't have the same issues. The visual corruption isn't present at the joins, but there is now a new issue. The video file goes from being around 2 hours 25 mins to 4 hours 50 mins, and the subs don't appear anymore.

I just can't get my head around this, never had any issue like it before with either of the muxing options I used.

EDIT: _AI_, apologies, seem to have cross-posted there. Will look into it later but will try and see if I can fix the issue using the programs I am currently using first.

[Odaik]

Just had another look - it seems the subs do show eventually but the issue is the timing is way off and it gets worse and worse as the movie progresses (i.e it seems to be a scale issue rather than a fixed offset). That may be why the file time is so long, it could just be the subs are timed to last over 4 hours.

Is there some sort of setting in mkvtoolnix for subtitle timing that I have missed? I have never had to set it before, the software has always applied the correct timing.

[_Al_]

I had same issues as you did, cooking with tsMuxer and mkvmerge while ago (sure they were updated since but anyway), but ended up using eac3to, that always works. It is a dedicated tool for that. If not, there is a "new" format on BD and eac3to needs to be updated, making sure latest eac3to is used (like Dolby Atmos or DTS X latest case).

[Odaik]

Can I ask how exactly I should be using eac3to in place of tsmuxer and mkvtoolnix? As I understand there are several components to eac3to.

I've just had a look at all the bonus titles from the Inception disk that I ripped and unfortunately it seems the exact same issue with corruption is preset in those too (i.e pixellation at the joins in the playlist). It is impossible to tell whether other titles ripped from other discs with the same method exhibit the same issue as in those the joins all occur when the image is completely black and so is impossible to see if there is any brief corruption there.

Is there any robust method in particular that can be relied upon to rip blu ray titles to mkv files? As I understand it, these issues are arising due to slight differences in length of the original streams that are not being properly treated in the remuxing process.

I have tried MakeMKV and it works fine, although I do not like the layout/feel of the GUI and £50+ is incredibly expensive for the software after the trial given I already have decryption software.

[_Al_]

As I understand there are several components to eac3to.

Eac3to can encode audio from a file to other format (using encoder itself, perhaps some free encoder or possibly using other encoder you give it to it) Also, it can just demux streams and as a special case it can demux BD streams. We use just that demux ability in this case. It can find what titles are on BD, then offer track/stream selection for demux. You can use eac3to basic command line to do that or use ClownBD, it does just that having nice GUI so folks does not have to use command lines.

Is there any robust method in particular that can be relied upon to rip blu ray titles to mkv files?

1.Using ClownBD, it uses eac3to for demux desired streams , I mentioned that already. You do not check tsMuxer muxing. Then you find folder with those streams and manually create MKV, by just loading those streams into MKVMerge (mkvtoolnix). You can follow this tutorial. I think it mentions also BDSup2Sub, subtitle software, that can change PGS subtitle (sup, it is always on BD) to VOB type subtitle (idx/sub). Because supposedly players mostly support sub subtitles.

2. You can do it manually, using eac3to command lines. First command line finds BD titles. Second offers title streams, third can demux desired streams. Then using MKVmerge to mux those streams into MKV. Those command lines are mentioned and explained at the bottom of this page. This is most robust as you asked because you do not rely on any other GUI or whatever, but sure, to work with command lines is not much comfy, typing it all the time. Hence batch scripts are usually written to make it easy. ... To elaborate on this basically ClownBD does nothing else but first creates those command lines for eac3to internally and then it runs it. You can even select just to create that batch script and then run it yourself. I do not expect you to go this road, just mentioning it, you asked about most robust way to do it.

3. You can get eac3to GUI and work with it to get those streams and then manually mux MKV. I never actually tried eac3to GUI though. Not sure how it handles BD etc.

[Odaik]

Many thanks for the tips, very useful.

I've been messing around with it for a while and have figured out a few things. The subtitle issue, along with the invalid movie duration, is isolated to the subtitle stream itself. Neither occur if I simply do not mux the subtitle stream. The visual corruption seems to be a separate, second, issue - if I demux and remux as an m2ts file the audio and video only from the playlist (no subs), tsmuxer creates a flawless file. Mkvtoolnix has no timing issue but the image corruption returns.

With regards to the sub issue, I may have found the culprit. Looking at each of the individual m2ts files associated with the main movie mpls playlist, using mediainfo, the subtitle stream I am using in each of the files has a different value for the parameter "delay relative to video". It seems neither tsmuxer nor mkvtoolnix can cope with a varying delay value and as a result the subtitle stream in the final muxed result comes out with timing errors and an invalid duration (nearly 5 hours instead of 2.5).

I have tried eac3to as per your instructions, and like MakeMKV, it seems to handle it OK. The raw streams it produces go into tsmuxer and mkvtoolnix just fine. So eac3to and MakeMKV both do something in the process of demuxing/extracting from the BDMV structure that fixes the subtitle timing issue that tsmuxer and mkvtoolnix are incapable of. Any idea what this could be?

Unfortunately MakeMKV is expensive and doesn't recognise all titles in the BDMV structure, and eac3to is incredibly difficult to use. Using the eac3to command line method is finicky and doesn't seem to recognise installed components correctly, and the ClownBD GUI is incredibly unstable (crash-fest) although I managed to get through to the end a few times to get the result that I've mentioned above.

Are there any other tools out there that are reliable?

Thanks again!

[johns0]

Makemkv is free for now in beta and it does recognize all the titles,you have to expand the options in the root files to tick other stuff you missed.

[_Al_]

So eac3to and MakeMKV both do something in the process of demuxing/extracting from the BDMV structure that fixes the subtitle timing issue that tsmuxer and mkvtoolnix are incapable of. Any idea what this could be?

Not sure, that demux just creates proper tracks with delays or whatever technical jargon there is, all tracks end up with proper sync. It is perhaps written very well, reading all that BD and track delays, flags. And demuxing streams to hardisk is basically copying it on hardisk, so why not to demuxe it properly at the same time. It takes the same time to do like that so why not. I use scripts that make MKV right away (using eac3to and mkvmerge, also BDsup2sub). Scripts can get just those titles, tracks, remembers settings and then when PC is not in use it can be dealt with those later in batch, all of them at once, encode tracks as well etc.

Sure there are titles when using perhaps ffmpeg, dealing with BD's m2ts right away (if there is only one m2ts, creating mkv or encoding it right away) might work, or even using tsMuxer and MKVMerge is ok in most cases perhaps, but as I said having a proper, reliable tool like eac3to sorts this out in general for any BD. I see a tool that works in any case (never dealing with 3D BD's, so cannot confirm that for those) , so I'd use it.

[Odaik]

Makemkv is free for now in beta and it does recognize all the titles,you have to expand the options in the root files to tick other stuff you missed.

I've done that, but not all titles are listed. In fact, the log underneath the main window clearly states some titles are skipped due to being "identical" - although this is an erroneous assessment and it means some genuine content is unfortunately skipped.

_AI_, are you aware of any other GUI programs for use with eac3to? I guess I could just learn to get used to using the cmd prompts for demuxing but it would save time if I could just use a GUI. The other issue with ClownBD that I forgot to mention is that on my system it seems to cause a massive memory leak.

EDIT: I've managed to get eac3to to work with just the cmd prompts - the demuxed streams seem fine as I can put them through mkvmerge with no issue. Still don't understand what exactly it is that allows it to cope with these tracks while tsmuxer can't. I guess I should just get used to writing the appropriate commands to make it as easy as possible.

[Steve(MS)]

You can use HdBrStreamExtractor as a gui with eac3. Place it in the Eac3 folder and double click HdBrStreamExtractor.exe to start it up.
Havent used it in a long time since I don't do a lot of video editing anymore but have it in my eac3to331 folder.

[Steve(MS)]

Are you ending up with one m2ts file or multiple m2ts files with what you are doing?
The reason I ask is perhaps that is why you are getting those pixels?

[Odaik]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion Steve, will try it out tonight.

The blu ray playlist file (.mpls) references multiple m2ts files (29 in total) for the whole movie. Putting the playlist through tsmuxer (therefore combining the individual files and demuxing to 3 individual streams for subs, audio, video) then remuxing with mkvmerge into one MKV file is fine, but if I try to put the playlist straight into mkvmerge so that it handles the entirety of the appending and demuxing and remuxing process results in pixellation in the final (singular) mkv file.

[Steve(MS)]

Haven't noticed exactly how you are decrypting the disc originally but I would suggest you run it through a program to get all the m2ts files merged into one m2ts.
There are various ways to do this after the decrypting process run them through either dvdfab (movie only), BDtoAVCHD (set it so it won't re-encode). I think BDrebuilder will do this also...there likely are others that will do this.
Creating one m2ts might take care of the problem...which may have to do with computer's ability to buffer correctly.
Seamless branching which is a form trying to keep people from ripping correctly can cause headaches on a small percentage of BD movies.

Whoops! I was trying to go from memory... which sometimes is faulty but I am not sure if dvdfab will combine the m2ts into one.
I know that BDtoAVCHD will combine them into one.

[Odaik]

I'm using AnyDVD HD to remove copy protection as mentioned and simply copy the BDMV folder to the local disk and remux from there.

I attempted to use tsmuxer to convert all the m2ts files in the playlist into one combined m2ts file with no intermediate steps, but this had the problem involving the mis-timed subtitles.

Unfortunately, in more way than one, this disc seems to have been mastered horrifically.

[_Al_]

Those discs are mastered precisely in that way just because of folks like you! And me and others. To prevent simple copying and playing its content. As long as BD players play that content, it is fine, the rest is irrelevant for those BD creators.

If tsMuxer worked all the time, everyone would use it and there would be tons of Youtube videos describing it.

[Steve(MS)]

Odaik, are you sure that you are choosing the correct playlist?
The reason I ask if this is one of those that has dozens or even over a 100 playlists, it could give you trouble.
Assuming you have the correct playlist, run it through BDtoAVCHD (set so it won't re-encode) and then you will have one m2ts file.
If you are not sure you have chosen the correct playlist, you can use dvdfab decrypter and it should choose the correct playlist.
Then run the results through BDtoAVCHD.
I know that is running around the world but sometimes I have had to go this longway because of anticopy schemes.
From there, you can do whatever you want with it...you may have to add back subtitles using a separate process.

Just a final note, it could be that BDRebuilder could do all the above without using separate programs but it has been so long
since I used it, I am not sure. I know you can set output so that it will not re-encode also.

Just throwing out some ideas for you to try, one of those routes should give you a desired results provided there isn't something wrong with your disc.

[johns0]

I have never had any issues ripping my blu-ray discs,seems like you have issues with your computer and your methods.Try using a better blu-ray burner.