Blu-ray backup/playback problems (mkv, m2ts, ffdshow, mkv splitter)

[Pyrophoric]

My goal is to be able to reencode to mkv/m2ts files. The mkv will be using moderate to heavy compression as these will be for TV shows and played back through WMC7. The m2ts files will be using light to moderate compression and will be for Blu-ray backups, keeping HD audio in tact. I would prefer to playback the m2ts files in WMC but dont think it will provide bitstreaming so I would have to us TMT3 Platinum. Finally, I want to be able to strip down and compress some Blu-rays just enough to burn to a BD-25.

Prior to getting into all of this I was using the Shark007 codecs and selected to use the gabest splitter in it's options to playback in WMC7. Everything worked great but when I started wanting to backup Blu-ray most of the encoder programs out there require ffdshow, matroska splitter and avisynth. I found out that I couldn't use the Shark007 codec pack in conjunction with these tools or as their replacement, as in Shark007+avisynth.

Because of all the problems, I uninstalled the codec pack and installed haali splitter, ffdshow x86 and avisynth. Playback in WMC was all over the place. My Fringe episodes had audio but it was extremely low while all movies had no audio at all. The only way I could get audio from the movies was to change my default sound device to s/pdif instead of speakers. This isn't a lasting solution for me because everytime I want to play an actual Blu-ray throught TMT3 Platinum I have to change the sound device back to enable bitstreaming.

After messing with different versions of each program for awhile, I finally found that the official haali splitter v1.9.355.1 used in conjunction with ffdshow v3291 x64 worked as far as playback. All mkv would run through both mkv splitter AND ffdshow audio at the same time. Running through ffdshow automatically increased the volume (without using the volume normalizer or any other tricks) of my Fringe episodes and restored volume on all other mkv files. However, I am now back to square one with these encoder programs as none of them seem to want to work with ffdshow x64 and I am not sure if they like the older version of the haali splitter. I think using the haali splitter over gabest is my first problem but the encoder programs dont like it.

Ripbot does a software check before loading and wont continue loading till I install ffdshow x86. BD Rebuilder will load and extract the a/v stream extremely slow even on normal (only uses 1-15% of my CPU for some reason with random spikes up to 50%) but fails at encoding. If x64 is installed it says none of the codecs are configured properly, if x86 is installed it fails claiming ffdshow version even though I am trying the exact version linked on the forum (3133). If I run BD Rebuilder with the Shark007 codec it is hit and miss with even a/v extracting. If it works at all it's EXTREMELY fast (using 90%+ of both cores) but at some point it fails with a popup message about the x264 file.

Regardless of what I have installed, MakeMKV files always play in fast forward. I have to remux them to m2ts.

Ontop of all this, TMT3 .170 won't play mkv files at all and if I try it resets the audio from HDMI passthrough to HDMI PCM. It will play m2ts files but still resets the audio to HDMI PCM.

After all this I am about ready to pull my hair out. Nothing works with each other; you can re encode but cant playback. You can playback but cant re encode.

Guessing the real issue is that I am trying to run on Windows 7 x64. Most of this software has been developed for use with XP x86.

Anyone have a similar setup or ideas that I can try? Is this just were the Blu-ray game is at now and I need to wait for it's evolution?

Thanks ahead of time even if you just took the time to read all that crap above... lol