Please help with VC-1 Bluray to WMV or ASF

[Ronin22222]

I've been converting my bluray collection to MKV to play on my home theater so I don't have to muck around with swapping discs. I have a Sony BDV-N790W home theater. It plays most blurays converted to MKV converted over with MakeMKV just fine, but with MPEG2 I have to convert the MKV to M2TS after dumping. I have a handful of VC-1 blurays like the Back to the Future trilogy that use VC-1 for the video. My player does not support that in MKV or M2TS. It only supports VC-1 inside of a WMV or ASF container

I've been looking everywhere I can to find out how to convert either the original bluray or an MKV/M2TS file to WMV or ASF, but all I'm seeing are ripping programs that re-encode the video. That's not what I'm wanting to do. I'm trying to get as close to a 1:1 copy of the original source material as I can. The closest reference I can give is for what I've been doing with makemkv to get a 1:1 stream of the selected streams and using mkvmergeGUI to swap the order of the HD/Lossless 7.1 tracks that my player can't play to the regular DTS stream that my player can play. For some reason my player won't recognize default/forced track flags, but that's a different problem

Anyway, I'm wanting to preserve the VC-1 tracks as they are, along with whatever DTS, AC3, and PGS tracks. If I have to convert one of the audio tracks that's fine as long as I can still preserve the other tracks in the file for when I get a better movie player at some point in the future. My OCD just won't allow me to tolerate an altered video track. The whole time I would be watching it I would see distortions even if they were just imagined

I hope I was clear with what I'm trying to do and would appreciate any help you guys can give. Google hasn't been much help, but they do keep steering me over to these forums so I think I'm in the right place at least

[El Heggunte]

1) wrap the VC-1 stream in an MKV file, and make sure it creates a constant-frame-rate file;

2) use Graphstudio + SolveigMM ASF Multiplexer for remuxing the MKV to ASF;;

As for the audio part, keep in mind that only WMA Pro has multichannel support;
FWIW, ffmpeg is good enough for creating ordinary WMA streams.

[Ronin22222]

Thanks man. Maybe I'm just being daft but I can load up a mkv in GraphStudio but I don't see an option to save and/or convert to wmv/asf. All I see is an option to save as graph or xml file. Is there a tutorial you're aware of that you could point me to? I don't need my hand held, but I'll be the first to admit I'm stuck on this

[jman98]

1) wrap the VC-1 stream in an MKV file, and make sure it creates a constant-frame-rate file;

I did this recently. To make the MKV I had to use gdsmux that comes with Haali media splitter as the tools I tried to use wouldn't accept VC-1 input. If your tools to create MKV files work fine with VC-1 input that's good. I just mention this in case anyone has the same problem I did.

Ronin22222 - If you get an MKV created with VC-1 video and whatever original audio you have, just try it and see if it works. If it does then you don't have to worry about the other suggested steps at all.

[Ronin22222]

Ronin22222 - If you get an MKV created with VC-1 video and whatever original audio you have, just try it and see if it works. If it does then you don't have to worry about the other suggested steps at all.

yeah, unfortunately I already have tried to just play it on my home theater and on my custom firmware PS3 with Showtime. My home theater just says the file isn't supported. I looked at the tech specs in the manual and it says specifically that VC1 is only supported in WMV or ASF containers. On my CFW PS3 Showtime will try to play the files, but it stutters dramatically and says that the CPU isn't powerful enough to decode and playback

I'm stuck to where I can't play my blurays converted to MKV that have VC1 video unless I figure out how to just remux either the bluray or mkv to WMV or ASF. Even if I decided to just convert the MKV outright using something like from Xilisoft I don't want to let it run for 20 hours or however long it takes to convert one movie at near 1:1 settings. There aren't many that use VC1, but there are some good ones that I really want to get done like the Back To The Future Trilogy and Terminator 2 Skynet Edition.

[El Heggunte]

@jman98: there is a difference between VC-1 and ASF/WMV, at least when the one who writes is me

Yes, both Haali dsmuxer and Gabest Matroska Muxer support ASF input. MKVmerge supports only standalone .vc1 streams.

@Ronin22222: apologies, my previous post was partially incorrect; I had forgotten some important details, because the ASF container is a major PITA, and generally speaking, my memory prefers good things to bad things So let's try again:

1) mux VC-1 to MKV
2) remux MKV to AVI through VirtualDub (set to Direct stream copy)

2.5) sometimes the SolveigMM ASF muxer works with MKV sources, sometimes it doesn't
sometimes it indexes the resulting files correctly, but often it does not ,
even when the source is a properly-indexed AVI file;

3) use an archaic command-line program named vidtoasf. Example:

vidtoasf -in INPUT.avi -out OUTPUT.asf -leadtime 3000 -seekable on

4) for reducing the container overhead,

ffmpeg -i OUTPUT.asf -an -vcodec copy -r 25 thru-ffmpeg.asf

Step 3 was necessary, because in this particular case, the WMV remux from SolveigMM ASF Muxer was indexed incorrectly, that is to say, ALL frames were marked as I-frames.

[Ronin22222]

@El Heggunte - OK, that makes sense. At least now I don't feel like a complete moron noob. I think I got it. I'll try again a little later today when I have some spare time. I have no issues remuxing and no issues with the command prompt. I'm old school and spend a lot of time in there anyway versus messing around with Windows. The only question I have right now just to double check is that SoveigMM ASF Muxer is just like a dependency and not an actual program right since the download I found didn't contain an exe, or jar or anything like that or do I need to find a different d/l for it? What I mean is, after I register that with the bat file included in it's download, then I just run steps 1-4 ignoring step 2.5 since it looks like you were just making a note about it. Also skipping the part in your first post about GraphStudio. That sound about right?

[El Heggunte]

Just build the graph manually, and then click on the "Play" button.

I hope one image can paint some hundreds of words:

[Ronin22222]

OK, I didn't know about having to hit the play button. I was looking for some way to save and all I got was to save as xml or graph files so it was throwing me off. So what's the point of this graph tool? I don't see where the graph or xml output is being called in the vidtoasf or ffmpeg commands. Maybe I'm just not clear on what the tool does if the video container is just being changed

Anyway, you've given me a lot to go on. I'm sure I'll figure it out so let me go ahead and say thanks for all the help

[El Heggunte]

Man, you've got a serious problem regarding text interpretation...

As I tried to explain, I mentioned the DirectShow ASF muxer because
sometimes it works as it should. Yes, I wrote "2.5" for a reason.

+++++

P.S.: Sometimes, even vidtoasf will be unable to create a properly-indexed ASF file.
The same caveat applies to AsfBin, to ffmpeg, and to Windows Media File Editor as well.
Didn't I say the ASF container suXXX?

[Cornucopia]

Also, GraphStudio/GraphEdit shows you graphically what is going on behind the scenes in code, so it doesn't work like other apps. What it shows is the workflow/program structure. When you save, you are saving the layout/connections for that structure's project (in xml or grf format). That way, you can reproduce that structure again if you need to.

But most people don't use Gs/Ge to just create and look at a program-chain's structure - they actually want the structure to DO something. That's what the PLAY button is for: it "runs" your custom-built app chain. The output of what you've run (depending upon how you've set it up in the GUIs) and the kind of structure you have (file-based vs. stream-based vs. direct to display/card, etc) will determine what you get.

Scott

[El Heggunte]

Important: use VirtualDub for checking whether your ASF files have a proper index.
Just hold the SHIFT key and then press the left and right arrows.
If all frames are identified as "Key frames", then you have a bad file.

[Ronin22222]

I got it. I kept thinking it was just a simple open and save as and not a funky visual connect the dots kind of GUI. You were right though. This is kind of a pain in the ass format. I'll see if I can just write a bat file and registry entry where I can right click on an MKV and do all the command line stuff to get an ASF to take the hassle out of it and automate it where possible. If not, then it looks like these VC1s just aren't worth messing with. Might be easier just to find an already converted x264 and not worry about trying to get 1:1 on these. I tried doing that myself earlier and I was getting something stupid like 4 frames a second on my laptop. That would take way more time to convert than I'd want to let it run

[Ronin22222]

OK, since converting a bluray to WMV or ASF is just such a PITA and converting the video track to h264 would take more time than I care to put into it, I did kind of a roundabout to get it done. I dumped my original Bluray as-is to MKV then I remuxed it with an h264 video track that somebody else had already done while preserving the original VC-1 video track so when I get a better video player at some point I'd still have the original video and would just have to remux out the h264 track. It's not exactly what I wanted to do, but it seems to play fine in my player like this. I'm just glad I only have a few more of these VC-1 Blurays and it's not really all that common

Thanks for the help guys