H.264 resulting files don't Mux on completion.

[ultim8fury]

I'm attempting to encode a 1080i DD2.0 Mpeg2-TS file of roughly 13GB into H.264. I've had a lot of success converting 720p transport streams.

I have the following settings.

H.264 .mp4 x264 - preset.

bitrate 7336
size 1920x1088

Also selected

de-interlace
CABAC
i4x4

Audio

AAC 384kbps
48KHz

video:0kB audio:130802kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 1.814034%
Error importing /Volumes/Movies/HD_Films/name.of.film.1080i.dd20.ts.ff.video.mp4: Invalid IsoMedia File

The encoding goes as expected and takes about as long as I would expect it to. then at the end I'm left with the separate audio and video files and the above error message in the information.


If I'm doing something wrong, please someone tell me what it is. I have a large collection of HD transport streams that are crying out for re-encoding and I'd like to get started on it.

Also is there a way of manually muxing the resulting files to .mp4 ?

PS.
I am well aware it claims the video is 0kb. Finder assures me it's in excess of 5GB and the video plays fine.

[Mortuus.x]

I get the exact same problem. I've tried both the mp4 H.264 and mp4 x264 options and wind up with the same result. If I try to mux the two via the tools option within FFMpegX I get a really big mp2 or mp3 file that contains, you guessed it, just audio.

Hopefully someone will take pity on us and respond to this thread. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Cheers.

[aedipuss]

have you tried changing the .ts to .mpeg before encoding? it helped with a couple i did a while back. hdtvtompeg2 works.

[Clamchop]

I have this problem too. The only "solution" if you can call it that, I've found thusfar is to shoot the files it spits out across my network to my windows machine and then use MKVmerge and package them into a .mkv file.

[ultim8fury]

I was hoping to make the files a little more frontrow friendly and whilst VLC does a fine job with H.264-MKV I was really hoping for an mp4 solution. That is unless someone can point out a working MKV codec for QT.

[TugBoat]

I was hoping to make the files a little more frontrow friendly and whilst VLC does a fine job with H.264-MKV I was really hoping for an mp4 solution.

What happens when you use QT Pro to export to MP4? I've had similar results when converting WMV to x264 but just assumed it was due to using Decode with QT on wmv9 files. To get the Audio I usually open the wmv in QT and export an aiff, which I then fiddle around with in Peak for a while. Then I open the x264/MP4 video in QT, delete the first frame (which for some reason is always white), add the AIFF audio file, and then Export to MP4 with Video set to Passthrough and Audio set to 128kbs AAC.
Works for me 8)

[thehand]

uncheck the "keep elementary streams" option in the ffmpegx menu of the menu bar.

[ultim8fury]

I'll give that a go. Thanks. Will post back in 8 hours or so when it's done re-encoding.

I've had very limited success with opening the Audio and Video streams in QT and saving them out as a self contained movie. In most cases though it does completely destroy A/V sync so it's not a good option.


EDIT::UPDATE

unchecking "keep elementary streams" didn't work

[ultim8fury]

I tried again and this time I ran the output in a terminal just to see if I could gather anymore info as to why it was failing to Mux.

All goes well until the very last stage and it would appear that mp4box is the root cause of the problem.


/Applications/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/mp4box -fps 29.97 -add /Users/bit/Desktop/Input.file.1080i.dd20.ts.ff.264 -add /Users/bit/Desktop/Input.file.1080i.dd20.ts.ff.aac.mp4 -new /Volumes/Movies/HD_Films/output.file.1080i.dd20.ts.ff.mp4
media_import.c:2917: failed assertion `nal_start'
Abort trap


I have no idea what it means but maybe someone here does.

I've had a look at the mp4box documentation for any hints of size limits of input files or something that would explain why this is going wrong but I can't find anything.

I'm really getting desperate now. Please someone help.

[rumplestiltskin]

I've never used the CABAC setting when I encode H264. Why not try it w/o that setting enabled?

[apollo8fan]

I've been experimenting this last week with this issue and I believe I found the problem (but not the fix). It appears that MP4BOX cannot mux MP4 files where either the sound or video file is greater than 2GB.

This issue has annoyed me to no end. And now that I've found the problem, I'm even more put out as there's no resolution short of the developer(s) fixing the 2GB limit.

Basically, I've been converting the same video over and over, getting gradually bigger until I hit the error right at 2GB on the video file.

[apollo8fan]

There's also a post on the developers' site reporting this exact 2GB issue, but no responses as of this writing.

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1666249&forum_id=287546

[jpschuck]

I've been experimenting this last week with this issue and I believe I found the problem (but not the fix). It appears that MP4BOX cannot mux MP4 files where either the sound or video file is greater than 2GB.
This issue has annoyed me to no end. And now that I've found the problem, I'm even more put out as there's no resolution short of the developer(s) fixing the 2GB limit.

Maybe you can try this workaround (assuming that mkvmerge GUI supports large file)
1/ mux audio and video in an .mkv file using mkvmerge GUI
2/ split the .mkv in, say, 2GB parts using mkvmerge GUI
3/ demux each part with iMKVextract
4/ remux each part in different .mp4 files using mp4box
5/ merge the .mp4 parts in a bigfile using copy and paste in either Quicktime Pro or MPEGStreamclip.
6/ Export as passthrough MPEG-4 (Quicktime pro) or save as MP4 (MPEGStreamclip)
7/ You have a big mp4 file

But... well... this is a slow & boring method...

Maybe (if you're lucky) you can go straight from 1/ to 7/ using the Export wizard of VLC on the .mkv file (video : dummy, audio : dummy, container : mp4)...

[ultim8fury]

By the time you finished all that version 1.0 of the perian codec pack will be out and supporting MKV in quicktime

[jpschuck]

By the time you finished all that version 1.0 of the perian codec pack will be out and supporting MKV in quicktime

Well, when I said it was a "slow" process, I didn't mean THAT slow
This is a lossless work stream (i.e no extra-long re-encoding time) that can be used if you don't have a lot of movie files to process. By the way, now that there are Mac version of MKVmerge GUI and MKVExtract there is no need anymore to do some Windows file transfer.