Do all blurays that have pcm uncompressed 5.1 have a plain ac3 5.1 track?

[yoda313]

Ok I'm currently ripping a majority of my blurays to m2ts with converted ac3 audio (the ones that have dts-ma tracks). I'm going to use these on my wdtv and my recently purchased sony bluray player.

I have just ripped and converted a bluray that had uncompressed pcm 5.1 audio on it. I forgot about that as a sound track option on blurays. I was going to extract the pcm with eac3to and convert that to 640kpbs ac3 but I noticed it had a 448kpbs ac3 5.1 track. I thought well I'll just go ahead and use that. It works just fine on the muxed video only m2ts file that I copied to my 2tb usb harddrive.

So is this common on blurays that have a pcm 5.1 audio track? Do they all have a regular plain old ac3 5.1 track on them?

The reason I"m asking is I'm planning on dubbing my dolby true hd discs to my hdpvr to get 13.5mb/s h264 files for use and save some space. I wanted to do that with my dtsma discs but of course the hdpvr doesn't take dts tracks. -----Can the pcm 5.1 be picked up by the hdpvr? ----------

It isn't a codec exactly in the same sense that dts is. So should the hdpvr pick it up as ac3 5.1 to its design? Otherwise I could use the ac3 track from the menu but if I could eek out a little more and cap to 640kpbs ac3 5.1 over the hdpvr I'd like to do that.

Fyi I'm using my ps3 fat 40gb to dub the dolby true hd blurays over component and fiber optic. I haven't started that phase yet as I'm doing my dts-ma rips and audio conversions first.

Also am I right in assuming a 2 hour movie capped at 13.5 mb/s over the hdpvr would give me a file roughly 13-15gb? If so on average I think that is the way I want to go with my non dts bluray discs.

Reason being two fold - 1 it will save some space, about half from the 25-27gb m2ts files I am getting with keeping the video untouched and converting the audio - and 2 - time saved with realtime capping to a ready to copy file from the hdpvr.

Since I have to first rip the disc, extract the dts core, convert the core to ac3, mux the main movie and new ac3 track to m2ts and then copy the file to the harddrive I would prefer a straight single approach like the hdpvr dubbing I plan on doing.

I'm planning on doing a max cap with the hdpvr at max on a bluray that i"ve already copied without converting the video. Than assuming it is adequate for my tastes I'll go ahead and proceed that way for the non dts blurays to save processing time and storage space.

And yes I know a bitrate calculator is what i need for the file size above but the avchd calculator I was using only has presets for dvd single and dual layer and bluray not open ended that I could tell. I could fool around with it more later.

Fyi this is in offtopic as its not really a request for detailed assistance kind of more a curiosity question and I'm just listing my approach here.

Also if anyone is interested my steps are:

Rip with anydvdhd
Extract dts core with eac3to
Convert dts core with eac3to to 640kpbs ac3
Mux original main movie from the stream folder with new ac3 in TSMUXER
Copy to usb harddrive

If anyone knows how to simplify these steps please let me know.

Fyi I have an older dual core computer (2.7ghz) so encoding the ripped bluray to h264 at 1080p or even 720p for a full length movie is not an optimal use of my time or the wear and tear on my computer and on me.

Thanks.

[Island_Dweller]

Extract dts core with eac3to
Convert dts core with eac3to to 640kpbs ac3

Why not convert dts-hd ma to 640 kbps ac3 with eac3to in a single step. DTS core is lossy, no point using that when you have lossless dts-hd ma source on your bluray. Look at this thread https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/352153-DTS-HD-MA-7-1-to-WAVS-%288-channels%29 for how to use Arcsoft DTS decoder for that purpose.

[yoda313]

Extract dts core with eac3to
Convert dts core with eac3to to 640kpbs ac3

Why not convert dts-hd ma to 640 kbps ac3 with eac3to in a single step. DTS core is lossy, no point using that when you have lossless dts-hd ma source on your bluray. Look at this thread https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/352153-DTS-HD-MA-7-1-to-WAVS-%288-channels%29 for how to use Arcsoft DTS decoder for that purpose.

That would certainly simplify things a bit and save some time in the total conversion workflow.

I'll have to read up on that this weekend and give it a look.

Fyi I have the arcsoft total media extreme that came with the first edition hauppauge hdpvr. Will that have the decoder in it?

[Island_Dweller]

If you already have Arcsoft Total Media Theatre installed, then yes.

[yoda313]

If you already have Arcsoft Total Media Theatre installed, then yes.

Thanks.

That will save some time once I figure out the thread you posted to. Encoding directly to ac3 rather than demuxing the dts core first will be more efficient.

[yoda313]

Ok I did the test procedure and it does say the decorder is ok to use.

However in the link you provided I don't see how to tell eac3to to go from dts-ma to ac3 directly.

I am using the yr_eac3to_more_gui that is included with eac3to. Also I have an older version of eac3to that I'm using. THe eacto exe file is dated 2/2009.

I can't tell how to tell it to use the dts-ma track and convert straight to ac3. That is why I was using the dts core then ac3 procedure. It clearly has an "extract dts core" option. So i used that and then used the dts core file I got and used it to get a ac3 file.

Actually in my current project it has a normal ac3 file already that I can extract directly for my purposes. I will go ahead and use that to simplify the process and limit the number of conversions.

On my next dts-ma disc rip project I will look into this.

Basically my issue is how do I tell eac3to to use the dts-ma to convert directly to ac3 in one step. I am using the gui. I suppose I'll have to get my hands dirty and go to the command line if that is the only way to force it to use the dts-ma (which will be the english track I want as all my discs are usa released discs for the english versions).

I'll use the normal ready to go ac3 track I have available for this project and then I'll tackle this again with my next disc.

Thank you.

Edit - ok it turns out that ac3 5.1 track was the english descriptive track for the impaired. I will still need to get the dts-ma to ac3 after all for this project.

Edit - ok I'm trying the command line and it is not working. First off I had to copy it to the stream folder because trying to tell eac3to to use e:\bluray rips\folder etc.. it wouldn't find it, even when I copied the eac3to folder to the e drive.

So I copied eacto to the stream folder where the m2ts file was (the largest file in the stream folder).

I used eac3to file name 3 (the track number I want) moviename.ac3 -640 and it came up audio conversion not supported.


Track 3 is used for destination file "3".
Track 4 is used for destination file "movieac3640.ac3".
This audio conversion is not supported.

That is what came up when I entered my command line. Track 3 is the dts-ma track I want to use and track 4 is the first available ac3 track which is the descriptive audio track I don't want.

So nothing was processed.

I basically want to use eac3to to convert the track 3 dtsma track directly to ac3 640 and I can't seem to do it.

This is what I get in command prompt when typing eac3to:

eac3to sourcefile[+sourcefile2] [trackno:] [destfile|stdout] [-options]

I used the m2ts file name then 3 for the track name then movieac3.ac3 -640 to tell it to save as movieac3.ac3 using 640kpbs.

What am I missing? How do I tell it to go directly from dts-ma to ac3?

Thanks.

[Island_Dweller]

The Eac3to gui I use is this one http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145574 . The gui is very intuitive and friendly. Grab the lastest eac3to from http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966 . I recommend using both of the newest releases, as they have a lot of bugfixes.

Then, it's simply a simple matter of dragging source into the gui and choosing ac3.

[yoda313]

The Eac3to gui I use is this one http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145574 . The gui is very intuitive and friendly. Grab the lastest eac3to from http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966 . I recommend using both of the newest releases, as they have a lot of bugfixes.

Then, it's simply a simple matter of dragging source into the gui and choosing ac3.

That gui looks great. Simplified compared to the one I'm using but flexible. Also it is in plain english from what I can tell. I like the in and out for the track selection which is what I want.

I will definitely upgrade my eac3to and check out the gui you mentioned. Hopefully that will streamline my process.

Thanks again island dweller

[yoda313]

Ok I haven't gotten back to backing up my blurays lately so I don't have an update on my attempt to simplify that with either bdrebuilder or a different gui for eac3to.

However I have started working on my regular dvds.

My sony bluray player (a 2013 model) doesn't do video_ts folders with vobs in them. Well it did start the movie when I tried a ripped movie only with the movie as a single vob (no compression ripped with dvdshrink and no 1gb chunk splitting - anydvdhd in the background). It started the movie but would not seek. I decided I would want to be able to fast forward so I went a different direction.

It can do mkv and m2ts and quite a few others but I haven't tried a dvd iso which would be the simplest.

But I did rip the movie to a single vob and then used tsmuxer to make a m2ts file. It worked like a charm! And I kept the audio commentary since they were so small and I am using a 2tb drive for this. I am happy to report it performed beautifully.

Right now I'm working on completing a film franchise that I have spread across a few dvds and a few blurays. I think I have all the blurays ripped and muxed to m2ts and now I'm working on the dvds I have. Soon I'll have that particular movie series backed up to a single harddrive. That will be great to hop to a folder and play any movie any time with no discs.

Yes i have had a wdtv gen 1 for a long time but not enough storage space to make ripping without compression practical. So now I have two devices that will read my 2tb drives and my noncompressed movie rips. This will be nice once I get my collections built up.

Fyi I'm not going to bother backing up this drive. Since I'm keeping the original discs and I'm not doing any compressions there is no need to backup the drive. It will be a relatively quick process to rebuild it on a new harddrive should this one die. It won't be an instant process but it won't take forever so I'm going with just the one source for this particular project.

I have a second 2tb drive that i"m using for a some videos that I have taken the time to compress or have obtained from various sources. Those I do have on dvdr or doubled or triplicated the backups.