hd-dvd to high def mp4/divx/mkv options?

[yoda313]

Bump.

Well I'm back at it again. I had gotten to the point where video would play on the ps3 but only a frame at a time and no audio. Though I could do 2.0 on aac but I don't have a new enough amp to do 5.1 aac.

I am rethinking my approach. Since I've given up on using the xbox360 for playback I am focusing on the ps3.

I am going back to my original hd-dvd rip and starting over. With ripbot264 I am using the high def profile and am making a mkv file. I had seen in the tools the mkvtovob tool specially designed for taking h264 mkvs and muxing to a format the ps3 will play. THat is my goal this time around.

I took the movie and am converting to 1280x720. I am using the 5.1 384kbps audio option (they had some odd name with it I had not come across before). I am not cropping the video at all so I hope to have the full widescreen (2.35:1 I believe - it's a major action movie).

I took the 2 pass option and fixed the file size to just under 7gb. I plan on burning to a dual layer dvd. My hope is that with mkvtovob I should get a file that the ps3 will play well and I can burn to a dual layer disc.

If this works out well I'll report back with my results. I may just do my other movies this way if it works. FYI I'm at an eta of 6.5 hours right now on pass 1. (dual core amd). HOPEFULLY that doesn't mean 6.5hours just for pass 1. I'm hoping that means 6.5 hours total and not 13 hours for the full project.

Well we'll see.

I'll report back in the morning with the results. (or late this evening if I stay up late and it finishes early).

EDIT - well I'm suspicious that eta is for the first pass (2 pass encode to get a fixed file size). It now says its 45 minutes left. It was six hours when I started. So that must be an eta per pass than. So maybe it won't take so long if the first encode was significantly shorter than the estimate. Hopefully ripbot is doing it properly.....

EDIT 2 - I'm giving up on ripbot for the time being. It had ended early and I didn't seem to have a finished file. SO after searching I finally decided to give evodemux a try. After a few failures I was able to get the avc-h264 video stream and the dd+ audio track demuxed. I then put them in tsmuxer and used the create bluray disk option.

I am now using Bd rebuilder to shrink it to a single layer bluray for dvd burning (dvd-5 option). I know I'd get better quality on a dual layer but I want to make sure my process is right before wasting a dual layer.

The only odd thing is bdrebuilder is reporting a time of almost three hours when the feature is 2:23. It also shows ac3 audio but unknown is the rest of the description.

I had made some changes in the tsmuxing process. I chose to change it to profile 5.1 and to use the 24,000 setting (it was 30fps I believe). I'm hoping these are adequate changes and won't affect the synch or visual presentation of the film.

The actual demuxing with evo demux and remuxing with tsmuxer did not take much time (about a half hour with each program - more or less). Bdrebuilder is currently running. However I don't know how long this will take. I have a dual core amd 2.7ghz processor. I'm hopefull this will take less than a day (I'd be thrilled with under 12 - shooting for something like 9-10 hours would be ok with me).

If this works out and I can create a playable bluray structure on a dvd-r this will be great. It is relatively straightforward just a bit more massive and complex than the dvd world.

I did have an extra thought on the time difference. I had demuxed the feature 1 and 2 evo's. There may be a little more bonus stuff on the main disc that I am not aware of or forgot about. This was from a two disc hd-dvd - two physical discs not a flipper - and most bonuses I thought were on disc two. But anyway this should be interesting.

ALso does bdrebuilder preserve the 1080p video? I only have a 720p set at 1366x768 native res so I don't need max just curious.

EDIT 3 - Ok it looks like nothing happened with Bd Rebuilder. I have version 0.17.13 beta. It created a working files directory with a gig of audio meta data. But nothing else happened overnight. I aborted that session and I'm restarting trying again with the same settings. Anything I'm doing wrong here? Also where does the output go? It only gives you a choice for the source path (the original bluray structure location) and a working path (which I assume is where all the temps files go). So where does the new shrunk directory go to?

[soadtrails]

I have been encoding regular DVD's into divx avi's for playability on my xbox360. It took me a long time to find a combination of encoding structures and programs to use, but I have it pretty much down to a science now.

I have yet to order a bluray/hd-dvd drive for my computer (actually I'm going to order one tomorrow I think), so my poking around on this forum is a bit preliminary, but I'm trying to gather as much information as I can to get a head start on HD movie encoding.

I have 3 versions of a movie....one is the best that I can currently do in standard definition, one is a 720p wmv rip, and the other is a 1080p wmv rip. They play fine on my 360, and both the 720 and the 1080 look great on my hi def tv. For my regular encoded test movie, the file size is approx 1.1 gigs. The 720 rip is 2.2 gigs and the 1080 rip is 8 gigs. My plan is to use the 720p ripping procedure for my movies that are not "hi def worthy" in my eyes...meaning something that is not a visual masterpiece. I would still get the benefit of a surprisingly clear picture that is very passable on a hi def TV, but not have to fork over the 8 gig storage space for the 1080 rip. The 1080 rip I will reserve for deserving movies. I understand that i can go even higher in file size than that, but I will have to play with settings. Based on these test rips I like the quality and file sizes.

I will most likely have to go through two learning procedures, one for HD DVD and one Bluray. Clear and concise tutorials seem to be a bit lacking, most are cluttered with stuff that doesn't really need to be there.

I see alot of people talking about 264 encoding, I was unable to get any of my movies to play on the xbox when i tried that procedure. They might have been able to play via streaming over media center, but i have decided to go the route of plugging a USB hard drive directly into the 360.

It also seems like I might have some troubles with audio, in my standard dvd's, I was unable to get an aac audio stream to play in 5.1....I could only get ac3 to work. I'm not worried about getting a dolby hd stream, just a standard 5.1 dolby or dts stream would be fine with me.

One thing I do want to state is i have gotten around the FAT32 4gb size restriction on the 360. I installed Macdrive on my pc and formatted the external movie drives in HFS+. I have put files on there up to 9gb with no problem, and the xbox recognizes the drive just fine. Some people have claimed that this does not work, but I can attest that it works just fine. I do NOT know if this would work for the PS3, but for the 360 it works like a charm.

Since I do not yet have experience in actually manipulating these movies, I will have to play around with compatible file formats, encoding procedures, audio issues, file sizes and encoding times. All that times 2, 1 for bluray and one for hddvd.

So far this looks like a great place and I have enjoyed reading the posts in this forum thus far.

Any information anyone wants to pony up, I'd be welcome to it!

Thanks everyone.