Ripping Starfleet Access for Star Trek TOS Blurays.....

[primetime34]

I would like to rip all the extras for all the Star Trek series available on Bluray. I just finished up doing all of TNG and Enterprise. However, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to rip the starfleet access episodes from TOS. I am working on S1D1 right now. I just can't figure out a way to do it...I know it contains PIP, which is going to be an issue I guess.

So, any ideas on the best way to rip these episodes (which really are commentary episodes that I would love to have on my HTPC and play through Plex to my chromecast). Thanks in advance!

[Baldrick]

What have you tried? MakeMKV?

[primetime34]

Yes. MakeMKV does not find this "title" in the list of possible titles. It finds everything else, but does not find that one. I've also tried Ripbot...same issue, doesn't show this "title" (the starfleet access episode).

[wulf109]

Open the disk in Explorer and play each m2ts file to find the one you want. The largest files will be the episodes so don't play them.

[primetime34]

Open the disk in Explorer and play each m2ts file to find the one you want. The largest files will be the episodes so don't play them.

Not in there...like I said, I think it has something to do with the extra part of the episode being pip. Does that make sense?

[videobruger]

Two things spring to mind:

Find the m2ts with the PIP and re-encode cropping to the PIP'ed part.

Make a screen recording of the PIP'ed part.

[primetime34]

I've played all the m2ts files, but none of them play the PIP part.

I've tried a screen recording, but it isn't working. The player I'm using (PowerDVD10) has an overlay so Camtasia is only recording the audio, not the video. I've tried other players to play the bluray, but none of them use the menu and I have to have the menu in order to play this bonus feature since none of the playlists are playing it.

It's turning out to be a real pain, but now I want to solve the problem!

[videobruger]

Fraps probably can do the screen recording.

[ndjamena]

Picture In Picture consists of two separate video tracks. MakeMKV will simply ignore the second video stream. Try searching the m2ts files for one with a secondary video stream, if you find it the only way you'll be able to play it properly is to overlay the secondary video onto the primary video using AVISynth or something and re-encoding it burnt in.

-Edit- I'm ripping ST TOS at the moment so I figured I'd take a look. It looks as though Starfleet access is a combination of PIP and PGS subtitle graphic. I'll see if I can find it on my disc.

-Edit 2- Oh, and I'm pretty sure you'll have to mix the audio tracks as well. Good luck with that, hopefully Star Trek TOS doesn't use the same dynamic mixing process seen on Doctor Who Blu Rays... Otherwise you'll have to watch the whole thing, take notes about where the volume of each track changes and try to duplicate the effect manually.

[ndjamena]

It's 00000.mpls, the secondary video stream is at the bottom and the last subtitle track makes up the rest of the image. I can't seem to get to the audio though, MKVMerge can't rip DTS-Express and it's not showing up in MakeMKV either. I only know it's there because MediaInfo says it is.

[ndjamena]

OK, EAC3To will extract the DTS-Express from the mpls, it's track number 10 so:

eac3to 00000.mpls 10:"00000.wav"

And then you just need to re-encode the video together and figure out how to mix the audio together properly. Simple!

(although I notice the secondary video track comes and goes I wonder if even AVISynth can do anything with that...)

[ndjamena]

src = AVISOURCE("F:\Work\Step 2\Video 1.avi").ConvertToYUY2()
pip = AVISOURCE("F:\Work\Step 2\Video 2.avi").nnedi3_resize16(640, 480).ConvertToYUY2()

Layer(src, pip, "add", 257, 1920 - 900, 1080 - 560).ConvertToYV12(interlaced=false)
SupTitle("F:\Work\Step 2\subs.sup", forcedOnly=false, swapCbCr=false, relocate=true, relocOffset="")

I'm almost there. I just need to figure out how to remove all the black frames in the PIP. I know there was a filter that would return the darkness levels or something but I can't seem to find it. Then I'll need to figure out how to tell AVISynth NOT to overlay the pure black frames over the episode. One of the conditional filters maybe?

[primetime34]

I tried a different approach. I recorded the audio while watching the episode through vlc. Then, I tried to remux the audio to the video. I lined it up perfectly and it works great at the beginning. However, by the end of the episode, the audio is off by 2-3 seconds. Any luck on your end?

[ndjamena]

No one told me how to remove the black frames and I'm in the middle of writing two programs at the moment so didn't have time to figure it out.

I could check if the audio I extracted is the same length as the two UTVC AVIs that represent each video stream...

I'll be back.

[ndjamena]

All four streams are exactly 50mn 34s long when muxed into individual files. Theoretically all I'd need to do is encode the video then do a basic mixing of the audio and I'd have a perfectly playable video.

[ndjamena]

src1 = AVISOURCE("F:\Work\Step 2\Video 1.avi")
src2 = AVISOURCE("F:\Work\Step 2\Video 2.avi")
pip = Layer(src1.ConvertToYUY2(), src2.nnedi3_resize16(640, 480).ConvertToYUY2(), "add", 257, 1920 - 900, 1080 - 560).ConvertToYV12(interlaced=false)
ScriptClip(src1, "( AverageLuma(src2) < 17 ) ? src1 : pip" )
SupTitle("F:\Work\Step 2\subs.sup", forcedOnly=false, swapCbCr=false, relocate=true, relocOffset="")

I'd do some more filtering but that does the job well enough for now.

[ndjamena]

I'm having the same problem, I guess we'll just have to wait for MakeMKV to figure out how to rip the thing properly.

[ndjamena]

Success!!!

I remembered that X264 had spat out some weird numbers for the frame rate, which calculated to something like 23.970fps, so I remuxed the final product with MKVMergeGUI, forced a frame rate of 24/1.001 and selected "fix bitstream timing information" and now everything syncs up perfectly. I couldn't figure out how to get audacity to output 7.1 channels so my file has stereo audio and the mixing isn't in that great a state anyway (I still need to figure out how to account for the audio mixing changes when the "commentary" track goes silent) but the final product is the actual complete Star Trek Access episode in all it's glory. I may go back try to do a better job at some point if I can find the time.

[ndjamena]

I tried a different approach. I recorded the audio while watching the episode through vlc. Then, I tried to remux the audio to the video. I lined it up perfectly and it works great at the beginning. However, by the end of the episode, the audio is off by 2-3 seconds. Any luck on your end?

How did you manage to record the audio with VLC? The audio is DTS-MA with a DTS Express track overlay. Either you let some other program/device do the decoding and recorded the output using VLC somehow or I'm really behind the times.

[primetime34]

I recorded it with camtasia doing a screen capture, so nothing too fancy. What program are you using for the lines of code that you have posted above?

[ndjamena]

AVISynth

I'd like to add some denoising/debanding and I forgot to crop the pillar boxes off the edges but the important bits are all there. Getting the audio right will be more of a problem, I need to mix a stereo track into a 7.1 track and hunt down lengths of silence in the stereo DTS Express track, and if the silence is long enough increase the volume of the main track. I'm not even sure if there is a program out there capable of doing such things (a free one at least). I'm wondering if I could rig something to record the 7.1 PCM my Blu Ray player outputs through its HDMI port until MakeMKV or some other program can figure out how to re-encode these Blu Ray overlaid tracks.

[primetime34]

Ok. I am a total newb with AVISynth. I have the wav file extracted (the commentary wav listed above). Now, what do I do?

[ndjamena]

Um, do you mean you used Eac3to to convert the DTS Express track or are we talking the screen capture?

Do you want to sync your video with your audio or are you asking about AVISynth? If you haven't already you'll need to install it. AviSynth scripts are just text files with a .avs extention.

You'll need to use MakeMKV to make a full backup of the disc then use eac3to to extract both video tracks (MKVMerge can do it too, but apparently VC1 is another b-frame codec MKVMerge has trouble cutting).

Make sure you extract each track to MKV. Then I used DirectShowSource to read the files (you can replace the AVISource commands in my script with DirectShowSource, my script was for "step 2"). you'll need to hunt down an AviSynth filter called SupTitle to overlay the subs onto the video and you'll need to choose a resize method (I used nnedi3_resize16 which is completely unnecessary for downsizing). Then you can feed the script directly into x264 if you like, or into MeGUI or whatever. I have my own methods which would be of no use to you. Once you have your video the audio will be out of sync, so load both the video and audio into MKVMergeGUI, select the video track go to format specific options then from the FPS drop down box select 24000/1001. Mux the thing and it should come out perfect.

I don't know if that's what you needed to know but there it is.

[primetime34]

Also do you mux in both the primary audio and the secondary (commentary) audio? If so, doesn't that just create 2 audio tracks instead of 1, like when you play it from the bluray?

[ndjamena]

Getting the audio right will be more of a problem, I need to mix a stereo track into a 7.1 track and hunt down lengths of silence in the stereo DTS Express track, and if the silence is long enough increase the volume of the main track. I'm not even sure if there is a program out there capable of doing such things (a free one at least). I'm wondering if I could rig something to record the 7.1 PCM my Blu Ray player outputs through its HDMI port until MakeMKV or some other program can figure out how to re-encode these Blu Ray overlaid tracks.

You need to combine the two audio tracks using an audio editor. I used Audicty to remix them, I had to lower the volume on the main track to make the "commentary" intelligible but the reason why dealing with these kinds of features on Blu Ray is such a PITA at the moment is that they seem to be able the change the mixing configuration dynamically (or at least enable/disable one of the tracks) and as far as I'm aware there's no software available that's capable of extracting that mixing data from the disc, much less reproducing it. Until there is we'll just have to do our best to simulate the effect.

[primetime34]

I finally got the episode done! Thanks for your help, but now I have a followup question.

I'm working on Disc 3 (The Menagerie parts 1 & 2). How do I find the playlist that contains the things I'm looking for? Thanks again! This is causing me to geek out!

[ndjamena]

MediaInfo, just point it at the mpls files and look for one with a DTS Express track. DTS Express aint normal and is only used for commentaries and such (and of course overlays) instead of AC3 (which most discs use anyway). You could automate it using MediaInfo CLI and a batch script, but unless you intend on doing this a lot it's probably not worth the effort. (or you could load the disc in MakeMKV, find the title that you know holds the actual episode then see which mpls contains it... the same mpls will hold the Access episode as well) (I guess you could substitute MediaInfo CLI for EAC3To, but for general purposes, MediaInfo has a nice GUI to find these things with. MKVMerge GUI will work too, just don't extract with it because it doesn't handle VC1 very well.)

[primetime34]

Sweet. Thanks. I'm currently working on the Menagerie Part 1 and hoping to finish season 1 this week. Then on to season 2! Thanks again for all your help, and if I have more questions, I'll be back.

[oxidius]

I stumbled upon that post when I was trying to digitize my TOS blurays and I just wanted to share that you don<t need to use eac3to anymore for DTS express tracks. FFmpeg now handles it like a champ without any third party paid application.

By the way, thx ndjamena, reading you posts helped me alot. I'm still trying to fiddle around for the mixing of the audio tracks. What we are looking for is known as "ducking" and can be fairly easely done in modern audio editing suite, I just have to find a free command line tool that can now

[oxidius]

Ok, so I figured it out, FFmpeg has a filter named sidechaincompress that alows to compressed a 1st audio stream if a 2nd audio stream get over a threshold.

Here's an example of how I used it.
ffmpeg.exe -playlist 0 -i bluray:"PATH_TO_YOUR_STARTREK_BD_FOLDER" -filter_complex "[0:10]asplit=2[commentary][commentarymix];[0:2][commentary]sidechaincompress=level_in=3:attack=0.01:threshold =0.001:ratio=1.5:release=1000[compr];[compr][commentarymix]amerge[out]" -map 0:11 -map [out] -c:a ac3 starflett_acess.mkv

So here I'm only extracting and compressing the starfleet access video and mix auido track so I can remux it as additinal video and audio tracks to an episode rip.

The important options here are
threshold : be sure to make it small because because you want to start compressing as soon as the commentary track is not silent
ratio: you can play a bit with it if you want to accentuate the compression, for me 2 was too much, and 1.5 was comfortable
attack: you want it as small as possible so the compression starts as soon as it can
release: you want to make it a bigger than the default (250) so the sound does not get back up beetween small gaps of the commentary.