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UHD Blu-ray Authoring - Technical Discussion

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 (Edited)

Note: This is a giant wall of text, so I will be adding more and more to this as we go. The post is unfinished as of right now. Stay frosty for updates!

My goal is to author a UHD Blu-ray for 4K77, 4K83 and whatever the ESB 4K transfer is. Mainly I’m focusing on 4K77 for now. This will also hopefully be useful to videographers and small studios who would like to author UHD BD’s without the $14K minimum entry fee.

Yes there are no proper UHD Blu-ray authoring tools available to consumers yet, probably never will be with Adobe not renewing licenses with the Blu-ray powers that be and ending support of Adobe Encore, as well as Hollywood probably trying to prevent this from ever happening. However there are alternatives to fighting (hehe).

  • DVDFab: UHD Creator - You can test it out, it’s freeware but it can only convert/process 10 minutes of video and it will also slap on a logo in the upper left corner of the video (unless you purchase it of course).
  • TSM2UHD - Created by the same guy who developed BD Rebuilder (I believe), this tool is used after mixing your streams with tsmuxer. This process is a little more complicated, but it’s free and it has potential to unlock the doors to decent UHD Blu-ray authoring for consumers.

If you haven’t kept up with this topic, here are some of the main issues that lie ahead.

  • UHD BD compliance - Bitrate is the main issue here, as well as BDXL discs (more on that later).
  • Custom Menus (in 4K)
  • Proper Metadata flagging in the mpls and clpi files - This is super important because we need to make sure we have the proper files listed and the proper resolutions/framerates.
  • Player compatibility - Certain UHD BD players throw fits with what you give it. The Xbox One S/X may be the pickiest of these.

Compliance

You can author UHD Blu-rays on 25GB Single Layer, 50GB Dual Layer, and 100GB Triple Layer discs. 66GB DL and 128GB Quad Layer discs are not available to consumers at this moment. The fun trick with 100GB discs is that technically they aren’t available either. What is available is 100GB TL BDXL discs, which are not the same as a UHD BD 100. The trick to making them work is what kind of sucks, you’ll be able to use two of the three layers to essentially author a ~66 GB disc, and it may have spotty compatibility, which makes this route a lot less worth it. Whitepaper here: https://www.blu-raydisc.info/docs/Spec_Info/AllBooksNovember2017.pdf

The roadblock here is that we have to be below certain bitrates in total so that our players can read the disc properly without any stuttering or playback issues. Now in the future this could be elevated as I have found an article from 2016 that explains how one authoring tool developer behind the Blu-ray Disc Association gate wrote their tool to send the higher bitrate content to the edge of the disc so that it would be guaranteed to have the fastest read speed possible. Article here: http://giant-interactive.com/uhd-blu-ray-capabilities-require-workflow-adjustments/

UHD BD 25’s aren’t really used. It is possible to author a UHD disc on 25 GB, but your bitrate will have to be low enough or your content short enough that it’s not really worth authoring a disc except for testing as you could easily make a ready to stream file with a 35 Mbit/s bitrate and have better quality. 25GB discs are cheap nowadays from reputable manufacturers, so I strictly do testing on 25 gb discs and transcode my content to really low bitrates haha.

Here are the bandwidth/bitrate limits we must abide by:

UHD 25GB - Follow HD Bitrate Guidelines (I think it’s 32 Mbit/s max bitrate)
UHD 50GB - 82 Mbit/s
UHD 66GB - 108 Mbit/s
UHD 100GB - 128 Mbit/s

  • Because the way tsm2uhd and DVDFab UHD Creator (not too sure with DVDFab) work we may have to abide by HD Blu-ray bitrate and frame rate constraints.

To prepare my copy of 4K77, I have transcoded it to fit a 50 GB disc but the video bitrate is an average 42 Mbit/s (original bitrate is ~93 Mbit/s which is on par with most 100 GB retail discs) to get it to approximately 41 GB so that I have room for menus, intros, audio, and room to spare just in case. Still better than the average streaming 4K file. Make sure none of your content exceeds the bitrates listed above, this includes spiking bitrates. It’s best to go for a two pass encode.

We must also make sure we are using HEVC (H.265/x265) for our codec. UHD will not work with H.264 content.

Now one thing that will probably knock out compliance but you shouldn’t worry about is 8-bit (SDR) content. The BDA requires that all content has HDR10 (10-bit) HDR color profiles. But since what were doing doesn’t legally require compliance, we can ignore this as it’s more of a let’s push HDR thing and not a this will break everything like what bitrates are.


Software

DVDFab UHD Creator

  • This probably easiest way, however no menus, and you MIGHT experience some issues. They’re pretty much the non-open source effort to figure out UHD BD authoring lol.
  1. Buy it
  2. Load up the content
  3. Configure output to appropriate disc size - Note, if not doing passthru mode, HDR is lost I believe.
  4. Export

TSM2UHD

  • Still working on my project to figure this out completely

BDEdit

  • Old but will help you at least parse the mpls and clpi files

BDInfo

  • Lighter than BDEdit but same reasons to use it

Hybrid

  • This can convert m2ts to m2ts which is important if we are to scale up the m2ts menu

A Hex Editor

  • We may end up having to manually find settings flags and modify them to get our desired output for m2ts and clpi files

BD Info

PowerDVD 17 or later

  • You can avoid making a ton of coasters if you test in proper blu-ray viewing software first.
  • It won’t weed out all of your bad attempts, but it will help you a lot.

Some Command Line Tools

  • eac3to
  • mkvextract
  • ffmpeg

BD Authoring Software

  • Adobe Encore CS6 (Comes with Adobe CC, you’ll have to select previous versions when installing), this can’t handle anything other than mpe2 & h264 for video and Dolby Digital and PCM for audio. Important to note it’s also limited to 5.1 surround sound. Which in our case is ok but 4K77 has DTS tracks.
  • Blu-Disc Studio Lite (Free) - From DVD Logic, they are BDA members, this is lite version that does a BDMV JAVA mix and works nicely once you figure it out. You can force it to take streams it doesn’t support but in the end it doesn’t compile them because when it passes stuff of to ffmpeg for transcoding it doesn’t realize that ffmpeg can handle HEVC lol.

Fun stuff I’ve wasted a Saturday trying

I have tried forcing Adobe Encore to transcode everything to HEVC at 2160p. I modified default transcoding templates, I modified the x264.dll to no avail, it either threw a fit or it didn’t open at all. Part of the problem is embedded in the source code which I haven’t been able to get into at all. Partly because Encore is locked down tight since it’s basically a super light version of scenarist as it’s base was licensed by Adobe from the developer of Scenarist.

Like I said above with Blu-Disc Studio, I have tried forcing it to use ffmpeg and the x265 toolset so all I have to do is try to force it to render at 2160p instead of 1080p. Still looking into this route. I have a feeling that I could just make sure it dumps whatever commands it throws to ffmpeg and have it interpret the commands to work for the x265 library instead. That could take a while though.


Important things to note (I guess lol)

Find this on the BDEdit thread on doom9:
“Hi outgoing, UHD has the header file “0300” instead of “0200” and the program does not recognize them, however the IGS menu can be worked.” (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1857404#post1857404)

Blu-ray Wikipedia Page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray)
Definitely has some good information to keep in mind.

Ultra HD Blu-ray Wikipedia Page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray)
A little barebones but still has some needed info.

Here’s a good whitepaper on UHD Blu-ray specs (http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/Downloadablefile/BD-ROM_Part3_V3.0_WhitePaper_150724.pdf)


Failed Attempts will be posted below

Post in Progress


If you would like to help please feel free to do so. If you have found success in authoring a UHD Blu-ray with custom menus, please post below!

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Work has been really busy today. I’ll get this thread updated tonight.

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 (Edited)

FAILED ATTEMPTS

Attempt 1:

Any Encoder: Create 1080P files
Adobe Encore: Create 1080p Blu-ray authored folder
Any Encoder: Prepare 4K files to replace 1080p streams
TSMuxer: Mux to m2ts
Hybrid: Take menu m2ts file from 1080p authored folder and resize to 3840x2160 and convert to HEVC
TSM2UHD: Run Bluray folder through TSM2UHD
ImgBurn: Create Disc Image
Windows: Mount Disc Image
PowerDVD (17 or newer): Play Disc

Result: No audio or video, unknown playlist essentially.

Notes: I think my main issue here is that I didn’t really modify the mpls files as well which are the playlist files.

Edit: I believe I see my missed logic here, So tsm2uhd will need to modify the clpi and mpls files. So I think what I need to do is mux each of my 4K HEVC files to their own blu-ray folders and I can probably get those to work when playing the disc image. The pain will be the menu. I’m contemplating how to properly get that remuxed. I think I may have to go ahead and remux it in its own structure, rename the clpi, and then run tsm2uhd and put it back in our main disc structure. After all of this I’ll open the disc up in BDEdit and copy over instructions from the HD version that I made in Adobe Encore earlier, this should help insure the ordering of files and what file is run on first play. However I’ll probably get to that tomorrow. Still have work in the morning, gotta pay the bills. I really wish I could just win the lottery and buy me a license for Scenarist or Kite UHD. Welp there’s to dreaming haha. I’m going to run a simple test to even see if my files are compliant, so a structure with no menus that I muxed then ran through tsm2uhd, I’ll see if they load up properly in PowerDVD, then probably going to bed.


Attempt 1.5:

So I tried muxing my files seperately and then combining then naming appropriately and then running through tsm2uhd. My playlist files (mpls) are way way screwed up. Otherwise the resolutions are correct. But I think because of the mpls issues, I’m getting a black screen with only audio because it at least knows what audio is supposed to play for some reason.


Attempt 2:

So I remuxed everything this time with x265 in FFMPEG and used the --uhd-bd flag and some example command for ffmpeg from doom9. Needless to say if I burn the files individually after running through tsmuxer and tsm2uhd, they play flawlessly on a 25 GB disc well above the bitrate threshold!

Bad news though, still no menus, and I can’t get it to run through sequential files as I have to modify the mpls files (playlist files). I can’t use the ones that point to the 1080p files or the content just won’t work. If you use the 4K mpls files, well it will only play the first video.

I also need to be able to retain the 1080p version index.bdmv and MovieObject.bdmv files as they contain certain instructions that we don’t want to leave out.

Unfortunately BDEdit cannot/will not let me modfify the clpi files to show resolutions above 1080p, and it won’t let me select HEVC for a codec. Meaning I’ll manually have to enter it. Which also means I need to figure out what that option is encoded as in Hexadecimal 😦

As far as the MPLS files go, looks like I’m going to have to see if there are any indicators of resolution or codec in that as well, which I don’t think it does at least. However I am missing information if I bring in the mpls files that tsm2uhd can pick up. Which this is where the going to the next video breaks.

So far have not been able to get into the menu.

Calling it a night, gonna have to do some serious research this weekend. Would be so much easier if we could figure out BDMV 300 objects and encoding right now, but there just really isn’t much on it. Damn you Hollywood lol!


Attempt 3:

Figured out some flags and stuff. Possibly part of my problem is the index.bdmv created from Adobe Encore is all sorts of screwed up. May need to actually test my 1080p disc lol.

Edit: Yup Encore is screwed up. Uninstalling and Reinstalling lol.


Attempt 4:

Spent most of the day trying to get this to work. Wasted on of my 50gb discs 😦 . Also manually edited the clpi, mpls, index.bdmv, and movieobject.bdmv files with no luck. Left the menu mpls/m2ts/clpi file alone. The main issue was that tsm2uhd just wouldn’t see the flags it needed to determine that it need to start editing the files.

So my doom9 account should be able to comment on that form now. I’ll ask jdobbs for assistance, although he’s probably really freaking busy.


This comment will be updated with failed attempts

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Post and Failure comment have been updated

aka… This is a BUMP lol

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Just a quick update, I did find some software last night that will at least a UHD disc/structure and can will help me parse through where my errors are. It also open source so I can download the source code and probably find out what tags are what in the source code, hopefully it makes it easier enough to where I can make my own new version of BDEdit that can edit a UHD disc.

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Saturday came and went. Here’s to another bump. Won’t work on it tomorrow since I spent all day trying lol.

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There will be more updates on this once jdobbs gets the next update of tsm2uhd and bd-rebuilder out.

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So the TSM2UHD functionality has been imported into the main build of BD Rebuilder. On another front BDedit is being updated for UHD however it make take a while before it can fully edit a UHD menu or Blu-ray structure.

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 (Edited)

railerswim said:

Compliance

You can author UHD Blu-rays on 25GB Single Layer, 50GB Dual Layer, and 100GB Triple Layer discs. 66GB DL and 128GB Quad Layer discs are not available to consumers at this moment.

It appears that 128GB BD-R XL discs have been released by Sony, but I only see them on eBay. e.g. https://www.ebay.com/i/164223683860?chn=ps

Edit: By the way, I found this on AVSForum https://www.diversifiedvideosolutions.com/products.html when I was looking to calibrate my TV, so it looks like at least one independent person has worked out 4K Blu-ray authoring. I’m not sure if he’ll be open to sharing techniques though.

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Any update on this project?

  • RiK

“My skill are no longer as Mad as the once were” RiK