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How to extract scenes from the 4K.. series video files?

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 (Edited)

I’ve made several attempts to extract a selected scene from the 4K… video files—namely using Windows’ Media Player ‘Trim’ feature to trim any given downloaded file (which gave me a message saying that I do not have ‘permission’ to do that), simply copying the file (on Media Player’s prompt suggestion before retrying Trim), and (finally before giving up on the idea) importing the file into Fimora9 (in the hope of selecting the scene in there), which resulted in an ‘unsupported file’ message. So, I’m more or less beat, I guess.

I assume from all this that the files are ‘locked’ in some way. Can anyone confirm this? It would help just to know if I’m wasting time trying to do something that’s technically impossible (at least for someone like me with merely average computer skills).

Thanks!

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Which 4K video files? Or are you talking about 4K77/4K83?

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Oh, okay, I thought you were asking about 4K video in general.

Um…which releases of the films do you have? The actual 4K MKV files, the 1080p MKV files, or the 1080p authored Blu-Ray files?

Windows Media Player is probably the worst possible choice for doing whatever it is you’re trying to do. These files all have multiple audio tracks, a good chunk of which are lossless DTS-HD MA files - those two things alone probably make Windows Media Player panic. Add in the fact that the 1080p versions are high-bitrate h264 and the 4K version is a whopping 80GB or so MKV file encoded in h265 and I’m surprised Windows Media Player actually plays them!

What exactly are you trying to do with the files? That might help narrow down your options. You’ll almost certainly have to strip out all but one audio track first, and to make sure you pick an audio track that will work well with whatever it is you’re trying to do (which might mean downloading a separate PCM track if the software you want to use doesn’t like DTS-HD MA or 5.1 tracks).

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Thanks. Interesting in-depth answer.

I have the actual 4K and 1080 MKV files of both SW and RotJ. These things are gems.

I use WMP in a pretty decently spec’d Dell XPS 13, which plays the 1080 files no problem, and actually manages to play the 4K files although it stutters occasionally!

As for my intentions, I was curious to have a go at editing/adding LUTs (following DrDre’s posts with great interest) to given scenes, and just generally playing around with it, since I’m a big fan of the film, and it might serve as an interesting means of learning the Filmora9 software I have.

Thanks for replying—appreciated.

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If LUTs are what you’re primarily interested in working with, I’d recommend first demuxing the video stream out of the MKV file before doing anything else with it. Grab tsmuxer (free), open the file using it, uncheck everything except the video stream (h264 for the 1080p and h265 for the 4K), select “demux” above the destination field, then choose where you want the file to go.

You’ll end up with a video-only stream that some programs might not be able to open, but most things that you can use to apply LUTs should play nicer with that than with a muxed MKV file.

You can also check one of the audio tracks if you want to end up with both the video stream and an audio track as two separate files in the end, which might be useful depending on what you want to do with it in the end.

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ChainsawAsh said:

If LUTs are what you’re primarily interested in working with, I’d recommend first demuxing the video stream out of the MKV file before doing anything else with it. Grab tsmuxer (free), open the file using it, uncheck everything except the video stream (h264 for the 1080p and h265 for the 4K), select “demux” above the destination field, then choose where you want the file to go.

You’ll end up with a video-only stream that some programs might not be able to open, but most things that you can use to apply LUTs should play nicer with that than with a muxed MKV file.

You can also check one of the audio tracks if you want to end up with both the video stream and an audio track as two separate files in the end, which might be useful depending on what you want to do with it in the end.

Thanks so much for these insights, sir. I will follow your suggestions and see what comes up. I assume that rendering a new file with only a single audio track will also guarantee that the chosen track gets played (rather than being stuck with an alternative language that someone might not know how to change), and also make the file smaller and more manageable (although, I guess, the bulk of the file size is 1080 or 4K video data).

Thanks again.

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Both of those things are true. But if you want to make a single new file with just one audio track, don’t use tsmuxer - use mkvtoolnix. Same idea, uncheck all the tracks you don’t want, but it’ll spit out a new, muxed MKV file at the end instead of splitting it into individual video and audio files.

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ChainsawAsh said:

Both of those things are true. But if you want to make a single new file with just one audio track, don’t use tsmuxer - use mkvtoolnix. Same idea, uncheck all the tracks you don’t want, but it’ll spit out a new, muxed MKV file at the end instead of splitting it into individual video and audio files.

Haha, well, I just got tsmuser up and running (thanks again) but looks like mkvtoolnix is probably better for my immediate purposes. I’m a bit confused as to how tsmuxer differs. Is it better suited to extracting video content only?

Sorry to pick your brains, but you obviously have a good handle on this.

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 (Edited)

The primary use of tsmuxer is to either demux files (split an MKV/MP4/etc. into its elementary video, audio, and subtitle streams) or mux them into a Blu-Ray or AVCHD folder/ISO or .m2ts file - it can’t output a muxed MKV or MP4 or whatever.

The primary use of mkvtoolnix is to either take elementary streams and mux them into an MKV file, or to take an existing muxed file (MKV/MP4/etc.) and take out/rearrange/add audio or subtitle tracks, outputting an MKV file.

Basically, mkvtoolnix will give you an MKV file at the end that contains exactly the tracks you want, but tsmuxer can’t do that (you could make it give you an m2ts file or an authored Blu-Ray with no menu, though).

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Wow, I need to read that over and absorb the various implications, but thanks so much for taking time out to spell it out for this rookie.

The Force is strong with you Chainsaw.

Cheers!

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ChainsawAsh said:

The primary use of tsmuxer is to either demux files (split an MKV/MP4/etc. into its elementary video, audio, and subtitle streams) or mux them into a Blu-Ray or AVCHD folder/ISO or .m2ts file - it can’t output a muxed MKV or MP4 or whatever.

The primary use of mkvtoolnix is to either take elementary streams and mux them into an MKV file, or to take an existing muxed file (MKV/MP4/etc.) and take out/rearrange/add audio or subtitle tracks, outputting an MKV file.

Basically, mkvtoolnix will give you an MKV file at the end that contains exactly the tracks you want, but tsmuxer can’t do that (you could make it give you an m2ts file or an authored Blu-Ray with no menu, though).

Well, so far so good. mkvtoolnix seems to be playing nice with the 4K77 (4K) file, and appears to be rendering a new file with all soundtracks (except my preferred 35mm Dolby A track) ‘nixed’. Looking forward to seeing what it spits out.

Thanks again for providing me with some fun fodder, Chainsaw!

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Agh, bollocks. Process failed at around 20%. Things were looking good up to that point.

Back to the drawing board.

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Hm, that’s interesting…do you have enough hard drive space? What options do you have checked?

Since I haven’t yet left for work, I opened up my 4K77 v1.4 in mkvtoolnix - if you just want the 35mm Dolby Surround track, here’s what it should look like (this is assuming you still want the chapter headings; unchecking the “3 entries” of “global tags” at the bottom shouldn’t cause any problems, but just to be safe I’d leave it checked:

Make sure you point your “Destination file” to the location you want that has plenty of free space (this file will most likely still be in the 55-65GB range even after most of the audio tracks are stripped), then click “Start multiplexing” and you should be fine. Just leave your computer alone while it works!

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Thank you, sir! That gave me some confidence to give this a go again. I did everything you mentioned, although I DID uncheck the ‘entries’ and ‘global tags’. I am NOT able to set the aspect ratio—that area is grayed out unless I am missing something that enables changing of the settings in that area.

UPDATE: I was able to do this on a lowly Dell Optiplex 790 (Core i3/4GB) at work, so what gives with my Kaby Lake Gen 8/8GB Dell 9360 is beyond me - EXCEPT, I wonder if the failure was the result of my using an external HDD on that occasion - so data is going back and forth from the motherboard to the external drive (accessing the source file on the HDD and then placing a copy on the same external HDD). In the case of the older Optiplex, everything was done in the box/on the same HDD. These are all computer-rookie-level assumptions. Another thought was that this is better performed on HDD rather than SSD given the large data amounts moving around.

Anyway, thanks, Chainsaw, and some progress for sure. I will have a go at doing this within the 9360 itself, but that will require making space for the destination file (hence my using an external drive in this case).

Sorry, long reply, but it might be of use to someone experiencing similar problems.

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No problem! I didn’t actually do anything in the aspect ratio area at all, that’s just what it looks like on mine (likely just because I have the video track selected in my screenshot; that area would probably be grayed out if you don’t have any tracks, or a non-video track, selected). Your external may have just disconnected briefly at some point during the process which caused it to fail, that’s happened to me in the past. Damn cats…

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No cats here. It can only be gremlins!

Cheers!