Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 418

hairy_hen said:By the way, the DTS is not an encode of the same mono mix file that's been out there for the past few years.

Thanks for confirming that.

But isn't AVCHD native to Blu-Ray? I would think I could do the .mkv to AVCHD conversion then simply burn the AVCHD data to a BD25 disc with no loss in quality. Am I missing something?

If what I propose will a) be too time consuming, b) result is compromising quality, or c) require software tools I do not have, then I will wait for the official Harmy BD release.   :)

 

Harmy said:

jdryyz said:

Thanks for posting the info on converting mkv to AVCHD format. I recall the last time I tried to do something similar I was using Toast for Mac OS X. It seemed like there was some transcoding going on and I ended up cancelling it as it was taking way too long. Should that normally happen? I know .mkv is not a native BD format, so I suppose some type of conversion will be necessary, but how long are talking here to produce a disc? Shouldn't burn time be the longest part of the process??

The point of AVCHD is for it to fit on a DVD9 (7.9GB), so seeing as the video track in the mkv is 12GB, you have to transcode to get it to fit a DVD9. If you're serious about keeping the picture quality high, you need to use a slow setting and this can then take anywhere between 6 hours and several days depending on your CPU, RAM and HDD speed. If I remember correctly, it took me something like 18hrs to encode the AVCHD and 36 hours to encode the BD.

Interesting. My understanding of AVCHD was that it was an HD video standard developed by Sony that uses the H.264 codec and is fully compatible with the Blu-Ray disc format. So, if I have an AVCHD file structure, wouldn't it just be a matter of burning this to a blank BD with BD authoring software? That's my definition of trivial!

You're saying AVCHD is only intended for burning to DVD media??

I have no problem following your steps also to get the desired result, but I am not familiar with the programs you've listed. Since I am at risk of making a BD coaster on my first attempt, perhaps I will test out smaller HD source files on DVD-RW media.  

CatBus said:

jdryyz said:

But isn't AVCHD native to Blu-Ray? I would think I could do the .mkv to AVCHD conversion then simply burn the AVCHD data to a BD25 disc with no loss in quality. Am I missing something?

Terminology problem.  AVC is a video encoding.  HD is high-definition video.  AVCHD is video encoded using AVC in HD and then burned onto a DVD.  If you plan on burning to BD-R, there's no reason to even talk about AVCHD.  When you say the word AVCHD, people immediately jump to the first step of how to compress the data so that it fits on DVD media.

Converting the MKV to burn to BD-R is trivial.  Demux the streams using MKVtoolnix or somesuch, and then use tsmuxer to put them into a Blu-ray compatible format.  I've already done this.

In the context of this forum where previous AVCHD discs have been created, I can see where there could be confusion, but I never mentioned wanting to make an AVCHD disc.

I have a good example of that with Harmy's v2.1 edition.    :)

So question to Harmy-- how will you go about creating v2.5 in BD format?

Zer0Squared said:

MrSmartyMax801 said:

I can hear the other tracks just fine, but not the DTS tracks. Can you fix it?

Not to take away from the sarcasm you're due from Frink but....  ever think it might be on your end?  I can hear all the tracks just fine on mine. :)

Maybe a little more information about how you're playing it (vlc, media player, etc)

DIVX, which plays mkvs but it goes faulty when it comes to DTS sounds, but plays AC3 just fine.

FYI Mac users: to extract the files you want in order to make a blu-ray disc from an MKV was something I hadn't done before but a little research and I found MKVtools which can extract what you need before remuxing using tsMuxer to create a blu-ray compatible folder.

I had previously only used MKVtoolnix for remuxing MKVs but had never considered creating a BD from the files contained within. I had read that people can use MKVtoolnix to demux and then also create a BD compatible folder but I think you need certain compatible GUIs that only appear to be available for Windows as neither of these options appear in the Mac version.

You learn something new every day!

I tried making even a simple menu with MultiAVCHD and ran into errors.  Probably something I did wrong.  I'm sure Harmy's will be on point like the rest of his work.  It seems like a buggy program, it crashed on me several times 

chyron8472 said:

Concerning blank media, what is the best manufacturer of blank Bluray discs?  I am aware that the best DVD5s are from Taiyo Yuden, and the best DVD9s are from Verbatim's manufacturer in I think Singapore. What is the best manufacturer of Blurays to go with?

Yes this does matter. I tried burning Kerr's 6-disc Lord of the Rings set onto disc, and had to go out and buy more discs after I wasted a whole 20 pack spindle only to get 4 of them to work reliably on a standalone DVD player. I know it was the fault of the discs, not the data.

 

I use only blank Verbatim to burn Blu Ray, never had a coaster yet.  Either the white printable from Japan, or the ones you can get in stores.  They both work great, never playback issues or coasters.

chyron8472 said:

Concerning blank media, what is the best manufacturer of blank Bluray discs?  I am aware that the best DVD5s are from Taiyo Yuden, and the best DVD9s are from Verbatim's manufacturer in I think Singapore. What is the best manufacturer of Blurays to go with?

Yes this does matter. I tried burning Kerr's 6-disc Lord of the Rings set onto disc, and had to go out and buy more discs after I wasted a whole 20 pack spindle only to get 4 of them to work reliably on a standalone DVD player. I know it was the fault of the discs, not the data.

 

I use Verbatim discs, I get them off ebay (import from China) for just £2 a disc and haven't had one fail on me yet. I use an external Samsung drive. Don't know about any others but would recommend these to anyone asking.

Cobra Kai said: Thanks for the info.  Was just about to research this.

To elaborate, as it's not quite so straight forward... while you can find MKVtools easily (even though it often goes by the name MoKgVm2DVD), the version of tsMuxer you require is called VoxMac Unofficial build, it's on the videohelp website (address below) and is listed under 'More information and other downloads' - it's the one listed for OSX SnowLeopard. Annoyingly for it to work correctly you need to remove 2 korean language fonts from your Library - it tells you exactly which ones in one of the read me files when you mount the dmg.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MoKgVm2DVD

It's a bit of a pain but easy when you figure it out. Unfortunately I've noticed the audio file names stripped from MKVtools are generic so are clearly stripped of the information about which track is which, you can tell the right order (stream 0, stream 1 etc) but when picking an audio track they all just say whatever language you assign to them in tsMuxer - if anyone can advise of a better demuxer for Mac that retains the audio track names, then I would love to hear about it! Seems so much easier on Windows :(

chyron8472 said:

And, much to Harmy's obvious chagrin, I'm also considering uploading a comparatively small, tablet-friendly m4v to the spleen with only a few audio tracks for people who want to watch this awesomeness on the go or else want to enjoy Star Wars but don't have much HDD space or bandwidth to spare.

I started a thread with a few questions about making m4vs over here. I found that using the Apple TV 3 preset or the iPad one gets you something in the range of 4 gB if you limit it to just one soundtrack or the main three English ones. I remember h_h saying that the surround mix really shouldn't be played on devices that don't do surround because of phasing problems. If saving space is a concern, perhaps just the mono or stereo mix? (May be better to take that discussion to another thread.)

Just purchased my first blu-ray burner, a Samsung external, with 10 Verbatim discs. Should be fun.  

Only 6x on the BD-R side, but it should be fine. I'll probably heed some of the warnings here and burn my first couple of discs at 2x or 3x. Not looking for $2 frisbees every time I try to burn something.