waspattck

I'm not a Nero salesperson, nor do I play one on TV, but according to their site:

"Blu-ray Disc compatible applications already found in the Nero 7 (and above) software suite today include Nero Burning ROM and Nero Express, which enable Blu-ray Disc data recording on BD-R/RE media and the creation of 1:1 copies of any unprotected BD media."

.......Which I interpret as no quality loss or re-encoding. Could be wrong and the menu capabilities are not described very well other than "Hollywood Quality." The video samples of some of their menu possibilites look pretty good, though.

Edit: I'm not seeing DTS as a supported format here, so it could be a dead end:(

If you can find it without a heavy price tag;-) Nero Platinum 2014 seems to have some good Blu-ray authoring features, including menus. Retail $109.99.

There's a slimmed-down video-only version, including the Blu-ray features for $39.99.

Happy to report my new Samsung SE-506BB Burner worked well out of the box. Plug and play drivers through Windows 7, and a drag and drop for the Blu-ray folders and files. At 2x (6x possible), it burned in just over an hour.

Verbatim BD25-R, about $2 ea. All 20 or so audio tracks are recognized on the disc, plus about 6 subtitle tracks I added. Tested the disc in my Sony BDP-S390 and it plays flawlessly and looks great...........All the chapters are there and not a glitch in sight. TSmuxer does a great job prepping the files for BR. 

Now for a menu..............which can wait. This disc will hold me for quite some time:)

Jonno said:

Re. Encore: the CS6 version can still be installed via CC but you need to use a 'special process' (read: workaround).

http://helpx.adobe.com/encore/kb/encore-cs6-installed-cc.html

Tried this, but the "download Premiere CS6" option on the Premiere page has been removed. I think the documentation is out-of-date.

Laserschwert said:

waspattck said:

Adobe Encore seems to have disappeared from the planet, since Adobe no longer supports it. Finding older versions is no small task.

Encore CS6 can be dowloaded as part of Premiere CS6 when you're using Adobe Creative Cloud, so at least it's still available. No idea why they didn't update it to a CC version as well...

Premiere CS6 doesn't seem to be a download option on the CC menu anymore. I downloaded the trial version of Premiere Pro CC and Encore was nowhere to be found. Seems like they want to forget it ever existed.

Regardless, I have the BR structure ready to burn through TSMuxer with the audio and sub options I want, so the lack of a menu is no big problem in the short run. When the extras, etc. are all available, I'll re-download the whole package with menus.

I'm starting to gain an appreciation for how tough this BR menu authoring can be.......MultiAVCHD seems to shut off full-menu capability when it enters BR Mode. Adobe Encore seems to have disappeared from the planet, since Adobe no longer supports it. Finding older versions is no small task.

Using the Pop-Up menu feature in MultiAVCHD seems risky, since there is no preview feature there.

There don't seem to be a lot of other options unless one is willing to break the bank.

Seems like I'm going to burn the basic BR structure with all the audio options and some subtitles and wait for the pros to handle the menus. At least the GOUT chapter markers will port over and it will be much smoother skipping around the film. I'm sure time search will work as well.

 bird333 said:

Which Sony and Samsung burners are you guys recommending?

Can't say I recommend it yet, since it's in-transit from Amazon, but I bought the Samsung SE-506BB/TSBD 6x Slimline External Burner. It's very compact, which I like for moving around from computer to computer.

The online reviews are pretty positive, the only major gripe being that it's a bit slow, but for $89, I'm not complaining. If I'm going to be burning at 2x regardless of the drive, I don't want to pay $150 for the privilege.

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.

Watched the whole thing through last night and am floored by how good this looks (and sounds). I unfortunately don't have a receiver that decodes MA audio, but the core tracks are pretty good....... My aged ears have a rough time differentiating the difference anyway.

I used TSMuxer to remove the foreign tracks (since my BR player apparently only accepts 10 tracks) and now have what I consider to be the "ultimate" version of the Non-GL-F*****-Up Star Wars 77.

A couple of menus, extras, and disc burns to go and it'll be perfect. Thank you, Harmy.

The space limit on a single-layer BD is somewhere around 23.5 GB. 17.9 as-is without any extras is fast approaching that.

I suppose you could start dropping selected audio (particularly lossless audio) to create more space, then of course the revised menus.

There wouldn't be any layer break on a BD-25, of course so no worries there. Even if there were, the software would handle that seamlessly.

DVD-BOY said:

Harmy said:

OK, Mavimao, I'll be sending you the scripts as I finish them :-)

I have a different problem though and that is that my BD player only shows ten audio tracks (and for some reason, it shows the 1st nine and the last one). I hope this is just the player's restriction for MKV and not some general BD format restriction. I can't remember if any of my commercial BDs has more than 10 language tracks, but the most I can recall is around 8. This could be why Encore won't import more than 8 tracks. I hope not.

EDIT: I just found a commercial BD that has over 12 audio tracks, so it should be fine.

Blu-ray supports up to 32 Audio Tracks - I think the reason Encore tops out at 8 is this is how many DVD supports - is there some smart option to render a DVD from your Encore Blu-ray project?  I wonder if they have gone with the lowest common denominator...

I believe there are 10 audio tracks showing on Harmy's BD player, like mine. When I use VLC on my computer, everything is recognized, but feeding it through my Blu-ray limits the audio options to 10. Probably a player MKV limitation. The physical Blu-ray should be fine.

Regardless, I can certainly live with 10 audio tracks worst case if I mux out the foreign tracks. 

Harmy said:

 

I have a different problem though and that is that my BD player only shows ten audio tracks (and for some reason, it shows the 1st nine and the last one). I hope this is just the player's restriction for MKV and not some general BD format restriction. I can't remember if any of my commercial BDs has more than 10 language tracks, but the most I can recall is around 8. This could be why Encore won't import more than 8 tracks. I hope not.

EDIT: I just found a commercial BD that has over 12 audio tracks, so it should be fine.

 

Harmy, I have the same exact issue on my BD player, except it recognizes the first ten tracks, in order. I can't find any BD spec. that limits the number of tracks (not to say that it doesn't exist in some dark corner), so think that it probably is an MKV restriction within the player.

johnlocke2342 said:

 

You can also use TSMuxer (cross plateforme tool) to turn the mkv into a Blu-ray (without the menus of course).

You're right. I had forgotten that TSMuxer has a Blu-ray setting. Thanks for the catch.

box said:

I'm hoping to share out 2.5 via AVCHD on DL-DVD. Will this be possible by simply de-muxing enough audio tracks to reduce the file size or will a re-encode be necessary?

I think you'd be over the size limit if you stripped out all the audio, so a re-encode would be necessary. If memory serves, AVCHD doesn't handle DTS, so AC3 DD would be your options there. 

Why not just use 2.1's AVCHD in this case? It's already compressed and very close to 2.5 in content. 

As a small caution to those who may be burning the MKV right to Blu-ray, be prepared to brick one blank in the event your player requires a Blu-ray spec file structure in order to recognize the file. The physical optical drive on some players might require a very rigid structure within spec to work.

I don't know if my own player would play an MKV directly from disc. My current setup is a small portable Seagate backup drive (1 TB), connected via USB to my Blu-ray player. That works flawlessly, but I am planning to purchase a BRD burner for this and other projects.

I know this might require a little (gasp!) research and (gasp!) work, but the BR file structure doesn't appear to be too complicated. It's not much different from AVCHD, which is why 2.1 worked so well with so many players. For example, there are free programs out there that will mux MKV to .m2ts (TSMuxer), which is used by BRD. That might be the first and most complicated step in making this work on physical disc without compression. Have fun people. Maybe take a shot at designing your own personal menus. I might try that myself and see what I can come up with:)  

With Multiupload, the reason JD(2) is grabbing multiple copies of the same file is because there are multiple (as in multi) sources for them with that service.

On the right side of the screen in JD, you'll see a listing of the various sites. Simply de-select all but one source that has all the files (in my case multiupload.nl), and you're good to go. 37 in all, 500 MB each, the last being slightly over 300. Most importantly, look for 17.9 GB total before instructing JD to start and everything will work. No captchas; just go and have a sandwich and depending on your connection speed, the MKV will be there soon. 

I spot-checked the file last night and it looks fantastic! Thank you, Harmy and all the people who worked hard to make this project a reality. For the first time since I was a 13 year old kid in 1977, I feel like I actually have a Technicolor print of the version I saw in theaters all those years ago. It's beautiful. The added bitrate does give it an edge over 2.1. It looks like film to me, albeit with some of the Lowry Digital "grain" still intact, but grain regardless. The fact that I can see the grain with such clarity is a testament to how clear this version is. Blu-ray has nothing on it, and I'd consider the quality to certainly be on-par with 1080p.

Regarding the color pallette, it seems pretty spot-on to what one would see with Technicolor, which seems to display slightly exaggerated colors due to the dye process. It's certainly more accurate than the "official" versions and looks like a theatrical print to me. Others may argue, but this is what film looks like, folks and until Disney commits the resources to reassemble this version from the OCN in 4K, I can't imagine it getting much better.  

Just finished the download on multiupload.nl and there weren't any captchas. I'd say it's just as fast as uloz.

Definitely "humane."

 chyron8472 said:

Multiupload doesn't use captchas.

How's their DL speed? I was cranking at about 4 Mbps on uloz yesterday. About 60/70 minutes for all 92 parts.

Captchas are a pretty small price to pay for this masterpiece.

I agree with ZerO. This is almost certainly a container error, since having a glitch on every track in the exact same spot is rather unlikely.

Do a test remux from the fixed MKV with a single audio track, take a quick look around 47/48 minutes to see if everything's kosher and all should be fine. 

Zer0Squared said:

Actually, the first thing I did was load it up into mkvmerge last night so I could remove all but one audio track to easily stream it across my wireless network. (I still keep an original around because I like the commentaries, etc) While doing so, I had the very first 5.1 track selected and all others unchecked and started the process.  I noticed that the 'time remaining' kept going up about 1/3 of the way through the process and then I saw the error log window.  It kept repeating at a very fast rate:

"Warning: DTS_Header problem: invalid source PCM resolution"

I let it go and it finally errored out after a few more minutes, unable to continue.

So, I unchecked the 5.1 DTS track and went for Track 5, the 93 LD AC3 version because I really wanted to watch it last night.  Well, it coughed up about 5-6 timecode errors during the re-muxing but said that it was able to recover each one, so I let it go.  

This is just one of them:

"(filename):Error in the Matroska file structure at position 7508142148. Resyncing to the next level 1 element.
The last timecode processed before the error was encountered was 00:45:37.9020000000 .
Resyncing successfaul at position 7517875330" 

I went into our living room to watch on the big screen and at the point ray_afraid mentions above, the screen just blacks out for a moment - then it continues on.  I just thought it was my media box having being glitchy (it's been known to be at times.)

But after I read ray's post, I remembered something happening at that point last night and loaded it up into VLC here on the computer to verify.  At 45:37, I got the black screen at the same point but then....VLC crashed!  Unable to continue playing with just a basic APPCRASH error message.

Maybe we should hold off on putting this out publicly for a moment until the bugs are verified and worked out?

I got the exact same error messages on mkvmerge. Tried stripping all but one of the audio tracks out, with no success.

Same problems here at the exact same spot. Tried muxing it through TSMuxer and got an "invalid H264 NAL unit size. NAL unit truncated."

Originally thought it was my Sony BD Player, since it wouldn't recognize more than the first 10 audio tracks, but VLC choked on the very same spot: 45:37. It skips right to 1:52:15, during the trench battle.

My BD player just freezes and goes back to the player menu. 

I am able to chapter past it, but it crops out 5 minutes of the movie.

I'm certainly willing to seed on MySpleen when the time comes. My UL premium acct is ready to fly at 4.0 Mbps for the initial download. 18 Gig will take a few hours, but I think this will be well worth the wait:)

 DavidMerrick said:

During my spare time I can't help but pop the DVD-9 of v2.1 in and, geez, it's almost hard to believe how good this looks. I mean, it's not surprising seeing that 90% of it is taken from the Blu Ray, but good God it's almost staggering. I can't wait for the scene selection in v2.5 if only so I can skip to the Mos Eisley sequence more easily. :p

 

So again, great work Harmy.

You can easily add chapters into 2.1 yourself by using Handbrake.

New poster, longtime reader. Just wanted to say magnificent work, Harmy! Been enjoying your work for some time now. A big thanks from an admirer.