Best method to rip lossless BluRay to use with PCH 100 series

[kghammond]

Previously I had a XBMC on XBOX and I ripped all my DVD's to lossless ISO. Worked great and works great on PCH as well.

I bought the PCH to get 1080p as xbox is limited to 1080i/720p.

Tonight I tried my first stab at ripping lossless BluRay to mkv to play on the PCH. It didn't fare so well. I first tested using MakeMKV. I ripped the main title only with the best audio track and no subtitles.

The movie was about 16 GB and it started playing just fine then I ran into the stuttering issues.

This test was on a PCH A100, I also have a A110, but I have not been able to test that yet, wife is sleeping. I currently do not have a internal hard drive and I am using NFS over wired ethernet, latest firmware.

From the threads I read, the first challenge is the mkv container. I will only be playing files I rip, so I don't care what the PCH can or cannot do, I want to know what is the best way to rip lossless BluRay for the PCH.

Since there seems to be some software overhead with mkv containers on the PCH, should I avoid ripping to mkv? MakeMKV seemed to be easy and quick to use and it was lossless, but PCH doesn't seem to like it much.

What other lossless solutions are there that the PCH might like better? Are there any downsides to other lossless containers? I originally ripped DVD's to ISO's as that was about as close to the original DVD as you can get. I would prefer to rip BluRay's similarly so that in the future, I can easily burn them back to a BluRay, or future media players will easily be able to read or convert my rips.

Thank You,
Kevin

[kghammond]

Well...

Today I remuxed the mkv I made to a ts and it plays great. Apparently whatever mkv bug, software decoding issues apparently still exist.

TS just works. Now, if I save them all as lossless ts, will I be able to convert them back to a BluRay disc or will I have lost something?

Is MKV the best container to store copies of my original BluRay's on disk? Is there a better way?

Then as far as the popcorn hour, should I only keep the highest audio DTSHD as an example, then let the popcorn hour or my end device downgrade the audio to AC3 or whatever? Will that work or will I have problems?

So far my first test only had AC3. I am trying a BluRay right now with DTS-HD.

Thank you,
Kevin

[chris57]

Follow this guide:-
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/wiki/i...r_Playback

There are a few differences between 100 and 200 series abilities on Bluray. Dont think 100 series has HD Audio in MKV working and PGS subtitles aren't. So go with m2ts and srt subtitles on the 100 series,

[kghammond]

That is a good guide, thank you, especially the audio computability notes.

That wiki doesn't mention anything about why ts versus mkv and the issues at least with the A1x0 series has with mkv containers. Someone should update that container and notate that there are buffering problems with mkv containers on the A1x0 family of products that are related to mkv being software decoded and ts are hardware decoded.

It also doesn't answer my question about converting back to a Blu-Ray disk.

For example, right now we buy our kids movies, rip them to a DVD ISO then burn them back to disk with the main movie over. This way, they auto-play without all the other crap, and they can get scratched to hell. I assume somewhere down the road we may want to do the same thing with BluRay's, but then portable media players may be a better solution anyway. Maybe I don't need to worry about the container as long as it is a lossless container... Hmmm... BluRay is a different world.

Thanks again for the link.

[jj666]

Hello there,

Thank you for the compliments regarding the guide. It's my process since a couple of years or more for both the old A-100 equivalent player, and now with my C-200 player.

For conversion back to Blu-ray, you can take the outputted .TS/.M2TS file and add it to TSMUXER, simply select the Blu-ray disk output and go. This file would then be playable (or burnable) as a full Blu-ray disk for playback on a standalone, or C-200.

If you are keeping the files stored somewhere longterm, I would suggest to keep both the full HD audio and PGS subtitles (the subs won't work on the A-1x0, but they will if you upgrade to a x-2x0 player).

Personally, I keep all of my files still as .TS, as the only thing you lose versus .MKV are the chapters (which is a moot point for me, as skipping around in the movie with the remote works perfectly fine). Single files of course are better for working with YAMJ and similar jukeboxes also.

Cheers,

-jj-

[kghammond]

(08-26-2011 08:04 AM)jj666 Wrote:  Hello there,

Thank you for the compliments regarding the guide. It's my process since a couple of years or more for both the old A-100 equivalent player, and now with my C-200 player.

For conversion back to Blu-ray, you can take the outputted .TS/.M2TS file and add it to TSMUXER, simply select the Blu-ray disk output and go. This file would then be playable (or burnable) as a full Blu-ray disk for playback on a standalone, or C-200.

If you are keeping the files stored somewhere longterm, I would suggest to keep both the full HD audio and PGS subtitles (the subs won't work on the A-1x0, but they will if you upgrade to a x-2x0 player).

Personally, I keep all of my files still as .TS, as the only thing you lose versus .MKV are the chapters (which is a moot point for me, as skipping around in the movie with the remote works perfectly fine). Single files of course are better for working with YAMJ and similar jukeboxes also.

Cheers,

-jj-

Hmm, that is good to know... Well at a minimum that means I need to save my mkv files... Or I need to get mkv's to work on my PCH...

I tested chapters and FF on a ts this morning and of course, no chapters and FF sucked compared to DVD ISO. FF on DVD ISO shows real time GG. The ts kinda paused and then when I stopped FF, it jumped to the new time sequence.

Testing .m2ts next. Maybe it is time to install a internal drive to see if the swap file fixes my mkv issues...

[jj666]

I'm generally using the keypad %'s to skip thru the movie, then FF/REW if I need to fine tune. It's not very often when I need to stop a movie and resume playback later to be honest though, most movies are done in one sitting here, so I don't have much of a requirement on being able to skip around.

Cheers,

-jj-

[kghammond]

For what it is worth, in my A110, I added a internal SATA drive, formatted it, added NMT Apps, disabled them all and my test MKV now plays fine.

ts will still probably play better than mkv, but I have chapters back... FF/REW works at 2x but anything more than that and the screen freezes. Better than the XBMX on XBOX though, you could not even do 2x FF/REW without the screen freezing.

So now I am back to, will software MKV with an internal hard drive be good enough... Or maybe only remux to ts if MKV doesn't work... Sticking with my original goal, lossless in my definition should contain the original chapters as well, so this is probalby my best backup of a BluRay main movie.

Or ts without chapters...

PCH doesn't make this easy. All I wanted is a standalone media streamer that can play native 1080p over the wire. Oh well...

Regardless of everything else, apparently a PCH runs better with an internal hard drive due to the extra swapfile. That would be good to know earlier on in the process.

Now, will YAMJ limit my mkv playback... Right now I am just browsing to the file and playing it.

[kghammond]

Well after further testing.

mkv's suck with the NMT, even with an internal hard drive.

ts is the only way to go for BluRay.

MakeMKV kinda sucks as well, it cannot go straight from MKV to TS. Best method appears to be Clown_BD...

I tested two rips so far, one with TrueHD and another with PCM. With both of them I ripped the unconverted AC3 (Dolby Digital) track as well.

I have one TV setup with 7.1 sound, HDMI audio and all the bells and whistles. That played the TrueHD track on a A110 and the receiver identified it as TrueHD. On the other BluRay, I played the PCM track and the receiver identified it as PCM.

My second TV is setup with 5.1 sound over optical. That one worked with the AC3 track on both rips. It would not work with the TrueHD or the PCM track (PCM was 2 channel). This is a A100.

The third TV is also a A100 using HDMI Audio but the output goes directly to the TV and I currently have it set to Analog PCM in the PCH. That one plays the default track without any problems. I did not try to play the AC3 track and change it to digital. I am not sure if the TV has an internal Dolby Digital DAC.

Anyway, I hope this information helps someone. I have a feeling I may have a rough time going from ts back to BluRay disk sometime in the future, but maybe by that time, I will just put the ts files on some portable player instead of the DVD player in the cars, etc. BluRay has a long way to go yet to replace portable devices...

Thanks again for the good information