BD RB Beta released! - now at version 0.37.08 (April 23rd, 2011)

I sent him a PM yesterday letting him know that I borrowed some information from his bug thread and he gave it the OK. He'll be along as soon as things get hopping. If anyone has any questions then post them and I'll let him know about them. He's been really busy lately on a project with his real job.

 

I am not sure I agree with that completely....

What TV do you view these on? I have a Sharp 46" 1080p LCD and I can certainly tell the difference when too much compression is used.

I always use a dual layer DVD for 1080p BD rips. There has even been the odd occasion where I have used 2 DVD-9's for a 1080p BD rip (for example a 3 hour+ film). The only time I ever use a single layer disc is for a 720p encode (downloaded media or DTV capture etc.) and even then if it approaches the 2 hour+ mark I consider using a dual layer DVD. This is still much cheaper than burning to BD media. I get my dual layer discs for 80c AUD, which is 58c US.

I am very familiar with the x264 encoder settings and I am confident that I am able to set up the encoder for optimum quality (I have a download link for my MeGUI/x264 profiles on the thread link in my sig). However, with that said, too much compression and you start to lose detail. The picture will still look sharp and much better than regular DVD but I prefer to keep it as close to having as much detail as the original BD as possible... But each to their own.

Also, after my recent Home Theater overhaul (photo's in my profile) lossy audio is starting to sound well... Lossy. The lossless track just sounds so much cleaner and defined. I can't wait for the price of BD media to come down. The best I have found is $12 AUD ($8.65 US). When they are closer to the $5 mark, I will consider using them then.

 

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I am not sure I agree with that completely....

What TV do you view these on? I have a Sharp 46" 1080p LCD and I can certainly tell the difference when too much compression is used.

52 inch Samsung 1080P. I'm curious, at what bitrate do you re-encode at?

I don't. Before I burn a disc I pre check it for quality on 24" S-PVA 1080P PC monitor.

Your familiarity with X.264 is not in question here. You do lose quality but at what point can one truly see the difference? Most true X/H.264 Mpeg4 BD discs use more bit rate than is need to achieve quality 1080P picture quality. I suspect that part of the reason is to prevent copying. If that's so then at what bitrate should one re-encode a BD movie. I find that under 20 mbps is more than adequate for 1080P, in fact I choose a bit lower than that when I re-encode.

Am I saying that there is no loss? Nope! I know there is but if I can run two instances of an original along side a re-encode and I have to stare to see the differences, then why should I spend an extra $1.75 on a dual layer disc? My rule of thumb is 2 hours and down goes to a single layer disc. If the movie is 2 hours or more then I check the original to make certain that it's not an mpeg 2 BD disc.

Audio is definitely an area that I choose to save disc space with, and I do it for a reason. Most people's systems can't reproduce the quality differences between HD Audio and 640 Kpbs. In fact it is down right hard to find a system today that can, and even if it could the vast majority of people couldn't hear the differnces anywat. They might hear a difference but in a blind test they couldn't tell you which one is better. If a 640 Kpbs audio track is better mixed than an HD track, then the 640 kpbs track is going to sound better. Most people think that the high frequencies determine the quality so the one that sounds brighter is usually the one they pick. So what happens if the 640 Kpbs mix sounds brighter than the HD mix?

I am a trained and one time certificated studio engineer (although out of the studio for a number of years now) and before that a professional musician, and the first thing that one realizes is that there is no such thing as a lossless format. There is loss converting acoustical energy to electrical energy, during the recording/capture process, and then more through time delays, compressors, and digital reverbs' just to start. Then a final mix is made before transferring to CD, and by then we end up with about a 50% loss.


I appreciate your disagreement and respect you view, but for it to be completely true it would have to assume that view is wrong. I wouldn't suggest anything to anyone that I didn't think had merit.

 

does dvd-5 SL use 720p or is it 1080p

 

The media is not a factor in the format.

1080P is just the picture being in 1920x1080 progressive scan format.

The media does however determine the amount of compression required to fit the movie onto the new media, and as such possible loss of quality.

Once played back, it will only work at 1080P on a compatible display, anyt display of lower res will only display the picture in that displays native format.

 

I am burning in native BD/AVCHD format. As someone who is experienced in h264 encoding targeted for Blu-ray structure you should be quite familiar with bitrates etc. and I shouldn't really need to state this but I will break it down further below.

A single layer disc holds 4,483MB, allowing for the approximate 6% header that the Blu-ray structure requires leaves 4,214MB of usable media space. If you were to re-encode a movie that is 1 hour 45 mins in length and have a single layer DVD as your target. Using Dolby Digital @ 640Kbs, you would be left with a video bitrate of 4,967Kbs. That to me is nowhere near enough bitrate to keep all the detail from a 1080p BD source and that is not even considering the discs that use 1536Kbs DTS audio as the core track (which would restrict video bitrate even further).

I am saying that I don't need to stare to see the differences, but as I mentioned earlier we are all different. A 35Mbs original down to a 5Mbs recode has it's obvious degradation. If we were to use a dual layer disc as I do for my above example, then that would allow for a video bitrate of 9,558Kbs (instead of the 4,967Kbs that a single layer disc would allow) which I feel is a far more acceptable bitrate for such a high quality source.

In regards to the cost of dual layer discs, I know three shops that I can get Ritek DVD+/-R DL's for 80c AUD/58c US (as mentioned earlier) so I don't see it as a budget buster to retain that extra level of quality.

Mine can.... If we were to go back a week then I would say that I couldn't hear the difference but since my Home Theatre upgrade I can certainly hear a difference between lossy and lossless audio tracks. The difference is as noticeable as mp3 vs. CD. With that said, until the price of BD media comes down that is one sacrifice I am prepared to make. I will extract the regular Dobly Digital/DTS core for the time being, or A) Just play them straight from my hard drive with my Home Theatre PC, or B) Enjoy the original BD discs I own with lossless audio.

Wouldn't it be fair to say that if we are comparing a lossless track vs. a lossy track from the same BD disc, that they were mastered with the same mixing? All we are talking about here is compressed audio algorithms and what they discard in order to save space vs. having an audio track that is sonically identical to the studio master (after transfer).

I am fully aware of this. So why add to all this by further degrading quality with compression algorithms?

I am sorry but I didn't quite follow that last part. Please accept my apology for my lack of comprehension. I would like to say that all that I have stated above is simply my point of view. I am not expecting that you will share this. It is obvious that you are quite strongly set about the way you do things. However, I do feel that it is only fair for the benefit of other AfterDawn Members that they are able to gather other viewpoints in order to form their own way of doing things.

 

tsMuxeR has a pretty good split feature. After your video stream is encoded (as a whole) mux to m2ts splitting half way, then take those m2ts' and either burn, or make AVCHD discs.

 

Downloaded, will give it a try.

Thanks for the info.

 

Any idea when a stable version of BD-RB will be out for use ?

I am very interested and will need a new fasrt quad core buit for the purpose.

 

I've found the release linked from this thread totally stable so far.

No problems opening running or closing, and the rest of the system is as stable as before.

Running Vista 32 Home Premium SP1 with all latest patches.

 

i have the quad core prcessor but it is 6600
bd-rb would take atleast
i tried using i robot movie only by usin ftsmuxer rip the movie it came under 27gb and then use bd-rb to 25gb which came under 19.20gb physical and i wish i can put more like 21gb or 22gb physically it would be perfect its like 0-5 percent shrink i can handle it
it took 6hours
i know with menu it would take a bit imean 20hours long

i have two concerns:
one is i saw traget size which will be very good i know they will release in future version

second on eis as far as i know theres is no software that can keep true-hd ot hd-ma audio i wish bd-rb would release that too
GOOD JOB GUYS

 

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The bitrate is correct as far as average bitrate is concerned but you're missing two points. The first is thatH/X.264 is 3 to 4 times more efficient than mpeg 2, the second is that the bitrate is not a constant but a variable. The Peak bitrate for a 2 hour movie as set by BD RB on a single layer disc is 17,500kbs which more than enough for 1080P.

Post the link to those deals, I could always use a good deal on dual layer discs although I've experienced compatibility issues on standalone playback using their dual layer discs in the past.

Remember that's only 5mbs average but few encoders use CBR. When bitrate is redistributed the peak bitrate is much higher where it's needed (17.5mbs). When a BD movie is originally encoded the people setting up don't sit down and decide to run it at 35 mbs because that's what's needed. Once they've calculated the content and all the extras the encoder decides on bitrate based on available space. I do movie only backups but jdobbs is working on providing all the extras as well. His basic philosophy is to make it simple enough to be useable by those who aren't well versed in DVD or BD backup.

As I've previously stated, in a blind test very few people can tell you which of two mixes is better, HD audio or 640Kbs, which is by the way superior in quality to standard CD quality which is classified as lossless. 100% if all forms of recorded audio are lossy. There is no such thing as lossless. The original source for many of those discs that sport HD audio generally come from a source that is inferior to AC3 640 kbs.

Nothing to be sorry for, I am the typo king. I keep reminding myself that I should use a word processor first but it takes too long for me to post. I am typing this reply directly as well.


Below is my message with a few dyslexic letter placements. As a musician I played lead guitar and the left hand always precedes action from the right hand. This often causes me to type some letters in the wrong order such as beat for beta.

 

With all due respect, I am not "missing" any points. I have been playing around with digital media long enough to know the efficiency of a codec. I often tout the same words that you are right now, albeit against a different argument.

I am fully aware how peak bitrate works but if the average bitrate is not high enough, often times the encoder will starve the film of bits during certain scenes to the point where it easily becomes visually perceivable.

Yes, h264 is 3-4 time more efficient. However, BD's provide 6 times the pixel count.

DVD (720 x 480) = 345,600 pixels.
BD (1920 x 1080) = 2,073,600 pixels.

2,073,600 / 345,600 = 6.

Even most DVD's have an average bitrate of about 6Mbs.

Having 6 times the amount of pixels using a codec 3 times as efficient, still leaves us with the mathematical resultant of needing to allocate twice as many bits as the average DVD (MPEG2) bitrate.

Here's one... http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf

They seem to have listed $26 for a 25 pack ($1.04 each) of dual layer DVD's. I recall paying about $20 dollars last time. Maybe the price has increased since new year or they were feeling nice that day.

I think we have gone a bit off track here. All I wanted to point out earlier (for the sake of other AfterDawn members who may be interested in others experiences) was that I don't agree that a single layer DVD is enough for a 1080p movie only recode. I still stand by that view. I think we will have to agree to disagree here.

For movies, of course Dolby Digital is the better choice as it provides a 6 channel track. However, for music I haven't felt the same way. I have listened to a few music DVD's, and you can give me the CD instead any day. CD audio is lossless. Although it is lossless at 44.1kHz, 16 bit Stereo (Linear PCM @ 1411kbs). That being said, wouldn't a 8 channel, 24 bit, 192kHz track (as that is what the Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD MA tracks offer on Blu-ray) be considered superior to a 6 channel Dolby track @ 640kbs, 48kHz, 16 bit?

?? So you are saying that the claims from Dolby and Digital Theater Systems saying that their HD audio tracks are bit for bit identical to the studio master is just marketing and propaganda?

Even if that were true, the source is still the source. If you re-encode it with a lossy codec, it is going to further degrade regardless. It's always best to keep as much quality as possible.

If you had a mp3 at 192kbs, and then re-encoded it again at 192kbs, it is going to further lose quality and sound far worse than if you re-encoded it with a lossless encoder the second time around.

Ok, I don't mean to sound arrogant or rude but I feel this is where we may need to discontinue this conversation. We are straying too far off topic. I would like to reiterate that I am simply expressing my view for others to share. I didn't intend to enter into any kind of debate. Please excuse me if that is the way it seemed.

I am looking forward to seeing the progress of BD Rebuilder. Let's hope that in the future it can be the DVDShrink (with higher quality recoding) of the Blu-ray World. :-D

 

If it only ends up being the DVD Shrink of the BD world 'I'll certainly be giving it a miss'.
Shrink was a good tool for backing up DVDs but was no where near as good as DVD Rebuilder was/is.

If it ends up as good as DVD Rebuilder currently is for DVD, then it will be the only real choice for people that want to do backups, and want the best available solution that allows removal of content, and allows media change.

At the end of the day, its only a backup tool, if anyone really needs/wants only the best graphics and audio, then they need to be playing the original discs, then it only comes down to how good the film is and the how good the system you're playing it on is.

 

I meant it in way that was easier to understand for those newer to this scene that can relate to DVDShrink in terms of ease of use and popularity.

I am sure that I don't need to relay the facts that I understand about the gains made with proper 2 pass encoding. I have also had my fair share of experience with Cinema Craft Encoder and rebuilding DVD's manually. In fact I never really used DVD Rebuilder, I have always preferred a more hands on approach.

This will change when BD-25's become more affordable and 1080p TV's are considered the norm. I am really looking forward to being able to keep the lossless audio and only re-encoding the video if necessary to fit onto a BD-25 (that's if the movie only rip exceeds 25GB).

 

I didn't mean you personally I meant that they were missing from your post.

That's true in movies that are continuous action from beginning to end and for those I would recommend a dual layer disc. That's why I recommend mounting and playing back the result to check for errors. Out of 20 movies I ran into only one that clearly displayed visual artifacts. The rest appeared pretty much as the original and since I own originals of all my discs I can rerun a comparison anytime.

Again bitrate is not a predetermined need set before encoding, it is a calculated result based on available space.

If MPEG2 was encoded to fit a 25 Gb disc then it too would be capable of 1080P. As you know many BD discs are encoded in MPEG2 with 1080P, especially the earlier ones. This would have us taking a format that has about a quarter of the efficiency of MPEG4, increasing the Pixel count from 720 X 480 to 1920 X 1080. If this is true then why is it so hard to believe that the inverse can also be true (with the exception of lowering pixel count)? As you also know 720 X 480 was chosen back in a time when only type 5 discs were available. Using Mpeg4 one could encode a movie with the same specifications as an MPEG2 movie to a 1.46 GB mini DVD-R with the same quality. The biggest problem facing a BD single layer recording isn't pixels but disc spin rate, a problem I've overcome by building my own BD system. Many BD systems can only play dual and single layer disc at about 2X to 3X which can cause stutter when playing high bitrate content. This is why many of us choose to lower bitrate regardless of whether we are recording to single or dual layer.

I've accepted that this is how you feel about it, but you chose to post your disagreement in another forum and thread to disagree with a statement that I made. This implies that I am lying to members which I am not. I have many 2 hour BD movies successfully reencoded to single layer disc with full 1080P quality and no visual artifacts. I also know dozens of others including jdobbs himself who has made the same claim.

Quote jdobbs

There is no such thing as lossless. When we refer to lossless we are referring to lossless as it is perceived by humans. All (100%) recorded of audio formats are lossy. For instance 640 kbs DVD audio is as superior to standard 44.1 Khz PCM CD format as H/X.264 is to MPEG2. For those that would like an outside opinion regarding sound follow the link below. I think that you might be surprised, and remember that they're using equipment that none of us could ever afford in a listening environment that none of use could ever own.

http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby_TrueHD_DTS-MA_versus_Uncompressed_PCM?page=0,0

It's evident that this debate has taken over this thread, but it shouldn't have, and the DVD Shrink analogy was an unfair one. My intent was never to insist that anyone use single layer disc over a dual layer disc it was just to report my actual experiences doing it.

A little note on bitrate.

105 minutes (the length of a 1:45 movie) times 60 seconds equals 6300 seconds

Size of a single layer DVD is 4,700,000,000 GB or 37,600,000,000 bits and that divided by the number of seconds comes to 5,968,253 bits per second or rounded to 5968 Kbs, and 5968-640 kbs for a surround AC3 sound track comes to 5328. Minus 6% overhead we get 5008.32 kbs. This is as you know the average bitrate of the movie, but we also know that Blu-Ray is not a constant but a variable bitrate (VBR). For those who don’t understand this means that bitrate changes throughout a movie depending on how much is required to encode a specific set of frames. Where little is happening in a movie bitrate can be lowered and still produce excellent video results. This in turn allows for the redistribution of the remaining bits to more complex video scenes that require a higher bitrate. This would be enough bitrate to produce decent video quality with standard DVD mpeg 2, but H/X.264 is about 4 times more efficient than a standard mpeg 2. If we set the peak bitrate to 17,500 (which has been tested many times) we are able to fit most under two hour BD movies to a single layer disc with stunning 1080P quality.

 

A small addendum

Ritek makes a decent single layer disc but their dual layer discs have a terrible track record. I still have some unused ones sitting on a shelf because I stopped using them two years ago. They might be down to $.80 a disc but once the coasters start adding up then the costs goes up. For dual layer discs I use Verbatim almost exclusively because I have never had a bad burn with them. Unfortunately they are around $2 a disc.

I can find Ritek for $.80

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817132395


Verbatim will cost you more but you will get more. I'm betting that Ryu doesn't use Ritek either.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...escription=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

 

Sophocles, the MII disc don't fair as well as the MIS or MIT disc

 

True, but since I have yet to burn a dual layer coaster with Verbatim I feel more comfortable with purchasing them. I've also had successful burns with Ritek dual layer that still couldn't be read by some DVD players. Which discs do you feel comfortable with?