Blu-Ray conversions -- Anyone having any success?

[marjamar]

I've been looking for ways to convert my growing library of Blu-Ray discs to my HD library. I have been doing this with DVD's for some time now and want to start a new library on HD for Blu-Ray. I have had limited success with a handful of programs to some degree. But, I have yet to find a fully workable solution which will give me "acceptable" quality (video/audio) in full HD (1080p) with 5.1 Dolby surround sound. I can simply rip the disc to HD and it plays fine, but even though I have alot of TB's to store libraries on, I know that shrinking down about 1/4 their size using x264 still gives very good (almost unnoticeable quality difference) to the few clips I've managed to convert with limited success.

Problems is, I've not been lucky enough to come up with the right combination of settings to produce a fully workable solution. Audio is the biggest problem. I can't get a complete audio to finish encoding. I'm getting buffer over run errors most of the time. I don't know if the problems with my computer, me or just my settings.

Anyone here already converting blu-ray discs? If so, can you post your settings?

[marjamar]

I've have my first full Blu-Ray movie converting since about 8:30 AM. So far it looks promising, with no typical error messages showing up during the conversion. If this works, I'll give my steps and settings used to make it happen. Keeping fingers crossed...

[marjamar]

Well, it bombed out. I can convert timed segments without problems, but as shown below, I got an audio buffer underflow for some reason about 20+ hours into the conversion. This audio buffer problem is sporadic it seems, as it has comes up at different times, with different settings. I thought I had the right settings figured out for this conversion, as I was able to do a larger clip successfully before attempting this full movie conversion -- Guess not.

Anyone have any ideas as to what can be done to keep audio buffer errors squalled?

See log below:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[07-06 08:56:16] Start transcoding job for K:\Blu-Ray Rips\tsRemux Output Files\blank\blank.ts
[07-06 08:56:17] x264 loaded
[07-06 08:56:17] Starting encoder (x264)
[07-06 08:56:17] Starting encoder (FAAC)
[07-07 05:27:10] Audio buffer underflow, decoding thread blocked, encoding thread to exit. [AudioEncodeThread]
[07-07 05:27:10] Waiting for process to terminate
[07-07 05:28:33] Audio buffer overflow, encoding thread blocked. decoding thread to exit. [AudioDecodeThread]
[07-07 05:30:17] Video buffer underflow, decoding thread blocked, encoding thread to exit. [VideoEncodeThread]
[07-07 05:30:27] x264 unloaded
[07-07 05:30:27] Error occurred during video transcoding.
[07-07 05:30:27] Finished transcoding job for K:\Blu-Ray Rips\tsRemux Output Files\blank\blank.ts

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[marjamar]

I kinda feel like Will Smith. You know, in iRobot where he talks to the holograph of his dead friend and engineer, where he has to ask the right questions to get any response.

So, I have to ask "What is the right question"?

Anyway, I'm no closer. I have an ATI video card in this system. I've been thinking of updating it to higher power card, so I bought a nVidia GeForce GTX 470 w/larger PSU thinking maybe CUDA conversion would perhaps make a difference. Not a game player myself, but we do have a couple of simulators which we run on this system from time to time, so this new card will no doubt provide greater speed and realism.

So, I guess we'll see what happens next week when I get the card in and working.

[meRobs]

Based on mixer's last comment, suggest you have a bash at Build 4640.
If this helps please let us know!

[marjamar]

Well I've had the new video card installed, along with the new PSU and system is working fine and fast. I've not had enough time yet to check-out how well CUDA conversions work completely yet, but it seems that it might work as audio buffer underruns/overruns are not happening... yet.

I'm doing a full BR disc right now, and it is converting at lightning speed compared to my CPU conversion. It will have this disc done in 3 hours total. That's about 1/14th the time it would have taken using the CPU to convert. This is a slower computer for sure, but I don't think it would be 14 times slower then a fast computer. That tells me CUDA conversions have to be the way to go... If it works right, that is.

I'll post back after it has finished and I've watched the converted movie.

-Rodger

Added - Here's a screen capture of the conversion in progress.

[marjamar]

Woke up to a finished conversion (transcode) this morning. Played random portions throughout the file and it plays fine. I was amazed to see filesize was only 2.92 GB total. This is with Dolby 5.1 audio at using 48Khz, 128Kbps and 60% quality settings for video using H.264 format and variable bit rate. The overall quality looks nearly like Blu-Ray playing on my Panasonic TC-P50G25 50" Class Viera® G25 Series 1080p Plasma.

I'm doing a second transcode now on a different title at 100% quality settings to see how much sharper/smoother output will be. I did a small test with this setting, and filesize seems it will only be about 10% larger then transcoding at 60% quality.

I am sure happy about this! Glade I was willing to take the chance and buy this expensive upgrade for this older computer.

I hope others may benefit from this thread.

-Rodger

Forgot to add... If you noticed, the CPU load on this JPG shows 80.8%. This isn't the actual load being placed on the CPU for transcoding, just for related overhead and all other computer overhead combined. I can use my computer while transcoding without any degradation in overall speed or response. CUDA is really the way to go doing transcodes. Even though I don't have much experience yet in transcoding Blu-Ray, I have been transcoding/encoding to MPEG using multiple hardware/software encoders/devices for over 12 years and this is the single biggest jump I've seen in overall speed improvements since purchasing my second hardware encoder (Dazzle DVC 100) 10 years or so ago -- Nice!

[StormChaser]

...it is converting at lightning speed compared to my CPU conversion. It will have this disc done in 3 hours total. That's about 1/14th the time it would have taken using the CPU to convert. This is a slower computer for sure, but I don't think it would be 14 times slower then a fast computer.

In the interest of science, would you mind telling us what CPU you have, how many cores it has, and what speed it runs at?

I'm not knocking your efforts or your hardware, but I have a 3-year old PC sitting here with a 3.3GHz dual-core Intel C2D in it that crunches its way through x264 encoding on default settings at CQ=75% at just over 1x real-time, ie, just under 1 hour of transcoding time for every hour of source video. It's only SD (720x576) video I'm transcoding here, but it would be nice to have some apples-to-apples figures to compare.

[marjamar]

...it is converting at lightning speed compared to my CPU conversion. It will have this disc done in 3 hours total. That's about 1/14th the time it would have taken using the CPU to convert. This is a slower computer for sure, but I don't think it would be 14 times slower then a fast computer.

In the interest of science, would you mind telling us what CPU you have, how many cores it has, and what speed it runs at?

I'm not knocking your efforts or your hardware, but I have a 3-year old PC sitting here with a 3.3GHz dual-core Intel C2D in it that crunches its way through x264 encoding on default settings at CQ=75% at just over 1x real-time, ie, just under 1 hour of transcoding time for every hour of source video. It's only SD (720x576) video I'm transcoding here, but it would be nice to have some apples-to-apples figures to compare.

I'm using an hp m7640n Media Center PC. It's about 3 to 4 years old I suppose. Stock CPU (Athlon 64 X2 (W) 5000+ 2.6 GHz) and 4 Gigs of PC2-4200 MB/sec memory. Thing you have to remember here is I am transcoding 1920x1080, back to 1920x1080. You are transcoding from (???) to 720x576. That's 1/5 the byte count, so you could figure it may be nearly 5 times quicker to transcode then 1920x1080 output, if every thing else is the same.

The only full BR movie I tried to transcode using my CPU crashed about 20 hours into the transcode. I'm guessing it was maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds through when it crashed, so that would be 30 or 40 hours of transcoding time. I believe this movie was around 160 minutes, so that would be somewhere around 1.6 to 2.1 fps transcode time using my pc's CPU. The first BR movie I successfully transcoded using CUDA and my new nVidia GeForce GTX 470 was 106 minutes. This transcoded in a just a little under 3 hours, so that would be about 14.2 fps. This would make the actual ratio somewhere around 6.5~9 to 1, not 14 to 1. So, I may be a bit off on my excited guessing, but still 5 to 10 times faster is alot faster just the same.

If you could transcode a BR disc movie into a working BR quality HD (1920x1080) with 5.1 dolby using your PC's CPU then you can do what I can't (or at least couldn't), so for me CUDA was the answer.

-Rodger

[encroder]

Dolby 5.1 audio at using 48Khz, 128Kbps

128kbps really was the original audio quality that bad, to butcher it even further with 128kbps