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Converting Blu Rays?

roidy said:
Just nit picking but your Avatar subs are the wrong color, they should be yellow. What you need to do is in BDSup2Sub under the settings menu select 'Swap Cr/Cb', this will make them look wrong in BDSup2Sub but correct once encoded in Handbrake.

Also the frame you have posted seems to be a lossless 1.6meg PNG file but it looks horriblely compressed and soft, what Handbrake settings did you use? and what bitrate did the file turn out to be?

I've said it before I always use a deblocking setting of -1,-1 in Handbrake because I think Handbrake creates encodes that are far to soft and blurry.
Click to expand...

It's just a screengrab from VLC. From my experience, when taking a quick screengrab in VLC, quality is never indicative of how good the video actually looks.

I just use the Universal setting. The quality is superb on my HDTV. I don't worry about fine-tuning the settings, I'm perfectly happy with the preset. Bitrate is a little over 5,188Kbps.

As for the subs being the wrong color, thanks for the info.

*I tried your info regarding subtitles. Used BDSup2Sub, clicked on the option you told me... forced subs are still blue.
 
Ripping my first Bluray right now, and I'm still way unclear about the forced subtitles issue.

A forced subtitle is one necessary to understand the movie in it's native language, right? Such as the aliens (or whatever they are) in Avatar.

The Mac workflow strips them out?

Is there a way to tell if a movie has/needs them without watching it first? Maybe an online BR database built by a community of rippers?

Thanks.
 
As a follow-up to my own questions...

I notice that MKV gives you the opportunity to choose which subtitles to include, and has a "forced only" option. Handbrake seems to offer to choose "Forced only" and "Burned in" on the "Subtitles" tab.

Wouldn't that fix all our woes?

The movie I was ripping actually had two sets of subtitles for each language in MKV...

English
- Forced Only
Spanish
- Forced Only
French
- Forced Only
English
- Forced Only
Spanish
- Forced Only
French
- Forced Only

Why? And would you include both English Forced Only?
 
I've ripped a couple of movies and they've all worked fine. I did one yesterday and only the audio would play in VLC and Handbrake gave me a 'no valid format' error. Any ideas what I did wrong?
 
You got no picture in VLC? Your video is probably interlaced VC-1 video, which is a tough format. I installed Shark 7 windows codecs for windows 7, but the file plays back choppy. Handbrake can't read the mkv. When I convert to mpg, it still plays back choppy and the mp4 Handbrake creates also plays back choppy.

I've read tons of threads/posts on the subject but have had no luck in converting the problematic Blu-Ray.
 
rayward said:
Call up the picture settings dialog box, either from the menu bar or by hitting CTRL-Apple Command-P. You will then see the controls to change the resolution.
Click to expand...


Do I have to be using a nightly build, because I do not see anything in the picture settings, nor does the key command work. This is what it looks like for me:
 

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The.316 said:
Do I have to be using a nightly build, because I do not see anything in the picture settings, nor does the key command work. This is what it looks like for me:
Click to expand...

My friend, the resolution settings are the heigh and width. So for 1080p you would set the width to 1920 and for 720p you would set the width to 1280.
 
Mac In School said:
Ripping my first Bluray right now, and I'm still way unclear about the forced subtitles issue.

A forced subtitle is one necessary to understand the movie in it's native language, right? Such as the aliens (or whatever they are) in Avatar.

The Mac workflow strips them out?

Is there a way to tell if a movie has/needs them without watching it first? Maybe an online BR database built by a community of rippers?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The issue is that forced subtitles have whats called a forced flag which when set properly to yes tell the player (VLC, WMP, Boxee, AppleTV, etc) to play the subtitle track (called forced) at the appropriate times. Unfortunately this "flag" is not necessarily supported by all players the same way, especially when you start changing from the original containers into MKV, MV4, etc. As an FYI, some movies like the Godfather "burn in" their forced subtitles into the video file and thus there isnt even a separate subtitle track to worry about.

What handbrake allows, is for you to take a forced subtitle track that you extracted and instead of just making it the default subtitle track (this would be the one the player looks for first) and also the forced track (so if you have subtitles turned off on your player, with a forced flag it the player will auto play them thus you dont have to worry about turning on subtitles for certain movies), Handbrake allows you to "burn in" the subtitle forced track and thus avoid the issue completely and free you from having to worry about compatibility.

Any many people here do not need/want any subtitle track unless it is forced so the issue becomes properly extracting the correct forced subtitle track. And a disc may have multiple forced subs based on diff languages and various versions of the video (ie original, alt ending, commentary versions, etc). Per my other thread which you have seen, i have found that EAC3toGUI Plus is the easiest/best at auto extracting the forced subs and hence why i use it. That way, if it pulls a sub, i am very confident it is the correct one and thus I ALWAYS burn in the subs in handbrake (to be safe, i actually check all 3 options - default, forced, burn in).

Lastly, is someone over at AVS who was keeping a list of all movies with forced subs. Dont know how often it is updates, but FWIW

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t8Xb85eyNFtZ3vaNK8gqkbQ&single=true&gid=0&output=html

and also

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pPHEQXreaojFzWEoVbULwQA&hl=en#gid=0
 
Sky Blue said:
I've ripped a couple of movies and they've all worked fine. I did one yesterday and only the audio would play in VLC and Handbrake gave me a 'no valid format' error. Any ideas what I did wrong?
Click to expand...

That has something to do with some of the subtitle / alternate language tracks. If you rerip the title in MakeMKV but deselect everything but the DD/DTS English track and then encode you will not get the error. Seems to happen only with early Blurays.
 
canyonblue737 said:
That has something to do with some of the subtitle / alternate language tracks. If you rerip the title in MakeMKV but deselect everything but the DD/DTS English track and then encode you will not get the error. Seems to happen only with early Blurays.
Click to expand...

Thanks, i'll give that a go tonight. It's a BBC Blu-Ray from Jan 2011.
 
The.316 said:
Do I have to be using a nightly build, because I do not see anything in the picture settings, nor does the key command work. This is what it looks like for me:
Click to expand...

That's the correct box. As dhy said, you adjust the width and height to 1280 x 720, set Anamorphic to "Custom" and make sure that "Keep Aspect Ratio" is checked. That's it. The result looks great!
 
I am having a problem with the subs on "Hero" - the Tarantino/Jet Li movie from 2002.

I used MakeMKV and the subs ripped fine as I can play the rip in VLC and the subs show just fine. When I convert it using Handbrake, the subs do not carry over.

Not sure how to get them to "stick."
 
rayward said:
That's the correct box. As dhy said, you adjust the width and height to 1280 x 720, set Anamorphic to "Custom" and make sure that "Keep Aspect Ratio" is checked. That's it. The result looks great!
Click to expand...

Would the size of the original video prevent me from changing the resolution? I cant change neither the width or the height to the 1080p size. It allows me to change it only to 768 i believe.
 
The.316 said:
Would the size of the original video prevent me from changing the resolution? I cant change neither the width or the height to the 1080p size. It allows me to change it only to 768 i believe.
Click to expand...

I've never upscaled an encode, but when downscaling from a 1080p source, simply use the up/down arrows to change the width, height and anamorphic settings as previously advised, and Handbrake will do the rest.

I have done this hundreds of times, and the output through Apple TV on my 55" LCD looks fantastic.
 
rayward said:
I've never upscaled an encode, but when downscaling from a 1080p source, simply use the up/down arrows to change the width, height and anamorphic settings as previously advised, and Handbrake will do the rest.

I have done this hundreds of times, and the output through Apple TV on my 55" LCD looks fantastic.
Click to expand...

Ok, let me explain to you what I did. I saw the thread, and I wanted to create a custom preset for HD content. When I opened a source, I just chose the first video I saw, which was a 50 second clip of something. I chose it just so I can change the resolution, then save it as a new preset. Im thinking because the clip was so small, resolution size and storage size, it wouldnt let me configure it to 1080p. Im thinking I will just rip a blu ray movie I have, then try it out then, and see if that works.

Sorry for the confusion. Im not trying to upscale anything. I can get the hang of things like this pretty quickly, I just get stuck on things sometimes. I appreciate the help.
 
The.316 said:
Ok, let me explain to you what I did. I saw the thread, and I wanted to create a custom preset for HD content. When I opened a source, I just chose the first video I saw, which was a 50 second clip of something. I chose it just so I can change the resolution, then save it as a new preset. Im thinking because the clip was so small, resolution size and storage size, it wouldnt let me configure it to 1080p. Im thinking I will just rip a blu ray movie I have, then try it out then, and see if that works.

Sorry for the confusion. Im not trying to upscale anything. I can get the hang of things like this pretty quickly, I just get stuck on things sometimes. I appreciate the help.
Click to expand...


OK, you lost me. You can create a preset in Handbrake, and it doesn't matter how long the clip is in run time. The issue with Apple TV (which is what I think / thought we were discussing) is that it can accept only iTunes-friendly formats, subject to them meeting certain other requirements. An encode that will play in iTunes will not necessarily play on an Apple TV.

If you have a Blu Ray rip that's 1080p, and you want it to play on an Apple TV, you have to downscale it to 720p and make sure that the bit rate doesn't go crazy (it rarely does if you encode it with the appropriate settings). Handbrake's Apple TV preset will try to control the bit rate, but will default to DVD quality, not HD. To get HD, you have to go into the picture settings, and force the width x height to be 1280 x 720, setting anamorphic to "Custom" and checking the "Keep Aspect Ratio" option. If you do this, you will get a 720p HD file that will play beautifully on your Apple TV.

The Apple TV preset will create an AC3 passthru track for true 5.1 sound...if one is available. If not, that's a whole nother issue that requires additional steps of the use of a potentially unstable "nightly build" of Handbrake. That stuff is discussed at length elsewhere on this board.

If you are trying to encode a DVD, the Apple TV preset works fine without any tweaks.
 
Can anyone help a ripper novice?

I have attempted to rip some of my Blu Ray collection for the first time this weekend, using MakeMKV and Handbrake (nightly build).
I have used the Apple TV preset, with "Picture Settings" set to 1280x720, as suggested by others on this forum.

Some rips have been successful, including American Gangster, and 2012, although I have to figure how to to the subtitles in that one.

However in my last rip, "Master and Commander", although the picture is very good, the sound is "juddering" if you know what I mean.

Any idea what might be causing this?

I have tried playing it in VLC, Quicktime, and iTunes, all with same effect.

Thanks for any advice.
 
Clarify

Alot of information to digest here. But I still have questions:

Tommy stated best setup was this:
Add this to the advance tab:

cabac=0:ref=2:me=umh:b-adapt=2:weightb=0:weightp=0:vbv-maxrate=9500:vbv-bufsize=9500

Change the resolution to 1280 x 720

Anamorphic setting: Custom

Check: Keep aspect ratio

Here is my senireo though:

Apple TV (1st Gen) connected to 32" LED (780p)
Apple TV (2nd Gen) connected to 42" Plasma(1080p)
iPad
Dolbly Digital Reciever

I do encode telling it to pull AAC and passthrough AC-3 so it has audio for both Dobly Digital 5.1 Sound and Stereo sound for iPad.

If I encode using the High profile, then make the changes Tommy states turns out great for ATV2 and is playable on iPad. However the play back on the ATV1 is grainey, and the screen seems to go light and dark. Cloud scences(Harry Potty Blue-Ray) Seems very pixelated and not very smooth.

Any sugestions? Do I need to rip a HD version amd a SD version? If so what settings?

To rip a DVD do you leave all the settings the same except change resolution?

Also trying to use MakeMKV for first time and only selecting 1 title anytime i try to open the source from (Nightly build) of handbrake i get No Title(s) found error.

This is my 3 go around on this. LOl I ripped over 300 of the 1200 I have using DVDFab, and realized on stereo sound, changed to Handbrake with DVDPasskey for decoding it and I get AAC and AC-3, but now want better video quality.

Drive space is not issue and well as computer i7 with 8 gig memory..

Eveey movie i have encode with above setings I get invalid error 2401 invalid sample description and file wont open.
 
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