Trying to combine HD and surround sound

[dgarmaise]

I created a movie in FCP X that is in HD and that has surround sound. Short of burning a blu ray disc, is there some way I can create a file of this movie that I can play on my HD television and home theatre in HD and surround sound? I have a Pioneer BDP-LX55 blu ray player that has media player capability. But I don't see how I can create the proper file. I see no settings in compressor that combine HD and surround sound. Thanks for your help.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Consider buying an TV3. Then export as a ProRes file. Then, run that through Handbrake with the high profile or TV3 preset. This will yield a .m4v file that you can drag into iTunes. TV3 will play this file with Dolby Digital 5.1.

If you are wanting to make a blu ray disc instead, you'll need other software and a BD burner. Many Mac people seem to favor Toast for making BD files.

 

[nateo200]

This is an easy one (at least for me )

You need to create two elementary files. So export as ProRes and it will export the whole video once your done with it with the HD ProRes file + 5.1 channel Linear PCM....now open compressor and drag the ProRes file....select "H.264 for Blu-ray disc" click on it and make any adjustments you need to....it automatically sets the frame rate and resolution as per your video but if you want to lower/increase the bit rate you can.

Now for surround sound. For surround sound Compressor doesn't feature all the proprietary and advanced codecs used on Blu-ray but you can convert to 5.1 Dolby Digital (Lossy) or 5.1 Linear PCM (Uncompressed). For Dolby Digital it should be under disc burning. It should be automatically be selected to 5.1 but click on it to make sure. Make sure its 5.1 with Low Frequency effects should be selected, dialog Norm should be -31dB's (for simplicity). Use Film Standard compression, everything else should be left alone as its set for the best experience. If you ever get serious about editing stuff be sure to check up on how Dolby Digital works and how to encode it...additionally other formats like DTS offer more options as well.

For 5.1 Linear PCM go down to audio formats and select WAVE. Make sure its set to 5.1 channels and not stereo or mono. For sample rate use 48000hz (48khz), thats the standard sample rate for movie audio (44.1khz is for music).
For bit depth I would select 24bit but 16bit will sound pretty much the same. Now send that off to the cue to be converted!

Alternatively you can use Handbrake with the latest build as it can decode and convert ProRes files now and its faster BUT you have to have a little more know-how. For example H.264 for Blu-ray does not allow more than 4 reference frames and some advanced settings as well so you have to be careful for compatibility. If you just select the AppleTV preset (which I believe is still there) it should be fine. Just make sure you go under audio and have the first track as AAC in Mono, stereo, or ProLogicII and the second track as 6-channel discrete AC-3 (5.1 Dolby Digital).

When its done download MkvToolNix/MKVmerge and you can add both files in and combine it as one .Mkv file to play in VLC player. VLC player will let you output multichannel audio. However you have to use HDMI or optical to be able to output the multichannel audio. HDMI can output both 5.1 Linear PCM and Dolby Digital but optical can only output Dolby Digital/DTS. For playing back on a Blu-ray player some players support .Mkv and .M2ts playback from a flash drive or standard data DVD and some don't, mine supports pretty much any format you throw at it in an .mkv or .m2ts format but you'll have to check in your manual either online or the hard copy.

For burning to a Blu-ray, Toast works but I don't like it because 1) After I've spent often hours waiting for Compressor to encode my file to the right standard and request Toast NOT to re-encode it still does it anyways, 2) When it re-encodes my files it does not use surround sound, in fact it only offers LPCM and Dolby Digital in stereo! What a load of crap! For burning what I do for burning to a 25gig BD-R disc is I add my files in TsmuxeR and select Blu-ray disk....I export the combined files and I get the entire Blu-ray disk structure and drag it to the blank Blu-ray disk in Finder and hit burn and it plays in all my drives....you won't get fancy menu's but you will get a disk that will play in anything.

If you have any questions just post back and Ill get back when I can (usually pretty fast). I do this stuff daily so its really not that much of a drag for me.

-Nate

 

[dgarmaise]

Wow, Nate, that is terrific stuff. Thank you so much! Let me have a go at trying to apply it. I am sure I will be back with questions. And thanks, Hobe, too for the ATV 3 suggestion!

 

[dgarmaise]

Wow!

Holy cow, Nate, it worked! Way to go! The video looks and sounds great! I used Compressor, not Handbrake. Somehow, I ended up with the mkv file in NTSC format. Not sure when that happened. I do almost everything in PAL. But it does not seem to matter; my blu ray player plays it and my TV, which is set to PAL, shows it. One thing I found puzzling: When I looked at the .mov file that came out of FCP X, MediaInfoMac shows the number of audio channels as 3. Why is that? Left, right and all other?

 

[dgarmaise]

MKV files that play and those that do not

Nate, you mentioned blu ray players that play mkv files and ones that don't. Mine plays most, it seems. But it doesn't always play them in surround sound even when it should. I have two mkv files, the specs of which are almost identical (DTS codec, 6 channels). The only difference I spot in the specs is the version of mkvmerge that was used to create the files. I remember that this used to be an issue. Is is still an issue? I can post the complete specs.

 

[nateo200]

Nate, you mentioned blu ray players that play mkv files and ones that don't. Mine plays most, it seems. But it doesn't always play them in surround sound even when it should. I have two mkv files, the specs of which are almost identical (DTS codec, 6 channels). The only difference I spot in the specs is the version of mkvmerge that was used to create the files. I remember that this used to be an issue. Is is still an issue? I can post the complete specs.

Oh sorry didn't get email notifications!

Go ahead and post the specs of any stuff you are confused with...I look at media info stuff daily as well...and if your in PAL land sometimes with MKVmerge/MKVtoolnix H.264 streams don't have their FPS available as they should to the merger so you have to go into the settings and specify an fps stream or it auto selects to 24 or 25fps depending on the version. As for the file not playing in surround, try having your player bitstream that data to the receiver...basically makes it so the player is hands off the audio and the receiver does the right stuff. Ive had trouble with surround sound from MKV files on my player, its random and confusing to be honest and Ive read up ALLOT on the stuff even so.

Additionally I may have forgot BUT WAVE does not play nice with files over 4GB's :O basically a pain with big high res audio but pretty usable for short stuff. Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD, etc. have no such limit...however Dolby Digital is unfortunately the limit in terms of cost of what you can encode....DTS encoders...you can find free ones built into some software BUT Dolby is the most ubitquious and small size (but not low quality at all really).

 

[dgarmaise]

On the PAL issue, Nate, the mkvmerge programme gave me a message saying that if I did not set the FPS, it would go with 25 FPS automatically. Since that is what I wanted, I didn't bother setting it. Still not sure why that gave me an NTSC output file... On the mkv files issue, changing the setting to bitstream did not help. But I think you are right: it is random and confusing. I have three mkv files (among others), all in DTS with almost identical specs. One plays fine in surround. The second starts in surround or partial surround and then stops. The third plays throughout in stereo. I suspect that looking at the specs won't help all that much.

 

[dgarmaise]

I have one mkv file that won't play at all... These are the video specs:

Video Stream #1
Codec (Human Name)................................AVC
Codec (FourCC)....................................V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Codec Profile.....................................High@L5.1
Frame Width.......................................1 920 pixels
Frame Height......................................1 080 pixels
Frame Rate........................................23.976 fps
Total Frames......................................74024
Display Aspect Ratio..............................16:9
Scan Type.........................................Progressive
Color Space.......................................YUV
Codec Settings (Summary)..........................CABAC / 5 Ref Frames
QF (like Gordian Knot)............................0.235
Codec Settings (CABAC)............................Yes
Codec Settings (Reference Frames).................5
Video Stream Length...............................51mn 27s 421ms
Video Stream BitRate..............................11.7 Mbps
Bit Depth.........................................8 bits
Video Stream Size.................................4.10 GiB (94%)
Video Encoder.....................................x264 - core 59 r851M e11ef38
Video Encoder (Settings)..........................cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=6 / me-prepass=0 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / fgo=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=11688 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00
Video Stream Language.............................English

 

[nateo200]

I have one mkv file that won't play at all... These are the video specs:

Video Stream #1
Codec (Human Name)................................AVC
Codec (FourCC)....................................V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Codec Profile.....................................High@L5.1
Frame Width.......................................1 920 pixels
Frame Height......................................1 080 pixels
Frame Rate........................................23.976 fps
Total Frames......................................74024
Display Aspect Ratio..............................16:9
Scan Type.........................................Progressive
Color Space.......................................YUV
Codec Settings (Summary)..........................CABAC / 5 Ref Frames
QF (like Gordian Knot)............................0.235
Codec Settings (CABAC)............................Yes
Codec Settings (Reference Frames).................5
Video Stream Length...............................51mn 27s 421ms
Video Stream BitRate..............................11.7 Mbps
Bit Depth.........................................8 bits
Video Stream Size.................................4.10 GiB (94%)
Video Encoder.....................................x264 - core 59 r851M e11ef38
Video Encoder (Settings)..........................cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=6 / me-prepass=0 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / fgo=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=11688 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00
Video Stream Language.............................English

Post the entire specs. Like select "HTML" viewing on media info and copy and paste the whole thing. I'll need to see the audio specs as well. DTS can play games sometimes, I like the codec but if you ever in doubt an AC-3 track (Dolby) is standardized almost in everything. Although I noticed you encoded with 5 reference frames which is above the Blu-ray spec....did you use H.264 for Blu-ray for the video sharing spec? I could be wrong but I had a wise pro Blu-ray author person tell me to stay at 4 or below...video being out of spec can cause sync issues or audio to not play at all...Your video level is also 5.1 too which is pretty high. But it is random like I said...as for it still saying its NTSC, Id manually select 25fps even if it auto defaults...who knows...I believe the creator of the program was a C++ programmer from Germany so I can't see it being "North American biased". But post those specs in the entirety.

 

[ryanf247]

off topic...

Sorry to go off topic but earlier nateo200 mentioned how to burn a blu-ray with 5.1 surround sound without toast. I was wondering if you could go through in further detail of how you do that? I found this link online:

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/20/861769

It causes the final playback on the disc to lag a little bit a few times while playing back. So I was curious if anyone knew of a better way to burn a blu-ray on a mac with 5.1 surrond sound?

Thanks
Ryanf247

 

[nateo200]

Sorry to go off topic but earlier nateo200 mentioned how to burn a blu-ray with 5.1 surround sound without toast. I was wondering if you could go through in further detail of how you do that? I found this link online:

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/20/861769

It causes the final playback on the disc to lag a little bit a few times while playing back. So I was curious if anyone knew of a better way to burn a blu-ray on a mac with 5.1 surrond sound?

Thanks
Ryanf247

Are you playing back on a computer or set top player? Even fast computers will stutter with Blu-ray as it sucks in terms of seeking, rewinding, fast-forwarding, etc. for example. Doesn't make its timecode or whatever available to many players.

Keep in mind you do not get menus with my method but thats okay because the only thing I care about on my Blu-ray discs is the damn feature! haha

You need TsmuxeRGUI. Take your master file for your Blu-ray project and compress it using Apple Compressor 4 or another encoder that creates Blu-ray certified H.264 streams...make sure in Compressor to choose H.264 for Blu-ray disc...Blu-ray can be picky with how things are encoded so using software meant for it is important. Under the bit rate settings depending on your project length you can either leave the bit rate at max quality of adjust the average bit rate...for 1080p you can go from 14-30mbps safely....I've been encoding video since H.264, x264 came out on a regular basis so I've built up a good idea of bit rates. I also rip all my Blu-rays and examined what studios encode and generally I find 2.35:1 movies at 18-25mbps with AVC/H.264 and as high as they can go for 1.78:1 full screen, the bit rate for Blu-ray is honestly overkill most of the time but keeping the movie truer to the original source is important to allot (including myself) so if you can do it! I usually stick to 20mbps or 30mbps if I have space to burn...depends on whether your using a 50GB disc or a 25GB disc...I've only burned to 25GB discs because Ive had dual layers not play nice...I like my Sony Accucores for both DVD and Blu-ray....fewest errors writing and for long term storage...Verbatim comes in second but Verbatim is a top of the line brand for blank media discs. Name speaks for its self!

For audio you have a plethora of options, I happen to have both a Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio encoder but Linear PCM is the same thing just bigger (and Blu-ray can handle it thank God!). In compressor select WAVE file for audio. Drag the droplet to the queue so that you have your H.264 and the WAVE underneath. Select double click on the WAVE and choose your settings, for 5.1 surround make sure its selected. Your options are Mono, Stereo and Surround, surround obviously does 5.1...bit depth can be either 16 or 24bit...theoretically 24bit is better but the human ear can not perceive these differences...plug 16bit saves more space which is important since WAVE files over 4GB's freak out. Second choice is Dolby Digital...drag the droplet into your queue and make sure its set to 5.1..there should be a setting with a negative number like -24 or -27 thats the dialog norm....set it to -31...dialog norm can screw things up sometimes so unless you know what your doing -31 is fine...honestly -27 won't screw much up but I just like keeping it at -31.

Now let all that encode and when its done insert it into TsmuxeRGUI, to do this click add and scroll down to the bottom and select "All files" for whatever reason it doesn't allow you to select certain compatible files without doing this...idk why. Anyways add those in, now there should be options for "TS Muxing, M2ts Muxing, Blu-ray disk, AVCHD disk" select Blu-ray disk and make sure it exports to its own folder...name it like "Blu-ray disc Image file *Insert project name here* or something. Once its done you'll open that and you'll have two folders "BDMV" and "CERTIFICATE" these are the EXACT folders and structure that Blu-rays have...you need to take these files and drag them onto the blank Blu-ray you should have in your Macs Blu-ray burner....so that the root of the Blu-ray disc your going to burn has BDMV and CERTIFICATE in it. Once you burn it to a BD-R it will play on any set top player as everything in that folder is Blu-ray compliant.

EDIT: I'm currently working on a 4K video so my tiny little MacBook's CPU is, as you might expect, going nuts! I will adjust the grammar and what not in there if you have trouble reading it, typed that up in a hurry buts its accurate. Any questions just post, I like to have it all available for people looking for it in the future. I should make a thread on this with pictures and see if the mods would be interested in a sticky...its a very simple but fool proof method to burning a Blu-ray disc with whatever you want in it so long as its compliant...

 

[ryanf247]

Tried to use tsMuxerGUI

I tried to use tsMuxerGUI but it keep on giving me the same message every time I tried to add an item into the program. It said, "Can't detect stream type." So I don't know what else to do really? I used MPEG Streamclip before to Mux together my other Mpeg-2 files and AC3 files. I just don't know if MPEG Streamclip was effecting any of my footage causing it to pixilate or not?

 

[nateo200]

I tried to use tsMuxerGUI but it keep on giving me the same message every time I tried to add an item into the program. It said, "Can't detect stream type." So I don't know what else to do really? I used MPEG Streamclip before to Mux together my other Mpeg-2 files and AC3 files. I just don't know if MPEG Streamclip was effecting any of my footage causing it to pixilate or not?

TsmuxeR is buggy with the latest build of OS X...sort sucks. Unfortunetly its not be developed anymore but someone built a custom build for Lion users. If you would like to try it I can upload it. The "Can't detect stream type" error is common. Sometimes its little things like not selecting "all file types" or "all files" in the import window.

 

[ryanf247]

Yea I made sure I selected "all files" in the import window and it still said "Can't detect stream type." If you could upload that other version you mentioned that would be very helpful.

Thanks
Ryanf247

 

[nateo200]

Yea I made sure I selected "all files" in the import window and it still said "Can't detect stream type." If you could upload that other version you mentioned that would be very helpful.

Thanks
Ryanf247

Sorry man been busy with allot of work. I made this thread a bit ago on Videohelp forums: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/345794-tsMuxeR-crash-s-EVERY-time!?p=2172164#post2172164 the download should be at the end. Couldn't upload the file it was a bit big. Hope that works for ya!