Exactly what format is ideal for ripping Blu-ray

[jishaq]

Hey guys, happy holidays!

When I rip my Blu-ray discs, I'd like to perform all of the transcoding at the time of ripping. That way, when I stream to PS3 Media Server, there is no transcoding necessary: It simply streams the audio and video without any CPU overhead. Since I have Gigabit ethernet, which should be more than sufficient for streaming this content in real time, hopefully this will eliminate skips / stutters that are caused when the transcoding buffer starves because my CPU can't keep up with the movie.

Can someone tell me, exactly what formats do I need to transcode my Blu-rays into for Audio and Video, which are "native" for PS3 Media Server and thus require NO TRANSCODING AT ALL? I would like the quality to be as close to "lossless" as possible. I've made some assumptions based on a note that shows up in "Transcoder Settings" that reads, "...video is automatically transcoded and muxed to a MPEG-PS / AC3 audio (highly compatible on PS3)".

It seems Audio should be Dolby Digital AC-3 5.1, 640kbit/s, 48 kHz. Questions:
* I see that PMS has "Keep DTS audio in stream" option. But I understand that the PS3's File Mode player natively supports only AC-3, AAC, MP3, and 2-channel WMA. Not DTS. Therefore I am not sure what the point of keeping the DTS stream would be -- is it discarded by the PS3? Does PMS transcode it? Am I wrong, and PS3 File Mode actually does support DTS?

It seems Video should be MPEG-PS container format. Questions
* But exactly which video codec is this? I understand Blu-ray spec requires a video codec from one of the three:
Codec 1) MPEG-2 Part 2
Codec used on regular DVDs, allowing backwards compatibility
Least efficient

Codec 2) H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Most common and most efficient
Developed by MPEG, Sony and VGEC

Codec 3) SMPTE VC-1
Microsoft
PS3 can't handle this natively; must re-encode to one of the other two first

Please help me understand which audio and video codec to use when I rip, to eliminate any PS3 Media Server transcoding. Thank you!

[jishaq]

I discovered this URL just now, which is listing what I assume to be the native codecs of PS3 File Mode (as opposed to PS3 Blu-ray / AVCHD Mode):

http://manuals.playstation.net/document ... types.html

I only see two items in the big list that include AC3 Dolby Digital, one of the more common (and required) Blu-ray audio stream formats:

MPEG-2 PS (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AAC LC, AC3(Dolby Digital), LPCM)
MPEG-2 TS（MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AC3（Dolby Digital）, AAC LC）

But it appears that MPEG-2 PS is a container format, and not an actual codec. Now I'm totally confused, because I thought .m2ts was the container format to use to avoid having PS3 Media Server perform transcoding or remuxing.

[jishaq]

Another way of asking this question, I think.

What format does a Bluray rip need to be in, in order for PS3 Media Sever not to have to remux or transcode it? I've been slowly googling the web for the past week and have not found an answer. I'm surprised nobody here knows off the top of their head? Maybe I should start looking through the source to see under what conditions the "[MEncoder]" doesn't appear next to a movie on my PS3, which I assume means no transcoding nor remuxing.

-Jeff

[jenkles316]

Container: .m2ts
Video Codec: h.264 - Lossless, most blurays are h.264 if VC-1 re-encode to h.264
Audio Codec: lpcm - lossless and uncompressed. Its a large file but it's doable.

[Mandrake981]

Hi Jeff,

I've actually been doing this for some time with the Playstation 3 Media Server and a few other tools. I run Linux (Ubuntu) natively on my media server, and have a couple Blu-Ray drives and a DVD drive for ripping my movies to encode. I have a Windows 7 virtual machine set up on the system (using VirtualBox) which I use to rip the Blu-Ray discs (since the only thing that will rip them reliably is AnyDVD HD - which is a little expensive, but if you can afford it it works great for ripping them). Then I use HandBrake to encode the Blu-Ray to MP4 format (I use the HandBrake CLI due to the fact I can script it) - my settings are below (they might not be optimal, but they stream perfectly across a 100MB network connection and I never have skips):

Code: Select all

HandBrakeCLI --input "$INPUT" --output "$OUTPUT" --encoder x264 --vfr --audio 1 --main-feature --aencoder faac --ab 384 --aname English --drc 2.0 --arate Auto --mixdown dpl2 --format mp4 --large-file --loose-anamorphic --markers --two-pass --optimize --turbo --quality 14

This gives me Blu-Ray quality video, and the audio is mixed down to Dolby Pro Logic 2 (which is about the best sound I could get out of an encoded file, since, as I understand it, MP4 containers don't allow for HD audio, and even if it did I don't believe the PS3 would play it unless it's actually coming from a Blu-Ray disc). The $INPUT above would be the topmost directory of the Blu-Ray rip, and the $OUTPUT would be the name of the Blu-Ray file (whatever.mp4). This takes some time to encode (usually at least 12 hours on a dual core AMD), and the output file is rather large, but it's awesome quality and streams perfectly.

HandBrake is a great piece of encoding software - though they say they don't natively support Blu-Ray, I haven't found a Blu-Ray yet that it couldn't encode. There are other things you could use if you had issues, but will only elaborate on that if you have issues.

Give this a try, and feel free to shoot me an email if you have issues.

--
Take care,
Randall

[jishaq]

Brilliant! Thanks so much, Randall, this is exactly what I was looking for. I'm going to tool around with this a bit and if it proves to be successful I'd like to try and get this in the FAQs. I was very surprised not to see this as a FAQ. I don't think people know to ask it!

I haven't used HandBrake yet, I'll have to give it a go. Hopefully HandBrakeCLI is available for WIndows -- I also use an old WinXP box so I can take advantage of AnyDVD HD for my rips, and so I also do my encoding/processing on this same WinXP box.

Thanks again. I'll post up when I've made some progress here.

[jlm86]

I am using DVDFab, and trying to understand the ideal file format to
1. Keep ripped file, save multiple movies to BD media 25G
2. What format to rip the move in, then rebuild back to BD 25G and burn with IMGburn

Some movies at 2-3 G each, would be able to keep 7 or so movies on one BD media disc.


H264
MKV
MP4

[jN Did That]

So how did this all end up? Can someone share with me screenshots of their setup, or better yet, export their handbrake settings and email/post it? THANKS.