# BluRay -> TiVo Playable MP4 help



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

Overview: Ripping a BluRay Movie (That I own btw) to hard drive, demuxing, converting video to lower bitrate TiVo compatible H264, converting audio to AC3 or Stereo AAC and remuxing.

Currently I am successfull in this process except that MeGUI is changing the frame rate down to ~19 FPS instead of leaving the framerate of 23.976. So I am wondering if anyone else has a similar process of converting HD Movies down to a bitrate the TiVo can play via StreamBaby or PUSH.

Tools currently used:

SlySoft AnyDVD (Ripping Blu Ray to Disk)
MeGUI
MP4Box (Mp4 Mux/DeMux)
SUP Rip (Subtitle converter)

Steps:

Rip the movie to hard disk using AnyDVD. This places the entire Blu-ray movie into a folder
 Extract the video track, audio track, subtitle tracks via MeGUI's included HD Streams Extractor tool. I select MKV for the video container, AC3 for the audio and SUP for the subtitle.
 Using AVS Script creator to create a AVS for the video track. I crop off the black bars if they exist.. Mine looks similar to the below:

```
global MeGUI_darx = 47
global MeGUI_dary = 20
DirectShowSource("E:\Videos\Recordings\TAKEN\Taken.m2ts", fps=23.976, audio=false, convertfps=true)
crop( 0, 128, 0, -128)
```

 Encode the video to MP4 using the AVS profile created. I am using the "x264: Stand-alone" profile and only changing the bitrate setting down to 8000. Somewhere around 10-12 is where the TiVo starts to choke on the video.
 Recode the audio from AC3 to AAC LC Stereo. I do this as streaming with streambaby will get out of synch on AC3 Audio. If I was to PUSH the videos to the TiVo I would leave in AC3 format so I maintain the surround.
 Use SUP Rip to create a SRT from the extracted SUP
 Finally use MP4Box to Mux the Video and Audio back into a ISMA MP4.

Now the above process works great, a bit slow and I wish the TiVo could deal with the ~20 Mbit bitrates in the BluRay movies with having the reencode them. But I am struggling with one small flaw...

Sometimes the videos get reencoded into ~19 FPS instead of leaving them as 23.976. I have no idea why, I am not performing any deinterlacing so I do not know why it would touch the FPS. The MKV and the raw AVC or H264 codec (depending on the video title) always states it is in 23.976 FPS. Any Ideas?

Otherwise feel free to use this as a starting guide to convert Blu-Ray into TiVo compliant MP4s.

Rick


----------



## Airhead315 (Jun 11, 2009)

Why hadnt I thought of this? My whole reasoning for not buying a PC BluRay player was that the disks were too expensive to justify the cost of backing up my collection. I hadnt thought of ripping the bluray disks and then converting them to a format the Tivo can play...and since I just upgraded to a 1TB internal I would be able to store a couple of movies on the TiVo!

I hope you can get your issue worked out. Does anyone else here already do this? If so, what process are you using? He is using at least one purchased program...obviously I would like to avoid that if I can


----------



## Airhead315 (Jun 11, 2009)

Okay, I decided to improve this thread a little bit by providing the links where you can obtain legit copies of the software mentioned in the OP:

SlySoft AnyDVD: http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html <- 63 EUROs for one year, 79 for two years...
MeGUI: http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/MeGUI <-Free
MP4Box: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/mp4box <-Free
SUP Rip: http://exar.ch/suprip/ <- Free

So if anyone can provide informaiton on where to obtain a free DVD Ripper that can rip BluRay disks then we can make this process totally free. Here are some FREE possibilities:

AVS Video Converter: http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Converter.aspx
Blu-Ray Disc Ripper: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=129663


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

Thanks for providing the links. I probably should have done that. I have also used DVDFab6 http://www.dvdfab.com to rip Blu-Ray discs. It is a bit cheaper than AnyDVD and I already had a platinum license for the DVD ripper and converter (worth the money IMHO).

I think I may have found the issue in the process... Finishing a full conversion later today (20 hour process on my current HTPC!) and I should hopefully have it down with out messing up the Frame Rate. If it does work I will provide a step by step with screen caps document.

Rick


----------



## fyodor (Sep 19, 2006)

Let me ask a stupid question-can Tivo play Blu-ray streams that have been remuxed (but not re-encoded)? Or is it necessary to first reduce the bitrate? Given how cheap storage is these days, I'd just as soon not waste tons of time transcoding.

Edit:-just noted that the OP said that his Tivo has issues with the full-bitrate rips? Is this a playback or streaming-speed issue? Have you tried pushing the high-bitrate files to your Tivo to see if they play differently? I ask, because the 10-12 megabit speed that you mention is around the maximum speed for PC-Tivo transfers.

F


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

I will try to push a remuxed file. I am pretty certain I already tried this and ran into a few issues..

First was bitrate, I think the TiVo just froze the video until it could internally catch up.

The second is the version of H264. The TiVo only supports Level 4.1. I think most H264 Blu-Rays are encoded using a more recent level. You can use a tool to fake that the video is Level 4.1, but if the stream takes advantage of the newer features then the TiVo ignores the stream until it can understand it.

But as I said I will give it a try tonight. Am demuxing a blu-ray now and should be able to mux it in 20 mins or so and test it in an hour.

Rick


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

Yes the video is unwatchable at those high bitrates. I do not think the CPU can keep up. Both streaming (And waiting for enough data in the stream) and pushing the video produced the same behavior.

Basically the video is jerky, skipping and has audio cut outs at the standard bitrate. 

But one item I found interesting is at least the Blu-Ray I tested with the H264 was only Level 4.1.

So reducing the bitrate is a requirement to play these on the TiVo.

Rick


----------



## fyodor (Sep 19, 2006)

Alas. Thanks for checking and posting.


----------



## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

I checked out the Pavtube Blu-ray video converter ultimate (since another similar product was mentioned) and found that it also supports encrypted .tivo files by entering your MAK in the options. This really is a one stop program. I noticed in my testing that it is very fast and the quality is good also.

http://www.pavtube.com/blu-ray-video-converter-ultimate/

I have been using other tools that don't use both cores on my CPU, but this uses all of the cores, making performance better as well. This is also the most straightforward application I have found. The demo doesn't limit anything, but it does place a watermark right in the middle of the video.

I would be interested in hearing what other people think as well, I haven't bought it yet, still trying it out.


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

jaredmwright said:


> I checked out the Pavtube Blu-ray video converter ultimate (since another similar product was mentioned) and found that it also supports encrypted .tivo files by entering your MAK in the options. This really is a once stop program. I noticed in my testing that it is very fast and the quality is good also.
> 
> http://www.pavtube.com/blu-ray-video-converter-ultimate/
> 
> ...


When doing Blue-Ray to MPEG-4, does it re-encode to lower bitrates (which according to earlier posts is necessary for TiVo playback)? I don't know what you meant by "very fast" but re-encoding would take substantial time.

The .TiVo "handling" is for inputs only, according to their web page. Your post seemed to suggest you could go directly from Blue-Ray to .TiVo.

If this program really does everything it claims to do for $65 and is reliable and well supported, it will be an amazing thing. (If you get the impression I'm skeptical, well .... you're right.)


----------



## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

I am skeptical as well, and I haven't had enough time to go through all of the scenarios as you mentioned, blu-ray -> TiVo compatible .MP4. 

I wasn't trying to imply it would convert to a TiVo file, I meant that is supported previously encypted .tivo files as input. 

I haven't tried converting to an .MP4 and pushing to the TiVo, but that is my ultimate goal. Since it doesn't have any limitations during demo, it at least is fully transparent and doesn't leave a lot to risk. 

I would be interested to hear from others what there experiences are as well. I currently use AnyDVD, but this seems like a good alternative with more functionality as long as it is supported and maintained, which it has been for the last 3 months according to their change log.


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Please keep us updated on how this works, how long conversions take, if tivo accepts the mp4 files (please try some 720p and 1080i files to tivo). If it truly works as discribed, it's worth the $65.


----------



## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

I'd like to hear about doing this on the Premiere, and the bitrate ceiling on that platform... I know the audio bitrates have been bumped up from 448kbps to 640kbps, but I don't recall if video bitrates have been boosted as well...


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

The major concern is the H264 version that the new TiVo supports. Currently the TiVo supports 4.1 which is why we need to reencode blu rays, even BluRays that are H264 encoded. Most of those are using a 4.2 or later version of the Codec. I have tried to just remux BluRays with out reencoding and the video is jerky as the TiVo must throw away the frame information that it does not understand.

Actually looking at the specs that have been determined the video bitrate is more than capable to just remux if the H264 version support was increased in the Premeire.

Rick


----------



## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

The problem is that H264 support is really just an afterthought for TiVo mostly used for YouTube which obviously doesn't have the high bit rate requirements. As we have already painfully discovered there are some frame rate related and issues with H264 for series 3 (supposedly fixed for Premiere), and aspect ratio problems (I don't think those are fixed with Premiere), and I don't think TiVo spends much time on H264 decoding, so likely the same 4.1 level limit that exists for S3 units is still the case in Premiere. According to bkdtv the Premiere units total bit rate limits are ~35 Mbps compared to ~25 Mbps for S3 units, but I think the 4.1 level limitation is still there so not very helpful.
Then of course there is still the audio limitations where 6 channel AC3 is the best that can be supported right now which means you can't use the primary audio track.
Unrelated but also there is still the 1.1 GB stream buffer limit which is another big obstacle which makes TiVo a much less attractive option for generalized H264 playback (to me streaming is a lot more attractive than having to push files on to the TiVo which you then later have to go delete on that unit itself).
I feel that if TiVo were willing to spend just a little time lifting some of these seemingly arbitrary requirements it would go a long way into making TiVo a much better platform for H264 playback. But so far I don't think TiVo has thrown any bones in our direction related to this stuff.
So as it is now I think there are better network playback options out there right now for H264 without having to jump through hoops to generate streams that can playback without issues on TiVo.


----------



## Rdian06 (Apr 12, 2008)

Before you go throwing money at Pavtube, realize that it seems to be illegally using ffmpeg.

I would suggest not encouraging violation of open source licenses.

See: https://roundup.ffmpeg.org/issue1810


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

jimmy8765 said:


> I have tried it.I ripped my blu ray disc to MPEG-2 HD VIDEO(*.mpg)
> 
> settings: video codec:mpeg2, 1920*1080, 8000kbps, 25fps, audio codec:mp2, stereo
> 
> ...


For tivo HD/S3 compatibility, 720p video is 1280x720. No other resolutions work correctly. Call it a bug in the decoder if you wish but it is what it is. Tivo is aware but has not or cannot fix it. Perhaps its in the chipset. At any rate, Amazon VOD had the same problem when they first attempted HD and ended up sending all HD in full frame 720p. Your mp4 encodes will have to be full frame as well.

Is Pavtube capable of this? if not perhaps they will update so that it can be tivo compatible.

Don't know if the Premiere has the same shortfall or not.


----------



## jaredmwright (Sep 6, 2004)

For those looking for another option for a conversion program which may be helpful. Yesterday giveawayoftheday.com had http://www.sothinkmedia.com/hd-video-converter/ available and I donwloaded and installed it. I don't know if it is worth the $39.00 normally, but for free it is very good. There are other free alternatives like FormatFactory which are very similar.

It has easily customizeable settings for your conversion, and even allows changing the version of the h.264 profile which is very handy and adding and creating new custom profiles. The performance is slower than Pavtube and others (my CPU never went above 50% on either of my cores on my Core2Duo 1.8Ghz), but the quality and ease of use are very nice, plus it allows simple batch conversions as well. As others have said, it uses ffmpeg and the other commonly found utilities as the main tools, but the interface is one of the best I have seen and it allows simple editing to trim the beginning and end of videos which is great.

If anyone tries out Pavtube, Sothink, etc.. and has profiles that work well for the TiVo, please share them with others so we can build a supported profiles list.

PM me if you would like the giveawayoftheday info to install it.


----------



## Rdian06 (Apr 12, 2008)

jimmy8765 said:


> ffmpeg is a command line tool ,it's not user friendly.


ffmpeg is open source and its code is covered under LGPL or GPL licensing depending on which parts of the source code you use.

That means many, many volunteers devoted countless man hours into its development and the licensing requires those that use ffmpeg libraries in their projects to release their source code and in some cases prevents them from charging money for products based on ffmpeg.

So the point is that pavtube's developers are STEALING from the ffmpeg community and those of us who have devoted time into working on the ffmpeg code.

I don't care how un-user friendly ffmpeg is. Not being user friendly does not give anyone liberty to steal its code no matter how pretty a wrapper they place around it.


----------



## wishyou0607 (Jun 4, 2010)

i found Brorsoft Blu-Ray ripper also supports encrypted .tivo files by entering your MAK in the options.
i have checked it out.very fast and good quality.
you can download from brorsoft.com/blu-ray-ripper-mac/index.html
hope it can help you


----------



## pmiranda (Feb 12, 2003)

FYI, Mp4Box is included in MeGui now... I've got to give this thing a go...


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Yes. AnyDVD to rip the BluRay, meGUI to extract the required tracks, encode to h264 and mux into a compatible mp4 file. A very straightforward process now.


----------



## Sasparilla (Dec 10, 2003)

jcthorne said:


> Yes. AnyDVD to rip the BluRay, meGUI to extract the required tracks, encode to h264 and mux into a compatible mp4 file. A very straightforward process now.


Just for reference, how long does it take you to rip the main movie from a BluRay and get it ready for uploading to the TiVo?

I've been doing this with DVDs which involves some waiting, but the size of Blu-ray's has scared me from even considering doing the same with them because of the time associated with processing.


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Ripping takes about 30 minutes. Recode and mux about 90 minutes on a pretty fast quad core laptop. Would take less on a really high end machine. Its pretty processor intensive and and nvidia graphics engine is recommended for meGUI to work at its fastest.

I think it could be done in one step with AnyDVD running behind meGUI but since my bluray drive is on a low power network station, its far too slow for recoding, I have to rip and transfer to my corporate laptop first.

I prep all my movies to our file server first for playback not only on a tivo but on a WDTV device and my android tablet. (one file format). Once on the server, new movies that I want to see soon are pushed to the tivo, others are archived on the server for access when wanted via vidmgr or the other devices.


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

For the most part I use DVDFab now to rip my BluRays. I also use it to convert to H264 (in mkv format), then use the MKV2MP4 batch program that is referenced in these forums.

Three steps for me, could be done in less but I like to rip to disk first in case the reencode fails or is not correct.

1) Rip - DVD FAb
2) Convert to MKV - DVD FAb
3) MKV to Tivo Mp4

Rick


----------



## cncb (Jul 4, 2013)

Can the new Roamios handle higher bitrate MP4s such that a re-encoding isn't necessary?


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

cncb said:


> Can the new Roamios handle higher bitrate MP4s such that a re-encoding isn't necessary?


See my previous reply up about 10 posts. The issue is not really with the bitrate but the H264 level that is supported. I have a Roamio but I have not tested passing a higher H264 video to it.

I will try that in the next few days passing a remuxed raw bluray and see if the roamio handles it fine.

Rick


----------



## cncb (Jul 4, 2013)

rfryar said:


> See my previous reply up about 10 posts. The issue is not really with the bitrate but the H264 level that is supported. I have a Roamio but I have not tested passing a higher H264 video to it.
> 
> I will try that in the next few days passing a remuxed raw bluray and see if the roamio handles it fine.


Thanks for checking with the Roamio. By the way, I'm pretty sure most blu-rays are H264 level 4.1 so this might not be the problem.


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

rfryar said:


> I will try that in the next few days passing a remuxed raw bluray and see if the roamio handles it fine.


Tested using a 30GB movie. It worked fine on both premiere and roamio boxes.

Streambaby was painful due to the size limit with streaming but the push functionality worked fine.

I was also able to stream the video through my Mini as well.

However when it got to high bitrate scenes there was a bunch of pixelization errors. So I believe the Tivo is not keeping up or the streaming speed was not enough. I will have to retest this in an hour to validate it on the box I pushed it to.

[UPDATE]I let the show download enough so I could test with out causing an underbuffer from slow download speeds. The Premeire was not able to properly play full bitrate Blu Ray movies. During medium bit rate scenes I experienced audio drop outs and during high bitrate scenes I had extreme pixelization occur.
Rick


----------



## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

Roamio still fails on the full bitrate MP4 blu ray remuxed file.

While I had no audio drop outs like I had on the mini and Premiere I did have some extreme pixelation during high bit rate scenes. This was on a fully downloaded show on the Roamio.

So moral of the story, you must transcode BluRay movies down to a lower bitrate for all tivos. Not sure what the highest bitrate would be, probably have to experiment to find the ideal number for best quality.

Personally I just transcode to 8Mb/s as I am not too picky on the quality but I wanted to be through on my answer.

Rick


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

So I have a number of movies ripped and hadn't really been paying attention to realize that "push mode" existed with pytivo. Decided to get up to date and enjoy things in their full glory through my Premier 4XL.

The files are m4v container H.264 encoded with handbrake with 2 tracks, one 2 channel prologic, one AC3 pass-through. This is a typical handbrake apple TV or high preset, I believe. The pushed videos default to the AC-3 track and fail to play audio. I can manually switch to the prologic audio track during playback and it plays happily, so at first I assumed that my pass-through was borked, but when I started diagnosing, I realized that it wasn't quite that simple. For example "The Prestige" BD contains 2 audio tracks:

Track 1 BD LPCM
Track 2 AC3 Dolby Digital

I tried various permutations with them:

Scenario 1:
Encode Source Track 1
Output Track 1 prologic, Output Track 2 "AC3 Passthru"
Tivo defaults to Track 2, as you'd hope, but doesn't send audio to the receiver, only Track 1 will play.

Scenario 2:
Encode Source Track 2
Output Track 1 prologic, Output Track 2 "AC3 Passthru"
Tivo defaults to Track 2, as you'd hope, but doesn't send audio to the receiver, only Track 1 will play.

Scenario 3/4:
Encode Source Track 1 or 2
Output Track 1 "AC3 Passthru"
TiVo passes 5.1 to my receiver with no problems

Scenario 5:
Encode Source track 1 to output track 1, passthru
Encode Source track 2 to output track 2, passhtru
BOTH tracks work A-OK, 5.1 from my receiver. Defaults to 1.

Scenario 6
Flip Scenario 1 around and put the prologic on track 2 and the passthru on track 1.
Now it defaults to track 1 and plays CORRECTLY, 5.1, but if I switch to track 2 I get nothing.

Dear lord. So it appears that if a 2-channel encode is thrown into the mix, Track 2 doesn't work on the TiVo. Does anyone have any insight here other than just to figure out what works and work around it?

Scenario 6 seems to be a viable option so far if the files still work on other devices. Upside, at this point it appears that Scenario 6 plays on my son's Kindle Fire, playing the 2 channel encode without problems (5.1 encodes like Scenario 5 have no audio here, as it doesn't know what to do with them). I haven't tried it with any of our Apple devices yet, but let's assume for now they will also work. Downside, I've never encoded anything this way and I haven't seen others do it, either. It would be nice if I didn't have to re-encode every movie I own, so I'm hoping someone has a magic bullet.


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

So I was playing with the idea of remuxing these and saw the mp4box tool that others were using and grabbed it. Below is the info from my standard rip, where it defaults to the 2nd audio track but won't play it, but will play the 1st audio track if I manually switch to it. I notice that the 2nd audio track is flagged as "disabled." Off to try and read up on what the heck that means:

G:\Movies>mp4box -info "the prestige.m4v"
* Movie Info *
Timescale 1000 - Duration 02:10:29.824
4 track(s)
Fragmented File: no
File Brand isom - version 512
Created: UNKNOWN DATE Modified: GMT Mon Dec 09 23:43:01 2013

File has root IOD (9 bytes)
Scene PL 0xff - Graphics PL 0xff - OD PL 0xff
Visual PL: Not part of MPEG-4 Visual profiles (0xfe)
Audio PL: Not part of MPEG-4 audio profiles (0xfe)
No streams included in root OD

Chapters:
Chapter #1 - 00:00:00.000 - "Chapter 1"
Chapter #2 - 00:03:29.918 - "Chapter 2"
Chapter #3 - 00:07:45.089 - "Chapter 3"
Chapter #4 - 00:11:40.741 - "Chapter 4"
Chapter #5 - 00:16:04.129 - "Chapter 5"
Chapter #6 - 00:23:18.897 - "Chapter 6"
Chapter #7 - 00:27:20.555 - "Chapter 7"
Chapter #8 - 00:33:59.996 - "Chapter 8"
Chapter #9 - 00:38:46.782 - "Chapter 9"
Chapter #10 - 00:44:34.171 - "Chapter 10"
Chapter #11 - 00:49:28.298 - "Chapter 11"
Chapter #12 - 00:53:28.622 - "Chapter 12"
Chapter #13 - 00:59:49.043 - "Chapter 13"
Chapter #14 - 01:04:01.337 - "Chapter 14"
Chapter #15 - 01:08:48.499 - "Chapter 15"
Chapter #16 - 01:12:57.998 - "Chapter 16"
Chapter #17 - 01:17:47.371 - "Chapter 17"
Chapter #18 - 01:23:16.825 - "Chapter 18"
Chapter #19 - 01:35:48.868 - "Chapter 19"
Chapter #20 - 01:40:19.430 - "Chapter 20"
Chapter #21 - 01:45:17.352 - "Chapter 21"
Chapter #22 - 01:49:03.328 - "Chapter 22"
Chapter #23 - 01:55:06.733 - "Chapter 23"
Chapter #24 - 02:04:59.617 - "Chapter 24"

iTunes Info:
Name: The Prestige (12) (2006)
Artist: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson,
David Bowie, Piper Perabo, Andy Serkis, Daniel Davis, Jim Piddock, Christopher
Neame, Roger Rees, Jamie Harris
Genre: Thriller
Created: 2006-06-06
Disk: 0 / 0
Encoder Software: Lavf54.20.3
TrackNumber: 0 / 0
Cover Art: JPEG File

Track # 1 Info - TrackID 1 - TimeScale 90000 - Media Duration 02:10:29.780
Track has 2 edit lists: track duration is 02:10:29.864
Media Info: Language "Undetermined" - Type "vide:avc1" - 187727 samples
Visual Track layout: x=0 y=0 width=1920 height=818
MPEG-4 Config: Visual Stream - ObjectTypeIndication 0x21
AVC/H264 Video - Visual Size 1920 x 818
AVC Info: 1 SPS - 1 PPS - Profile High @ Level 4.1
NAL Unit length bits: 32
Pixel Aspect Ratio 1:1 - Indicated track size 1920 x 818
Self-synchronized

Track # 2 Info - TrackID 2 - TimeScale 48000 - Media Duration 02:10:29.802
Track has 2 edit lists: track duration is 02:10:29.865
Media Info: Language "English" - Type "soun:mp4a" - 367022 samples
MPEG-4 Config: Audio Stream - ObjectTypeIndication 0x40
MPEG-4 Audio AAC LC - 2 Channel(s) - SampleRate 48000
Synchronized on stream 1
Alternate Group ID 1

Track # 3 Info - TrackID 3 - TimeScale 48000 - Media Duration 02:10:29.824
Track has 2 edit lists: track duration is 02:10:29.902
*Track is disabled*
Media Info: Language "English" - Type "soun:ac-3" - 244682 samples
AC-3 stream - Sample Rate 48000 - 5.1 channel(s) - bitrate 640000
Alternate Group ID 1

Track # 4 Info - TrackID 6 - TimeScale 1000 - Media Duration 02:10:29.113
Track is disabled
Media Info: Language "Undetermined" - Type "text:text" - 24 samples
Timed Text - Size 0 x 0 - Translation X=0 Y=0 - Layer 0


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

And for grins, here's the quick encode I did of just the first chapter with 2 pass-thru tracks (scenario 5, above). It also shows the 2nd track as disabled, but both tracks play A-OK. Only other difference is that I did chop the video resolution down so the test encode would go really fast since I was burning through several permutations:

G:\Movies>mp4box -info "test.m4v"
* Movie Info *
Timescale 1000 - Duration 00:03:29.752
3 track(s)
Fragmented File: no
File Brand isom - version 512
Created: UNKNOWN DATE Modified: UNKNOWN DATE
File has root IOD (9 bytes)
Scene PL 0xff - Graphics PL 0xff - OD PL 0xff
Visual PL: Not part of MPEG-4 Visual profiles (0xfe)
Audio PL: Not part of MPEG-4 audio profiles (0xfe)
No streams included in root OD

iTunes Info:
Encoder Software: Lavf54.20.3

Track # 1 Info - TrackID 1 - TimeScale 90000 - Media Duration 00:03:29.751
Track has 2 edit lists: track duration is 00:03:29.757
Media Info: Language "Undetermined" - Type "vide:avc1" - 5029 samples
Visual Track layout: x=0 y=0 width=718 height=306
MPEG-4 Config: Visual Stream - ObjectTypeIndication 0x21
AVC/H264 Video - Visual Size 720 x 306
AVC Info: 1 SPS - 1 PPS - Profile Baseline @ Level 3
NAL Unit length bits: 32
Pixel Aspect Ratio 408:409 - Indicated track size 718 x 306
Self-synchronized

Track # 2 Info - TrackID 2 - TimeScale 48000 - Media Duration 00:03:29.408
Media Info: Language "English" - Type "soun:ac-3" - 6544 samples
AC-3 stream - Sample Rate 48000 - 5.1 channel(s) - bitrate 640000
Alternate Group ID 1

Track # 3 Info - TrackID 3 - TimeScale 48000 - Media Duration 00:03:29.056
Track has 2 edit lists: track duration is 00:03:29.061
Track is disabled
Media Info: Language "English" - Type "soun:ac-3" - 6533 samples
AC-3 stream - Sample Rate 48000 - 5.1 channel(s) - bitrate 640000
Alternate Group ID 1


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Why do you need encodes with multiple audio tracks? Just mux with a single video and a single AC3 audio track. They will push and play fine. Tivo has never supported pushed mp4 video with multiple audio tracks well.


----------



## pmiranda (Feb 12, 2003)

He wants one file that will play on both TiVo and other devices, hence one track in AC3 and the other in Dolby prologic surround.
(Although I would be surprised to find a device that couldn't play AC3.)


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

pmiranda said:


> He wants one file that will play on both TiVo and other devices, hence one track in AC3 and the other in Dolby prologic surround.
> (Although I would be surprised to find a device that couldn't play AC3.)


I know my son's Kindle Fire didn't play the AC3 only file. His old iPod touch won't, either, but I really don't care about it. I haven't tested other devices. It is sort of a default in Handbrake to do it this way -- all the higher end encode presets include both a stereo/prologic and AC3 passthru, I didn't just come up with the idea on my own. 

It appears that putting the AC3 track first makes the TiVo happy, and the above appears to indicate that my TiVo is semi-competent at this and I should get used to (I am) so I guess the solution to change how I encode, and either rencode or remux the old movies. It looks like mp4box can probably do the remuxing with a little work on my part to figure out the command line structure and the workflow or how to script it.

Anyone got better suggestions?


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

I encode TV shows pulled off my TiVo to dual audio tracks using KMTTG/ffmpeg. The AC3 5.1 track is second and the TiVo uses it when I push or pull back to the TiVo. The first track is aac stereo. The aac track has to be first in order for it to play on an iPad.


----------



## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Yes, its true that i-devices do not fully support the format Apple developed.

Just FYI, kindle fire and most other android tablets will play mp4 files with ac3 audio just fine. Just not in the stock gallery app. They work well on WDTV as well.


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

cherry ghost said:


> I encode TV shows pulled off my TiVo to dual audio tracks using KMTTG/ffmpeg. The AC3 5.1 track is second and the TiVo uses it when I push or pull back to the TiVo. The first track is aac stereo. The aac track has to be first in order for it to play on an iPad.


OK, so you're saying you're targeting basically the same thing I am an it's successful. This is with a Premier series TiVo? If I pull from pytivo I get a transcode to mpeg2 and I don't get AC3 5.1, do I? I was thinking I had to push and avoid the transcode to get the AC3 track?



jcthorne said:


> Yes, its true that i-devices do not fully support the format Apple developed.


Well, as long as it plays iTunes content correctly... /apple

Also, I hadn't tried my iPad yet as I assumed it was the most likely of my mobile platforms to support the AC3 audio.



jcthorne said:


> Just FYI, kindle fire and most other android tablets will play mp4 files with ac3 audio just fine. Just not in the stock gallery app. They work well on WDTV as well.


Thanks, I only tried the craptastic gallery.


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

colin1497 said:


> OK, so you're saying you're targeting basically the same thing I am an it's successful. This is with a Premier series TiVo? If I pull from pytivo I get a transcode to mpeg2 and I don't get AC3 5.1, do I? I was thinking I had to push and avoid the transcode to get the AC3 track?


Yes, two-tuner Premiere

This is a half hour show taken off the TiVo, commercials removed, and encoded


```
Duration: 00:21:04.63, start: 0.021333, bitrate: 2042 kb/s
  Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 1517 kb/s, 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 60k tbn, 119.88 tbc
  Metadata:
    handler_name    : VideoHandler
  Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s
  Metadata:
    handler_name    : SoundHandler
  Stream #0:2(und): Audio: ac3 (ac-3 / 0x332D6361), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 384 kb/s
  Metadata:
    handler_name    : SoundHandler
```
Whether I push or pull it back to the TiVo, my AV receiver shows 5.1.

Not sure if it matters, but I have "ts = on" in pyTiVo

ETA: in pyTiVo settings -> HD TiVo settings -> audio_lang

I have the value set to "5.1, DTS, en"

I believe if that is blank, pyTiVo defaults to the first track


----------



## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

colin1497 said:


> OK, so you're saying you're targeting basically the same thing I am an it's successful. This is with a Premier series TiVo? If I pull from pytivo I get a transcode to mpeg2 and I don't get AC3 5.1, do I? I was thinking I had to push and avoid the transcode to get the AC3 track?


Video and audio are transcoded separately -- the audio will be passed through if it's compatible. Also, pyTivo will transcode to 5.1, although some people have reported issues with this.

Consider also trying a pull with "ts=on" in the Server section of pyTivo.conf. This will pull the H.264 video without transcoding -- only a remux to transport stream format -- on a Series 4 or 5. But note that it's pickier than transcoding, and both pyTivo and the TiVo have issues with full-rate Blu-Ray video.


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

Thanks for all the replies. I will dink with it more this weekend.


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

Well, this weekend drug on a while. Initial tests with "ts=on" pulls seem to just pull across the 2 channel audio track. I think in the end end solution is to rip with 5.1 only and eventually remux or re-encode those old files.


----------



## colin1497 (Nov 20, 2006)

colin1497 said:


> Well, this weekend drug on a while. Initial tests with "ts=on" pulls seem to just pull across the 2 channel audio track. I think in the end end solution is to rip with 5.1 only and eventually remux or re-encode those old files.


I wanted to follow up on this in case some future person looked at this post.

1) I figured out that ffmpeg allows remuxing really easily from the command line
2) I didn't end up remuxing things because, once I added the "5.1, DTS, en" mentioned above, pull sends across the 5.1 track and I'm happy, even if push doesn't work quite right.


----------



## mikebaratta (Feb 26, 2010)

Has anyone had this issue with pyTivo:

When trying to pull a bd movie (makemkv -> handbrake .m4v) the transfer "starts" but the blue light never comes on. The video never actually transfers, it's paused at the first [black] frame and cancels itself out after a few minutes.

I think this began after the newest handbrake update but not sure. DVD's seem to be fine but I haven't tried a new dvd since the handbrake update. BD's ripped prior have worked.

Thanks in advance,
Mike


----------



## Sasparilla (Dec 10, 2003)

rfryar said:


> Roamio still fails on the full bitrate MP4 blu ray remuxed file.
> 
> While I had no audio drop outs like I had on the mini and Premiere I did have some extreme pixelation during high bit rate scenes. This was on a fully downloaded show on the Roamio.
> 
> ...


Thanks for testing and posting this Rick. I'm very disappointment that the new Romio's can't handle it without transcoding (one of the reasons I was looking at an upgrade if it did). What a bummer.


----------

