1920x1080i fails to convert in Handbrake?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

After (finally!) having acquired House, season 6 in BD (UK version), I have managed to convert the first episodes flawlessly with Handbrake.

The extras, however won’t convert … HB says something about “no titles found”. When I try VLC it plays the audio, no video. Inspecting with BDInfo reveals that the video track is interlaced for the extras only (not main episodes).

Any ideas why this won’t work? I’ve tried 2 HB versions (including svn3594). The BD is ripped with the updated AnyDVD.

BDInfo for one of the extras is:

General
ID : 0
Complete name : I:\House6-1\BDMV\STREAM\00264.m2ts
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 2.71 GiB
Duration : 22mn 29s
Overall bit rate : 17.2 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 48.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : VC-1
Format profile : AP@L3
Codec ID : 234
Duration : 22mn 29s
Bit rate : 16.3 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.263
Stream size : 2.57 GiB (95%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 22mn 29s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 30.9 MiB (1%)

Text #1
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 22mn 13s
Video delay : 8s 275ms

Text #2
ID : 4609 (0x1201)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 22mn 16s
Video delay : 4s 638ms

Cocovanna

2

Hmmm…  The fact that it’s interlaced shouldn’t give HB any problems…   

HB won’t CREATE interlaced content, but it can ACCEPT it as an input.

I would recommend posting the ACTIVITY LOG / ENCODE LOG on the HB forums.

Those guys are very good at that, but they don’t have any patience for requests for help if all teh required attachments aren’t there!  :)

3

I can add, that the original M2TS files play fine with the Live directly … meaning the fles should be ok.

I might inspect the log files later

Cocovanna

4

Ehh … where do I find the log file? I remember having seen it before, but can’t find it now?

5

drive:\Users_yourname_\AppData\Roaming\Handbrake\logs

I haven’t had enough coffee yet to remember how to get them from within Handbrake. :smileyvery-happy:

6

It’s done in the Activity Window selection on the far right.

7

Having now finished convertering the main episodes, I’ve got back to to extras which all behave alike.

The log shows this:

Scanning title 1 of 1...
[vc1 @ 0x1a8d450] Interlaced frames/fields support is not implemented

… guess I’ll have to use the unconverted versions (that’s around 10GB extra for 1 h 10m), seems like this interlaced format is not supported (yet).

Any suggestions to get around this (e.g. some preprocessing of the M2TS file before HB)?

Cocovanna

8

Don’t know whether that’s a VC-1 issue, or a general HD issue…

Like Tony said, I’ve had no trouble passing it DVD video that’s interlaced.  Doesn’t matter whether my DVDs are Progressive with 3:2, or whether they’re Interlaced, it’s just happily accepted them all.

9

Interlaced stuff is usually only a problem with BBC material (those Brits make life tough for all of us :>).  Anything else shouldn’t be a problem.

If this isn’t BBC stuff you might try posting the problem on the Handbrake forum and I’m sure they’ll help you there.

10

According to the HB forums, VC1 interlaced isn’t supported in ffmpeg, which is what HB uses to pull the streams out.

I wasn’t aware of that…  Hadn’t come across one myself.

11

Right, and that’s nearly always only stuff the BBC and/or UK DVDs have (which is why you and I don’t ever come across it).

12

This is a US TV series … and I wonder why the extras are different from the main episodes; ithe frame rate is 29.97 (23.976 for main) … I would GUESS it is the same problem in th US version, but I won’t find out (it is almost twice as expensive and then comes duty and taxes …)

Anyway, I’m happy it wasn’t the extras I could decode and the main episodes that wouldn’t work :slight_smile:

Cocovanna

13

The difference is that the TV show is shot on FILM and converted to VIDEO, hence the native framerate of 23.97.

The Extras (and HOUSE is not unique in this regard) are often shot direct to videotape, hence the native framerate of 29.97.  

You’re very likely correct; the US versions are probably identical.

I like the show (occassionally) but not enough to go buy a BD of it to double check for you… :wink:

14

I haven’t poked around in BR anywhere near as much as I have with DVD.

With DVDs it appears to depend on who did the mastering for them when the source is film (whether cinema or tv).  Unless I’m really confused in my half-awake state, I’m sure that some of my DVDs have 23.97 video and then use 3:2 pulldown to get a 29.97 stream, and some have hard 29.97 video, that you have to un-pulldown if you want to extract the original 23.97 stream from them.  So with DVD it’s somewhat of a crapshoot as to what video you’ll find inside when the source is film.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all BRs just keep the 23.97 and let the player do any frame rate conversions.

And of course, some players handle different frame rates better than others.  If I hand any of my hardware DVD players a PAL stream, the picture does look jerky (which is understandable, since they’re NTSC machines and aren’t expecting a PAL input and weren’t designed with conversion in mind), but if I hand the same PAL stream to the WDTV the playback looks “normal”.

15

I actually have the House DVDs for at least season two, but they aren’t blu-rays, just DVDs (and as Tony says, I like ths show but not enough to get the blu-ray to see what the trouble is).

I almost never convert any of my extras in Handbrake but I’m at least curious enough to wonder if this is only a Pal thing versus an NTSC thing.  I wonder if anyone on the Handbrake forum might know.

16

The problem is well known both in the HB and ffmpeg forums, so I guess when there is enough material encoded as VC-1i the feature will be implemented. It is not a showstopper for me now, just hope I won’t get to BD’s where the main features are encoded this way.

And BTW, season 6 is the first (and only) season in BD (yet).

Cocovanna

PS: As as side note I may add, that it seems these BD convert MUCH slower and yield larger MKVs – don’t know if it is because they are VC-1