New Dune HD Max and HD Smart anticipation thread Q3 2010 - Page 321

It was your recent reviews on mediasmart that made me act fast to buy two D1s while they're still available - I'm too invested in BD ISOs to have to start ripping from scratch if my current players fail.

As for the new Max, I hope it delivers what it promises but even if we set aside the pricing issue, I find it difficult to believe that HDI will be able to sell the new Max with full BD support without Cinavia - and if it has Cinavia it's a no go!

I guess in any case I'll hold off then on a 3D player until something with mvc mkv support and forced subtitles comes along.

In the meantime, I guess I'll rip my 3D titles to mkv SBS for my current dune players - unless I'm missing something this seems to be the best option.

Incidentally, I also used used DVDFab to create what it called a SBS blu-ray disc. It plays back on the Dune as a blu-ray disc but with an SBS image like an MKV - however it seems you can create such a file without compression as the resulting file is the same size as the original thus improving on the MKV results. However, at least DVDFab doesn't seem capable of creating such a file with 3D compatible subtitles - as soon as you put the TV into 3D mode the subtitles which were centered in 2D mode get split in half and pushed to either side of the screen. I don't suppose you've had any experience with this format have you?

Trust me, you will have to pry my Smarts from my dead hands before I let go!

With the Max supposedly there will be 2 playback engines (one for physical discs with Cinavia in place) and the other one sans Cinavia. Of course proof will be in the pudding, and we are still a whiles away before seeing anything concrete.

However, your point is exactly the challenge Dune faces. Many of the current users are heavily invested in BD Iso/folder playback, and tbh that has always been the big selling point with the Dunes. Let's hope they can come through

I don't use DVDFab so I have very little experience with the various options.

I should mention as well, with mvc mkvs, if a player supports properly you should be able to play back in both 2D and 3D (which means hopefully you could just have one copy of the movie that is supported among a variety of players regardless of whether the player supports 3D playback)

It's funny that so many dedicated media players have trouble streaming over SMB - the Oppo 103 blu-ray player I recently bought (strictly for physical disc playback) only has a 10/100 connection and SMB on the unit is listed as experimental. Yet it can stream full 3D BDMV folders (menus and all) over SMB without missing a step including tough titles like the Avengers - too bad it has Cinavia, aside from that and no jukebox it seems to be a step ahead of most dedicated media players for blu-ray 3D playback.

Here's hoping the Max as its intended materializes, otherwise although it sounds like a player is likely to come out that supports 3D in mkvs properly - individuals such as ourselves will have two media players in our media racks for different formats (3D/2D). I think if I had it to do over again I would have kept it much simpler and ripped to MKVs and I would have included only the forced subtitles, leaving subtitles on the player on by default. I imagine that there are a number of players that can handle that task. Oh well, I guess none of us could have predicted Cinavia.

Yeah, every player could handle an mkv if you only ever included forced subs and leave them on by default. I have thought as well if I should have just stuck with that route, but at this point I would have to go through a large part of my library to do. I only rip main movie with Clown_BD to BD folder rip but include all english subs just for ease, with Clown setting the forced flag where needed (leave subs off on the Dune and it displays the forced subs properly)

Thanks for all of the info. I have been ripping to folders, but I think I'm going to make the switch to mkv, forced subs only.

So then, if you think you will eventually have a 303D or something similar that is BD-Lite only, you should make the switch to MKVs ASAP, correct? At least seamless branch is no longer an issue then.

My solution for the whole subs, forced subs on MKV with the Dunes is quite easy... Leave the subs turned on all the time on the Dune, if the movie has forced subs put them on sub track #1 and the regular subs on track #2. If the movie does NOT have forced subs, I created a completely empty sub track that goes on track #1 while the regular subs go on track#2. That way I always get forced subs if they have them and if want the regular subs all I have to is hit the sub button once.

If I could start over I would go Mkv but that's only because new players supporting bd iso and BDMV folder structure are no longer going to be made.

This is why I'm making the switch now. I'm going to leave what I currently have as folder rips, but all future rips will be in mkv format.

Bear in mind that if you have a significant number of folder rips you will likely have to re-rip them as MKVs eventually as some are bound to have seamless branching or forced subtitles so depending on how many we are talking about it may or may not be worth it for you. For me it's just not worth the effort to start over.

Like 99% of my BD are main movie only M2TS or Folder Structure via ClownBD with HD sound and AC3 sound tracks. I've got about 5 movies that are ISO's.

98% of my TV Shows are DVD ISO files, and one TV Show are all MKV.

100% of my DVD movies are MKV.

So, if I really have to I will convert my ISO's into M2TS or MKV's. Good think I don't have many of those. However, I am definitely thinking about buying another Dune Smart series.

That doesn't make sense...ClownBD doesn't recode the video so there's no way it could downres to 720p.

I bought a Smart D1 for my parents and just hooked it up for them. I noticed that there are flickering black lines in the picture. At first I thought this was only in BD rips, but I noticed that it was going on in the Dune menu screens as well. The Dune is replacing a WDTV Live Plus and using the same USB HDD that that player used. The WDTV did not have these lines popping up in the picture that the Dune is displaying and I have hooked the WDTV back up to the same HDMI cable and it was not doing this so I don't believe that it is the cable. I have already set up the Video Settings to match the TV and have tweaked it several times to see if I could get rid of the problem. I have a Dune HD Base 3.0 and a Smart D1 at my house, so I am familiar with the product. I have the same TV in my bedroom, hooked up to a Smart D1, that my parents have that I am hooking this new D1 to, so I'm pretty sure that I know the settings. Any ideas what could be causing this issue? Could it be a defective unit?
Edited by bob13654 - 2/17/13 at 9:34am

^^^
Never assume that an HDMI cable is "OK", swap in a different one to rule that out.

I just made an SBS MKV of the new Dredd from an ISO. I used Fab and made an active shutter audio copy, what I do is move the slider all the way over so the output file is about 30 gigs. Not to say making it smaller will look bad but my end result is a perfect 3D movie on my setup, I have always used MKV,s and have not had problems yet. Now on another note I have a question I have and Sc37 and a Duo and a D1 I had my Duo with me and had it set up to output PCM for the reg TV. So when I plugged it back into the 37 PCM popped up on the receiver screen with 7.1 speakers lit up. Now I turned the Duo back to bitstream and I get the DTS HD Master lit up but only the 5 speakers are lit up. So my question is what's better for sound? PCM or Bitstream? Both sound great?

That's pretty much what I've settled on doing and I agree the end result is very good.

As for your issue, what I do is set the player to bitstream (you can't get better than that) and i use internal decoding if there's an issue (e.g. the recent total recall blu-ray had numerous audio drop outs if you bistreamed from almost any blu-ray or media player). However, I have DREDD and though it's been a few weeks since I saw it if I recall correctly it has a 7.1 DTS-HD MA audio track so that's what you should be getting to your AVR if you bitstream. In fact, unless firmware revisions have brought forward improvements that's the one sound format Dune's cannot decode properly (DTS-HD 7.1). They can do DTS-HD HR 7.1 but not MA 7.1.

Hmm I have the new total recall and don't remember any drop outs

Drop outs were there only if you were playing the extended cut. This was an authoring problem and all BR players were impacted.

It doesn't sound easy . How are you shuffling the subs around?

Not quite sure what you mean by "shuffling".... Basically the full subs are on the secondary track so they never show up unless you need them and you manually select them. Track 1 is always on for the forced subs but since not all movies have them I keep an empty sub track so that it does not show up at all (and by empty sub I mean a simple SRT with one line that has the entire time of the movie....I know there is another way to create an empty track but I have yet to figure out how it's done).

Sorry what I meant was...I'm not very proficient with mkv. I mainly use the drop-and-rip (to iso) functionality of MyMovies. One reason is convenience another is to keep subs as needed. I guess what I'm asking is how do you set what subtitle is on what track, how do you determine if it's necessary and when to use your "blank" subtitle file, etc. What's your workflow? I'm wanting to see if it's worth the trouble. I'd like to use mkv's exclusively but the subtitle thing has been problematic.

Along these lines, and maybe partially related, is there a way to shift these subtitles? Can one edit the subtitle file?

My workflow is eac3to (command line)+mkvmerge but you should be able to use any program that can demux the individual tracks and then use mkvmerge to get them back together. Making an MKV with multiple subtitles is a bit more manual due to the fact that you need to identify each of the tracks and put them in the correct default order. mkvmerge lets you put them in default and non-default order but more importantly, it lets you name each track individually....for me that's huge since I can name them exactly how I want them.

As far as editing, you can pretty much edit a sub track any way you want depending on how much you want to edit and how much work you are willing to put into it. If all you want is to move the subtitles into the scope area (big thing for me and my CIH system, then using BDSup2Sub400 is mandatory. If you want to edit the timming then you can use Subtitle Workshop but you will need to convert the PGS to SRT (unless SW now supports PGS). If you want to convert SRT to PGS then easySUP is a great little app.

So my workflow is a little like this.... eac3to (command line) for the demuxing. Check if there is a forced subs. If there is then make sure they are in their own track by either separating them or putting them in their own track. If there is no forced subs then I use my empty track (either an SRT that has one line which you can easily edit with notepad) and making sure that is the default track. Then using mkvmerge to put them back together and making sure that the force subs or the empty track is marked "default" and I name it "Forced" or "Empty". Then the full subs is marked as non-default and given a name.

When the Dune starts playing it will either play the forced subs automatically or the empty sub track. If you want to see the full subs then you hit the subs button and select it.

I believe you can also create an empty PGS track but I have yet to try that.

That doesn't sound "quite easy" to me . But, interestign in trying ti out.

The only thing I'd want to edit is the position, for CIH. Can you elaborate on how that's done, or point me to a how to?

I think Killroy had a tutorial somewhere on here or another thread how to use BDSup2Sub400 to move the subs but it comes down to opening the specific PGS track, then go to EDIT-->Move all captions and choosing "move inside all bounds", select the aspect ratio (I always move them to 2.45:1) then click "Move all". Then FILE--->Save/Export. that's it.

BTW, I just created an empty (actually one-line) PGS that works great as the default when you don't have forced subs. Single line that lasts 2-seconds at the beginning. The Dune defaults to that one and the full subs are not shown unless selected. I prefer PGS over SRT.

Hi guys,

I personally rip my blu-ray's to movie-only ISOs so I can't claim to be an expert on MKVs but I would imagine that MakeMKV can essentially accomplish what is needed - the only thing it doesn't do is set the forced subtitle flag to on - you can simply go into header editor in MKV Merge and set it to on which takes all of about 10 seconds.

Again, although I haven't used it much myself, MakeMKV is very easy to use - if you don't care about subtitltes other than forced subs just check only forced subtitles - as a result only one subtitle track will at most be produced (if there are forced subtitles) then simply set the flag to on using MKV Merge header editor - and that's it!

On the other hand, let's say you want to retain full subtitles you put a tickbox next to the full subtitle track and then tick the option for forced subtitles - this will create two independent subtitle tracks - one with all subs and one just with forced subs. Using MKV Merge header editor set the flag to on for the froced subs and the complete track is there in case you need it as well.

The only scenario this won't work is if you have a movie with what is essentially forced subtitles but in a separate track - the only way I know to correctly identfy such subtitles is to playback your disc on a software player such as TMT 5 or PowerDVD before ripping and see if one of the individual subtitle tracks is enabled by default - if so that is your forced subtitle track.

My only hesitance with MakeMKV is there are at times issues with the mkvs created. I don't if issues still exist, but I also have 100% success when I used mkvmerge + other tools (although obviously not as "1-click" as MakemKV)

YEP! Same with me. I seem to have issues at times with makemkv as wel! lip synch being my main complaint. I have rarely, if ever, had an issue with an ISO.

dbone, do you have a recommended workflow using mkvmerge? Although I'm not ready to jump ship from ISO it would be nice to be aware of the methods that could be used to do so.

One thing I like about MakeMKV is if I decided to convert my movie-only ISOs it does so super quick - converting the ISOs is an idea I'm toying with to ensure future compatability. On the other hand, with two D1's in storage I guess that is perhaps being overly paranoid about hardware failure.