Crunchie with HD material and AC3 audio.

whitford · **17th October 2005, 04:55 PM**

Has anyone work out a way to crunch high definition?

Edited by Arkay : Split to new thread.

arkay · **17th October 2005, 05:25 PM**

Crunchie was and is designed specifically for SD material (as that was all we had at the time). I have always intended it to be useful for HD material as well and the modification necessary won't take me that long.

Unfotunately at the moment the introduction of AC3 audio has introduced problems for me that I cannot easily overcome.

DVRMSToolbox which is used to convert dvr-ms to mpeg currently does not properly demux HD or SD with AC3 sound imbedded.

I have spoken with the author of dvr-ms toolbox (babgvant) and we are both at a loss as to why this is occuring (it work's fine for ATSC recordings, just not DVB-T).

So. Until the above can be resolved Crunching anything with AC3 audio will result in an avi with NO sound.

I can make the modifications to support HD material conversions but there is little use without the ability to take the audio as well.

My apologies to those of you who do use Crunchie on a regular basis. Be assured that I am always looking to solve the issue and that as soon as a resolution can be found Crunchie will be updated to support all your HD habits!

Cheers,
Arkay.

jgrouse · **17th October 2005, 05:27 PM**

Find a product which can convert the DVR-MS HD files to MPG format first. The DVRMSToolbox app which Crunchie uses doesn't work with the AC3 audio in these recordings. If the audio is MPG layer 2/MP3 then all is ok with DVRMSToolbox. Once the files are in MPG format then Crunchie seems to be able to convert the files. One exception seems to be 576p (7HD). Even with the 50fps output option it will end up with a jerky low res looking AVI file. For some reason 1080i deinterlaces nicely to 50 fps.

I'm using the latest beta for VideoReDo (build 416) which can take in the DVR-MS files, find the start/stop points for the ad's and output a nice MPG file. Has a slider to correct audio sync. Excellent app worth every dollar.

If you have a mix of MPG and DVR-MS files in a folder Crunchie 1.1 will process all of them without having to set it to MPG only.

I've even been able to go out to 720p WMV using VideoReDo and Sony Vegas 6. Source was 1080i and ends up as 720p 50fps. Huge processing time though. An average size movie ends up as a 5GB WMV. Retains the 5.1 audio as well. Still looking for a plug-in to remove the channel watermark.

jgrouse · **17th October 2005, 05:32 PM**

dang! (note to self: must type quicker)

arkay · **17th October 2005, 05:39 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgrouse

One exception seems to be 576p (7HD). Even with the 50fps output option it will end up with a jerky low res looking AVI file.

This is expected behaviour as Crunchie automatically deinterlaces ALL content. Feeding it a progressive source will have varying results (all of them bad) as it's deinterlacing a progressive source.

All SD was interlaced so automating deinterlacing worked well for SD.

The HD version will need to determine the source material type and deinterlace only the 1080i channels. 720p can just be compressed without the need for any deinterlacing

Cheers,
Arkay.

jgrouse · **17th October 2005, 05:55 PM**

Hi Arkay,

is there a paramiter I can include in the ini file which will tell mencoder not to deinterlace the source as it is feeing it out to AVI or is the deinterlace hard-coded?

whitford · **17th October 2005, 05:59 PM**

Thanks... correct me if I'm wrong:
1. The ONLY solution at this stage will be to use videoredo --> mpg --> crunchie. And this will work with 9 /10 HD.
2. Crunchie does not work with 7HD
3. How long does it take to convert a 1 hour HD recording from videoredo --> mpg? Will it take as long as DVRedit / dcut?

jgrouse · **17th October 2005, 06:05 PM**

7 - no, 9 and 10 HD yes.

See Arkays post on progressive source files.

2 hour movie takes about 3-4 minutes to convert to MPG with VideoReDo as it doesn't actually re-compress the MPG stream in the DVR-MS file, just cuts out the bits you don't need.

whitford · **17th October 2005, 07:42 PM**

Any idea whether I can convert 9HD / 10HD into mpeg using autodvrconvert instead of videoredo?

arkay · **17th October 2005, 08:22 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgrouse

Hi Arkay,

is there a paramiter I can include in the ini file which will tell mencoder not to deinterlace the source as it is feeing it out to AVI or is the deinterlace hard-coded?

It's hard coded at the moment. Either median deinterlacing or 50 fps conversion.

Let me look into it. I might be able to get a beta out for you to play with with no deinterlacing but I still need to totally rework the crop detection for HD and also automate file source detection (if it's possible).

Lots of research to do but if you really want to be able to do 7 HD without deinterlacing I could code some exceptions for deinterlacing based on the file name (channel 7 HD) for instance.. So you can config the name of the channel and the type of video it has in the gui). This is not the way I want to do it but as a stop gap it'll work.

Given that you'll only be converting mpeg I also need to rework the name detection (as currently this is only done on dvr-ms files).

Bloody Emerald.....

Cheers,
Arkay.