Dr Who Season 5&6 on Blu-ray

[jfrobmd]

Most episodes do not convert properly to MKV files. Will not play with Quicktime or VLC. Choppy when played in the Finder window. Cannot convert files to M4V. Suspect file is corrupted when converted to MKV.

Can you help?

[Smithcraft]

I'd say it's not corruption as it's designed that way, since it's BBC the Bluray files are done with interlaced VC-1. This is not supported by much other than Microsoft in software.

You could try a combination of Perian, and Flip4Mac.

SC

[jfrobmd]

Bummer. Wish I had known that bout the BBC Blu-ray discs. Should have gone for the DVDs.

Any other Blu-rays I need to be aware of that will not work with MKV?

What program could I use from the windows side and will those programs work with Windows XP?

JR

[Romansh]

Bummer. Wish I had known that bout the BBC Blu-ray discs. Should have gone for the DVDs.

Any other Blu-rays I need to be aware of that will not work with MKV?

This is neither a limitation of MakeMKV nor of the MKV format.

It's that of the player (anything using libavcodec for decoding, like VLC, XBMC, and many others)…

[jfrobmd]

[quote]This is neither a limitation of MakeMKV nor of the MKV format.

It's that of the player (anything using libavcodec for decoding, like VLC, XBMC, and many others)…/quote]


I guess that I am unclear as to the exact problem. Is the issue the type of blu-ray drive that I have? The BBC blu-ray discs need different blu-ray drive to be converted properly? I have not yet tried Perian or VLC, but if those work are they not different software solutions?

Could you please explain further?

Thanks! JR

[Romansh]

The video is compressed using the VC-1 codec and interlaced compression. Perian, VLC and anything using libavcodec for decoding cannot play that because it's not implemented. Perian, VLC and so on are the problem, not the Blu-ray.

[jfrobmd]

I appreciate your explanations and patience.

So far I have been able to use MakeMKV to convert the Dr Who Season 6 blu-ray discs #2-4 to MKV files. I cannot get a successful conversion from disc #1, and have not yet tried discs #'s 5 and 6.

Using iSkysoft Video Converter I have created M4V files to use on my Apple devices from the MKV files above.

Why can I convert some of the episodes and not all of them? Is it possible that the first disc is damaged? Could BBC have changed from using VC-1 Codec midseason?

I am very puzzled, but glad to be making some progress. Any advice on how complete the process for all of the discs would be appreciated.

Again, many thanks!

JR

[Romansh]

IDK. Some episodes must be progressive rather than interlaced, I guess.

[Jackaloop]

On a Mac running OS X 10.8, I had no luck with the interlaced Doctor Who discs using iSkysoft Video converter -- it just spat out an audio file. Much the same result with several other converters. My target format was Apple TV 3/M4V.

I did some tests in my Win XP virtual machine (RipBot and others), but it was all a bit hit and miss. And slow.

On a whim, I tried an old version (5.0.1) of Kigo Video Converter for Mac that I'd downloaded months ago.

The software's device profiles are old, and the output from the Apple TV 2 profile wasn't great, but the artifacts from the interlacing were gone!

If you default to a Customized MP4 movie, notch up all the settings to the max, with frame rate set to 30000/1001, you'll get an MP4 file that plays just fine on Apple TV 3.

Interestingly, later versions of the software (6.x) throw up an error as soon as you try to convert the same VC-1 interlaced MKV files, so whatever magic was happening in 5.0.1 is no more. The software "about" page has credits for FFmpeg and MPlayer, though as far as I'm aware FFmpeg still doesn't handle interlaced VC-1.

The converter ploughed through the Tennant specials and Season 5 with no hiccups. The resulting file size per episode is about 4Gb, from 10-13Gb MKVs, so it's not super efficient -- Profile: High 1.3, which might explain it.

It's far from perfect, but it is the most workable solution for interlaced MKVs for me in Mac land. A Google search will deliver you the 5.0.1 version I used -- worth a try at least.

[dannyboy48888]

Season 05 is interlaced VC-1 and 06 is interlaced AVC MBAFF
handbrake handles season 06 but bloats the filesize

On a windows box in MEgui I use this AVISynth script to get back the 25fps(24.975) fps video

LoadPlugin("C:\Users\ChuckD\Desktop\MeGUI_2028_x86\tools\ffms\ffms2.dll")
FFVideoSource("H:\Doctor_Who_Series_6_Part_1_Disc_1\Doctor_Who_Series_6_Part_1_Disc_1_t00.mkv", threads=2, fpsnum=30000, fpsden=1001)
LoadPlugin("C:\Users\ChuckD\Desktop\MeGUI_2028_x86\tools\avisynth_plugin\TIVTC.dll")
TFM(mode=5, PP=5, blockx=64, blocky=64, chroma=true, d2v=")
TDecimate(mode=3, cycle=6, hybrid=2, vfrdec=1, dupthresh=0.3, se=true, mkvout="timecodes.txt")

FYI all Dr. Who Bluray titles before season 06 I.E christmas specials are VC-1 interlaced