Ripping Blu Ray

[GOS]

OK - Power/Glory first 5 songs...none of them play in foobar. Same error. I have to say this though. Prior to downloading eac3to (or whatever it's called) the .dts files would play. Now they won't play at all. Not sure if it is getting in the way somehow when I'm using DVD-AE. UGH....

I tried to unistall the eac3to, but oddly, I can't even find the program.

 

[GOS]

OK - Power/Glory first 5 songs...none of them play in foobar. Same error. I have to say this though. Prior to downloading eac3to (or whatever it's called) the .dts files would play. Now they won't play at all. Not sure if it is getting in the way somehow when I'm using DVD-AE. UGH....

I tried to unistall the eac3to, but oddly, I can't even find the program.

OK - I was able to get rid of all the remnants of eac3to using Ccleaner registry cleaner. Went back to DVD-AE, went through same process (direct stream demux)...retrieved the .dts file and opened in Foobar...and... IT PLAYS! So, in my case that damn eac3to bastard must have been doing something...no clue what.

Now my next step is to try to rip the whole album....then see if I can convert to flac. Good lord...

 

[quoddiophile]

Fear not Sir Gos but help us is on the way.

Like you, I'm a relative newbie at this--I still can't get Foobar to work properly but there are other ways.

In the case of Octopus, I have also experienced your frustrations. I was finally able to get it to rip properly by using MakeMKV to produce an MKV file (MakeMKV has a built-in decrypter so you have to temporarily disable any active decrypter, eg. DVDFAB Passkey for it to work properly). Within MakeMKV, you should make sure that you check only the relevant DTSMA streams. The correct one will have the appopriate number of chapters in its description of the DTSMA stream.

Then use Audiomuxer to extract the file and export it to flac (Audiomuxer -- Tools --" Extract Audio from MKV/MKA file". Check the "Export to Flac" and "Load in AudioMuxer and Split into Chapters boxes', set the Flac level if you wish (5 is probably the best), then click "Extract". Save the file to whatever directory you wish (the default name is output.flac) using the windows explorer window that will pop up if you haven't done this before. You will then be asked to tag the files. Once you have done this, press tag and audiomuxer will do its thing and eventually produce 9 output files in the case of Octopus (it will produce 10 if you do it any other way). You will then have to rename the files using a tagger (e.g. Mp3tag, I use Musichi).

To be clear, there is almost certainly nothing wrong with your usual method rather there is a problem with the DTSMA stream in Octopus. What seems to be happening is that a very brief lossy file exists in the DTSMA stream just before "Knots". The program is expecting a lossless file (as in DTSMA) and so screws up. What happens in MakeMKV is that very brief files (I think it is under 20 seconds) are ignored. Therefore it seems that the lossy (i.e. problem file) is bypassed and so does not make it into AudioMuxer for the conversion to flac and so AudioMuxer works properly.

Incidentally, you can use the MakeMKV/AudioMuxer combination for just about anything and they are both basically free (you get a 30 day trial for MakeMKV). Notice that I said 'just about' anything. Just now while ripping the very last of my Rock/Soundtrack discs, I found one that would not work using any method. It would rip the 24-192 2-channel layer but not the 24-192 surround layer. The blu-ray in question is Citizen Kane; The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann. It is produced by High Definition Tape Transfers (mentioned several times on this site). I will contact the company about this and I suspect they will send me or allow me access to the flac files that they also sell besides the physical disc; they are very nice people.

By the way, I find that the easiest way to rip these discs is to use DVDAE along with DVDFAB's Passkey (to decrypt the discs) because they are easier to tag using the metadata download feature of DVDAE. You can also use the "Extract from blu-ray" option under tools -- "extract audio from blu-ray" in audiomuxer if your disc is already decrypted with Passkey (or presumably something similar). There are many ways to skin a disc, particularly if you have all 4 programs (DVDAE, DVDFAB Passkey, AudioMuxer and MakeMKV.

Hope this helps.

Jim (aka J.R.)

 

[GOS]

Fear not Sir Gos but help us is on the way.

Like you, I'm a relative newbie at this--I still can't get Foobar to work properly but there are other ways.

In the case of Octopus, I have also experienced your frustrations. I was finally able to get it to rip properly by using MakeMKV to produce an MKV file (MakeMKV has a built-in decrypter so you have to temporarily disable any active decrypter, eg. DVDFAB Passkey for it to work properly). Within MakeMKV, you should make sure that you check only the relevant DTSMA streams. The correct one will have the appopriate number of chapters in its description of the DTSMA stream.

Then use Audiomuxer to extract the file and export it to flac (Audiomuxer -- Tools --" Extract Audio from MKV/MKA file". Check the "Export to Flac" and "Load in AudioMuxer and Split into Chapters boxes', set the Flac level if you wish (5 is probably the best), then click "Extract". Save the file to whatever directory you wish (the default name is output.flac) using the windows explorer window that will pop up if you haven't done this before. You will then be asked to tag the files. Once you have done this, press tag and audiomuxer will do its thing and eventually produce 9 output files in the case of Octopus (it will produce 10 if you do it any other way). You will then have to rename the files using a tagger (e.g. Mp3tag, I use Musichi).

To be clear, there is almost certainly nothing wrong with your usual method rather there is a problem with the DTSMA stream in Octopus. What seems to be happening is that a very brief lossy file exists in the DTSMA stream just before "Knots". The program is expecting a lossless file (as in DTSMA) and so screws up. What happens in MakeMKV is that very brief files (I think it is under 20 seconds) are ignored. Therefore it seems that the lossy (i.e. problem file) is bypassed and so does not make it into AudioMuxer for the conversion to flac and so AudioMuxer works properly.

Incidentally, you can use the MakeMKV/AudioMuxer combination for just about anything and they are both basically free (you get a 30 day trial for MakeMKV). Notice that I said 'just about' anything. Just now while ripping the very last of my Rock/Soundtrack discs, I found one that would not work using any method. It would rip the 24-192 2-channel layer but not the 24-192 surround layer. The blu-ray in question is Citizen Kane; The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann. It is produced by High Definition Tape Transfers (mentioned several times on this site). I will contact the company about this and I suspect they will send me or allow me access to the flac files that they also sell besides the physical disc; they are very nice people.

By the way, I find that the easiest way to rip these discs is to use DVDAE along with DVDFAB's Passkey (to decrypt the discs) because they are easier to tag using the metadata download feature of DVDAE. You can also use the "Extract from blu-ray" option under tools -- "extract audio from blu-ray" in audiomuxer if your disc is already decrypted with Passkey (or presumably something similar). There are many ways to skin a disc, particularly if you have all 4 programs (DVDAE, DVDFAB Passkey, AudioMuxer and MakeMKV.

Hope this helps.

Jim (aka J.R.)

Whoa...well, that sort of explains some things..at least for that particular disc. I do have all those programs you mentioned. For now, I need to calm down and forget about Octopus.....just makes me crazy. I'm working on Power/Glory right now using my standard method and hoping it works. Thanks a lot for the comments. At least I now know I"m not totally crazy.

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Excellent post Jim, was about to re rip using the above method Hope your post helps Gene and Skherbeck

 

[GOS]

Fear not Sir Gos but help us is on the way.

Like you, I'm a relative newbie at this--I still can't get Foobar to work properly but there are other ways.

In the case of Octopus, I have also experienced your frustrations. I was finally able to get it to rip properly by using MakeMKV to produce an MKV file (MakeMKV has a built-in decrypter so you have to temporarily disable any active decrypter, eg. DVDFAB Passkey for it to work properly). Within MakeMKV, you should make sure that you check only the relevant DTSMA streams. The correct one will have the appopriate number of chapters in its description of the DTSMA stream.



Jim (aka J.R.)

How do I do that??

 

[GOS]

Oh boy...

Well, the very first song ripped fine, would play. I went back, ripped the remaining songs...and....nothing. None of them except the very first song will play. WTF??

Again - this was Power/Glory simply using DVD-AE and Foobar. I haven't tried alternate methods that Jim outlined. Why would both discs behave that way? At some point back a ways in this thread - someone told me that DVD-AE and Foobar would generally work just fine. At least for these 2 discs, doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[GOS]

How do I do that??

OK - figured out how to disable....

 

[GOS]

Using MKV and it tells me it has skipped 4 "titles". Does this mean it's not making an MKV file for 4 of the songs? If so - that doesn't seem good.

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Probably titles less than 120 seconds.

 

[GOS]

Wow! It finally worked...using Jim's MKA/Audiomuxer method. I have to say - it took a while and the whole time I had NO clue what it was doing. At one point it said it was converting to wav files...which I did not ask it to do...then it turned around and converted to flac. Not sure I understand all the "hoops" it goes through. But if it works, I guess that's all that matters. For the record, I had to manually type in the song names in Foobar....not sure how to auto populate that. WEll, I do in Foobar, but it couldn't find any matches.

 

[HomerJAU]

Lots of activity on this thread overnight. Sounds like an issue with mastering on that GG disc Gene.

Audiomuxer doesn't auto populate track tagging but after getting a disc into individual FLAC files per album you can load them all into Foobar and use one of its tagging methods to automate it.

 

[GOS]

Lots of activity on this thread overnight. Sounds like an issue with mastering on that GG disc Gene.

Audiomuxer doesn't auto populate track tagging but after getting a disc into individual FLAC files per album you can load them all into Foobar and use one of its tagging methods to automate it.

Which I've done a zillion times. For some reason, I can rename (retag) all the names in foobar - but when I go back to the songs in my Gentle Giant folder, they still have the generic name assigned by Audiomuxer. Which basically means, I can't see this title in my Foobar library. I have to manually get it and then it doesn't stick. UGH

 

[HomerJAU]

Are you talking about the files names or internal meta data tags?

 

[quoddiophile]

Oh boy...

Well, the very first song ripped fine, would play. I went back, ripped the remaining songs...and....nothing. None of them except the very first song will play. WTF??

Again - this was Power/Glory simply using DVD-AE and Foobar. I haven't tried alternate methods that Jim outlined. Why would both discs behave that way? At some point back a ways in this thread - someone told me that DVD-AE and Foobar would generally work just fine. At least for these 2 discs, doesn't seem to be the case.

I have recently ripped Power/Glory and it worked just fine. To be honest, I can't seem to get Foobar to work properly so I would recommend the following:

Use Passkey and wait until the disc is decrypted.

Activate Audiomuxer and then tools -- extract blu-ray audio

Then follow my instructions in paragraph two in post 143. You have to "select the mpls file". Then find the files that you need to find on the blu-ray via the Windows explorer menu (my apologies, in my haste I forgot this step in my previous post).
These files are [blu-ray drive:] -- BDMV -- Playlist. There will be a number of streams listed with numbers such as 00001.mpls etc. You will have to find the stream by trial and error (open the file or double-click on the filename). Luckily the parsing process it uses to display the file contents (i.e. the appropriate stream) is quite rapid.

Next, as in post #143, click the appropriate boxes such as "Export to Flac", etc. (and I would recommend FLAC be set to level 5) and proceed accordingly.

I have found this to be the most reliable method for discs with DTSMA streams above 24/48. Anything 24/48 or less or any LPCM is probably best done via the DVDAE/Passkey combination because the tagging is easier via the download metadata feature in DVDAE. Tip: When tagging in AudioMuxer, unlike DVDAE the down arrow does work which makes things a little bit easier.

I have ripped quite a few discs this way and other than Octopus and the Citizen Kane disc, it has always worked. And yes, it will work with the relatively rare Dolby TrueHD discs as well.

Best of luck. You can always PM me if necessary.

Jim

 

[GOS]

As an example. The song Proclamation, is song one on Power. Audiomuxer did it's magic, only it then named the track Output.split-001.flac. And so on....002, .003 etc. So, I go to Foobar, pull in those 9 files. Go to properties, start editing the information (metadata) - which it let's me do....and all looks OK. Only, if I exit out of Foobar, go back to my library and search for GG...it doesn't exist.

 

[HomerJAU]

I use Tagscanner (free) to rename, add my own album art and re-tag as I add the source info to my FLACS, e.g. Comment: 'From 2014 BDA' - I usually change the album title too - e.g. 'Album Title (Quad BDA)' as I can see that when I play on my media player, that's also important if I have more than one version of an album.

But usually the DVDAE and Foobar will work and you will get your desired file names and metadata automatically.

 

[quoddiophile]

As an example. The song Proclamation, is song one on Power. Audiomuxer did it's magic, only it then named the track Output.split-001.flac. And so on....002, .003 etc. So, I go to Foobar, pull in those 9 files. Go to properties, start editing the information (metadata) - which it let's me do....and all looks OK. Only, if I exit out of Foobar, go back to my library and search for GG...it doesn't exist.

What I do is select all the output files and paste them into my Gentle Giant directory, then within my Musichi tagger I select all the files and it has a function to rename them in a batch. I'm sure that a tagger like MP3tag will work just as well. The files come out as Proclamation.flac, So Sincere.flac, Aspirations.flac, etc. For most people, the path would be something like C:\Music\Rock Music\Gentle Giant\The Power and the Glory\Proclamation.flac, C:\.....\So Sincere.Flac, C:...\Aspirations.flac

I have no idea if this will help but it might.

Jim

 

[GOS]

Going back to what Jim just suggested...I got to the part where I chose the correct stream via audiomuxer...and now it pops open this window. I assumed I could populate the information...even manually. Do I, or don't bother?

 

[quoddiophile]

Wow! It finally worked...using Jim's MKA/Audiomuxer method. I have to say - it took a while and the whole time I had NO clue what it was doing. At one point it said it was converting to wav files...which I did not ask it to do...then it turned around and converted to flac. Not sure I understand all the "hoops" it goes through. But if it works, I guess that's all that matters. For the record, I had to manually type in the song names in Foobar....not sure how to auto populate that. WEll, I do in Foobar, but it couldn't find any matches.

The wav files are just temporary files that Audiomuxer seem to use as part of its conversion processes. Just relax and let Audiomuxer do its thing.

Jim