Searching for better reliability (BD rips to MKV)

[madman]

I have been doing some testing of Blu-ray rips under UMS v1.4.0. Let me say at the start that UMS is great - easy to use, clean, actively maintained and the price is right! Big thanks to all the devs involved in this project.

I'm stuck though. I've found that UMS gives me a clean replay on only about 50% of my tests....

Code: Select all

                                  Main title                      Other titles from the BD

Moon                              ok                              Audio sync probs, some data streams corrupt
Real Steel                        Freezes in opening seqce        ok
Real Steel                        ok only if transcoded using Mencoder/DTS
12 Monkeys                        ok                              Bad vid quality
The Unforgiven                    ok                              Bad vid quality
Texas Killing Fields (*)          Audio sync probs
The Descendants                   Bad - coloured bands in playback
The Descendants                   ok only if transcoded using Mencoder/DTS
Chronos (+)                       .m2ts data stream corrupt
The Shining                       ok                              Bad vid quality, replay speed wrong
2001 A Space Odyssey              ok                              Bad vid quality, replay speed wrong
Transformers 3                    ok

The BD rips were all made using MakeMKV, except for Chronos(+) which is a straight unencrypted BD disk image, and Texas Killing Fields(*) which was ripped using Aiseesoft.

I am using UMS v1.4.0, Win 7 x64, 100 Mbit network to a PS3, HDMI out to Sony Bravia TV.
I should also mention that all titles replay perfectly when using VLC on the host computer.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions?

How do I go about debugging the playback problems?

Are there changes to the UMS settings that might improve the situation?

Or am I expecting too much and I should be using some other media server? (I've also tried Serviio, by the way. It gave me a different set of failures).

Thanks to all.

[SubJunk]

Problems are to be expected if you use programs like those since they may be using weird codec and container settings. I would recommend using MeGUI and MKVToolnix since that's what a lot of scene rippers use.

[madman]

Problems are to be expected if you use programs like those since they may be using weird codec and container settings. I would recommend using MeGUI and MKVToolnix since that's what a lot of scene rippers use.

Yeah, I started off thinking bad things about MakeMKV too. But I've since changed my mind....
- MakeMKV does not transcode the video stream as it comes off the BD. It preserves it, as is, and just bundles it into a .mkv container. It's the same idea as DVD Decrypter. No needless transcoding, no loss of quality.
- The same mkv object, when presented to VLC on the host computer, plays flawlessly.
- Up to a point, weird inputs to UMS shouldn't matter. It's up to the consuming app to compensate wherever it can. Web browsers are in the same boat - strict HTML enforcement just hurts a browser's usability.

I'm not just here to have a whinge. No offense intended. I have plenty of dev skills and I'm happy to spend time trying to debug this if someone can start me in the right direction. I can also provide chunks out of the .mkv files if that would help.

What would be some examples of weird codec and container settings?

This may be irrelevant, but I have noticed that about half of the bad videos came off the BDs as 720x480 29.9fps MPEG2 NTSC.

Any tips appreciated.

[SubJunk]

Can you post your debug.log after trying to play the problematic files?