Extract m2v from HDV MOV for BD

You could extract it using Quicktime, you can remux it with an audio file of the same length. Make sure you are frame specific. It can be tricky, but I have done it. Not sure what you would do with it then. You can't burn the HDV directly to Blu-ray... I think...? Blu-ray, I believe is H.264, and HDV is mpeg2, as you already said.

But that method will extract the HDV file. Open the movie in QT. Go to the menu option Window/Show Movie Properties, then select the Video Track in the window, and choose EXTRACT in the upper left. Make sure you do a Save As, and give it a different name than the original. If you just save the new extraction you will get a reference movie, not a self contained HDV file. If you want, you can also extract the Timecode track. I guess if you were going to do that, you might as well extract the audio file and save the original as a different self contained movie. (Make sure you do that step...)

It looked like the HDV file I just broke up used PCM audio, at 1.54Mb/s. Once you have another audio track you want to add, make that audio track into a QT movie. Make sure it is the exact number of frames as the HDV. Open both movies in QT, press cmd-A to select all on the audio track. Press cmd-c to copy. Then move to the HDV movie, select all, and go to menu bar/Edit/Add to movie. Make sure you have the entire timeline selected. Save as a new, self-contained movie. But you still won't have a Blu-ray compliant file yet...

Actually, Brian is on to something. First, mpeg2 is one of the codecs allowed on a BD. When given mpeg2 elementary streams, Toast WILL mux a BD without reencoding.

So, how can we get the mpeg2 transport stream out of the HDV? Just extracting with Quicktime player yields another Quicktime movie.

It seems strange to me that one can capture from a camcorder with AVC Video cap (or whatever that is) and get m2t files, but capturing by FCP gives an HDV file that is fundamentally different. Shouldn't it just be a difference in header information?

use MPEG Streamclip (free from Squared 5) to demux the HDV file. Demux to m2v and you'll get the original movie file on its own. Of course you'll wind up with a new movie file. But it is a copy.

You are confusing extracting with deleting. If you don't want another file, you can't extract the mpeg2. You have to delete the audio. If you use MPEGSC, you can make a clone of the m2v isolated.

any way you can post a 5 second clip on this forum and I will take a stab at it. Unfortunately I don't have any m2t files from a specific camera. If I create on in Compressor I can do all this stuff in QT and streamclip. If you can post a clip that would help.

I believe Compressor has a Blu Ray MPEG 2 encoding option. There are many flavors of MPEG2 and HDV is not BD compliant so extracting this won't be legal. Never tried BD streams from Compressor in Scenarist so let us know how it goes. Other than that, you'll need to use an encoding packages like Cinevision or Main Concepts

Sure, you can reencode. But the big deal here is that the stream from the camera (captured with AVCvideoCap) is BD compliant. Just drop it on Toast, and there is no rencoding necessary. I just did it now.

Capture it with FCP and it is instead in a QT HDV container that MPEGStreamclip cannot demux.

Right now, I could offload a tape and burn it for full-resolution viewing in real time plus burn time, although this leaves editing out of the loop. Reencoding is not a nice prospect. But I don't know enough about headers and such to tell the difference between what the camera streams and what FCP does to the capture.

I will try to post some examples later.

~Jeremy

Message was edited by: Jeremy Hansen

I am in the same Quicktime/FCP boat, but found a way out. What's funny is that the solution is a bunch of Windows apps. It takes some time, but much less than re-encoding.

Because I couldn't find an easier method, I will note what I did to convert HDV .mov to M2T(in prep for Bluray):

Requirements:
A Windows machine (virtual or real). I used a Parallels XP running on the Mac.
Womble Video Wizard DVD ( http://womble.com/products/dvd.html)
YAMB ( http://yamb.unite-video.com/download.html) - have to set path to MP4Box
MP4Box ( http://www.videohelp.com/tools/mp4box)
tsMuxeR ( http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html) - requires .NET
Apple Compressor
Toast or Nero

Flow:

Video
----------------
HDV .mov file --> YAMB(extract raw)
.hdv8* file --> Womble Video Wizard (Tools -> MPEG format converter) - transport stream
.m2t file

Audio
----------------
HDV .mov file --> Compressor (AC3 output only)
.ac3 file

"Add" the .m2t file and .ac3 in tsMuxeR and output to Bluray structure.
Burn just the BDMV folder to BD.
I use Nero 8, with UDF 2.5/physical partition file system/no-multisession

Cheers!

*1080i60 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv2'
1080i50 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv3'
1080p24 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv6'
1080p25 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv7'
1080p30 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv8'

Since my last post, I've worked out a slightly better way of addressing the issue of getting FCP HDV .mov files into a Blu-ray playable form. It adds a step, using MPEG Streamclip, but can use Toast 9 for authoring, which means simple menus.

*Video Component*
---------------
HDV .mov file --> YAMB - +extract raw+
.hdv2* file --> Womble Video Wizard DVD - +Tools -> MPEG format converter -> MPEG-2 Transport Stream+
.m2t file --> MPEG Streamclip - +Open Files -> Convert to TS -> Convert to TS+
.ts file

*Audio Component*
---------------
HDV .mov file --> Compressor - +AC3 output only+
.ac3 file

*Combine Audio and Video*
----------------------
.ts file + .ac3 file --> tsMuxeR GUI - +M2TS Muxing+
.m2ts file

*Author and Burn Blu-ray*
--------------------
Add .m2ts files to Toast 9 + HD Plugin
Burn DVD, DVD-DL, BD, or BD-DL with no-encoding, just multiplexing
Play

http://mymoments.roxio.com/enu/articles/mac/video/2008/05/burna_highdef_dvd_with_toast9.html

Notes:
I noticed if some tools are used in the wrong sequence, the field order gets screwed up.

From my observations, Toast 9 doesn't know that HDV .mov actually has MPEG-2 video, so it re-encodes for Blu-ray. If you try .m2t files from direct capture outside of FCP, Toast 9 recognizes the streams, and does not require re-encode. The same is true for the files generated in the above flow.

*
1080i60 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv2'
1080i50 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv3'
1080p24 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv6'
1080p25 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv7'
1080p30 25 Mbps CBR = 'hdv8'

Ha! That is great. But I can do one better.

I tried YAMB as you suggested. I extract all streams (because extracting just the video gives me an incomplete file; I "extract all to raw" and then abort once it reaches the audio portion.)

Then try this: take the resulting file ending in .hdv2 and change the extension to .mpg. MpegStreamclip will open it!!!

Then demux to m2v.

This file (plus a quicktime extracted aiff) can be put into Toast, muxed, and burned!!!

Now, we just have to find a UNIX equivalent of the Mbox "extract streams to raw" function.

Cheers!

Jeremy

Hmmm.....YAMB is a frontend to MP4Box. And MP4Box may be available as a Mac app. Check this out:

http://www.tkn.tu-berlin.de/research/evalvid/

But I don't know what I am doing as far as command line apps.

Or, google "MP4Box mac"

Let me know.

I really apologize for talking to myself here. But I have good news:

MP4Box can be found here:
http://gpac.sourceforge.net/index.php

It needs a library (libpng) found here:
http://ethan.tira-thompson.com/Mac%20OS%20X%20Ports.html

Install the MP4Box binary in /usr/bin and run the libpng installer.

Use this command in terminal:
MP4Box -raw 1 input.mov
Where, of course, "input.mov" is the name of your QT HDV movie. It extracts Track 1 (the video).

It creates a file with ".hdv2" as the extension. Change it to ".mpg" and open it in MpegStreamClip. Demux to m2v. Voila!

I use QT to extract an aiff file separately. For some reason MP4Box's extraction of track 2 takes forever.

~Jeremy

Jeremy, you definitely did one better, and saved us all a bunch of time!

I just got MP4Box(for Mac) from that Berliner site you mentioned, and stuck it into /usr/bin.
Extraction worked. MPEG Streamclip apparently fixes something about the stream.

I suppose this flow can easily done in batch, since MP4Box is command-line, MPEG Streamclip has a batch mode, and Compressor is batch oriented.

It's nice that Toast 9 asks for the audio stream when the .m2v file is added.

I noticed that my Toast-authored Blu-ray DVD5s show the menu okay on my PS3, but the actual movies only show black, incrementing elasped time.
If I create a BDMV folder with tsMuxeR and then burn that with Toast, there's no menu, but the movie plays fine on the PS3. It could be a PS3/Toast bug. The PS3 shows the disc as an AVCHD disc.

Well, there is another problem. There appears to be a 2gb filesize limit with mp4box. I'm wondering if something like mencoder would have an 'extract raw' sort of ability.

So, the disc doesn't work on the PS3?

The Windows compile of mp4box has no filesize limit. Can anyone compile mp4box (gpac) from here:

http://gpac.sourceforge.net/index.php

I would try version 0.4.5.