Color me confused

[editorchick]

Okay, so awhile ago I posted that I was having trouble ripping Series 5 of Doctor Who. Then I though I had solved it. Well, the long and short of it is nope.
So, basically here's what happens. I put the disc in, open MakeMKV, and can rip it without trouble. The resulting MKV file, however, is horribly glitchy and laggy. If I open it with VLC, it's HD, and works fine except for a bit of lag here and there. Converting it to MP4 works, but it's still glitchy as all get out; which is annoying because my editing program won't open anything but MP4.
Anyone ever had a similar problem/suggestions as to what might be wrong?

[Woodstock]

When you "converted it to MP4", did you reencode the video to remove the VC1 Interlaced encoding the BBS is so fond of, and replace with something better? When glitches occur, does the VLC volume slider get replaced with grey, as it is trying to buffer the content?

[editorchick]

I honestly have no idea if I'm reencoding or not, so probably not. I've been using MakeMKV for ripping and Wondershare Video Converter for MKV-MP4. And I hadn't really paid attention to the volume setting, so I'll check that next time I get on the computer.

[Woodstock]

The Wondershare website says it supports VC-1 as an input format, but it does not say if it supports "all flavors" of it. VC-1 Interlaced has been problematic for a lot of players and converters... Handbrake had issues with it until about 6 or 8 months ago, and they still aren't 100% sure it's completely working, just "most of the time".

When it doesn't work, the video will be torn up pretty bad. MakeMKV will make an accurate copy of it into the MKV file, but players that don't know how to deal with it will give weird results. VLC 2.1.5 and 2.2.x should play it fine, however, assuming there is no bandwidth issues reading the file. That's where the little audio graph turning grey comes in - it's how VLC shows it's having issues reading the file.

[editorchick]

It actually doesn't glitch at all in VLC, really; once in a while it might hang up for a milisecond, but that is fairly common on my computer and seems to be more of an issue my way rather than the encoding way.
Anyways, I'm trying to figure out if a way exists for me to convert the files to MP4 without glitches so I can edit with them. Idk if a way exists, but I figured I'd look.

[Woodstock]

Ah, using them as source for editing.... That throws significant glitches of its own into the mix. You need something that will decode the VC-1, and write a compatible, non-compressed (or lossless compression) file your editor software can read, so you do not lose any detail. And, after you edit, you can compress the result.

If you accept that the files will get VERY LARGE when you go with lossless compression, you probably want something like ffmpeg (fmpeg.org). I monitor the handbrake forum as well, and have read some discussion in the last couple of weeks that settings that SHOULD give a lossless compression do not always work, but you might also give that a try (handbrake.fr is where you'll find it).

[editorchick]

Is ffmpeg the command prompt box thing? I think I tried using it once when I was trying out different options for conversion. For the life of me, I couldn't seem to figure out how it worked. Part of that was because I couldn't find any forums to read instructions off of, however, so.

[Woodstock]

Yes, ffmpeg is command-line driven. There are graphic front ends out there to use it, and the code within it is the basis for a lot of other projects.

If absolute quality isn't necessary, it will probably be simpler to use something like Handbrake's graphic user interface, and set it to maximum quality/lowest compression.

But, the "best" settings to use are going to be dependent upon what your editing software can handle. For example, the discussion on forum.handbrake.fr recently was about how the lossless x264 settings output files that a some editors cannot handle, because they don't support the particular profile. You can find more information by searching for "predictive" on the handbrake forum.

[editorchick]

I've used Handbrake before, so I tried using it again. And...it still wound up glitchy. Possibly even worse than before. I suppose it could be my settings, or the fact that I'm still using MakeMKV; just converting the mkv with Handbrake. Are there any specific settings I should be using? Or possibly the x264 encoder options?

[editorchick]

Okay, so I tried opening the disc itself with VLC, and this popped up:

"Blu-ray error:
This Blu-ray Disc needs a library for AACS decoding, and your system does not have it.
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'bluray:///D:/'. Check the log for details."

Soo...AACS is the problem??

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV takes care of the AACS in the rip. And there are ways you can use MakeMKV to decode AACS for other applications, but I don't use it, so I can't explain it.

[editorchick]

Kay, so I've tried converting with Handbrake; I had it set to lossless, which might be one of the problems, but it basically adds up to a time remaining of six hours and then shuts down the computer in the middle of it. I tried out the original MKV file in VLC; no pixelation, and no greying-out of the audio bar, but the footage itself is kind of jerky in speed. Idk if this is just my computer, or the footage itself, as I said.