What flavors of H264 will my Sony Bluray player like?

[TedBellLover]

I spent days building the perfect DVD9 of "The Lorax" I shed all but two of the soundtracks (main and commentary) and inched up the bitrate until it just fit on a DVD9 disk (about 8.5 GB). I used VirtualDub 32 bit and set the H.264 codec to single-pass constant rate factor 17.5 and kept the original size (1920 by 1080). It would not play the DVD9 so I tried the original Matroska on a WD Passport. It still would not play. How must I adjust the codec so the Sony will play it? Thank you in advance for your responses.

[James]

Ted, I didn't know you could playback 1080p content from a "dvd" structure. I thought that the codecs in the player were dictated by the type of disk that was being played back?

Does your bluray player support playing back just video files instead?

[TedBellLover]

I should clarify. I ripped my Blu-ray, reencoded the H.264 stream to a more compact size (still 1080p though) and muxed that with several AC3 streams (again from the Blu-ray) to make a Matroska with one hi-def H.264 stream and several AC3 streams. I burned this to a DVD9, so in this case the DVD is just a media carrier like a thumb drive, or the little WD Passport I use. I tried to play it. The Sony Bluray player started to play it and hung and had to be "cold-booted". It did the same when I tried to play the same Matroska from the little Passport. Since it plays other Matroskas I have made fine I suspect it's the exact codec setting I am using. That's what I meant. There's no DVD or Bluray structure as such; it's just a DVD9 used as a data disk and with my Matroska on it. I hope that clears it up. I suspect my codec settings are distasteful somehow to the Sony.

[James]

Ah, that makes sense. Shows how much I know about the DVD formats. DVD9 is just a "data" DVD, got it.

I vaguely remember something about needing to only use the "low" profile option in h.264 for some players. I have no clue if that is what is happening here, but I'll see if I can track down where I heard/read that.

[proxops-pete]

I believe the Blu-ray player will have to support the specific video codecs you want to use...
What is the model # of the Sony? I wanna say a bad joke that Sony won't support any codec unless its own. :P

[Nabby]

Yeah, I'm almost 100% sure that Sony anything will not play an Mkv file. I've had the same issue with ripping my bluray collection so that I may stream it to my PS3. I've found that mp4 or m2ts formats work best. I use a software called aunsoft blu-ray video converter ultimate for this and it works great. I've done this manually with handbrake and various other applications but it is too time consuming.

[TedBellLover]

I don't recall the exact model of the Sony player. It does play some of my Matroskas but not others. I don't know why exactly it plays some but not others. I think there are tiny technical differences, possibly just the H.264 codec settings. I found a page somewhere that listed the requirements for a Bluray player to play files. Instead of laboring to hit those restrictions I should just build myself an HTPC.

Thank you for all the replies.

[Nabby]

I don't recall the exact model of the Sony player. It does play some of my Matroskas but not others. I don't know why exactly it plays some but not others. I think there are tiny technical differences, possibly just the H.264 codec settings. I found a page somewhere that listed the requirements for a Bluray player to play files. Instead of laboring to hit those restrictions I should just build myself an HTPC.

Thank you for all the replies.

Mediainfo is your friend. Use this application to look at each file and compare one that works and one that doesnt. Keep in mind mkv is just a container and each file can differ greatly within said container.

[vertices]

I have 4 Sony BR players. They all suck for mkv playback. Moving to a Plex Media Server at home combined with HTPC and Roku and iOS playback devices was the best thing I ever did. Been quite a while since I've even turned on one of my Sonys.