tsMuxer

Vision

This project is for tsMuxer - a transport stream muxer for remuxing/muxing elementary streams. This is very useful for transcoding and this project is used in other products such as Universal Media Server.

EVO/VOB/MPG, MKV/MKA, MP4/MOV, TS, M2TS to TS to M2TS.

Supported video codecs H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, VC-1, MPEG2. Supported audio codecs AAC, AC3 / E-AC3(DD+), DTS/ DTS-HD.

Some of the major features include:

• Ability to set muxing fps manually and automatically
• Ability to change level for H.264 streams
• Ability to shift a sound tracks
• Ability to extract DTS core from DTS-HD
• Ability to join files
• Output/Author to compliant Blu-ray Disc or AVCHD
• Blu-ray 3D support

Ethics

This project operates under the W3C's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct:

W3C is a growing and global community where participants choose to work together, and in that process experience differences in language, location, nationality, and experience. In such a diverse environment, misunderstandings and disagreements happen, which in most cases can be resolved informally. In rare cases, however, behavior can intimidate, harass, or otherwise disrupt one or more people in the community, which W3C will not tolerate.

A Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct is useful to define accepted and acceptable behaviors and to promote high standards of professional practice. It also provides a benchmark for self evaluation and acts as a vehicle for better identity of the organization.

We hope that our community group act according to these guidelines, and that participants hold each other to these high standards. If you have any questions or are worried that the code isn't being followed, please contact the owner of the repository.

Language

tsMuxer is written in C++. It can be compiled for Windows, Linux and Mac.

History

This project was created by Roman Vasilenko, with the last public release 20th January 2014. It was open sourced on 23rd July 2019, to aid the future development.

Installation

All executable are created to be portable, so you can just save and extract the compressed package for your platform.

The workflow to automatically create pre-compiled binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux is not quite finished yet.

However on each push to the master branch on GitHub, executables are created with GitHub Actions. To download the pre-compiled binaries head over to the following URL (you must be logged in) https://github.com/justdan96/tsMuxer/actions and click on the latest action for your chosen platform (Windows, Mac or Linux). In the Artifacts section in the top-right you can download a ZIP file containing the executable for tsMuxer.

At the moment only the CLI is included, the GUI is not yet available.

Windows

The ZIP file for Windows can just be unzipped and the executables can be used straight away - there are no dependencies.

Linux

The ZIP file for Linux can just be unzipped and the executables can be used straight away. The CLI doesn't have any dependencies. The GUI does have dependencies, but issues with these can be avoided with AppImage.

MacOS

This ZIP file for MacOS can just be unzipped and the executables can be used after installing a couple of dependencies. To install those run the commands below in the Terminal:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null
brew install freetype
brew install zlib

Usage

GUI

The simplest thing to do is to use the tsMuxerGUI. A screenshot of that can be seen below:

Command Line

Alternatively you can use tsMuxer via the command-line.

Examples:

    tsMuxeR <media file name>
    tsMuxeR <meta file name> <out file/dir name>

tsMuxeR can be run in track detection mode or muxing mode. If run tsMuxeR with only one argument then tsMuxeR display input track information required to construct meta file. If run tsMuxeR with two arguments tsMuxeR start muxing or demuxing process.

Meta file format

File MUST has extension .meta. This file define files you want to multiplex. First line of meta file contain additional parameters that apply to all tracks. In this case the line should begin with the word MUXOPT.

Following lines indicate a list of tracks and their parameters. The format is as follows: <code name>, <file name>, <parameters> Parameters are comma separated. Each parameter indicates the name and value. Example of META file:

MUXOPT --blu-ray
V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC, D:/media/test/stream.h264, fps=25
A_AC3, D:/media/test/stream.ac3, timeshift=-10000ms

In this example one AC3 audio stream and one H264 video stream are multiplexed to BD disk. Input file name can reference to elementary stream or track inside container.

Supported input containers:

• TS/M2TS/MTS
• EVO/VOB/MPG/MPEG
• MKV
• MOV/MP4
• MPLS (Blu-ray media play list file)

Names of codecs in the meta file:

Meta File Code	Description
V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC	H.265/HEVC
V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC	H.264/AVC
V_MPEG4/ISO/MVC	H.264/MVC
V_MS/VFW/WVC1	VC1
V_MPEG-2	MPEG2
A_AC3	AC3/AC3+/TRUE-HD
A_AAC	AAC
A_DTS	DTS/DTS-Express/DTS-HD
A_MP3	MPEG audio layer 1/2/3
A_LPCM	raw pcm data or PCM WAV file
S_HDMV/PGS	Presentation graphic stream (BD subtitle format)
S_TEXT/UTF8	SRT subtitle format. Encoding MUST be UTF-8/UTF-16/UTF-32

Each track may has addition parameters. Track parameters do not have dash. If parameter value has several words, parameter must be enclosed in quotes.

Common additional parameters for any type of track:

Parameter	Description
track	track number if input file is container.
lang	track language. MUST contains exact 3 letters.

Additional parameters for audio tracks:

Parameter	Description
timeshift	Shift audio track to future (positive value) or to past. Measured at milliseconds.
down-to-dts	Available only for DTS-HD tracks. Filter out HD part.
down-to-ac3	Available only for TRUE-HD tracks. Filter out HD part.
secondary	Mux as secondary audio. Available for DD+ and DTS-Express.

Additional parameters for video tracks:

Parameter	Description
fps	Video fps. If not defined, default value auto detected from a source stream if present. If not, default value 23.976.
delPulldown	Remove pulldown from the track if exists. This option lead to fps change from 30 to 24 if pulldown exists.
ar	Override video aspect ratio. 16:9, 4:3 e.t.c.

Additional parameters for H.264 video tracks:

Parameter	Description
level	Overwrite level in the H264 stream. Note: option update headers only. The H264 stream may not meet the requirements of a lower level.
insertSEI	If original stream does not contain SEI picture timing, SEI buffering period or VUI parameters, then add this data to the stream. This option is recommended for BD muxing.
forceSEI	Add SEI picture timing, buffering period and VUI parameters to the stream. Rebuild data If data already exist.
contSPS	If original video doesn't contain repetitive SPS/PPS then SPS/PPS will be added to the stream before each key frame. This option is recommended for BD muxing.
subTrack	Used for combined AVC/MVC tracks only. TsMuxeR always demultiplex such tracks to separate AVC and MVC streams. This parameter defined reference to AVC part(if value=1) or to MVC part (if value=2).
secondary	Mux as secondary video (PIP).
pipCorner	Corner for PIP video. Allowed values: "TopLeft","TopRight", "BottomRight", "BottomLeft".
pipHOffset	PIP window horizontal offset from the corner in pixels.
pipVOffset	PIP window vertical offset from the corner in pixels.
pipScale	PIP window scale factor. Allowed values: "1", "1/2", "1/4", "1.5", "fullScreen".
pipLumma	Allow PIP window to be transparent. Transparent colors are lumma colors in range [0..pipLumma].

Additional parameters for PG and SRT tracks:

Parameter	Description
video-width	The width of the video in pixels.
video-height	The height of the video in pixels.
fps	Video fps. Recommended to define this parameter for more carefully timing processing.
3d-plane	Parameter defines number of the '3D offset track' which placed inside MVC track. Each message has individual 3D offset. This information stored inside 3D offset track.

Additional parameters for SRT tracks:

Parameter	Description
font-name	Font name to render.
font-color	Font color. Color can be defined in hexadecimal or decimal format. If color 24 bit long (for instance 0xFF00FF) it's define RGB components. IF color 32 bit long (for instance 0x80FF00FF) it's define ARGB components.
font-size	Font size in pixels.
font-italic	Italic display text.
font-bold	Bold display text.
font-underline	Underlined text.
font-strikeout	Strikethrough text.
bottom-offset	Distance from the lower edge while displaying text.
font-border	Outline width.
fadein-time	Time in ms for smooth subtitle appearance.
fadeout-time	Time in ms for smooth subtitle disappearance.
line-spacing	Interval between lines. Default value 1.0.

tsMuxeR supports addition tag inside SRT track. The syntax and parameters coincide with HTML: <b>, <i>, <u>, <strike>, <font>. Default relative font size (used in these tags) - 3. For example:

<b><font size=5 color="deepskyblue" name="Arial"><u>Test</u>
<font size= 4 color="#806040">colored</font>text</font>
</b>

Global additional parameters placed in the first line of the META file (MUXOPT). All parameters in this group start with two dashes:

Parameter	Description
--pcr-on-video-pid	Do not allocate separate PID for PCR, use an existing video PID.
--new-audio-pes	Use bytes 0xfd instead of 0xbd for AC3, True-HD, DTS and DTS-HD. Parameter is auto activated for BD muxing.
--vbr	Use variable bitrate.
--minbitrate	Sets the lower limit of the vbr bitrate. If the stream has a smaller bitrate then NULL packets will be inserted to hold the limit.
--maxbitrate	The upper limit of the vbr bitrate.
--cbr	Muxing mode with a fixed bitrate. Options --vbr and --cbr should not be used together.
--vbv-len	The length of the virtual buffer in milliseconds. The default value is 500. Typically, this option is used in together with --cbr. The parameter is similar to the value of vbv-buffer-size in the x264 coder, but defined in milliseconds instead of kbit.
--no-asyncio	Do not create a separate thread for writing. Also, this option disable flag FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING for writing. Deprecated option.
--auto-chapters	Number. Insert a chapter every minutes. Used only for BD/AVCHD mode.
--custom-chapters	A semicolon delimited list of string in format hh:mm:ss.zzz
--demux	In this mode selected audio and video tracks are stored as separate files instead of muxing. utput name must be folder name. All selected effects (such as change of level for h264) are processed. When demux, certain types of tracks always get changed on storing into a file: - Subtitles in a Presentation Graphic Stream are converted into sup format. - PCM audio are saved as WAV files.
--blu-ray	Mux to BD disks. If output file name is folder, bluray disk is created as folder on HDD. For BD3D disks ssif files are not created at this case. If output file name has .iso extension, then BD disk is created as image file.
--blu-ray-v3	As above - except mux to UHD BD disks.
--avchd	Mux to AVCHD disk.
--cut-start	Trim the beginning of the file. Value should be completed with "ms" (the number of milliseconds), "s" (seconds) or "min" (minutes).
--cut-end	Trim the end of the file. Value should be completed with "ms" (the number of milliseconds), "s" (seconds) or "min" (minutes).
--split-duration	Split output to several files.The time specified in seconds
--split-size	Split output to several files. Values should be written using one of the following postfix: Kb,kib, mb,mib, gb,gib.
--right-eye	Use base video stream for right eye. Used for 3DBD only.
--start-time	Timestamp of the first video frame. May be defined as 45Khz clock (just a number) or as time in format hh:mm:ss.zzz
--mplsOffset	The number of the first MPLS file. Used for BD disk mode.
--m2tsOffset	The number of the first M2TS file. Used for BD disk mode.
--insertBlankPL	Add extra short playlist. Used for cropped video muxed to BD disk.
--blankOffset	Blank playlist number.
--label	Disk label for muxing to ISO file.
--extra-iso-space	Allocate extra space in 64K units for ISO disk metadata (file and directory names). Normally, tsMuxeR allocate this space automatically. But if split condition generates a lot of small files, extra ISO space may be required to define.

Todo

The following is a list of changes that will need to be made to the original source code and project in general:

• the program doesn't support MPEG-4 ASP, even though MPEG-4 ASP is defined in the TS specification
• no Opus audio support
• several muxing bugs when muxing a HEVC/UHD stream - results in an out-of-sync stream
• has issues with 24-bit DTS Express
• issues with the 3D plane lists when there are mismatches between the MPLS and M2TS

Contributing

We’re really happy to accept contributions from the community, that’s the main reason why we open-sourced it! There are many ways to contribute, even if you’re not a technical person.

We’re using the infamous simplified Github workflow to accept modifications (even internally), basically you’ll have to:

• create an issue related to the problem you want to fix (good for traceability and cross-reference)
• fork the repository
• create a branch (optionally with the reference to the issue in the name)
• hack hack hack
• commit incrementally with readable and detailed commit messages
• submit a pull-request against the master branch of this repository

We’ll take care of tagging your issue with the appropriated labels and answer within a week (hopefully less!) to the problem you encounter.

If you’re not familiar with open-source workflows or our set of technologies, do not hesitate to ask for help! We can mentor you or propose good first bugs (as labeled in our issues). Also welcome to add your name to Credits section of this document.

Submitting Bugs

You can report issues directly on Github, that would be a really useful contribution given that we lack some user testing on the project. Please document as much as possible the steps to reproduce your problem (even better with screenshots).

Building

For full details on building tsMuxer for your platform please see the document on COMPILING.

Testing

In absence of a full test suite currently we are creating some basic tests that can be performed.

The first test is a simple MKV to M2TS test with the first 2 minutes of Big Buck Bunny.

You need the file bbb-2mins.mkv and to either use the M2TS option in tsMuxerGUI or use the following meta file:

MUXOPT --no-pcr-on-video-pid --new-audio-pes --vbr  --vbv-len=500
V_MPEG-2, "bbb-2mins.mkv", track=1, lang=und
A_AC3, "bbb-2mins.mkv", track=2, lang=und

The MD5 sums of the original file and the output file should be:

a239a724cba1381a5956b50cb8b46754  bbb-2mins.mkv
62342b056d37e44fae4e48161d6208bf  bbb-2mins-from-linux-meta.m2ts

We will have also done the same with the test file Life Untouched. Results of the MD5 sums for the original and output file are below:

f2db8f6647f4f2a0b2417aed296fee73  Life Untouched 4K Demo.mp4
aba9ee3a3211cd09ba4833a610faff22  Life Untouched 4K Demo.m2ts

We need more sample files with 3D and multiple subtitle tracks if possible so if you have any ways of testing these files (particularly in relation to the bugs in the TODO section) please let us know?

Financing

We are not currently accepting any kind of donations and we do not have a bounty program.

Versioning

Version numbering follows the Semantic versioning approach.

License

We’re using the Apache 2.0 license for simplicity and flexibility. You are free to use it in your own project.

Credits

• Roman Vasilenko - for creating tsMuxer