Help a Newb streamline things a bit. MKV AAC to MKV AC3.

[akinakin]

I am sorting through my HD movie collection of 1080p Rips and focusing mostly on taking the AAC encoded audio files and transcoding to AC3 to make them 'Boxee friendly' as Boxee doesn't passthrough AAC and can not use Direct Show filters like I have MCE setup to use.

Anyways, here is what I do:

1) Demux audio track, keep in MKV container (strip to raw stream if conflicts arrise) using MKVmerge and/or TSMuxer.
2) Transode audio track 6chan AAC to 6chan AC3 384kbps using MediaCoder (FFmpeg).
3) Rebuild file using MKVmerge.
4) Done.

I have chosen to do it this way because I am paranoid that I will screw up a good 1080p video file (by accident) if I keep it all in a single piece for audio-only transcoding.

Is there a better way I could be doing this ?

As I said, I am a complete newb and the skills I have acquired as of late are simply due to trial and error, of what works and what does not.

Thanks in advance,
Allan

[Baldrick]

Or use popcorn mkv audio converter. It does everything for you.

[akinakin]

Or use popcorn mkv audio converter. It does everything for you.

Thanks, I will definately check it out.

I am not sure if it's worth mentioning or not, but the files do not always begin as MKV containers, although I make a point of it, regardless of file container, to convert everything to MKV before I archive it on my network server for playback at home.

Anything that I receive in MP4, is a simple re-mux using MKVmerge.

Anything that I receive in M2TS, I demux using TSmuxer, then rebuild/re-mux with MKVmerge.

I even find myself doing the same for certain Divx/Xvid/avi files I get, that contain multi-channel audio.....as well as using MKVmerge to join together the CD1/CD2 rips I get, to simplify playback.

Using MKV almost exclusively for all of my HD/BluRay rips, I find that my end file sizes are smaller and (for my setup anyways) the performance is better for things like seeking foward or replay/reverse, especially compared to MP4 files, which I find to be the worst and laggy at times. The re-mux to MKV solves little issues such as I mentioned above. With what I know, I also find MKV eaier to work with and manipulate if a problem presents itself.

Should I be leaving everything (mp4, m2ts etc) alone ? or can I continue to change everything over to MKV, regardless of it's original container ? am I shooting myself in the foot and creating potential problems that may or may not reveal themselves in the future ?

Cheers,
Allan