Is there any way to get 5.1 audio and H264 to run in Quicktime

[ndawes]

Up till now, I have been using mac the ripper, then Hanbrake, or just a DVD ripped via handbrake to AVI H264, with AC7. It works well, but I have to use VLC or similar to play the movies, since quicktime won't recognize the audio or h264 in an AVI container.
I do believe that AAC multichannel is supported in QT, but How do I go from DVD to an H264 video, 5.1 audio, quicktime compatible file?

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
nick

[rumplestiltskin]

What you may have to do (and I haven't tried what you are asking) is do an intermediate transcode (from the MTR VOB or a 100% quality AVI using Handbrake) to an AVI (DivX or Xvid) with mp3 audio. At that point, an additional transcode to H264 should yield an AAC audio without a problem.

What I sometimes do (depending on the recalcitrance of the original file) is demux using MPEG Streamclip to mjpeg-b and AIFF, then combine them into one movie (copy & paste within QT Player Pro). Further transcoding is optional depending on what you need.

Note that 5.1 audio is not an option if you wish to use the video in an iPod. (But you didn't say you were going to do this, I know.)

[ndawes]

Thanks, I'll give it a try, since I already have QT pro and MPEG Streamclip.
Many thanks,
Nick

[Utumno]

Up till now, I have been using mac the ripper, then Hanbrake, or just a DVD ripped via handbrake to AVI H264, with AC7. It works well, but I have to use VLC or similar to play the movies, since quicktime won't recognize the audio or h264 in an AVI container.
I do believe that AAC multichannel is supported in QT, but How do I go from DVD to an H264 video, 5.1 audio, quicktime compatible file?

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
nick

Unfortunately at the moment there's no simple way to do this on the Mac to my knowledge. It *can* be done manually with mAC3dec and QuickTime Pro, but not in a reasonably simple way.

ffmpegX at present can only output 2 channel AC-3 anyway (or broken AC-3 that only plays in VLC), so stay away from ffmpegX if you want to retain your 5.1 sound, even on an AC-3 passthrough.

Check http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=893 for further conversation on this issue, and the walkthrough on actually getting it to work.

Ut.