HD Audio to FLAC > BD25?

[hogger129]

Does anybody else here convert the HD audio to FLAC in an .mkv container and then burn the resultant file onto a BD25?

Are there a lot of players that could play it? So far all I can find is the Oppo and Panasonic players.

Just curious because it seems like a good way to keep the HD audio but compress it a little in order to give more bit rate to the video.

[johns0]

Nope,most players if any as you as pointed out do not support flac,just use ac3 or dts for mkv,unless you have an uber stereo system you won't hear any difference.

[hogger129]

Is there any sign of FLAC support growning? Maybe I'd be better off to just go buy a WDTV Live box.

I'm just using FLAC to keep the lossless audio intact but compress it a little for backup purposes.

[jman98]

Worrying about audio inside of a video container is like getting all worked up because a store several miles from the store you usually go to offers the exact same HDTV you want to buy but it costs 1 dollar less. I'm not anti-FLAC at all, but is there any evidence that it actually can compress HD audio formats better than those audio formats are already compressed? Assuming it can compress, again, look at my TV analogy. The largest component of any container is the video. I don't see the big deal in trying to squeeze a little tiny percent more from using FLAC. FLAC offers good compression on uncompressed formats, but all the HD audio formats are already compressed. Of course "HD audio" is kind of vague so maybe what you define by this term is not what others would assume it to mean. For example, AC3 and DTS are NOT "HD audio formats".

[hogger129]

Well what I mean by "HD audio" are the lossless and uncompressed audio tracks on the BD such as Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD MA and LPCM.

But I listened to a few samples, did a lot of reading on discussion boards on this topic, and I think I might as well just stick with the high bitrate lossy tracks. I don't have a high end surround system where I would really be able to tell the difference anyway.

I was going to store the audio as FLAC so that I had one master copy with uncompressed video and the lossless audio (it resulted in smaller file sizes when I transcoded the HD audio to FLAC rather than not), but isn't it pretty safe to say that DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 sound good enough and will be around for a long time? I thought manufacturers of BD players had to include one or the other anyway per Blu-Ray spec.

I feel like I am way overthinking this...

[Cornucopia]

What I think jman98 was trying to say, was that your BD choices: LPCM, DolbyTrueHD (aka MLP), DTS-HD-MA, DD+, DTS, DD; those are what's available to you. Of those, the only ones where FLAC would be a filesize savings would be LPCM, right? But even for it, it is not that much of a savings in the big picture (especially considering Video). Otherwise, the original TrueHD or DTS-HD-MA streams, etc are already as high quality as they're going to get, and already decently compressed. But also, they are BD compliant, by their very nature of having already been put on the BD disc. FLAC is NOT compliant. Certainly not for BD (and never will be), likely not for general media players.

You've got to remember that Audio really no longer has the size constraints the way Video has, mainly thanks to the presence of Video. A 2-hour LPCM 5ch 16/48 clip is ~3GB. A same sized clip in FLAC is between 1.4-1.9GB. So at most, you have a savings of 1.6GB. When you are usually dealing with having to drop from 50GB to 25GB, saving 1.6GB might slightly affect the video, but it doesn't affect your bitbudgeting all that much either way, so why not stick with LPCM?

LPCM is going to be compatible, in any event.

Scott

[jman98]

I was going to store the audio as FLAC so that I had one master copy with uncompressed video and the lossless audio (it resulted in smaller file sizes when I transcoded the HD audio to FLAC rather than not), but isn't it pretty safe to say that DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 sound good enough and will be around for a long time? I thought manufacturers of BD players had to include one or the other anyway per Blu-Ray spec.

I feel like I am way overthinking this...

You don't have uncompressed video if your source is DVD or BluRay. Perhaps you really mean that you haven't further converted the original video, but if so, that's not a technically correct way to say that.

VCD is STILL here and that dates from almost 20 years ago. CD audio technology is over 30 years old and still here. I wouldn't worry about DTS and AC3. There will still be ways to play those for decades to come.

I would not expect anything but LPCM to give you a smaller size if converted to FLAC, but again, I think the space savings are minimal. By any chance are your FLAC conversions going from 5.1 to 2 channels? Be sure you're not getting space savings by doing that.

[hogger129]

I mainly was concerned about it because I want to make backups and I'd like to keep the lossless audio, and transcoding it to FLAC seemed like a good idea because the file is a little smaller, but I'm also concerned about compatibility in the future. I got a WDTV Live box and I really enjoy it, but it isn't going to last forever.

Is it worth converting those HD audio tracks to FLAC? Maybe I would be just best off keeping the AC3 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks.

[Cornucopia]

I thought we made that clear: Convert to Flac? - NO. Keep as is (whether TrueHD, DTS-MA, DD, DTS, etc)? - Yes.

Until things greatly change for the better, Flac remains a hobbyist's or hacker's format. Too bad, I like it...

Scott