Handbrake & audio questions

[Narfski]

Hey all,

I've recently been trying to backup some Bluray movies so I can transfer them to a large storage system I have.

So far I've been ripping Bluray's using MakeMKV to my hard drive (backing up only the main title / movie) then using Handbrake in order to convert / encode to an H.264 (x264) MKV file using the High Profile that is within Handbrake.

What I've been trying to attain is the same audio track as the source and only compress the video.

As stated above I've been using the High Profile within Handbrake, the only changes I've been making is:

- Anamorphic: "Loose"
- setting is the Constant Quality to RF: 17 (probably overkill from what I've read, but enjoy the quality so far)
- using Auto Passthru in order to keep the same source audio track

I've noticed that on some movies the Auto Passthru option seems to work and Handbrake doesn't downmix / convert the sources audio track, no idea why it does this on some movies and some other ones it does not.

I've tried just testing out a chapter instead of waiting for the full encode of a movie in order to make sure that the audio track was preserved and so far I gather that if the source is English (DTS) (5.1 ch) I can just select DTS Passthru and it works great.

Now on another movie, the audio source shows as True HD 5.1, Auto Passthru changes it to Dolby Pro Logic II (think that's what it changed to, can't remember off hand but it wasn't the same as the source), so I tried AC3 Passthru and that seemed to work fine.

I'm just wondering is there a specific Passthru that should be listed for True HD 5.1 as say with DTS and DTS-HD? or am I going about this all wrong? Doesn't matter to me that I have to select each movie audio as a case by case basis in order to make sure is preserves the orig audio track (Ex: DTS = DTS Passthru, DTS-HD = DTS-HD Passthru, True HD = AC3 Passthru).

Is there any other audio source formats I would encounter besides the 3 I've already mentioned? So far that's all I've found and was trying to find, if so, what would be the correct option for me to select in order to preserve the orig sound source?

Probably using the wrong terminology but thanks for the help in advance,
Narfski

[yoda313]

Just an fyi there is also lossless pcm audio (another surround sound - so far as I know its the same "equivalent" to wav - except surround in this case not stereo - but of course stereo is usually available for concert videos - at least on dvds I dont' have any concerts on bluray yet so I don't know about that) - audio though I'm sure the more knowledgeable members here will be able to point out the differences between what we think of as cd wav audio and what the true lossless hd pcm audio is - I don't know the true differences for pcm itself other than they seem to be used somewhat interchangeably.

So far as your audio questions just go with what works. If you've already discovered that the passthru modes do what you want them to do then just be vigilant and always choose that in each mode.

Just a side note however you might tinker with ripbot (assuming you are using a windows pc - don't know if there is a mac version of ripbot or not). Ripbot has a copy audio mode and though its been awhile since I"ve done a bluray conversion you should be able to copy the existing audio track without any alterations. Thats what I do with mkv files I get off the net that I need to occasionally convert to work on my tablet - though thankfully my tablet does handle most of them But I just fiddle with video and leave the audio alone.

[hello_hello]

Maybe you could just tell Handbrake not to do anything with the audio (delete any audio in it's audio setup section. Convert the video as usual.
When it's finished, open the MKV containing the encoded video with MKVMergeGUI. The use the Add button to add the original MKV containing the ripped video and audio. Uncheck the original video stream so you're left with just the encoded video and the original audio selected. Hit the "start muxing" button and MKVMergeGUI will save them as a new MKV for you.

The only downside is if you're using a single hard drive and the original MKV is large it might take five minutes or so to read the original files and write the new MKV, but it'll happen as fast as your drive can read and write.

The above can also a good way to to add audio from other file types such as MP4 or AVI if you're re-encoding them. MKVMergeGUI should automatically apply any audio delay from the original file so there shouldn't be any audio sync issues.

[ElJimador]

Narfski, does the device you're using to play your MKVs support DTS-HD? The blu ray player I use doesn't support DTS-HD for network or USB playback and if your device has the same limitation that could be why it's playing as something else (although I would expect it to default to DTS instead of PL II).

I've only started using the audio auto passthrough option on Handbrake myself and at first I thought it might be capturing the wrong audio stream too but then I realized that some disks I thought had DTS did not and that's why it defaulted to PL II instead. I'll go back and look though and if I find an example where it did take the wrong audio stream I'll let you know since I'd still like to make sure that Handbrake isn't doing that also.

[ElJimador]

Okay so I went back and reviewed all my logs and it turns out that Auto Passthru does NOT encode DTS unless you go into Tools / Options and select the "show advanced audio passthru options" from the Audio and Subtitles tab. Then on the Audio tab you can select DTS or DTS-HD along with a fallback option (AC3 in my case) if the file doesn't include your preferred codec. If you don't do this and only select Auto Passthru by itself it will encode DTS sources as AC3 5.1 instead. So now I have to go back and do those over again.

Dolby TrueHD isn't one of the options on the advanced settings so it looks like the best option for those is to let them encode to the fallback setting of AC3 5.1 instead.

[hello_hello]

Dolby TrueHD isn't one of the options on the advanced settings so it looks like the best option for those is to let them encode to the fallback setting of AC3 5.1 instead.

You can't simply add the original audio to the encoded video manually, as per my previous post?

[ElJimador]

Dolby TrueHD isn't one of the options on the advanced settings so it looks like the best option for those is to let them encode to the fallback setting of AC3 5.1 instead.

You can't simply add the original audio to the encoded video manually, as per my previous post?

Yes I assume you could do that. It just sounded like the OP was looking to use Auto Passthru in his default presets and still get the best quality, instead of having to enter every time whether its DTS Passthru, AC3 Passthru, etc. I'm just saying that he can that with advanced auto passthru options as long as he doesn't mind the fallback for non-DTS sources being AC3 Passthru or one of the other options available. For Dolby TrueHD, you're right he would need to add that manually since it's not an option in Handbrake.