Merging lossless audio with HD video

[DaFees]

Hello everyone,

I have an issue and I'm not sure what software I need to solve this issue (that is of course if this issue can be solved) so maybe someone can help me.

Let me start by saying that I like music, I like the way it sounds on my system and I like my music to be played back without any resampling or any fancy stuff like that. If my music is 44.1khz, 96khz or even 192khz I want those signals sent as is from my PC to my AVR. I can do that, no problem. I also like music videos and I know that a lot of them are available on YouTube in HD. Yes I know HD on YouTube isn't the same HD you get on a Blu-Ray but it's good enough, I say. My thing is that although the video is good the audio is not. YouTube audio just isn't that great. So what I like to do, and this is where my issue comes in, is take that HD YouTube video and merge it a high quality flac rip of the song that that video is for.

To do this I open up the high quality music file in Adobe Audition and edit it to match the audio found in the video. Typically this involves adding or removing a little bit of silence at the end but other times it is more than that, which I can handle. Either way I take the end result, save it as a wav file and then add that wav file to the video file. I do this using TsMuxeR and the GUI that comes with it. This works if the original audio file is 48khz, 96khz, or 192khz because that's what TsMuxeT will accept in a wav file. Anything else and it errors out.

So for now I've just resampled some songs to 48khz, which gets the job done but ultimately I would rather not do that.

So here is my question how can I take a wav file that has a sampling frequency of 44.1kz, 88.2khz, or 176.4 khz and add it to a video file? Understand of course I do not want to make ANY changes to the video portion of the file, it should remain untouched which it does when I use TsMuxeR. Oh and for the record these files would played back on my PC, I would never intend to burn them to a Blu-Ray, so I'm not worried about any kind of compliances in that regard.

[Cornucopia]

I'm a little surprised. MPEG2-PS and MPEG2-TS containers are agnostic WRT samplerates. The DVD-Video and BDMV/AVCHD specs are stricter subsets that do require 48kHz-based SRs, however, so I guess it's possible that TSMuxer wants to stick with just those. Well, try TSRemux, redbox.net, possibly a few other, more expensive tools out there. One of them ought to be able to do it.

Why sticking with MPEG2-TS, though? Couldn't you remux to MP4 or MKV? A simple remux will retain the quality. And those formats & tools might be more forgiving of samplerate.

Alternately, since you're already doing things in an audio editor (including "more than just editing & silence insert/delete" whatever processes you are doing is modifying the signal anyway, creating rounding errors & loss. Why not just do an SRC at that point to 48kHz-based rates and not have to worry about it?

BTW, you mentioned flac. While it is great as an audio-only format, it just hasn't been picked up in force by the video community yet, so container support is sparse at best. Much better to decode to full LPCM WAV and live with the ~2x size. It's audio- how much bigger could it be?

Scott

[DaFees]

Ok perhaps I should add some more info. Maybe MPEG2-TS containers are agnostic WRT samplerates but TsMuxeR is not. When I download a music video from YouTube it is saved as a .mp4 file. I load this .mp4 file into TsMuxeR and then I load the edited/converted music file as well. I save both together as a new .m2ts file. TsMuxeR is the only program I know to do this with. Also I do not know what is involved with remuxing but I don't see how that would help. I am basically trying to add a lossless audio stream to an already existing video stream.

[hech54]

Yea....I don't understand much about "HD Audio" so to speak.....but where are you getting this "48khz, 96khz, or 192khz" from exactly. CD audio is 44.1. What is the source of this "48khz, 96khz, or 192khz" that matches the music from the music video?
CD "wave" audio at a 44.1 .wav file is as good as you are going to get. Are you actually trying to upsample CD audio hoping it will sound better?

[DaFees]

Yea....I don't understand much about "HD Audio" so to speak.....but where are you getting this "48khz, 96khz, or 192khz" from exactly. CD audio is 44.1. What is the source of this "48khz, 96khz, or 192khz" that matches the music from the music video?
CD "wave" audio at a 44.1 .wav file is as good as you are going to get. Are you actually trying to upsample CD audio hoping it will sound better?

I am not trying to upsample CDs and there are websites like HDTracks.com that offer music in higher quality formats like 24bit/96khz flac or 24bit/192khz flac. This isn't important though, you are all missing my point. I'm trying to add an audio stream that has sampling frequencies that aren't 48, 96, or 192 to a video and I just want to know how I can do this because TsMuxeR won't let me.

[hech54]

Yea....I don't understand much about "HD Audio" so to speak.....but where are you getting this "48khz, 96khz, or 192khz" from exactly. CD audio is 44.1. What is the source of this "48khz, 96khz, or 192khz" that matches the music from the music video?
CD "wave" audio at a 44.1 .wav file is as good as you are going to get. Are you actually trying to upsample CD audio hoping it will sound better?

I am not trying to upsample CDs and there are websites like HDTracks.com that offer music in higher quality formats like 24bit/96khz flac or 24bit/192khz flac. This isn't important though, you are all missing my point. I'm trying to add an audio stream that has sampling frequencies that aren't 48, 96, or 192 to a video and I just want to know how I can do this because TsMuxeR won't let me.

I'm not missing the point. I do believe there are quite a few "recordings" out there available in "Hi Def" audio....what I don't believe is that you are finding matching music videos to the hi-def releases shown on HDTracks.com. There is not much music on HDTRacks that isn't jazz....and I don't see many jazz musicians making music videos.

[El Heggunte]

Well, you can safely use the MKV container for storing audio @ ANY sampling frequency. Besides, Matroska supports various lossless formats (FLAC, WavPack, TTA, ALAC, MLP, TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio). I simply don't understand your apparent fixation with the M2TS container and TSMuxer.exe though.

[Cornucopia]

I used to do this back in the old days: Record a Music Video that I got off of MTV (back when they actually HAD music videos on a regular basis) to VHS. Then cap that to AVI file on a PC, edit it & replace the accompanying audio with audio from the original CD (editing to sync). It would always have MUCH better quality than VHS's FMstereo, even when tracking wasn't a problem. Then encode to MPEG+AC3 and author for DVD...

The OP is probably doing something similar, just using YT video as the source (crappy source, BTW! - your standards regarding video quality must be much lower than your audio quality standards), and remuxing instead of editing & re-encoding.

@OP, it could be that TSMuxer is just "sticking" with the SR of the video source's audio. Try demuxing to a NO-audio video file first and then mux in the audio. Might work, might not.

Or try the other apps I mentioned, or try muxing into MKV, MP4 etc. Or just do an SRC anyway. If you use a good one (BeSweet's isn't too bad for free), and are going LPCM-WAV to LPCM-WAV and using dither correctly, you really aren't losing much, even if it isn't the "original" any more.

Scott

[DaFees]

@hech54: There is quite a bit of music on the website I mentioned that isn't jazz. Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney being two good examples but that's not the point. The point is that even music from a CD is better than the music used on the videos found on YouTube.

@El Heggunte: I don't have a fixation with m2ts container and TSMuxer.exe, it is just simply all I know how to use. TSMuxer.exe (or rather it's GUI) is the only program I know that let's me easily add video and audio streams/tracks together. Add to that TSMuxer.exe really only gives me the option to save the merged files as m2ts, so that's why I go with that.

@Cornucopia: I am trying to do just as you did back in the day with MTV videos except now I am using YouTube as my source and I just, basically, sync my flac files to those videos. Now as for your regards to YouTube and its inherent quality, or lack there of. I do believe I said that I know it doesn't rival that of Blu-ray or other HD sources BUT music videos aren't exactly available on Blu-ray nor do I have DVR to record the few that actually pop up on TV besides downloading YouTube videos is so ridiculously easy that's why I stick to it. Also, editing the audio is the hard part, it is really easy to swap out the video for a higher source should one appear.

Now you said that TSMuxer might be sticking to with the SR of the video's source audio but if that were true I wouldn't be here because YouTube uses 44.1khz for its audio so that rules that theory out. Oh and I did check and demuxing the video first didn't make a difference.

As to your point about trying TSRemux, I looked into that app and failed to see where it could do what I was trying to do. You also mentioned Redbox.net but I couldn't find anything on that piece of software. All my searches just led me to the media rental company.

If I didn't mention it before, ok, but I currently do do the sample rate conversion but I just trying to figure out if I could avoid doing so.

Basically, when I download a YouTube video it is a .mp4 file which contains a video track and an audio track. I take .flac CD rip or high quality download of the song that video is for and edit that song in Adobe Audition to match the video, sync the song if you will. I save the edited song as a .wav file and merge it with the .mp4 file, either replacing the already existing audio or adding it as a second audio track (so to make comparing the two easy). Because of the way TSMuxer works this all gets saved as a .m2ts file. The video was left untouched and my new, higher quality audio track is sync with the video, providing me with a better sounding music video.

Show me a program that does basically what TSMuxer.exe does but supports 44.1, 88.2, and 176.4khz sampling frequencies and then we will have something. See with TSMuxer it doesn't try to re-encode the video which can take a while on a system like mine, it doesn't even touch it. I am currently unfamiliar with any programs that let you save a file as .mp4 or .mkv without re-encoding the video.

If anyone has any further questions let me know.

[hech54]

@hech54: There is quite a bit of music on the website I mentioned that isn't jazz. Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney being two good examples but that's not the point. The point is that even music from a CD is better than the music used on the videos found on YouTube.

Yes....I know that. I do it all of the time. I'm changing the audio on an old Robert Palmer video right now as we speak. CD audio is 44.1 and video (mpeg2 video) requires 48. Going any higher is a ridiculous waste of time from a CD source.

[DaFees]

Yes....I know that. I do it all of the time. I'm changing the audio on an old Robert Palmer video right now as we speak. CD audio is 44.1 and video (mpeg2 video) requires 48. Going any higher is a ridiculous waste of time from a CD source.

I can agree with you that, when you have a CD source, going higher than the 44.1 that, it is a waste of time. I only upsample to 48 because TSMuxer forces me to. If there was a program like TSMuxer that worked with frequencies like 44.1, then my problem would be solved. I'm not trying to be difficult or have a big debate here, I'm just looking for a program like TSMuxer that will do what TSMuxer won't let me.

[El Heggunte]

......
I'm just looking for a program like TSMuxer that will do what TSMuxer won't let me.

MKVmerge GUI (aka mmg.exe), which is part of the MKVtoolnix "bundle"
(mkvmerge, mkvextract, mkvinfo, mkvpropedit).

[DaFees]

MKVmerge GUI (aka mmg.exe), which is part of the MKVtoolnix "bundle"
(mkvmerge, mkvextract, mkvinfo, mkvpropedit).

THANK YOU. This is exactly what I was after. MKVmerge accomplished exactly what I wanted it to. Now let's say I wanted a .mp4 file (for PS3 compatibility) instead of a .mkv file what are my options now, if any?

[El Heggunte]

MKVmerge GUI (aka mmg.exe), which is part of the MKVtoolnix "bundle"
(mkvmerge, mkvextract, mkvinfo, mkvpropedit).

THANK YOU. This is exactly what I was after. MKVmerge accomplished exactly what I wanted it to. Now let's say I wanted a .mp4 file (for PS3 compatibility) instead of a .mkv file what are my options now, if any?

Unfortunately, MP4 has many more limitations than MKV. AFAIK, no muxer and no media splitter supports uncompressed audio in an MP4 file. As for lossless audio, you can use ALS or ALAC, BUT I don't know any MP4 multiplexer capable of muxing ALS or ALAC together with a video stream.

And regardless of the limitations of the available MP4 muxers (mp4box, mp4creator, L-Smash, ffmpeg), there are the limitations of the hardware players too. I don't know whether the PS3 accepts MP4s containing AC3, and very-unlikely it will ever accept DTS in MP4.