Remove Subtitles From MKV - How?

[Evokazz]

I use a WDTV Live media streamer, and ran into an issue with some MKV files a few years back, where the time displayed as 18:18 for the file, and it loaded really slow, someone here told me to run them through MKVToolNix first (changing no settings), this fixed the issue and was perfect.

I also noticed you could remove subtitles by unchecking the box, which was awesome. However I have recently upgraded my system to home cinema 5.1, and noticed an issue.

I have a file on my PC that originated from a BluRay, in MKV format. I run it through MKVToolNix, and remove the subtitles. The video quality is perfect, but it removes the 5.1 ACC sound? And the resulting file only has stereo? Before running it in MKVToolNix it has 5.1 sound.

How can I run the file through MKVToolNix to remove subtitles, and retain all the original audio?

[sneaker]

ACC? I only know AC3 and AAC. Can you upload a sample of the source?

In general, mkvtoolnix shouldn't touch the audio with a few exceptions. Downgrading 5.1 to 2.0 should never happen. Are you sure the original audio actually had 5.1? Maybe it was misdetected and mkvtoolnix corrected it.

[Evokazz]

Sorry it's AAC. 6 Channel Audio, MPEG4 Video, I can remove the subs no problem, but file plays back in stereo even though it's 6 Channel still after muxing.

[sneaker]

How do you know it is actually 6 channels?

[Evokazz]

It says so in MKVToolNix

[sneaker]

Upload sample.

[Krispy Kritter]

MKVToolNix doesn't alter any of the streams, it simply adds or removes streams from the (mkv) container. If it's actually removing something, it's because the user selected the item to be removed.

Regardless of what is reported in MKVToolNix, are you using a media player and the appropriate hardware to playback the audio streams in question to know if the audio stream is stereo or multi-channel surround?

[KiwiKid]

I believe many devices are not licenced to play 5.1 AAC and downgrade to stereo when playing. You could convert the audio to AC3 if you want surround sound.

[netmask56]

According to this WD page http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=2698#live
Audio -- MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
AAC/Dolby Digital/DTS decodes in 2 channel output only. You will need an audio receiver capable of decoding these codecs for additional channels

[johns0]

There's no receiver that i know of that will decode 5.1 aac as 5.1 audio,just load the file into audacity and output as 5.1 Dolby,it will work as 5.1 ac3 in all receivers that support Dolby 5.1.

[netmask56]

Another way to do it is to use either PopCorn-MKV-AudioConverter https://www.videohelp.com/software/PopCorn-MKV-AudioConverter or MKV2AC3 https://www.videohelp.com/software/MKV2AC3 Leaves the video alone and it will leave the original track if you want it to.

[abolibibelot]

Two ideas :
- What does MediaInfo say about the audio in the input and output files ? (Surprising that noone suggested that in 10 replies.)
- Could you copy the command line used by MKVMerge ? (There's a “show command line” command available in the menu.) Maybe there are two audio streams and you mistakenly removed the 5.1 one. And maybe treating those files with a batch script would be both quicker and more error-proof, instead of loading each one into the GUI and manually checking/unchecking the wanted options.