Converted AAC audio from a movie to AC3 but burned BD still doesn't work

[fistigeburt]

Hey guys,

I'm new here so I hope this is the right place for my question:

I have a .mp4 file of a movie

Video Codec: h264, MPEG-4 AVC, 23.976024, 1920x804,
Audio Codec: 5.1 MPEG AAC Audio (mp4a)

which I want to burn to a BD25 disc. The file works fine. Tried creating a Blu-Ray ISO with tsMUXER like I always do but it said not all files could be found (and it only showed the video track). I thought the .mp4 format may be the problem. So I used MKVToolNix to turn the .mp4 to a .mkv but it still didn't show the audio track in tsMUXER. Out of stubborness I tried to burn it anyway, creating a Blu-Ray ISO with tsMUXER and writing the image to disc using IMGburn. The writing was sucessful and the verifying process as well. But when I put the disc into my Sony UPB-X700 UHD blu-ray player and chose the disc in the menu it goes to black for a short moment as it's trying to load the disc but then goes back into the menu without doing anything. It also didn't work when I tried to play it on my PC using Leawo Blu-ray Player.

By doing some research I found out that tsMUXER has a problem with AAC audio. So next I used MKVToolNix to extract the AAC audio track from the previously created .mkv and convert it to AC3 using ffmpeg (ffmpeg -i "inputaudiofile.mka" -c:a ac3 -b:a 640k "outputaudiofile.ac3"). It worked without problems and afterwards I started up MKVToolNix again, added the video from the previously created .mkv, checked off the AAC audio, added the AC3 audio and muxed it to a new .mkv file.

This time around tsMUXER didn't complain when I loaded up the new .mkv and it showed the audio track as well. Created the Blu-ray ISO and again burned it with IMGburn to a BD25 disc. But when I put the new disc in my player, it's the same thing. It tries to load but apparently fails and goes straight back to the menu.
Other burned discs work without any problems. I don't want to end up wasting more and more blanks trying so I thought it might be best to ask for help.

Sorry if this post is in the wrong category or if my problem could've been solved with more research. But I just don't know what to search for as I have no clue what might cause the problem.

I hope I didn't leave out any necessary details. If I did, please ask. Thank you very much, any help would be appreciated!

[johns0]

Use mediainfo and copy and paste the info here to see if there's an issue with the video.Also 1920x804 isn't blu-ray compliant so if you didn't re-encode it to 1920x1080 then that's your problem.

[fistigeburt]

Thank you very much for your reply! I now tried re-encoding the video using ffmpeg. I used

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf "scale=1920:1080:force_original_aspect_ratio=decre ase,pad=1920:1080:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2,setsar=1" output.mkv

(the space in "decrease" isn't in the original command, don't know why I cant remove it in here)

but everytime I did that (tried it two times) it reduced the file from about 13gb to about 2gb and apparently the quality with it. And I have absolutely no idea why. What I want is to fill up the remaining 276 pixels (138 above, 138 below) with black bars without any or only marginal quality loss to finally have a file that I can create an image of with tsMUXER and burn it to a functioning Blu-ray with IMGburn.

Please note that I'm just getting into this whole thing and have very little experience with coding and ffmpeg. But I'm willing to learn and would be very thankful for any kind of help or advice. I'll post the info I got out of the 3 files (the original 1920x804 .mp4 with AAC audio, the 1920x804 .mkv with converted AC3 audio and the re-encoded 1920x1080 video only .mkv that got shrinked massively in the process) down below. Thank you very much!

The original 1920x804 .mp4 with AAC audio:

General
CompleteName originalfile.mp4
Format/String : MPEG-4
Format_Profile : Base Media / Version 2
CodecID/String : mp42 (mp42/isom)
FileSize/String : 13.4 GiB
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
OverallBitRate_Mode/String : VBR
OverallBitRate/String : 14.5 Mbps
Encoded_Date : UTC 2019-10-16 10:55:08
Tagged_Date : UTC 2019-10-16 10:55:08

Video
ID/String : 2
Format/String : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format_Profile : High@L4
Format_Settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format_Settings_CABAC/String : Yes
Format_Settings_RefFrames/String : 2 frame
Format_Settings_GOP : M=2, N=12
CodecID : avc1
CodecID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
BitRate_Mode/String : VBR
BitRate/String : 14.0 Mbps
BitRate_Maximum/String : 16.0 Mbps
Width/String : 1920 pixel
Height/String : 804 pixel
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 2.40:1
FrameRate_Mode/String : CFR
FrameRate/String : 23.976 (24000/1001) fps
ColorSpace : YUV
ChromaSubsampling/String : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String : 8 bit
ScanType/String : Progressive
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 0.377
StreamSize/String : 12.9 GiB (96%)
Language/String : en
Encoded_Date : UTC 2019-10-16 10:55:08
Tagged_Date : UTC 2019-10-16 10:55:08
CodecConfigurationBox : avcC

Audio
ID/String : 1
Format/String : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
CodecID : mp4a-40-2
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
BitRate_Mode/String : CBR
BitRate/String : 512 Kbps
Channel(s)/String : 6 channel
ChannelLayout : C L R Ls Rs LFE
SamplingRate/String : 48.0 KHz
FrameRate/String : 46.875 fps (1024 SPF)
Compression_Mode/String : Lossy
StreamSize/String : 485 MiB (4%)
Language/String : en
Encoded_Date : UTC 2019-10-16 10:55:08
Tagged_Date : UTC 2019-10-16 10:55:08


The 1920x804 .mkv with converted AC3 audio:

General
UniqueID/String : 313133381790551470391698819023621855123 (0xEB934BB03A35727893A575AB2BC01793)
CompleteName : audioconvertedtoac3andremuxed.mkv
Format/String : Matroska
Format_Version : Version 4
FileSize/String : 13.5 GiB
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
OverallBitRate_Mode/String : VBR
OverallBitRate/String : 14.6 Mbps
Encoded_Date : UTC 2020-09-06 12:50:17
Encoded_Application/String : mkvmerge v49.0.0 ('Sick Of Losing Soulmates') 64-bit
Encoded_Library/String : libebml v1.4.0 + libmatroska v1.6.1

Video
ID/String : 2
Format/String : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format_Profile : High@L4
Format_Settings : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format_Settings_CABAC/String : Yes
Format_Settings_RefFrames/String : 2 frame
Format_Settings_GOP : M=2, N=12
CodecID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
BitRate_Mode/String : VBR
BitRate/String : 14.0 Mbps
BitRate_Maximum/String : 16.0 Mbps
Width/String : 1920 pixel
Height/String : 804 pixel
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 2.40:1
FrameRate_Mode/String : CFR
FrameRate/String : 23.976 (24000/1001) fps
ColorSpace : YUV
ChromaSubsampling/String : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String : 8 bit
ScanType/String : Progressive
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 0.377
StreamSize/String : 12.9 GiB (96%)
Language/String : en
Default/String : Yes
Forced/String : No

Audio
ID/String : 1
Format/String : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Format_Commercial_IfAny : Dolby Digital
CodecID : A_AC3
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
BitRate_Mode/String : CBR
BitRate/String : 640 Kbps
Channel(s)/String : 6 channel
ChannelLayout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
SamplingRate/String : 48.0 KHz
FrameRate/String : 31.250 fps (1536 SPF)
Compression_Mode/String : Lossy
StreamSize/String : 606 MiB (4%)
ServiceKind/String : Complete Main
Default/String : Yes
Forced/String : No

The re-encoded 1920x1080 video only .mkv that got shrinked massively in the process:

General
UniqueID/String : 69022280309392703469828599991638719956 (0x33ED352867923CABEC3B3091F6187DD4)
CompleteName : thereencoded1920x1080filevideoonly.mkv
Format/String : Matroska
Format_Version : Version 4
FileSize/String : 2.08 GiB
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
OverallBitRate/String : 2245 Kbps
Encoded_Application/String : Lavf58.35.102
Encoded_Library/String : Lavf58.35.102
ErrorDetectionType : Per level 1

Video
ID/String : 1
Format/String : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format_Profile : High@L4
Format_Settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format_Settings_CABAC/String : Yes
Format_Settings_RefFrames/String : 4 frame
CodecID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration/String : 2h 12mn
BitRate/String : 14.0 Mbps
Width/String : 1920 pixel
Height/String : 1080 pixel
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 16:9
FrameRate_Mode/String : CFR
FrameRate/String : 23.976 (24000/1001) fps
ColorSpace : YUV
ChromaSubsampling/String : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String : 8 bit
ScanType/String : Progressive
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 0.281
StreamSize/String : 12.9 GiB
Encoded_Library/String : x264 core 159
Encoded_Library_Settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=18 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=23.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language/String : en
Default/String : Yes
Forced/String : No

[johns0]

Try using vidcoder and in encoding setting sizing set it to 1920x1080 and padding set it to height so you get the black bars to fill it to output 1920x1080 and in the video encoding tab set it to constant framerate and constant quality at 18 and in the audio encoding tab set it to codec ac3 bitrate at 640 and mixdown at 5.1 channels,save this profile and load the original mp4 and add to queue and click on encode.

[fistigeburt]

Thank you very very much for your help! I've set up the profile in VidCoder and I'm encoding the file right now. My schedule is pretty packed at the moment so don't know when I'll get around to burn the Blu-ray. But I'll definitely post my results when I do.