5.1 to 2.1

[miltk]

hi guys...i have a problem

the tech of today's 5.1 puts out a sound that my ears cannot pick up

as an old fart i require CLARITY, particularly with dialogue

is there a way to convert 5.1 mp4's into 2.1?
actually i have problems picking up dialogue in a lot of recent movies(last 20yrs at least)

i use handbrake to encode my stuff and i don't see any function to reconvert audio to simple stereo.

for instance i could barely understand what was being said in "fall guy". it was muddy to me. otoh, commercials, studio, and network programs are fine because their audio setup is simple

i need a way to convert to stereo or 2.1

can anyone help?

thx all,,,,,,milt

[johns0]

In handbrake in settings there should be an audio setting where you can choose 2.1,i use vidcoder which has those settings and is based on handbrake.

[miltk]

In handbrake in settings there should be an audio setting where you can choose 2.1,i use vidcoder which has those settings and is based on handbrake.

handbrake defaults to "stereo"
i guess it's not enufff

[hello_hello]

There's a couple of conversion presets already configured in this portable version of foobar2000 for compressing the audio while converting, or compressing it after downmixing to stereo (they compress with the Dynamic Audio Normalizer).
Assuming your video files are MKV, you'd have to extract the audio first with gMKVExtractGUI and then replace the original audio with the new version using MKVToolNixGUI.

Alternatively you could do it directly with ffmpeg and a command line like this:

ffmpeg.exe -i "InputVideo.mkv" -y -map 0 -c:v copy -c:s copy -ac 2 -af dynaudnorm=f=150:b=1 -c:a aac "OutputVideo.mkv"

The video and subtitles are simply copied so it doesn't take very long.
The audio would be downmixed to stereo, compressed and converted to AAC.
The output audio can be configured by changing it's type. ie -c:a ac3
The output file type can be configured by changing the extension. ie "OutputVideo.mp4"
-y in the command line allows ffmpeg to over-write a file with the same name as the output file, if one already exists in the output directory. Remove it you'd prefer ffmpeg didn't do that.
It only converts the first audio stream and copies the first subtitle stream when there's more than one of each though. Someone more familiar with ffmpeg may be able to tell you how to apply it to multiple audio and subtitle streams if necessary.
Edit: It was annoying me so I asked google and all that needs to be added to the command line is -map 0 to tell ffmpeg to copy or process every stream.

If you're not a fan of using the command line, you could create a new ffmpeg preset for AnotherGUI and convert by dragging and dropping files onto it's interface. The same command line as an ffmpeg preset for AnotherGUI would look like this:

-i "<FullSourceFileName>" -y -map 0 -c:v copy -c:s copy -ac 2 -af dynaudnorm=f=150:b=1 -c:a aac "<OutputPath><OutputFileName>.mkv"

If I remember correctly, by default AnotherGUI converts as many files simultaneously as you have CPU cores when you drag and drop multiple files. That can be a quite mental, especially when remuxing large files on a slow hard drive, but you can change that in AnotherGUI's preferences.


[Attachment 79432 - Click to enlarge]

[ProWo]

Use clever FFmpeg-GUI.
Download the zip archive, extract the exe wherever you want, double-click it and follow the instructions.
Then load your video with the 5.1 audio track and follow the instructions in the enclosed video tutorial.
The new video will then have a clearer and louder stereo audio track.


[Attachment 79439 - Click to enlarge]