How to passtrough LPCM?

[yatskovsky]

Hello,

Sorry for (maybe) stupid question, but how to passtrough LPCM 2ch? With latest Snapshot svn2592 , I have two options: AC3 passtrough and DTS passtrough? Do they fit, or am forced to encode audio into mp3 320 for the best quality?

[s55]

You need to re-encode it.

[TedJ]

PCM passthrough is not currently supported by Handbrake, but the last time I checked PCM in MP4 is unsupported and PCM in MKV is a little buggy.

[yatskovsky]

Thank you for answers!

Many disc have PCM at the moment. If it should be reencoded somehow, what is the best format for this? I believe mp3 320kbps not enough. Is there something better?

[TedJ]

I'm afraid 320 kbps MP3 may be your only option, as Ogg Vorbis isn't very widely supported and AAC tops out at 160 kbps on all but the Mac in current code.

[peterjcat]

Every Blu-ray disc with LPCM should also have a legacy Dolby Digital (AC3) soundtrack, which will usually be at 640kbps and will sound pretty good. The best thing to do would be to pass through the AC3 track to either MP4 or MKV. Not all receivers can handle 640kbps AC3 (since on DVD it topped out at 448kbps) but many of them can. If not (or indeed if for some reason there's no AC3 track) the best thing is probably to use eac3to in Windows to recode the audio, and mux it all up to MKV or (M2)TS before running through Handbrake.

[yatskovsky]

Thank you for replies.

[noahwolfe]

You can encode it to flac, using a program like eac3to - then remux it with your Handbrake-encoded video. For mkv's, mkvmerge works great for this task.