Don't want to re-encode video, just add subtitles and audio track

[hazay19]

Hi Group,

I just want to confirm or get some advice on the following handbrake project.

I have a 720p h.264 video in mkv format with an ac3 5.1 audio track. All I would like to do is (1) attach subtitles to the mkv that I have downloaded for this particular rip and (2) add a mix down track (dolby prologic, I believe), for 2 channel, if I'm not watching in surround sound. I don't think I have any questions in regards to doing that part.

However, my question is if I want to keep the h.264 720p video exactly the way it is, how do I do that? In other words, if I'm going from h.264 mkv to h.264 mov, does RF and many of the other video encoding options matter? If so, which ones.

Thank you so much, in advance, for your time and advice,

Best Regards,

Hazay19

[mduell]

Don't use HandBrake.

What you want is a muxer, like mkvmerge or ffmpeg.

[Deleted User 11865]

HandBrake always re-encodes video, it's not the tool you're looking for. Subler may work for you though.

[hazay19]

Thank you both for the responses. I will look into your suggestions. I know that there is auto pass thru for audio and other aspects, it's too bad they don't add that ability. Given all that handbrake can do, it seems like it wouldn't be a very hard thing to add.

Thank you again for the reply.

Best Regards,

Jack

P.S. - I tried it anyway while I was waiting for a response and, while I noticed it did ree-ncode the video, it was still quite good quality. The only problem I had was when I added the subtitles, when I viewed the finished product at the beginning and end of each subtitle was an "a" with a line over it, then a trademark symbol "TM", and then another a. It was quite annoying. Does anyone know how to add the subtitles, without the extra characters that were added on every line. Thanks!

[Woodstock]

Make sure that the character set in your SRT file matches what you tell Handbrake it is. If you get the encoding incorrect, you can see weird characters.

[hazay19]

Thanks for follow-up.

I partially figured out the issue. The file starts out with a song and when I opened up the file in wordpad on my windows computer (my handbrake is on my mac), it showed music notess on the outside of the lyrics / text. I'm assuming that i have the wrong encoding set in hand brake and it is turning the music note symbol into aTMa

I have a google search to no avail on "Identify set file character set", but is there a program or process you can recommend to identify the character set.

Thank you very much,

Jack

[Deleted User 11865]

Smultron works fine for me.

[mduell]

Thank you both for the responses. I will look into your suggestions. I know that there is auto pass thru for audio and other aspects, it's too bad they don't add that ability. Given all that handbrake can do, it seems like it wouldn't be a very hard thing to add.

Wouldn't be very hard -- would just require a fundamental rearchitecting of HandBrake. Patches welcome, I bet you could knock that out in a long weekend.

P.S. - I tried it anyway while I was waiting for a response and, while I noticed it did ree-ncode the video, it was still quite good quality. The only problem I had was when I added the subtitles, when I viewed the finished product at the beginning and end of each subtitle was an "a" with a line over it, then a trademark symbol "TM", and then another a. It was quite annoying. Does anyone know how to add the subtitles, without the extra characters that were added on every line. Thanks!

Fix your character encoding.

[hazay19]

Wow... I didn't mean to offend by my response. I apologize if I offended you. I don't know anything about the architecting of handbrake

Re-encoding can take a lot of time and processing power, just taking the source video as, was the only suggestion. There is an audio pass thru, so I thought it would make it a more complete all around product, given the quality of the interface and process, rather than primarily just an video re-encoder.

My bad.

[kpflugshaupt]

Wow... I didn't mean to offend by my response. I apologize if I offended you. I don't know anything about the architecting of handbrake

Re-encoding can take a lot of time and processing power, just taking the source video as, was the only suggestion. There is an audio pass thru, so I thought it would make it a more complete all around product, given the quality of the interface and process, rather than primarily just an video re-encoder.

My bad.

The reaction probably came about because video passthrough has been requested many times already, often in a far less polite tone than by you just now If you search the forum, you'll find discussions about this, including more detailed explanations why it's not going to happen within Handbrake anytime soon.

As to your project, it's well doable. Here's how I achieve this:

• Set up a special "Video Throwawy" Handbrake preset with extremely low video quality and resolution. Its sole purpose is to recode the audio stream into a stereo format. I choose the legacy ffmpeg encoder for this, as it's the quickest.
• Recode the movie using this, keeping the original file. Since it mostly recodes the audio, it's going to be quick.
• Use a muxer (on a Mac, Subler is my tool of choice) to combine the video stream from the original file with the downmixed audio stream from the recode and any subtitle streams you want. You can even include the multi-channel audio stream, too, if you think you may need it in the future.

Hoping this works out for you
Kaspar