AppleTV 2.3 update breaks AC3 5.1playback?

[weldon]

Would it be possible to fix this issue by inserting an empty AAC track? Seems like this would a simple way to fix old encodes rather than redoing the files from scratch.

[kiran_mk2]

Does anyone know if the aTV can finally support more than one AC3 track per file (for multiple language AC3)?

[Filmguy15]

Phew, I was worried for a minute. I just moved so I still have the ATV packed away, but it's good to hear that I can update. Interestingly, I have heard (from MacRumors forums) that VisualHub encoded movies with 2.0+5.1 are broken now. They hacked the files a different way didn't they? Sucks for visualhub I suppose...

[dynaflash]

They hacked the files a different way didn't they? Sucks for visualhub I suppose...

No, sucks for the users since visual hub is no longer available. VH used a .mov which is different than how apple and HB does it.

[hauke]

Does anyone know if the aTV can finally support more than one AC3 track per file (for multiple language AC3)?

I did a quick test and it seems to work now. This feature was added with 2.2, but although the AppleTV recognized the 3 tracks (AAC+AC3+AC3), it couldn't play them. With 2.3 AppleTV can.

Although there is a slight drawback, at first there was no sound at all, I had to manually select a track. Perhaps this led the creator of this thread to believe that the AC3 playback was broken... I assume AppleTV looks at the names of the tracks and gets confused. But this is just wild guessing.

cheers,
hauke

[osohardy]

If I may add my recent experience with this...

--all of a sudden 2 days ago NONE of my encodes were outputting 5.1 anymore. These were ripped with AAC + AC3 and range from snap 5 to .9.2
--after going crazy swapping cables, trying different inputs on my receiver, and trying test re-encodes I couldn't get it to do it....however I finally pulled the HDMI and tried optical out and THAT shows 5.1
--the startup movie also only shows 2-channel now (again on HDMI)
--the confusing bit is that my version still showed 2.2, but I have also seen other posts that claim the ATV 2.3 update did not show as 2.3, and a restore to 2.1 did not solve it (??), so I am exchanging for a new unit to be sure it is not hardware...

[dynaflash]

Just updated atv to 2.3.

Couple observations:

1. aac + ac3 as per the atv preset works just fine as before.

2. Same as above but adding a third aac track to the mix (another language) works great, but the file starts out with the aac track and not the ac3 track as it would if it was just the original setup ( I believe this behavior is unchanged from 2.2 ) . However, as noted you can choose the ac3 track on the atv and it plays fine. All tracks are selectable and the previously used track is used upon the next play of the movie.

[benrh]

Is there any way of adding aac to my AC3 only files or will I have to re-encode and then not mess with settings again

[dynaflash]

Is there any way of adding aac to my AC3 only files or will I have to re-encode and then not mess with settings again

well, you could demux and remux I suppose. But frankly you might just be better off re-encoding tbh.

A warning: we used both the aac and ac3 track in the atv preset for a reason, it is exactly how the apple atv intro movie did it. Therefore that audio scheme has withstood the new update.

Frankly there was never any good reason to deviate from this setup for the atv and only use a single AC3 track (now, of course that is totally broken). The aac track takes up very little space, so why not just include it anyway ? I mean if you were to ever change your atv setup so you did not have a dolby dd capable soundsource you would need that aac track to make the audio work anyway.

All atv / HB users PLEASE NOTE: USE BOTH TRACKS AS OUR PRESET DOES.

As far as adding the aac track if you chose to just use a single ac3 track, it can be done but frankly it would be messy imho and someone more familiar with the tools to do so would have to speak up here on the details. Personally given the other advantages to both tracks being properly created at encode time and this thread which is impending http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7606 I would recommend preparing for some re-encoding. But thats just me.

[nightstrm]

What he said.

[benrh]

Yes indeed - lesson learnt. Luckily I've only done about 30 so its not that major maybe I'll play around with the picture - oh there I go again must leave the options alone...

[benrh]

Sorry - off topic how do you select different audio tracks on the appletv?

[dynaflash]

Hold the pause button for a couple of seconds. I think it only works if you have more than one. Also chapters are accessed in the same menu.

[osohardy]

yeah, i forgot to mention in my last post, that in the context menu (hold play) I'v only ever seen chapters--never seen alternate audio selection for any file (even when the ATV was playing 5.1 properly). I know they're in the file cause I can see them in QT movie properties...grrr but couldn't force ATV to pick the AC3 track in that menu to see if that was it...

[kiran_mk2]

You don't see the audio selection screen if the only audio streams are the AAC and equivalent AC3 - aTV picks one automatically depending on your Dolby Digital setting in the options menu. If you have several audio streams (such as extra languages or a track labelled as a commentary) it will appear.

[revoltage]

Apple Document how it should be done from March 11, 2008.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25199

[nightstrm]

Nice link... thanks for posting it!

[catskinsox]

I know this is off topic a bit, but it's good news... It appears 2.3 has fixed soft subtitles with Muxo on the AppleTV.

http://forum.entropicgarden.com/viewtop ... rt=30#p266

[fjr_birddog]

Well, I had no idea about selecting the sound track on the AppleTV by holding the play/pause button... Thanks to whomever mentioned THAT one.

I found that all my movies (encoded with Handbrake using the AppleTV presets) no longer had any sound after installing the AppleTV 2.3 update. Selecting the soundtrack, as mentioned above, seems to have solved the problem. (Tho why the update would "require" me to do this is a mystery.)

[Vortec4800]

So it looks like pretty much every one of my movies needs to be re-encoded as I did all of mine with AC3 only. There are some of them which I don't have the original source anymore (moved) to encode from. Is there a way to take my encoded m4v file from HandBrake and have it reprocess the file and add the track, even if it has to re-encode the same thing? I'm thinking if it re-encodes the encoded file, I'm going to lose a lot of picture quality. Does anyone else have a solution to "fix" these few that I don't have the source for anymore?

[nightstrm]

If you don't own the source, you shouldn't be making encodes from them (or keeping existing encodes).

Sorry, but the HB team did it with both for a reason... it is identical to how Apple formats their tracks.

[dynaflash]

Sorry, but the HB team did it with both for a reason... it is identical to how Apple formats their tracks.

... and was therefore thought to likely be future-update-proof and compatible ... once in a while we get something right

[nightstrm]

Sorry, but the HB team did it with both for a reason... it is identical to how Apple formats their tracks.

... and was therefore thought to likely be future-update-proof and compatible ... once in a while we get something right

Don't let it go to your head or anything....

[jwsmiths]

Is there any way of adding aac to my AC3 only files or will I have to re-encode and then not mess with settings again

I just opened the files with QuickTime, added a blank AAC track and then clicked Save and selected the self-containing movie option. There wasn't any noticeable loss of video quality (these are all rips of DVD movies so the quality was fairly high to begin with, usually 2500kbps H.264 2-pass encoding). I now get the AC3 audio output from the movie files, and the new files aren't significantly larger than the original file was so I didn't lose my hard drive space in the process.