AppleTV 4K

[drjohnnyfever]

Many years I’ve used MakeMKV to rip plenty of blu-rays, convert with Handbrake, and play them on my AppleTV 3 in perfect 5.1 surround on my Pioneer system.

This month I upgraded to the AppleTV 4K and a Denon 7.1 system.

The only blu-ray I have with a 7.1 track is “Pans Labyrinth”. I used MakeMKV to make my MKV file with the 7.1 track... but no matter what I do, I can’t make a video file with 7.1 sound. It's always down mixing to 5.1 even though I say “passthru”.

Am I just doing something wrong, or is trying to make an AppleTV compatible video with 7.1 sound the same as looking for a unicorn?

NOTE #1: When I say I know they’re down mixing I mean I’m using Subler, VLC, and others to check... as well as the AppleTV playing 5.1.

NOTE #2: I know I'm not being specific with build version, logs, etc., but first I want to know if this is even possible. I don't want to dig deep if it's a lost cause.

[rollin_eng]

Could you please post your logs, instructions can be found here:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/hel ... y-log.html

[drjohnnyfever]

As I said in 'note #2', first I want to know if this is even possible. Is your request for a log an indication that yes, what I'm wanting (7.1 via AppleTV 4K) is possible and I'm just doing something wrong?

[Ritsuka]

A log would be nice, because it would tell us the exact format of your 7.1 track. Anyway, HandBrake doesn't support E-AC3 in mp4.

[drjohnnyfever]

Does HandBrake support E-AC3 in any format?

[lone_tree]

Therein lies the question. eac3 passthrough will work on ATV, but whether or not HB recognizes it as a valid codec is another question.

[Deleted User 11865]

Yes, we can encode to E-AC-3 (up to 5.1 channels only), but we can only mux it to the Matroska container. I can't remember if we can pass it through, but we can still only place it in the Matroska container anyway…

[BradleyS]

I will eventually make an Apple 2160p Surround preset. Been busy lately. Will be AC-3 only for now.

[IanBauters]

I've spent all day figuring this out and it's possible, just not really lovely to do :p
So, AppleTV 4K plays 4K movies in HEVC, in the past Apple has been using mp4 for this, they no longer are because of the limitations of mp4, no 7.1, no HDR,... so they started using .mov files again.
They support 5.1 surround widely however, 7.1 is only supported in LPCM.
The way I managed to get it to work was by creating an MKV from my movie, whether it is Full HD or 4K. Then converting video only in 10-bit HEVC with handbrake. After that I used MKVTools to get the audio track out of the mkv after which I transcoded the thd to wav with FFMPEG.
Once those where done, I opened the HEVC in Quicktime and exported it as Full HD or 4K with HEVC enabled. QuickTime has now made an mov with the HEVC file included (this would go really fast) after which I used FFMPEG again to copy the wav file inside the mov container.
I know it's quite a lot of hassle but it worked for me.

[hugeman]

I've spent all day figuring this out and it's possible, just not really lovely to do :p
So, AppleTV 4K plays 4K movies in HEVC, in the past Apple has been using mp4 for this, they no longer are because of the limitations of mp4, no 7.1, no HDR,... so they started using .mov files again.
They support 5.1 surround widely however, 7.1 is only supported in LPCM.
The way I managed to get it to work was by creating an MKV from my movie, whether it is Full HD or 4K. Then converting video only in 10-bit HEVC with handbrake. After that I used MKVTools to get the audio track out of the mkv after which I transcoded the thd to wav with FFMPEG.
Once those where done, I opened the HEVC in Quicktime and exported it as Full HD or 4K with HEVC enabled. QuickTime has now made an mov with the HEVC file included (this would go really fast) after which I used FFMPEG again to copy the wav file inside the mov container.
I know it's quite a lot of hassle but it worked for me.

Would you like to create a more detailed guide on how you did?

[Woodstock]

Seems strange that, when incorporating a video codec with higher compression capabilities, they limit themselves to an uncompressed audio stream.

[rollin_eng]

Would be interesting to know if this is true as I thought you can't download 4k movies only stream them, so how can anyone analyse them? or am I wrong?