AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

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eddyg
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by eddyg »

saverio wrote:Hi everyone. You are fantastic!!! I'm eager to try the definitive 9.2!

I have a question. Living in a non-english country, the fact that TV can switch between two different audio tracks (AAC and DD) means that one can have both the original language track (maybe the one in high quality) and the spanish one (in AAC) and select the one to hear by just enabling or disabling AC3.

Will we be able to select different audio tracks for the AAC and the DD parts, or we will choose just one track and have the two versions in the file?
May I choose english DD and spanish AAC?
This, along with some .srt support on TV, will solve every desire I have.
Not in this release from the GUI - but we did briefly prior to this release, but thought it would confuse people.

I'm not sure if you can in the CLI, I haven't played with the mixdowns there.

In the next release we are going to revamp all the audio selections to make it easier.

Cheers, Ed.
FritzsCorner
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by FritzsCorner »

I just completed my first encode using DD 5.1 for Saving Private Ryan and I am having some sync issues with the AC3 track. It isn't 2-3 seconds off like some of the other reports but it is off just enough to be noticeable. The AAC track seems to be perfectly in sync though. I am encoding a couple other disks as well to see if I have the same problem. Handbrake is an awesome app and I really appreciate all the work that you guys put into it.

Edit: I just went back and read through some of the posts with similar issues. I am going to try ripping the DVD using a different app and see if that helps.

Thanks again!
dbrajkovic
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by dbrajkovic »

Well I saw some posts on this topic, but no one asked or answered the question I have. Can those wonderful coders who bring Handbrake to us change the order of the AAC/AC3 tracks? In other words, if AC3 was the first track, and the AAC was the second track, would my Mac Mini default to AC-3, which of course is what I want.

I love to use Front Row with my Mac Mini (in fact it's the only reason I am using it) and by not being able to default hurts. However, as I am typing this, I'm fooling around with iTunes a bit and I noticed that once I chose DD5.1, iTunes remembers that selection. Now I'll have to see if that memory is retained in FrontRow. I'll report back. Haven't hooked up the optical cable yet.

P.S. Anyone want to buy Griffin's excellent Firewave box? :D
EchoRob

Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by EchoRob »

After encoding several DVD'S with Handbrake 0.92 using the Apple Tv setting quicktime shows in the movie inspector thats it's only Stereo AC3 2 channel not 5.1 this is on many dvds, the problem is not there if i use MKV or AVi with ac3 passthrough is this normal or is there a fault at my end ?
ragboy
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by ragboy »

sbalthazor wrote:
ragboy wrote:Another encode with english DD 5.1, and no subs, out of sync by same amount.
Are you doing this straight from the DVD or have you ripped it down first? I was having a similar problem with 3:10 to Yuma with it being off by about 2-3 seconds for the AC3 (while the AAC was perfectly in sync), but once I ripped it using AnyDVD and ran that through (as opposed to straight from the disc) it worked perfect.
I use dvdfab, and I did it both ways, same result. Its the only movie, out of about 30 so far, that has had this issue.
ragboy
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by ragboy »

Well, this is a bit off topic, since not HB, but on topic with atv and 5.1. After working through some of the code in HB source, compiling a patched version of ffmpeg and mplayer/mencoder, a few other tools, and I have been able to backup from hddvd to a 720p file, with both AAC and AC3, that atv plays, and works with analog atv, and digital atv.

I will be posting the whole process in my blog or something, like I did when I posted the atv dd 5.1 hack from before take 2. There still needs some tweaking to the ffmpeg x264 settings. I am not as used to ffmpeg x264 encoding, so any experts welcome to PM me.

Until then, you can download this sample I used to test, it was a 20mbps 1080p/24 evo file with eac3 audio at 1536kbps, so it was a good test, and this intro never stands still. It is a trailer/intro for Bourne Supremacy, it is NOT part of any movie.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8DZVP1OT
bach1234
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by bach1234 »

Dear Forum,

I did a first encode with Handbrake 0.9.2 and the AppleTV preset. After I opened this file in Quicktime and examined the tracks, I've found:

- A video track, H.264 encoded
- An audio track, AAC encoded, activated
- An audio-surround-track, AC3 encoded, but not activated
- A "text" track

Could someone explain why the surround track isn't activated? Will AppleTV automatically recognize this, deactivate AAC and activate AC3? And what is this "text" track? Never had this before...

And: When I go into the audio details of the AC3 track, I find that Channel 1 is named "left" and Channel 2 named "right". Channels 3-6 are named unnamed and not LFE, Center, etc .... is this any problem?

Thanks for answering ...
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Ritsuka
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by Ritsuka »

1) AppleTV automatically activates the ac3 track when is needed.

2) The text track is for the chapters.

3) That's QuickTime stupidness, Apple couldn't care less how QuickTime display the channel of ac3 track, as all that information are ignored.
ragboy
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by ragboy »

bach1234 wrote:Dear Forum,

I did a first encode with Handbrake 0.9.2 and the AppleTV preset. After I opened this file in Quicktime and examined the tracks, I've found:

- A video track, H.264 encoded
- An audio track, AAC encoded, activated
- An audio-surround-track, AC3 encoded, but not activated
- A "text" track

Could someone explain why the surround track isn't activated? Will AppleTV automatically recognize this, deactivate AAC and activate AC3? And what is this "text" track? Never had this before...

And: When I go into the audio details of the AC3 track, I find that Channel 1 is named "left" and Channel 2 named "right". Channels 3-6 are named unnamed and not LFE, Center, etc .... is this any problem?

Thanks for answering ...
If you activate just one, then apple sees it as an alternate track. Look at the screenshot I put up earlier in this thread. You can switch from back and forth in itunes, from one track to another. If both tracks are enabled, this feature goes away. However, it seems to still work in atv.
bach1234
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by bach1234 »

Ah, got it... thanks a lot. Let's hope that Apple won't chance these strange behaviours in a software update so that I don't have to edit my whole movie library. By the way, what are the defaults for channel 3-6 ... in which order are they assigned by handbrake - just in case I want to fix the optics in quicktime manually.
EchoRob

Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by EchoRob »

Quicktimes Stupidness ? Then why are the AC3 tracks in .MKV and .AVi displayed correctly only in the mp4 its all stuffed up
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Ritsuka
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by Ritsuka »

Because they use a different fourcc. Apple has broken "ac-3" sometime ago in QuickTime 7.3, probably to do passthrough on the appletv.
EchoRob

Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by EchoRob »

Ok cool, Thanks everyone for clearing this up for as i wont have an Apple TV till next week just wanted to make sure i wasn't doing something wrong

Thanks for a great product :D
quagga
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by quagga »

nightstrm wrote:
nightstrm wrote:I will post mine in a couple minutes after I get things settled.
http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php ... 116#p27116
Thanks nightstrm, Cavalicious.

I'm using similar settings. Sort of a mis-mash between the two of your presets. I mainly watch on my AppleTV but I want to be able to push something to the iPod Touch if I want to. Size isn't super important as I only would have one movie or so on their at a time.

I'm using loose anamorphic to your strict and I'm encoding at crf .66. People have been having good luck with -V (vrf)? If so I'll enable that. It isn't on my setting at the moment since it is listed as experimental.

I'm also going to crank my refs up to 2. I was using 3 and iTunes would barf and not push a file to the Touch. If 2 works that'll be good and I can turn mixed refs on.

Happy times :).
nightstrm
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by nightstrm »

quagga wrote:
nightstrm wrote:
nightstrm wrote:I will post mine in a couple minutes after I get things settled.
http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php ... 116#p27116
Thanks nightstrm, Cavalicious.

I'm using similar settings. Sort of a mis-mash between the two of your presets. I mainly watch on my AppleTV but I want to be able to push something to the iPod Touch if I want to. Size isn't super important as I only would have one movie or so on their at a time.

I'm using loose anamorphic to your strict and I'm encoding at crf .66. People have been having good luck with -V (vrf)? If so I'll enable that. It isn't on my setting at the moment since it is listed as experimental.

I'm also going to crank my refs up to 2. I was using 3 and iTunes would barf and not push a file to the Touch. If 2 works that'll be good and I can turn mixed refs on.

Happy times :).
I'm sure I'll throw out my current encodes and bump up CRF to .66-.68 as soon as Steve announces the 32 and 64GB 3G iPhone later this year. Wouldn't be the first (or second, or third) time I've restarted. :lol:

VFR is MUCH improved in .9.2. The devs may still list it as experimental, but the only problems I've seen mentioned from it are on anime discs, of which I have a total of 5 (and they are pretty mainstream). An added bonus to VFR, HB will say it is going to take forever, but it typically finishes the encode at around 80% in the GUI. As it was explained to me, this is due to the way the encoder is calculating using a static framerate (29.97?). :)
flybynight
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by flybynight »

nightstrm wrote: I'm sure I'll throw out my current encodes and bump up CRF to .66-.68 as soon as Steve announces the 32 and 64GB 3G iPhone later this year. Wouldn't be the first (or second, or third) time I've restarted. :lol:
Can you give me a quick (layman's) explanation of why you use CRF at 60-something percent, as opposed to setting the target bitrate at the preset's 2500kbps and using 2-pass encode? I'm still learning about all this stuff and just wondering how the different methods effect quality, file size and encode time (less important since I usually just set it running overnight or while I am at work). Fitting in on my iPhone is not important, mostly quality and reliability of streaming to the @TV.
When are those 10Tb hard drives coming out??? :wink:
jbellanca
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by jbellanca »

Does anyone know if the ATV cares what order the audio tracks are in? Will it will pass through the AC3 track if it's the first audio track, and will it still play the AAC track (if digital is off, or on iphones) is it's the second track?

Thanks!
ragboy
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by ragboy »

flybynight wrote:
nightstrm wrote: I'm sure I'll throw out my current encodes and bump up CRF to .66-.68 as soon as Steve announces the 32 and 64GB 3G iPhone later this year. Wouldn't be the first (or second, or third) time I've restarted. :lol:
Can you give me a quick (layman's) explanation of why you use CRF at 60-something percent, as opposed to setting the target bitrate at the preset's 2500kbps and using 2-pass encode? I'm still learning about all this stuff and just wondering how the different methods effect quality, file size and encode time (less important since I usually just set it running overnight or while I am at work). Fitting in on my iPhone is not important, mostly quality and reliability of streaming to the @TV.
When are those 10Tb hard drives coming out??? :wink:
I think I can handle a laymans example. Have you ever encoded in ffmpeg on the command line and watched the bitrate and q numbers change? Q doesn't mean quality, but you can think of it that way. Basically, the encoder watches the bitrate, and adjusts quality to stay within its bitrate parameters. A higher Q value, is lower quality, more compression. With CRF, the encoder works the opposite, it maintains the q, or quality, and will adjust the bitrate to make sure you hit that quality. Before handbrake, I used to encode using CRF. One advantage, is you really don't need 2 pass, since you are not so concerned about file size. The disadvantage is you can have wildly different file sizes. You get a movie like Ratatouille, animation, and pristine digital transfer, it will be like less than 1 gig, depending on your settings. Then you take a movie, like an old western, with film shake, and film scratches, and noise, and the encoder will struggle to keep the quality where you want, and pump the bitrate, you may have a 3gig file for a movie same length.

Thats a laymans answer, anyone feel free to correct me. Also, many settings you see in advance, they don't necessarily make a movie look better, they make it look better at the same bit rate. So you get better quality, at same bit rate, but takes longer to encode. Many settings you can turn off, and just give yourself higher bit rate, if speed of encoding is the issue.

So basically, you use the best settings for you, that give you what you want, balancing what is most important to you, speed of encode, quality, file size/bit rate.
dynaflash
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by dynaflash »

Does anyone know if the ATV cares what order the audio tracks are in? Will it will pass through the AC3 track if it's the first audio track, and will it still play the AAC track (if digital is off, or on iphones) is it's the second track?

Thanks!
Frankly really not sure. I don't imagine it would matter what order. HandBrake sets the aac track first and the AC3 track second and disables it (just like apples setup) So I don't see why you'd want to change it to be honest.

Assuming I understand your question correctly.
ragboy
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by ragboy »

That reminds me, I have a question for someone who knows the answer. ;-)

I have read other places, that trellis at 2, needs to have a subq of at least 6. Yet in HB settings, subq=5, trellis=2. Shouldn't either subq=6, or trellis=1? Or can trellis be set to 2, with subq=5?
ragboy
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by ragboy »

jbellanca wrote:Does anyone know if the ATV cares what order the audio tracks are in? Will it will pass through the AC3 track if it's the first audio track, and will it still play the AAC track (if digital is off, or on iphones) is it's the second track?

Thanks!
Look at it like the ac-3 track is the red headed step child that everyone ignores, except for Apple TV. All else should just play the AAC track the way HB encodes the mp4/m4v. In itunes you can switch from one to the other, if you have perian to decode.
plumbum27
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by plumbum27 »

ragboy wrote:
flybynight wrote:
nightstrm wrote: I'm sure I'll throw out my current encodes and bump up CRF to .66-.68 as soon as Steve announces the 32 and 64GB 3G iPhone later this year. Wouldn't be the first (or second, or third) time I've restarted. :lol:
Can you give me a quick (layman's) explanation of why you use CRF at 60-something percent, as opposed to setting the target bitrate at the preset's 2500kbps and using 2-pass encode? I'm still learning about all this stuff and just wondering how the different methods effect quality, file size and encode time (less important since I usually just set it running overnight or while I am at work). Fitting in on my iPhone is not important, mostly quality and reliability of streaming to the @TV.
When are those 10Tb hard drives coming out??? :wink:
I think I can handle a laymans example. Have you ever encoded in ffmpeg on the command line and watched the bitrate and q numbers change? Q doesn't mean quality, but you can think of it that way. Basically, the encoder watches the bitrate, and adjusts quality to stay within its bitrate parameters. A higher Q value, is lower quality, more compression. With CRF, the encoder works the opposite, it maintains the q, or quality, and will adjust the bitrate to make sure you hit that quality. Before handbrake, I used to encode using CRF. One advantage, is you really don't need 2 pass, since you are not so concerned about file size. The disadvantage is you can have wildly different file sizes. You get a movie like Ratatouille, animation, and pristine digital transfer, it will be like less than 1 gig, depending on your settings. Then you take a movie, like an old western, with film shake, and film scratches, and noise, and the encoder will struggle to keep the quality where you want, and pump the bitrate, you may have a 3gig file for a movie same length.

Thats a laymans answer, anyone feel free to correct me. Also, many settings you see in advance, they don't necessarily make a movie look better, they make it look better at the same bit rate. So you get better quality, at same bit rate, but takes longer to encode. Many settings you can turn off, and just give yourself higher bit rate, if speed of encoding is the issue.

So basically, you use the best settings for you, that give you what you want, balancing what is most important to you, speed of encode, quality, file size/bit rate.
Ist there a certain max bit rate that the ATV can handle? What I am thinking per you explination is that the bit rate might jump too high for the ATV to handle while trying to keep the Q steady....if you set the CRF too high.
nightstrm
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by nightstrm »

plumbum27 wrote:
ragboy wrote:
flybynight wrote:
nightstrm wrote: I'm sure I'll throw out my current encodes and bump up CRF to .66-.68 as soon as Steve announces the 32 and 64GB 3G iPhone later this year. Wouldn't be the first (or second, or third) time I've restarted. :lol:
Can you give me a quick (layman's) explanation of why you use CRF at 60-something percent, as opposed to setting the target bitrate at the preset's 2500kbps and using 2-pass encode? I'm still learning about all this stuff and just wondering how the different methods effect quality, file size and encode time (less important since I usually just set it running overnight or while I am at work). Fitting in on my iPhone is not important, mostly quality and reliability of streaming to the @TV.
When are those 10Tb hard drives coming out??? :wink:
I think I can handle a laymans example. Have you ever encoded in ffmpeg on the command line and watched the bitrate and q numbers change? Q doesn't mean quality, but you can think of it that way. Basically, the encoder watches the bitrate, and adjusts quality to stay within its bitrate parameters. A higher Q value, is lower quality, more compression. With CRF, the encoder works the opposite, it maintains the q, or quality, and will adjust the bitrate to make sure you hit that quality. Before handbrake, I used to encode using CRF. One advantage, is you really don't need 2 pass, since you are not so concerned about file size. The disadvantage is you can have wildly different file sizes. You get a movie like Ratatouille, animation, and pristine digital transfer, it will be like less than 1 gig, depending on your settings. Then you take a movie, like an old western, with film shake, and film scratches, and noise, and the encoder will struggle to keep the quality where you want, and pump the bitrate, you may have a 3gig file for a movie same length.

Thats a laymans answer, anyone feel free to correct me. Also, many settings you see in advance, they don't necessarily make a movie look better, they make it look better at the same bit rate. So you get better quality, at same bit rate, but takes longer to encode. Many settings you can turn off, and just give yourself higher bit rate, if speed of encoding is the issue.

So basically, you use the best settings for you, that give you what you want, balancing what is most important to you, speed of encode, quality, file size/bit rate.
Ist there a certain max bit rate that the ATV can handle? What I am thinking per you explination is that the bit rate might jump too high for the ATV to handle while trying to keep the Q steady....if you set the CRF too high.
You could set the vbv-maxsize and vbv-bufsize (I think those are the names, I'm at work so I can't verify). This would basically set a ceiling for bitrate spikes. This was very important on the ATV1.0, but I have yet to encode a file that dropped frames due to these spikes with the ATV2.0. Maybe if you bump the CRF value up, but it is probably comparable to the iPhone specs (both max at 10000).
dynaflash
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by dynaflash »

Yes, atv 2 appears to handle cabac better than atv1. However to be real safe, I would suggest some sort of vbv buffering to be sure. More info on this can be had here : http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515

As well, lets try not to derail a thread about AppleTV 5.1 audio too far off track. Seems to me this cabac issue and crf would make a good new topic. (hint, hint)
Cavalicious
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Re: AppleTV to support Dolby5.1 Natively

Post by Cavalicious »

dynaflash wrote:Yes, atv 2 appears to handle cabac better than atv1. However to be real safe, I would suggest some sort of vbv buffering to be sure. More info on this can be had here : http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515

As well, lets try not to derail a thread about AppleTV 5.1 audio too far off track. Seems to me this cabac issue and crf would make a good new topic. (hint, hint)
I can never find that damn post when I need it...Thanks!
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