Bluray encoding + DTS sound question

[Bobcat37]

Hey all, I've used handbrake for years for DVD encoding, but now am working on learning the ropes for bluray encodes on my iMac... one big question right now--

I'm trying to create quality 1080p w/ surround sound rips that are in the 5GB range to play on my Acer HTPC running XBMC (so I have no need to worry about restrictions that Apple hardware puts on movie playback). Does anyone out there have a recommendation on a good way they do this?

I just started playing with MakeMKV to rip my bluray discs, but this seems to make a direct MKV rip of the bluray, as the resulting file ends up being about 20GB. From there, I'm assuming I can use handbrake to transcode this file into a better compressed version?

The movies I'm working with right now are all DTS audio, which I believe has caused issues with handbrake in the past, but from what I understand the latest developer builds are starting to play more nicely with this audio format.

Using the latest nightly build I transcoded the MKV to an MP4 and for the audio chose the '6-Channel Descrete' mixdown option assuming this equates to keeping 5.1 surround? However, the MP4 file that resulted had VERY quiet sound levels, I had to really blast my speakers to even begin to hear it (the original MKV created by MakeMKV had a normal volume level). Is this typical, or did I possibly do something wrong?

Then I tried another approach, transcoding the MKV from MakeMKV into a smaller MKV using handbrake, so I could just choose DTS Passthru for the audio... the file came out at a great 3.85GB (down from 20), however the file that resulted seems to be corrupted and the video is scrambled and unplayable. Is attempting to transcode an MKV into a smaller MKV a reason for this mishap? Or did something else go wrong? I don't have the log anymore at this point, but can always recreate the test to provide one... just figured I would ask first if MKV -> MKV is even a viable option. [edit: will find log tonight]

Basically I'm just looking for suggestions on how best to rip my 1080p DTS blurays and end up with reasonable file sizes, whethere they are MP4s or MKVs does not matter!

Thanks again.

[thompson]

Post your encode logs, which are all stored to disk as explained in the announcement at the top of every forum. For the Mac version, they are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Handbrake/EncodeLogs

[Bobcat37]

Post your encode logs, which are all stored to disk as explained in the announcement at the top of every forum. For the Mac version, they are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Handbrake/EncodeLogs

Missed that footnote! Thanks for the heads up, just assumed they were deleted each time I quit the program. Will find and post this evening when I am off work. In the meantime if anyone has any general advice on bluray ripping, I'll take it.

[mduell]

High Profile preset, change the container to MKV, disable the filters, reduce the quality to RF 23, and drop the AAC track.

DTS should work fine, no need to reencode as 6ch AAC. Post an encoding log for support with any particular encode with issues.

[Bobcat37]

High Profile preset, change the container to MKV, disable the filters, reduce the quality to RF 23, and drop the AAC track.

Sweet thanks mduell, just one clarifying question.

Disable filters as in switch detelecine and decomb to off, correct? I did not do this last time I chose the MKV container, could that have been what jacked it up?

Thanks again, I'll give these settings a go tonight!

[Deleted User 11865]

When using MakeMKV make sure to extract the DTS core and not the DTS-HD track. HandBrake will see the latter as DTS, but will not be able to decode it properly (if there's any issue with HB and DTS right now, it's this one).

Disable filters as in switch detelecine and decomb to off, correct? I did not do this last time I chose the MKV container, could that have been what jacked it up?

Unlikely but possible (if you're still using 0.9.4 and not a nightly). Anyway, a log will tell.

[Bobcat37]

Thanks Rodeo... so when I pull up MakeMKV I see this:

Video - Mpeg4
[ ] Audio - DTS-HD Losless
....[ ] Audio - DTS 3/2+1

Do I check both of those boxes or just the latter? And I'll look for that log tonight on the one that had scrambled video (oh and I'm on a nightly, though it's a few weeks old so I'll grab the newest one tonight as well)

[Bling2Ming]

Video - Mpeg4
[ ] Audio - DTS-HD Losless
....[ ] Audio - DTS 3/2+1

Do I check both of those boxes or just the latter?

Just leave the last one (DTS 3/2+1) checked. It's the lossless track that causes the problems.

[Bobcat37]

It's the lossless track that causes the problems.

Ok got it, thanks. Come to think of it, I believe my MKV rip I did above that muxed all scrambled was using the DTS-HD track, maybe that's what messed up the whole thing? I'll try again with the 5.1 later (and still toss up my log of the other just in case it was some other issue).

[Deleted User 11865]

Thanks Rodeo... so when I pull up MakeMKV I see this:

Video - Mpeg4
[ ] Audio - DTS-HD Losless
....[ ] Audio - DTS 3/2+1

Do I check both of those boxes or just the latter? And I'll look for that log tonight on the one that had scrambled video (oh and I'm on a nightly, though it's a few weeks old so I'll grab the newest one tonight as well)

Unless you intend to demux the HD audio and remux it afterwards, just the latter - it's the only one HandBrake can use. If you select both, just remember to select the second track in HB.

[Bobcat37]

Hey guys thanks for all the help... it had to be the DTS-HD that was messing things up. When I looked at the log from before it was a disaster list of 1000 fail errors, haha. So I went with the 3/2+1 track and just got a great rip of Moon down from the original 20GB to 4.25GB, and that was with an RF of 20... I'm gonna back that down to 21 for my next rip to shrink it even a bit more, as I can't imagine quality will take much of a hit at 1080p, especially with all the high-profile settings and the recommendation of only 23 by mduell. And hey mduell, if you happen to see this again, is there a particular reason you say to turn off the filters for an mkv bluray transcode?

[TedJ]

The detelecine and decomb filters are only needed on hard-telecined and/or interlaced sources... your average Blu-ray title is neither. Disabling them when you know they're not needed will garner a small performance boost.