| Home | “Ever download a movie with 5.1 sound, but your media player can’t decode the audio into surround sound? … Here is a fast/easy solution to the problem.” |
Note: This tutorial assumes that extensions for known file types are not hidden. (1. Click Start. 2. Click Computer. 3. Click Organize. 4. Click Folder and search options…. 5. Click the View tab. 6. Make sure that Hide extensions for known file types is unchecked. 7. Click OK. 8. Close the Computer window.)
Instead of watching a movie at home using a DVD or Blu-ray™ player, it makes good sense to watch it using a 100% solid state (no moving parts) media player such as the Asus™ O!Play™. They are more reliable (no more disappointment because of unplayable disks due to scratches or dirt), less complicated (no more dealing with difficult-to-understand DVD/Blu-ray menus for which there is no consistent standard), and they are quieter/use less energy (no more noise/energy consumption/wear-and-tear due to having to spin a disk at high speed for hours on end). However, obtaining the video file in the first place can get quite complicated.
Here’s a fast/easy solution to one such complication: That of downloading a movie with surround sound, but which your particular media player is incapable of decoding into 6 discrete audio channels because the audio track is not Dolby Digital). Most media players can decode DTS into 6 discrete audio channels, but not AAC. Some media players can’t decode either one. They may be able to play the sound, but only as 2 channel stereo. :-(
The solution is to convert the audio track into the universal 5.1 audio standard: Dolby Digital (.ac3). There are other tutorials available on the Internet which explain how to accomplish this, but, without exception, they use methods which are unnecessarily complicated and time consuming. One of these overly complicated methods even requires one to be connected to the Internet!
Using this method, the original video file may be .mkv, .mp4, .m2ts,¹ .avi, or .mov, but the newly created (converted) version will always be .mkv.
This amazingly fast/easy procedure requires the following free software:
1. Mediainfo.
2. RipBot264v1.16.5.
3. tsMuxeR_1.10.6. (Only needed if the audio file to be converted is of the M2TS type.)
This tutorial assumes that the RipBot264v1.16.5 folder and the tsMuxeR_1.10.6 folder are in a folder named C:\Portable Software. (Neither of these software packages needs to be installed.) It also assumes that Mediainfo has been installed.
The following only needs to be done once:
1. In the C:\Portable Software\RipBot264v1.16.5 folder, open the RipBot264.ini file with Notepad.
2. Change:
StoreTempFilesin=AUTO
…to:
StoreTempFilesin=C
3. Change:
DefaultContainer=mp4
…to:
DefaultContainer=mkv
4. Change:
x264LowPriority=1
…to:
x264LowPriority=0
5. Save.
Do the following for each video file to be converted (This process cannot be done in batch mode without wasting a tremendous amount of time and energy unnecessarily converting the video.):
1. Drag & Drop the video file onto the MediaInfo icon on your computer’s desktop in order to find out the bit-rate of the audio.²
2. Double-click the RipBot264.exe icon in C:\Portable Software\RipBot264v1.16.5.
3. Click Add.
4. Navigate to the video file and select it.
5. Click Open.
6. After Please Wait… Demuxing audio streams…, etc. is finished, change the AUDIO/PROFILE to:
5.1 Aften AC3 384 kbps [cbr]
…or:
5.1 Aften AC3 448 kbps [cbr]
…or:
5.1 Aften AC3 640 kbps [cbr]
…depending upon the bit-rate noted in step 1 above.³⁴
7. Click Done.
8. Click Start.
9. As soon as Encoding Audio… is finished, drag and drop the audio.ac3 file from the C:\Temp\RipBot264temp folder onto your desktop.
10. Click Remove.
11. Click Yes. (Caution: Unless the audio.ac3 file has been moved out of the C:\Temp\RipBot264temp folder in step 9 above, this step will cause it to be unceremoniously deleted.)
12. Close RipBot264.
13. Drag and drop the original video file into the C:\Portable Software\RipBot264v1.16.5\Tools\mkvtoolnix\mmg.exe (mkvmerge GUI) icon. (When mkvmerge GUI comes up, the original video file will automatically appear in the input box.)¹
14. Drag and drop the audio.ac3 file into the input box also.
15. Uncheck the audio track that you don’t want. (Usually DTS or AAC.)
16. Uncheck any subtitle tracks with may be present.
17. Click the Start muxing button.
18. After muxing has completed, close the mkvmerge GUI program (C:\Portable Software\RipBot264v1.16.5\Tools\mkvtoolnix\mmg.exe).
19. Delete audio.ac3.
20. The converted video file will be, by default, in the same folder as the original one, and with the same file name. However, if the original file is also a .mkv file, then (1) will have been appended to the file name.
¹ As of the date of this tutorial, the latest version of mkvmerge GUI is not capable of demuxing a M2TS file. The solution is to use C:\Portable Software\tsMuxeR_1.10.6\tsMuxerGUI.exe to demux it. Then, in step 14 above, instead of the original video file, drag and drop the demuxed video (with no audio) instead.
² Sometimes Mediainfo does not reveal the bitrate of the audio. In these cases, I recommend that you choose the lowest bitrate in step 6 (5.1 Aften AC3 384 kbps [cbr]). If, after completing all 22 steps, the new version of the video file is smaller than the original, you might want to consider repeating the entire procedure, this time choosing a higher bit rate in step 6.
³ One time, while RipBot264 was in the “Please Wait… Gathering information…” stage, it hung up. I tried again with the same result. I suspect that it might have been because the video file had one or more non-SUP (Blu-ray standard) subtitle tracks. In any case, I solved the problem by using mkvmerge GUI (C:\Portable Software\RipBot264v1.16.5\Tools\mkvtoolnix\mmg.exe) to get rid of all of the subtitle tracks. This time there were no problems. But before doing this, I used a program called C:\Portable Software\RipBot264v1.16.5\Tools\mkvtoolnix\MKVExtractGUI2.exe to extract the English subtitle track, which, in this case, happened to be in the SRT format (the format which I always use). If the subtitles had not been in this format, I probably would have used http://subscene.com to downloaded an SRT version of the corresponding subtitle file, rather than bother to do a conversion.
⁴ Sometimes, MediaInfo is unable to determine the bit rate. In such a case, all that you can do is to guess what bit-rate (384, 448, or 640) to use for RipBot264. If you end up with a video file which is significantly larger or smaller than the original, then repeat steps 6 through 18 using a different bit-rate. For example, I converted one such MP4 video file with AAC sound. First I used mkvmerge to convert it to an MKV file, an extra step which makes the file size comparisons more meaningful. (Otherwise, we’d be comparing apples and oranges.) The newly created MKV file size was 2,909,056 KB. I figured that a full length movie with a video file that small is not going to have audio encoded as 640, so I tried 448. The resultant video file was 3,013,819 KB, so I tried it again, this time using 384. This time, the resultant MKV file was 2,962,275 KB. This is still a little larger than the original, which is good, because it means that the audio quality was maintained. Obviously, the 384 version was the version that I kept.
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