Please help with audio on War BR

[administrator]

Hello,

I'm trying to convert War (the movie with Jet Li and Jason S) using MakeMVK 1.8.14. I've converted 300 BR discs so far and this is the first one no matter what I try my Oppo (with the latest firmware) can't stream. I often have trouble with one track such as LPCM but DD or DTS or some other audio track on it can play. On this movie neither track plays. I've tried the default profile. I've also tried FLAC (which has worked for movies in the past). I've also tried AAC. I can't get it play any audio track with any conversion. I'm sure there is a way to resolve this as I get audio when I play back the mkv on my PC.

MakeMKV sees the first audio track as LPCM 7.1 English and the second as DD Surround 5.1 English.
Track information
Type: Audio
Name: Surround 7.1
Language: English
Codec: Linear PCM
Channels: 8
Channel layout: 7.1
Sample rate: 48000
Bits per sample: 16
Output format: LPCM audio in WAV container with channel configuration metadata ( Lossless conversion )
Output description: Save as LPCM in WAV container
MKV Flags: Default


Track information
Type: Audio
Name: Surround 5.1
Language: English
Codec: Dolby Digital
Channels: 6
Channel layout: 5.1(side)
Sample rate: 48000

[ndjamena]

According to Blu-ray.com

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/War-Blu-ray/612/

the second audio stream is in fact Dolby Digital Ex, which is the equivalent of DTS-ES and ads an extra channel to the speaker layout, making your second track 6.1 DDEx. That may or may not be relevant.

If you've tried re-encoding each of the audio streams into different codecs you should know nothing would be kept that would interfere with playback, but there are at least two other tracks in the file. Can you play it back with other player software? What do you mean by "can't stream"? Do you lose the audio or video or does it just refuse to play? Do you have the latest firmware update for the Oppo? (The last time I got involved with an Oppo problem we went mad trying to figure out what in the file could be causing it. We found nothing but eventually everything became fine when the guy downloaded the latest firmware.)

[administrator]

If you've tried re-encoding each of the audio streams into different codecs you should know nothing would be kept that would interfere with playback, but there are at least two other tracks in the file. Can you play it back with other player software? What do you mean by "can't stream"? Do you lose the audio or video or does it just refuse to play? Do you have the latest firmware update for the Oppo? (The last time I got involved with an Oppo problem we went mad trying to figure out what in the file could be causing it. We found nothing but eventually everything became fine when the guy downloaded the latest firmware.)

Thanks for the reply. I can play it back on my computer. I can also convert it with DVDfab and play it back on my oppo but I end up with just multichannel surround. I did the firmware update last night that is why I said latest firmware. I also tried it on my other oppo which has slightly older firmware in case it was a bug in the newest firmware.

[ndjamena]

Sorry, I missed that.

Does it refuse to play completely? When you convert it with DVDFab, does that include converting the video? When you re-encode the audio with MakeMKV do you remove the second audio stream or convert that as well?

Can you post the MediaInfo output of a file that doesn't play?

[administrator]

Sorry, I missed that.

Does it refuse to play completely? When you convert it with DVDFab, does that include converting the video? When you re-encode the audio with MakeMKV do you remove the second audio stream or convert that as well?

Can you post the MediaInfo output of a file that doesn't play?

It says it can't playback the audio. It does show the video though. It also shows the different audio tracks when I switch using the audio button during the video but it still doesn't play either track. DVDfab does convert the video. I tried with both tracks. I haven't tried just converting a single - I know it won't play lpcm so I'll try just converting the DD (I haven't done this is in the past as I'm hoping some day the Oppo or whatever I end up for streaming next will support the LPCM track as well).

[ndjamena]

Well, the possible problems I can see, as unlikely as they seem, is that maybe the LPCM has an odd speaker layout that the Oppo isn't dealing with properly or maybe it's detecting the DDX marker in the DD stream and doesn't know what to do with it. It's also possible it's detecting irregularities in one audio stream and disabling audio completely because of it.

[administrator]

Strange. I normally do the top 2 audio tracks - e.g. DTS MA and DD or some such combination and usually both work. When it is LPCM and DD the LPCM won't play back but the DD will. I converted just the video and DD this time with makemkv and at least it was able to playback the audio now. I've never had to skip a track for it to playback properly. Thanks for your time.