VLC can't decode audio on certain MKV rips of BD

[bernard]

On "The Third Man" and "The 400 Blows," the main audio track produces "No suitable decoder module: VLC does not support the audio or video format "s16l". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this."

The commentary tracks are trouble free.

Any clue about how to troubleshoot this?

[setarip_old]

Click on the following link:

http://www.google.com/search?q=s16l&rls ... age=1&rlz=

[bernard]

Click on the following link:

http://www.google.com/search?q=s16l&rls ... age=1&rlz=

Thank you for the reply, but I had already googled it and found the same vague and non-actionable pages. Got anything more to the point?

[Wondercow]

On "The Third Man" and "The 400 Blows," the main audio track produces "No suitable decoder module: VLC does not support the audio or video format "s16l". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this."

The commentary tracks are trouble free.

Any clue about how to troubleshoot this?

VLC has already done the troubleshooting for you: VLC simply doesn't play tracks encoded as "s16l". And there's no way to fix it.

If you're looking for more in-depth info s16l is an audio format for 16-bit linear PCM (LPCM) data. This format is supported by the Blu-ray spec (and thus all players) but is unsupported in VLC. As such you'll need to convert it to an audio format that VLC understands. Exactly how you'll accomplish the conversion depends on which platform you're on and what software you already have.

In my travels across the 300 Blu-rays in my collection the only ones that use this particular format are from Criterion Collection.

Edit:
I forgot that you can convert the audio directly in MakeMKV using the FLAC profile.

[bernard]

Thank you Wondercow. I had been skeptical that VLC would not support such a format, but thanks to you I now know better.

I have Windows 7 and a bit of programming background. I can certainly use command lines. What workflow would you recommend?

[paulster]

You can re-run the MKV back through MakeMKV and choose the FLAC profile. This will convert all audio tracks to FLAC.

Otherwise, if you just want to convert a specific track you can use eac3to (free) to extract the particular track and convert to FLAC on-the-fly with a command something like:
eac3to filename.mkv tracknumber:name.flac

Then you can use MKVmerge from the MKVtoolnix utilities (also free) to merge your new FLAC audio track back into the existing MKV file in place of the original track.

[bernard]

Thank you, paulster.

I hate to have to come back for more help, but I can't get eac3to to do anything. Here's my command lines:

E:\eac3to>eac3to "G:\The Third Man\The_Third_Man_t00.mkv" 1:3rdman.flac

E:\eac3to>eac3to "G:\The Third Man\The_Third_Man_t00.mkv"

E:\eac3to>

The first line produces no audio file, but provides the following in both log.txt and 3rdman - Log.txt:
eac3to v3.24
command line: eac3to "G:\The Third Man\The_Third_Man_t00.mkv" 1:3rdman.flac

The second line, without an output, is supposed to return a track list, but it gives nothing.

I'm sure I have a beginner's dunce mistake here. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

[paulster]

Try the following:
cd e:\eac3to
g:
cd "\The Third Man"
e:eac3to The_Third_Man_t00.mkv

That should give you the track listing, and you're using the same version as I am, so it should work.

I have seen a few MKV files that it hasn't been able to parse successfully, in which case I use mkvclean to regenerate all the cues and this sorts out the problem, but I've only had to do that rarely.

Then, once you have the correct track number, use the following command:
e:eac3to The_Third_Man_t00.mkv tracknumber:3rdman.flac

In your case you used track 1, which would have been the video track. It'll usually be track 2 onwards that you're looking for.

[bernard]

paulster,
Thank you. That works on other files in the folder, but not The_Third_Man_t00.mkv.

So I ran mkclean with output to 3rdman_clean.mkv, and it finished, apparently with success, making an output file with a slightly different size from the input file.

However, eac3to still shrugs off the cleaned file without comment.

I guess it's back to re-ripping.

Would it really kill somebody to add s16l decoding to vlc? Jeeze.

[bernard]

I've re-ripped The Third Man blu-ray from the GUI after changing the preferences/Advanced/Options/Default profile to FLAC. There was no change. The main audio track is still s16l. How do I specify a profile other than Default or FLAC? In a similar thread for Macs, http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic ... =criterion , Crowfax thought specifying the FLAC profile would make it work in VLC. Apparently not so much.

[paulster]

When you choose the FLAC profile and highlight that audio track, does MakeMKV suggest it will be converted to FLAC or left as-is in the bottom right panel?

If it says it will leave it as-is then you might be able to forced it to FLAC by creating a custom profile that forces every single audio track to FLAC. You'll find XML files for each profile in the MakeMKV installation directory and you can copy the FLAC one as something else and edit it so that the default rule converts everything.

This is really strange though. I've never had this kind of problem with any of my Blu-rays, which all seem to have used 'normal' audio formats!

[bernard]

paulster,
Thank you. I did as you said and it worked this time. Last time the trouble must have been the wrong sequence of selecting the profile, having multiple MakeMKV windows open, or idiopathic operator error.

To recap for future Criterion or StudioCanal blu-ray users, in the GUI simply go to View/Preferences/Advanced/Options and in the Default profile field select FLAC instead of Default.

Thanks again!