Wrong sound tracks or missing English sound tracks

[jkerich]

I download and started to play with the makemkv software this weekend to see if I wanted to buy the makemkv HD version to save my BluRay disks to PC. However the software appears to have bugs copying the right sound tracks.

Example Guardians of the Galaxy:
I unselect everything and then select all the sound modes 7.1, 5.1, DD, etc. and selected English and English subtitles and then ran the software. I then tried playing the movie using two DVD players, windows 10 DVD player and PowerDVD 13. The PowerDVD 13 played the move in English but when I use the Windows 10 DVD player there is no sound. I then switched to each sound title and found that: title 0 and 1 had no sound, title 2 was Japanese (which I did not select), and title 4 had the English commentary track. I then started over and didn’t unselect anything, but there was still no English track. I did have Japanese, Spanish, and the commentary (but French was missing).

I also tried 2 other BluRay disks, first 2 Hobbit extended Movies, and got different results. The first move I did had the English sound track but not on the second Hobbit movie where I got Japanese and the commentary tracks again. The only difference was the first Hobbit Movie did not have 7.1 sound, so it could have something to do with that. Now clearly the English track is there because PowerDVD works fine, but why is the Japanese track being copied when I unselected (Japanese, Spanish, and French)? And why is the Windows 10 DVD player not seeing the English track when PowerDVD 13 can?

I did not have any sound problems or sound mismatches with DVDs so this seems to be a BluRay only bug.

[Woodstock]

There are a lot of tools that do not properly report 7.1 audio, showing it as "5.1" instead. And some applications do not have the ability to play some audio tracks, instead relying upon attached hardware (like a home theater amplifier) to play the audio. And other applications that will not give you the choice of audio tracks when there are multiples available.

If you have manually selected the audio tracks, and have NOT set up a conversion filter (requires use of Expert mode and editing of XML files), the tracks are copied through from the DVD or BD to the MKV file unaltered, and in the same order they were on the DVD or BD. That means the first track found will be the "default" used by most player software and hardware. You can use other tools to change that order to make sure the "most playable" track comes first. Or you can enable a conversion filter in MakeMKV to convert tracks to a more playable format.

As for "missing" tracks... The "default selection filter" in MakeMKV selects the highest-quality track in a given language, so priority is give to 7.1, 5.1, etc., down to 1 track. Lower quality tracks will not be selected by default. This works fine, most of the time, except when a movie is 1.0 mono or 2.0 stereo, and there is a 5.1 commentary track. This means you have to manually select the correct tracks.

You can alter those selection rules to capture "all" audio tracks, then sort them out later. I do this because everything goes through handbrake (handbrake.fr) after MakeMKV rips the disk, before it goes onto the media server. This allows me to make sure the proper audio and subtitle tracks are "first", because the player software doesn't make good choices all the time.

[jkerich]

I will try using conversion filter and see it it can push the English up. But why is Japanese there when I only selected English?

[Woodstock]

If you have not selected a preferred language (Preferences->Language, Preferred language), MakeMKV will automatically select 1 track of each language found.

If you set the preferred language to, say, eng:English, NO other language will be selected automatically.

[jkerich]

I set the Preferences->Language, Preferred language to English and tried again on Guardians of the Galaxy and the results were terrible. I only had 3 sound tracks saved according to the window 10 DVD player and the only one with sound was the English close caption track.

As for the "default selection filter" I have not been able to find it anywhere on the GUI. I will try and Google it and see if I can find a tutorial.

[foxmulder2]

You can modify the "default selection filter" in "Expert mode". Activate said mode under the "General" tab in the preferences and a new tab "Advanced" will pop up, which includes the filter rule.
The filter syntax can be a bit intimidating at first, but it is really quite easy.

For example, this is mine:

Code: Select all

-sel:all,+sel:video,-sel:mvcvideo,+sel:eng,-sel:core,=1:all

What it does: The video track, chapters and any English audio tracks and subtitles are selected by default and equally weighted. This should be fine for most movies, since most movies are primarily filmed in English. Other languages can be added easily through the GUI if you want to, of course.

Now, I manually check the resulting MKV file and sort out the tracks I don't need, mostly commentary audio and subtitles. (This is great for identifying forced subtitles without fail too, obviously.)
I then use mkvmerge to remux the tracks using proper descriptions, default and forced flags and the order I want them in.

[jkerich]

I tried out 4 different players on the movie and DivX and PowerDVD work but Realplayer and Windows 10 DVD player don't. So the higher end players are fine while the cheaper/free ones are not. I will try the more detail instructions for move the English sound track up and see if that works.

Well it was a little better. With the windows 10 dvd player I have 4 sound options again. 1 and 2 have no sound. 3 has CC sound, and 4 is the commentary. The RealPlay has no sound. I then tried setting again the English preference this time setting both Interface and Preferred to English. I then select the max chapter box and selected all the English sound and the 2 English subtitles (not sure why there two listed, the other disks only had one per language) and the Advance settings. But there was no change. I still can't hear the English sound track on either players.

[jkerich]

I find this hard to believe that I am the only one having these sound problems, but since none of the workaround are working I am giving up on this software ripper. I wanted these for my tablet, but since it's players can't find the English sound track either there is not much point being only able to play them on my desktop. Hopefully the company will release a new version that does successfully support BluRay disks in the future. It know that the cloneBD does that I have also been trying out, but is so expensive (which is why it works I guess).

Thanks for the people that tried to help got it to work!

[Woodstock]

You aren't the only one that has the problem. But, the solutions aren't always where we think to look first.

The problem is with the players. The free player VLC does not have problems with MKV video (at least on the platforms I've used it on, Windows, OS X, and Android), but a lot of others do. If I want to play something "everywhere", I run it through handbrake (from handbrake.fr) with a special "compatibility" preset I built that does OK with most platforms, but isn't optimized for any of them. And it outputs the result as an MP4 file, because several android players have a hard time keeping the sound and video synchronized with MKV files.

The key I've found is that the audio sound track you want as default MUST be the first audio track found. Flags within the MKV or MP4 file do not matter, just track order, because the player software rarely implements things "correctly". You have to work around their limitations. Knowing the quirks of your playback device is (disappointingly) important.

Same with subtitles - you can flag the tracks to have subtitles suppressed, or a particular track as default, and most players (hardware and software) are going to display the first subtitle track found when you hit Play. This is especially true with "hardware" players, except "smart" TVs.... The TVs may say they support subtitles, but not the kind you'll find on DVD or Bluray, so neither order nor flags matter, there won't be subtitles.

[dixita]

Hello.. i have one issue .. when select English for filter and push up english,but i cant understand that Japanese and it shows Japanese. why Japanese is there ?

[Woodstock]

Depends on how the disk was authored; Quite often a subtitled disk with have the native language tagged as "eng" (or whatever language would normally be on a disk from your market).

MakeMKV copies the language tags right from the disk, if they're properly set. WHAT they're "properly set" to is an entirely different matter.