Audio Problem - Always get Directors Comments An American Werewolf in London

[Ekontos]

When I am ripping An American Werewolf in London I either get no audio or I get audio with the directors and actors comments. I either have 1 or audio tracks selected but I dont see any other way to do this. Please help. Thanks.

[Woodstock]

The default selection rules for audio are to extract the "highest quality" audio first. Often, that is NOT the film audio. Many disks are authored with stereo for the main audio, but 5.1 audio for supplemental streams, including commentary and descriptive audio.

The easiest way I've found for dealing with this is to have MakeMKV extract ALL audio and subtitle streams, then play the result in VLC to determine which tracks I want. I post-process everything through handbrake, but you can also use mkvmerge (from the mkvtoolnix programs) to copy the tracks you want unaltered to a new MKV file.

[Ekontos]

Thanks - I tried what you said and when I play the video in VLC I get the Audio that I want and I dont have to do anything. The audio is Surround 5.1 but when I try to play it with Microsoft movies I get no sound. Would Handbrake correct that? I haven't tried it in Plex yet but I wonder if it will work properly there.

[Woodstock]

If the audio track is DTS HD MA, you may need to switch the audio track with MS Movies; it does not handle as many audio codecs as VLC. MakeMKV can provide alternative encodings for audio, such as FLAC, AAC, and AC3, all of which are supported by MSM.

Plex will re-encode audio and video "on the fly" when the client profile does not match the source file. So yes, that could help. Changing audio codecs is much less taxing on the Plex server than video conversions.

Handbrake is going to re-encode the video no matter what, and you can convert the audio from an incompatible format to something your preferred player can handle.

[Ekontos]

Thanks - new to all of this stuff - been meaning to do it for about 10 years.

[koberulz]

The default selection rules for audio are to extract the "highest quality" audio first. Often, that is NOT the film audio. Many disks are authored with stereo for the main audio, but 5.1 audio for supplemental streams, including commentary and descriptive audio.

I have never seen a 5.1 commentary track.

The easiest way, rather than ripping everything, is to use dvdcompare.net to figure out which tracks are on the disc, then double-check with VLC before ripping if there are multiple similar tracks of which you only want one (if you only want one of multiple commentaries, for example). Then rip just what you need in the finished file.

[Woodstock]

If your aim is to simply create an MKV that only has the relevant tracks, yes, that can work.

My workflow, however, is "rip it all, review with VLC, then tell handbrake what I want." Everything going on to my server is compressed through handbrake, so minimizing the time with the disk in the drive is important to me.

As for 5.1 commentary tracks, they're somewhat common. I've even had one on a movie that had a mono soundtrack.