Descriptive Audio only

[reid007bond]

I'm having an issue where I cannot get the English audio from certain BDs. This has happened on both Despicable Me, 1, 2, and 3, as well as In Time. The attached example is with In Time, but it is very similar with the other BDs.

I create the MKV file using the default audio settings. However, when I watch it (either on Windows Player, VLC, Plex Player), I get descriptive audio reading over the movie. In VLC, I've tried to select a different audio track to narrow down and remove the descriptive audio - to no avail. So, I've created 4 different MKV files from the Blu-ray and selected different iterations of the audio files. Here are different iterations and results.

Audio Selected = Result
DTS-HD MA+DTS Surround + DD Surround = Descriptive Audio
DD Surround 5.1 only = Descriptive Audio
DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1 only = No Audio
DTS Surround 5.1 only = No Audio

It seems that no matter what I select, I'm either stuck with no sound or having someone speak over my movie. I've converted ~200 movies, but this has only happened on this small handful of movies. I'm out of ideas on what to try. I've wondered if the codec may be missing for DTS, but that would be odd - since I didn't have any issues with any other movies.

Thanks for any help or ideas.

[preserve]

Yup, you want the first DTS-HD MA track and you don’t need the sub/child track... and the other 5.1 track will be the descriptive audio.

Does seem like a codec/playback issue in this case. Try mpv.io.

[reid007bond]

Thanks for the suggestion preserve. Unfortunately switching media players doesn't resolve my issue. Ultimately, I'm watching my movies on a plex platform so I can view my movies on multiple TVs / devices in my house. So, utilizing a different player wont work for what I'm trying to accomplish.

The route issue is why is MakeMKV pulling in audio for the DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1 Track for certain discs for 95% of my discs, but it does not pull any audio for that track on these select discs. And what can I do to fix it???

[dcoke22]

In an effort to narrow down what is wrong, try using a tool called MediaInfo (https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo) to interrogate your .mkv file. Or do a 'Get Info' on the item in your Plex library. Either way, you should be able to see all of the audio tracks contained in the file.

In your example with all three audio tracks selected in MakeMKV, I'd expect to see all three audio tracks in the resulting .mkv file. Here's an example of what the looks like from the command line version of MediaInfo:

Code: Select all

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : DTS XLL
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Commercial name                          : DTS-HD Master Audio
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2 h 28 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 2 197 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 2.28 GiB (3%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2 h 28 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.57 GiB (2%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #3
ID                                       : 4
ID in the original source medium         : 4353 (0x1101)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 2 h 28 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 204 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

In that example, there's a DTS-MA track + the DTS core + a stereo Dolby Digital track. Assuming the .mkv file has all the audio tracks in it you expect, it is reasonable to think the next most likely problem is related to your playback environment. If MakeMKV had an issue where it failed to properly extract audio tracks, this forum would be lit up with comments on the subject.

It could be the case that your playback environment can not support playback of DTS audio. It seems the only audio that is not DTS is the descriptive audio track. The players could be choosing the only audio format they can play. This is why preserve's suggestion to try MPV makes sense. It should be able to play DTS audio to verify that the audio in the .mkv file is correct.

Do you have any other movies with only DTS audio that work?

Also, you could try converting the audio to FLAC or AAC using a MakeMKV conversion profile during the rip to see if that works.

Or, you could send the ripped file through Handbrake, as a test, to convert the audio to something else that might work in your system.

Or, perhaps your setup can play DTS audio and something else is wrong. I don't have any of the four movies you listed, so I can't compare directly with a file in my library.

[reid007bond]

MediaInfo is a great tool. It's been very very helpful in troubleshooting. Thanks for the suggestion! So, I'm hopeful that I can fix the issue. It's definitely clear that there is a player issue, but I'm still working through to see if I have a codec issue too. More to come... hopefully resolved. fingers crossed.