No Sound On The Main Movie Track

[Len_Jacobson]

One year ago, I successfully used MakeMKV with my BlueRay disc for the movie, "The Martian". I needed to remake the movie image. With the 120 sec default limitation on which tracks to use, MakeMKV made eleven of the tracks. Ten of those eleven were just a few minutes long and came out perfectly. The main track, the movie itself, came out with no sound at all.

I redid the process and got the same result.

I then tried HandBrake, but that product said "No valid source or titles found".

I am baffled as to why I have a problem now when I had successfully used MakeMKV to make a .mkv file last May.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

[Ezatoka]

Does MakeMKV show any audio tracks when you open the BluRay?

Does MediaInfo show any audio tracks, when you let it examine the MKV file?

[Radiocomms237]

I suspect that the default audio track uses a codec that your player doesn't support? What player are you using to watch the movie?

When you play the file, are there any other audio tracks that you can select?

[Len_Jacobson]

First off, please forgive the delay in my reply to the two of you. This is my first posting to this forum and I probably failed to click on "Notify me when a reply is posted", and also didn't notice until now that the list of postings was NOT ordered by the most recent postings.

Yes, the main title shows multiple Audio tracks including English. When I try to choose any of those audio tracks, the sound is very muted. English is totally silent.

You can see the tracks here:

MakeMKV (Martian).jpg (273.84 KiB) Viewed 4046 times

As to the player not supporting the audio track, I am on my Dell XPS (high end) desktop running Windows 11. I am using Windows Media Player. I can't imagine that my desktop computer is lacking the ability to hear the sound. Please remember that I had said that there were eleven tracks that MakeMKV converted and all but the main movie track has perfect sound that I can hear when playing the track on my computer.

I repeat that I successfully used MakeMKV some time back to create this movie as an .MKV file on my computer.

[Len_Jacobson]

I just moved the movie track to my Plex.tv server and the sound of the movie plays perfectly on Plex.

I don't remember when I used MakeMKV to make the .MKV file one year ago whether I even tried to play the movie with the Windows Media Player. I may have moved the file immediately to my Plex server.

So the problem may simply be the Windows Media Player is not fully compatible with the audio track that MakeMKV produced. But the bottom line is that I am now a "happy camper", as I do have the movie on my Plex server and it runs fine.

I am sorry to have bothered you with this non-issue.

Len Jacobson

[Ezatoka]

I am sorry to have bothered you with this non-issue.

Never a bother if it helped someone

[dcoke22]

According to your screenshot, every audio track except the main one is a Dolby Digital track. The main track is a DTS track. Dolby and DTS are different companies with different multi-channel audio schemes. Windows Media Player on Windows 10 was famous for not understanding DTS out of the box (even though it is part of the blu-ray standard). It appears Windows 11's WMP is in the same boat.

As a side note, MediaInfo is a handy utility to tell you lots of details about media files. Also, there are lots of media players you can use on Windows, but VLC can play just about everything under-the-sun out-of-the-box.

[Radiocomms237]

I reckon @dcoke22 is on the money.

If not using VLC MP then you may want to install the K-Lite Codec Pack for Windows.

This is on my 'new install checklist' and gets added to every PC I build (although I haven't used Win11 yet, but it should work).

[Len_Jacobson]

I installed VLC Media Player and used it to play the .MKV movie that MakeMKV created. When the movie started, I was happy to hear the music background. But when it got to parts with people talking, there was no sound of the people talking, just music background. And even stranger, when it got to a part where something fell, I could hear that sound, but still no voices speaking.

Very, very strange.

[Ezatoka]

Wait... thats sounds suspiciously like you don't hear the center audio of a 5.1 audio track, because there is usually all speech located.

You should check your sound settings. Do you have a 5.1 system on your computer? If not, you should set it to Stereo in Windows sound control panel.

[Len_Jacobson]

My computer has simply two speakers. I went into the Windows Control Panel and to the Sound settings. Nowhere do I see where I can choose "Stereo" or "5.1", or whatever.

[Billycar11]

My computer has simply two speakers. I went into the Windows Control Panel and to the Sound settings. Nowhere do I see where I can choose "Stereo" or "5.1", or whatever.

Sound playback devices click configure on you output device and that's where you select your channel setup

[Len_Jacobson]

Thank you for that suggestion.

With the VLC Media Player, I was able to get the full soundtrack by clicking on "Audio" and then clicking on:

• "Audio Device" and then on "Speakers/Headphones"

• ]"Stereo Mode" and then on "Stereo"

Using Windows Media Player, there is nothing I see to do to get the soundtrack.

Thank you one and all for helping me with this issue. I do appreciate it.

Let's consider this issue closed.