Bluray - hearing impairment commentary frustrations

[Iaina]

Hi all
A frustrating issue - MakeMKV ripping Blurays fine in about an hour for copying from hard copy to my NAS. Unfortunately on every single one it is ripping the audio with the hearing impaired commentary on every audio channel- I have tried selecting each different audio channel in the rip with the same result ? I then tried ripping with all the audio channels and then choosing them separately at playback - again commentary on every one - this is true so far with all the Star Wars blurays, Skyfall, Oblivion, Prisoners and Petes Dragon, Avengers Infinity War and Allied. Collectively I have wasted about 30 hours trying options on all the above- any suggestions for me? Note this hasnt happened with the 60+ DVDs I have ripped so far-only on Bluray.

I have even tried re muxing through MKVToolnix- same thing!

Cheers for any help you can offer

[Woodstock]

Are you using the default track selection rules in MakeMKV, or have you created your own?

[Iaina]

Hi there Woodstock
Using default track selection rules- have tried denoting all of the separate audio tracks and re-ripping but to no avail - commentary seems to be on all of them??

[Woodstock]

Commentary (also known as "Descriptive audio") is usually its own track. And sometimes, it's "5.1 audio" while the movie itself is just stereo, so the automatic rules will tend to select it instead of the "real" track.

Since I always post-process the video through handbrake, I have MakeMKV pull ALL audio tracks, and then figure out which ones I want by playing the MKV file in VLC. That's also useful for determining which subtitle tracks I want. Then I tell handbrake to use the ones I want and throw away the ones I don't want.

[Iaina]

Thanks - helpful. I wasnt intending to Handbrake transcode to MP4 as happy with the quality of MKV - or do you keep your files in MKV and just use Handbrake for the edit you mention?

Cheers

[Woodstock]

I have too many devices that don't like MKV. Mostly I don't care about those, though... except that I've had too many "full-capability" hardware players simply die on me (3 Uebos, one each KDLinks 700, 720, and A300) that I'm having issues with playback that I didn't use to have.

That said, I transcode for space reasons. Anime shrinks 90% on average, with minimal effect on the video quality, so it seems silly to retain the original file. I have space to do an MKV with all features (including switchable subtitles) AND a separate, MP4 copy that has hard-coded subtitles and other things that make it Android/IOS friendly.

[bmillham]

Thanks - helpful. I wasnt intending to Handbrake transcode to MP4 as happy with the quality of MKV - or do you keep your files in MKV and just use Handbrake for the edit you mention?

Cheers

Instead of using Handbrake you can use MKVToolNix to remove un-wanted audio tracks and subs. Only takes a few seconds and leave the video untouched.