My white whale-descriptive audio

[Lstewart2525]

I purchase original Bluray's of movies and then make 1 Bluray copy using a Verbatim 25 GB disc for my own personal use, playing only the copy in my stand alone Bluray/DVD/CD player. On only 2 Bluray copies do I have this problem. Bell de Jour-1967 and now recently Capernaum-2018.

Here's the problem: No matter what I do, descriptive audio engages when playing the copied Bluray on my stand alone Bluray/DVD/CD player and it is seemingly impossible to turn off. Yes, I've tried my TV settings and Bluray player settings. But nothing seems be be able to eliminate or turn off descriptive audio. Why it gets recorded in the first place is beyond me, but I suspect that this descriptive audio (which is for the blind) is somehow embedded in the main file because on a computer, whether you play back the m2ts file or the mkv file, you always get the dreaded "descriptive audio".

And get this: I tried copying the full movie using both DVDFab and MkakeMkv/BD Rebuilder, and even then one cannot eliminate the descriptive audio, whereas you can eliminate the descriptive audio using the purchased video!

Anyone solved this yet to where one can make a Bluray copy that will play in a stand alone player WITHOUT descriptive audio?

[Grauhaar]

I think there at least two Audio tracks in the MKV file. The first is the audio description and the other one is the "normal" audio. Right? If this is true, you can change the sequence with MKVToolNIX. Load the mkv file, the move the "normal" audio track one up, set it as the default track in the settings and remux the file by creating a new one.

[Woodstock]

The standard MakeMKV track selection favors multi-channel audio with high specs. Sometimes, the movie audio is not as high spec as "other" audio, like the descriptive track.

Because of this, I have MakeMKV rip ALL audio tracks, and chose the ones to keep later. While I use handbrake to remove the unneeded tracks while compressing the video, mkvtoolnix Grauhaar mentions can do it, too - and much faster than handbrake.

[Lstewart2525]

05/21/19

I write this in case someone else may experience the same problem that I did with "Descriptive Audio", and the following may help. Then again.......

Anyway, while I greatly appreciate the advice from Grauhaar and Woodstock, my ultimate goal was to create a Bluray copy of the movie Capernaum...and eventually Belle de Jour, that would play correctly, without descriptive audio, in my stand alone Bluray player..

And I was happy to learn about MKVToolNIX, downloaded it to my computer, from https://www.fosshub.com/MKVToolNix.html, but didn't really know how to use it. If I don't have a Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc, I'm probably not gonna really understand how a program works without a lot of trail and error, or searching for someone who may have written step by step instructions. But who's got the time to write out step by step instructions for someone, right? So I had to go with what I could piece together from my own previous, quite limited, knowledge.

But here's how I made it work:

1. I used MakeMKV to create mkv files for the movie, clicking on "File", then "Open Disc", then the location of my Bluray burner. Then, after MakeMKV worked a bit, I ended up with lots of files and their respective check boxes showing in MakeMKV. Then I unchecked every box except the first main file cause all I usually want is the main movie. Then I noticed, for the first time I might add, that there was a "right arrow" to the left of that main file check box, and I clicked on that. Doing that opened up other check boxes (that I never knew existed) and I unchecked both English Audio check boxes and put a check in the "best" Arabic audio check box. I imagine that by unchecking the English Audio boxes that, by so doing, I eliminated my white whale, the dreaded "descriptive audio." (Also note that I don't understand Arabic in the least, but for foreign (at least to English-speakers) movies, the norm seems to be to let the natural language run and then read the English subtitles. So I left all the English subtitle check boxes checked. (Note: I later realized that the reason there were 3 English subtitles was because the first one was for just standard subtitles, the second one added more description for the hearing impaired, and the third was for "the director's comments") Finally I clicked on the rather large, green "Make MKV" arrow in MakeMKV on the right to create a "descriptive audio"-free MKV file.

But what good would an undecrypted MKV file be to me, since I wanted to create a Bluray, and that MKV file would still need to be decrypted, right?

2. So, now I turn to the quite costly DVDFab program, opening that program and then clicking on the "Creator" tab, and then drag and dropping the MKV file that MakeMKV made into DVDFab. At this point, I have no idea if DVDFab will decrypt everything to where I can successfully play the new Bluray in my stand alone Bluray player. All I can do is try it out, and...............

3. it worked!!

Note: I don't know if Handbrake would have yielded the same result since I have little experience with that program, or if perhaps there was a simpler, more straightforward, less convoluted way of achieving the same result, namely a Bluray that would play in a stand alone player. But I bet Woodstock or Grauhaar could tell us!