Trying to implement conversion profiles but very confused

Discussion of advanced MakeMKV functionality, expert mode, conversion profiles
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Donny Bahama
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Feb 23, 2014 2:02 am

Trying to implement conversion profiles but very confused

Post by Donny Bahama » Sun Feb 23, 2014 3:22 am

I'm using makemkvcon on a headless Ubuntu server. Once a disc is ripped, I'll be recompressing it with Handbrake (and I hope to automate all of this as much as possible).

The sticky post on conversion profiles says, "When expert mode is enabled, current profile may be changed in GUI after..."
What if you're not using the GUI? Is expert mode automatic when using makemkvcon?

I'm also having trouble wrapping my head around the custom profile stuff.
What I'm really trying to do is this:
  1. If there are non-English language tracks, don't include them (unless it's a foreign language film - in which case I'll use a different profile entirely - or maybe just use the GUI on a different machine.)
  2. If there's an HD track, use it and make it the default.
  3. In case I go to watch this on a device that doesn't support HD audio, also include an AC3 track if there's a lossless track.
  4. If there's no HD track, but there is a multi-channel lossy track, use that as the default.
  5. If there's no HD track and no multi-channel lossy track, just use the default
I downloaded the "profile1.mmcp.xml" template and looked it over. Seems to me that there's a lot of sections in there that I don't need at all. (Or am I wrong?) discard, copy, lpcm, wavex and LPCM-stereo are all things I don't plan to use. But if I modify the default section to say...

defaultSelection="-all,+eng,+nolang,-havelossless,-havemulti,-havecore,+forced,=10:all,+100:lossy,-100:lossless,-50:multi"

But based on that rule, how can I add in an AC3 track to I accomplish item #2 above? Can I use two defaultSelection lines in one trackSettings section? (or maybe that's taken care of by the "--audio-fallback ffac3" parameter in Handbrake?)

In the post about track weight, it states, "Track weight directly correlates with track position in output file - heavy items go down, light items float up." So, if I intend to create a file that has a lossless track such as TrueHD but I also want to include an AC3 track -- then I need to reduce the weight of the TrueHD track and/or increase the weight of the AC3 track to make sure that the HD track plays by default. Am I correct on that? If MakeMKV can discard all the audio tracks I don't want, then I can tell Handbrake to just include all the audio tracks it sees, right? Will Handbrake respect the weight of the tracks and maintain the track order I create?

I don't understand "core" at all. Can anyone explain?

If I'm not (ever) using a GUI and I don't care about the profile showing up there, can I skip the "mmcp" and just name the file "profile1.xml"?

And just to confirm - to make all of this work (once I've got the rule(s) right), I just pass makemkvcon a paramater like "-profile=/path/to/myAwesomeProfile.xml" ?

ahowell82
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2014 4:14 pm

Re: Trying to implement conversion profiles but very confuse

Post by ahowell82 » Sun Aug 31, 2014 4:18 pm

I am working on the same idea, where did you find the profile.xml??


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