So "remuxing" isn't the same as "re-encoding", is it?


That's pretty much what I mostly see out there.

Still not sure what's wrong with mp4, though...

Remuxing does not touch the streams in any way, it just puts them in another container so it is definitely not recoding.

I dislike MP4 because of a couple of reasons:-

1. MP4 files are quite often "hacked" to provide Apple compatibility which is a non-standard MP4 buggered around with by Apple.
2. Quite often, standard players such as the ACR will not obey these hacks. Examples chapers and DTS audio, multiple subs and multiple audio held within the the container
3. PGS (Bluray Subs.

MKV is my container of choice by far....

You mean when they become .m4v, right?


So are you saying the ACR player won't play .mp4 or .m4v files? Subtitled or not?

Not necessarily.

The only thing you can guarantee about a standard MP4 is that it will be non-standard.
Some it wil, some it won't. It depends on how the file was put together.

PS: Another thing I immensely dislike about most MP4's now is that a lot of people are putting them together with AAC audio.

I have very expensive older Onkyo A/V amps that will not recognise/decode the AAC audio stream and I'm not going to throw out a $4000 amp to suit Apples whims.

As far as I am concerned there are 3 standard audio formats, MP3, Dolby Digital and DTS. The Apple TV for example will not even play bog standard DTS.

I appreciate all the help here, thanks.


I'm using HandBrake for encoding so the default audio is AAC.

I'm not using an Onkyo amplifier so for my purposes, will the ACR player be able to play AAC audio?

Handbrake will encode to MKV's also. Use the pulldown....

That's what I do all the time and you will find that I am active on that forum also.

Yeah, your ACR should play AAC but I have set up Handbrake to include an MP3 track, a Dolby passthrough and a DTS passthrough so that I'll always have the original soundtrack with no re-encoding.

I also keep all the subtitles that I want eg: Forced, English, French and Spanish, I generally "Burn In" the forced subs.

Simplest thing is to give it a try All it will take is a little setup and computer time. Make sure that you are using the latest hightly of Handbrake which supports BluRay subs (PGS)

For 'future-proofing" your files, you should do something similar. You never know what will eventuate and I have learnt from bitter experience that the small hit in file size far outweigs compatibility and quality issues later on as disk space is so cheap.

Wow, you are cautious! lol...

Yeah, I suppose I could probably do all three audio tracks as well. Compressing my DVDs from VOB files down to MP4 or MKV does save on disk space.

~

When you mean Dolby passthrough, do you mean AC3 passthrough?

Do you use AC3?

And aren't there audio / video synch issues with uncompressed AC3 passthrough and MKV?

And on your constant quality setting, do you set it for RF:20?

~

Sorry for all the questions but I'm relatively new to all this. Any help would be most appreciated.

Yeah, I'm cautious as I've been doing this for a decade and I said, learnt from bitter experience.

Yes, I mean AC3 passthrough and also DTS passthrough.

No A/V sync issues that I know of. Just did some on the weekend and all OK.

For DVD's I set CQ to 18 and also use constant framerate as some players have problems with variable framerate, dunno about the ACR as I always use CFR and it works.

As you may have gathered, I am ANAL about getting things right in the first place.

For BluRays, I set CQ to 22.

The CQ is very subjective and you really need to try an encode of something that you can use to judge yourself. No need to do the whole title just do a couple of chapters at different CQ's and also ask other peoples opinions as when doing this, as you are a little too close to it and may read the wrong thing into the results.

Hope this helps.

I tried to do that and it wouldn't let me. Everytime I added a new audio track and changed the dropdown selection, it would just create two (or more) of the same encoded tracks

Well since I don't know Japanese or Polish, I'd just as soon burn the whole subtitle in rather than deal with separate .srt's

Good point, but as I mentioned above, it didn't work for me. I probably did something wrong.

On the Audio, I just select "Add All", highlight each selection and then set the parameters.

And you don't use SRT's.... The sub/idx or PGS subs are contained within the container.