i am trying to encode a video file that has 5.1 audio For my Apple TV first generation and i have the audio set to dolby pro logic ii from an apply tv preset but when i check the file with a program called videospec it shows up as 2ch stereo. what am i doing wrong? isnt dolby pr logic ii actually 5.1 surround sound? Should I set it to six channel discrete? any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
OP: You're not doing anything wrong. Dolby ProLogic is not a discrete 6 channel format. It's a two channel format, and other external programs will only ever recognize it as such.
To be a little more technical, Dolby ProLogic II is not really a format so much as it's a decoding method designed for Dolby Surround. But I won't bother you with the extremely technical details unless you really want to know.
The default behavior of Handbrake is that it'll create an AC-3 track and an AAC track that's ProLogic compatible. This is a bit of handwaving since the Handbrake encoder doesn't actually downmix anything... the Dolby Surround mix already exists in the front left and front right channels of any program that has a Dolby Digital track, and a ProLogic/ProLogic II decoder decodes the matrixed surround out of those two channels. How it does it is a longer, more boring discussion.... but no format analyzer will really recognize it as anything but stereo because digitally speaking there are only two channels.
If your version of handbrake presets isn't automatically selecting "ProLogic II downmix" in the audio settings, change those settings to show what that guy above, Peace, had taken a screenshot of.