SUBLER... a question and a thought...

[Bymatt]

1)From what I read in several forums, when you use Subler's OPTIMIZE function, it does not really effect the sound quality as the sound comes out of say, HB, it seems it makes sure of the order of some flags or atoms, and by interleaving it may speed up the reading of the sound track ????
2) when I encode with HB or MDRP, the surround track is present but unchecked as if it doesnt count. When you play the .MV4 file however on ATV it seems ok. I am pretty familiar with the different mix down combinations and I read the results with mediainfo which will show the 2 channel ACC track and the 6 CH AC track in detail, so I know it is there. What happens by checking the unchecked surround track in subler??
3)I like the abilities of Subler to painlessly look up and ad art, but have to confess I am a basic user. I read about adding/importing tracks, it doesnt seem I have much need to do that????
Sorry for the long windiness of these questions. Finding the exact answers have proven difficult. I have a Mac system, with great speakers and a decent modern receiver with optical and HDMI inputs. I put the movies on an iPad and use air play to watch the movies. Any input would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

 

[141077]

Hi! I'll try to answer your questions but forgive if my english isn't perfect.

1)From what I read in several forums, when you use Subler's OPTIMIZE function, it does not really effect the sound quality as the sound comes out of say, HB, it seems it makes sure of the order of some flags or atoms, and by interleaving it may speed up the reading of the sound track ????

A very important thing in the structur of each MP4 file is the place of the "moov" atom. It contains the information about the tracks inside the container. For streaming purposes it is importand that this atom is placed at the beginning of the MP4 file so the decoder understands how he has to interpret the tracks. If that's not the case it may happen that your video will not play untill the decoder has loaded all the other tracks untill it reaches the "moov" atom. So sometimes if you're file is a few GB big and the atom is at the end of the file you'd have to wait very long for it to play. When you create a MP4 file in Subler it places that atom usually at the end of the file and you should use the "Optimize" function after saving it. By the way that function is equivalent to the "Web optimized" of Handbrake.

2) when I encode with HB or MDRP, the surround track is present but unchecked as if it doesnt count. When you play the .MV4 file however on ATV it seems ok. I am pretty familiar with the different mix down combinations and I read the results with mediainfo which will show the 2 channel ACC track and the 6 CH AC track in detail, so I know it is there. What happens by checking the unchecked surround track in subler?

Not so sure but I think most players, exept for iTunes and the Apple TV, generally play the tracks which are enabled/checked in the MP4 file. iTunes will play the audio track of your prefered language for example and the QuickTime Playr or VLC (maybe) will play those you've enabled. I found out that if you check 2 audio tracks (different languages) and open the file with QuickTime player it plays both at the same time.

3)I like the abilities of Subler to painlessly look up and ad art, but have to confess I am a basic user. I read about adding/importing tracks, it doesnt seem I have much need to do that????
Sorry for the long windiness of these questions. Finding the exact answers have proven difficult. I have a Mac system, with great speakers and a decent modern receiver with optical and HDMI inputs. I put the movies on an iPad and use air play to watch the movies. Any input would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Imagine you don't want to use Handbrake to encode some DTS tracks to AC3 and AAC. Then you would extract the DTS track and create your AC3 and AAC stereo tracks with whatever encoder you like and easily add them after that to your MP4 file with Subler. Don't really know what else to say, you can add chapter titles and subtitles, too.

Hope I could help you.

 

[Bymatt]

Thank You for the detailed reply.... there is still

something eluding me though. BTW your english if VERY good.... I suspect, from reading again, the ATV will take the 6 ch AC track and other lesser devices will grab the ACC track, usually 2 channel with a prologic II mix. I will do the french lang thing on 2nd track to prove this with it checked and unchecked. I notice when I use this set up, any attempt to change modes on the receiver results in Not supported although the sound is good. If I set the 6 channel track to a 6 channel mix instead of AC pass through, then I can choose diff modes of Pro logic II or some blends on the DTS button.
I am getting decent sound, I just keep looking for that extra bit and in the process have become mired in the muck of not being able to really understand exactly what is happening within the different choices.
Thank you again for a good and helpful explanation.
Matt

 

[141077]

Thanks.

I don't know exactly how the Apple TV deals with 5.1 sound because I don't have the speakers. But I know it can't decode the AC3 track it just passes it through to a connected receiver. I think this could be helpful: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/147048D8-D8B7-45E7-9A97-3CD5B4C2B75A.html

 

[EmpyreanUK]

As far as I know, the Apple TV will attempt to play the first audio item in the track listing inside the MP4. Most of my films are encoded with a 256Kbps, original-language AAC track as the first track, a pass-through of the English AC3 track as the second, and then a pass-through of any English Italian tracks thereafter.

When watching a film on the ATV2, I have to manually select AC3 if I want the higher-quality track to feed to my amp, or if I want to watch a movie with Italian or English dubbed audio, otherwise the ATV2 selects the AAC track (i.e. first track) by default.

 

[Bymatt]

GREAT reference. I am a good researcher and

MY apoligies, I am getting my replies to messages out of order.
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14618824]As far as I know, the Apple TV will attempt to play the first audio item in the track listing inside the MP4. Most of my films are encoded with a 256Kbps, original-language AAC track as the first track, a pass-through of the English AC3 track as the second, and then a pass-through of any English Italian tracks thereafter.

When watching a film on the ATV2, I have to manually select AC3 if I want the higher-quality track to feed to my amp, or if I want to watch a movie with Italian or English dubbed audio, otherwise the ATV2 selects the AAC track (i.e. first track) by default.[/QUOTE]

when archiving with HB that what we really get is the rather thin track one sent to the receiver as a prologic II downmix and the second track that is passed through is not relevant. I do not question your observation, I thank you for your note. I think that by using a combination of english and other language tracks available on a given DVD I can narrow this down. I am not sure how you are manually selecting the AC3 track, subler???????
Thanks. Matt

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Thanks.

I don't know exactly how the Apple TV deals with 5.1 sound because I don't have the speakers. But I know it can't decode the AC3 track it just passes it through to a connected receiver. I think this could be helpful: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/147048D8-D8B7-45E7-9A97-3CD5B4C2B75A.html

I will get back to you further when I do the two language experiment..thanks again for your time. I fancy myself a good researcher, but you found a gem here...