Muxing MKVs with different number of tracks for Apple TV

[Chris Newbold]

Hi everyone

I'm currently ripping blu-rays with Make MKV and transcoding them via Handbrake on a mac to stream via apple TV. The DVDs are classic series Doctor Who and often a single story consisting of a few episodes is available as one 'story' stream to rip and i can encode it as one (which makes my listings shorter and tidier). However some DVDs don't have this 'play all' stream, as the individual episodes have different options - like an extra alternative commentary track. These only exist as separate episodes to rip and encode. For these, I am combining them as individual mp4s in Quicktime and exporting them without encoding. BUT when i do that i lose all chapters and can only have one audio track.

One workaround is to combine the MKVs first using MKVtoolnix. BUT I can only do that if they have the same number of audio tracks.

So.. is there something i can use to edit tracks - delete, rearrange or even insert a placeholder blank audio track? I want to make each separate mkv the same, so that when i combine them there's no confusion or missing track information. I have MKVtoolnix, subler and Remux, but can't figure out a way to do this..

Thanks

Chris

 

[Chris Newbold]

Or an alternative to QuickTime for combining Mp4s that preserves or allows me to edit the different track configurations

 

[waw74]

you should be able to add a silent audio track with ffmpeg, it's mostly command line only, there are a few GUIs but not sure if they implement all the features. it can do pretty much anything you want to do with video.

to add blank audio streams look up "anullsrc" audio, you'll have to figure out the mapping to get it to copy some tracks, and add blanks where needed.

it also combines files really well, you can even convert them to another format at the same time. I'm not sure how it handles files with different numbers of audio streams though. The proper name for joining things end to end like that is concatenate, you can figure that out with a bit of google.

you can also use ffmpeg to add chapter info, but when adding files together, you have to do math, since the chapter info is just a list of times in the metadata of the file, not an actual mark in the video stream. You have to add the duration of the first file to all the chapter times in the second file, and so on. there's a script shown here, but not sure how well it works, or if it's even still around. https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/1/26/joining-files-keeping-chapters-using-ffmpeg

pretty much anything you want to do to a video has been done, just google "ffmpeg and the thing you want to do" and you'll find the answers.

 

[villein]

I'm not sure what to use to edit them, but if the extra audio tracks are the issue then you can choose not to rip them in MakeMKV. Before ripping the disc, expand each episode and uncheck the extra audio tracks. The first one is usually the main audio track. Almost all (maybe all) commentary tracks are in Stereo.

 

[priitv8]

So far I have refrained myself from glueing individual clips together into a single clip. One of the reasons is indeed the need to have identical track properties (codec, size, framerate, samplerate, bit depth etc) and number of tracks in all the files to be joined.
But there is MP4tools - MP4 joiner/splitter available: https://www.mp4joiner.org/en/ if you want to venture into this.
PS you will need to create silent track with same length as all others. Otherwise aTV will show and play the total length of your clip as the duration of the longest track in it.

Esp with TV series I tag my individual clips with season and episode numbers and they will be arranged nicely in the iTunes/TV app.
With movies I usualy just name them individually, and put Sorting tags to keep them listed together in TV app later. It will not group Movies on the library view display. Alternative would be creating playlists but too much hassle for me.
With music videos I normally tag videos as separate disk # in set of disks and Music app again groups them nicely under same Album Artist/Album Name section, also showing the video icon alongside.

 

[Chris Newbold]

Thanks everyone I think the main problem I have is creating the extra audio track. If one file has 4 tracks, all needed, and another only 3, I have to add a fourth to fill that gap. Ideally if I do this at mkv level I can then concatenate them all and have all tracks selectable in the final mp4 on Apple TV, just with a dummy track on some episodes. Or I can try to duplicate an existing track as the placeholder. Anything can do this, copy and paste style?! I’m trying to avoid the complexities of ffmpeg.

 

[priitv8]

iMovie.app comes to mind. But you will again need to work with MP4-s, not MKV-s.
Alternatively, you can create a silent track with needed length in GarageBand.app. But you will need to trim them for every single clip you are planning to join.
Plan B - Create one 3..4-hour silent AAC track and clone it and cut easily in QuickTime to length.
To get the same done for multichannel AC3 and E-AC3 tracks, you run into more difficulties.
Your channel counts need to match on multichannel tracks as well.
One way would be to create a 6-channel AAC5.1 and use HandBrake to encode it into AC3/E-AC3.
With E-AC3 7.1 I have no good plan how to get that done.
Ideally, you could have one 4-hour long MP4 that contains AAC 2.0, AC3 5.1 and E-AC3 7.1 tracks.
Then you can use QuickTime to cut them to length and Subler to add needed tracks to needed positions.
I still see a hell of a lot handwork in all this.

 

[Chris Newbold]

Yeah I need to not re-encode ideally, so avoiding using video editing options and sticking to remuxing.

Assuming a I can create the right dummy track, how do I add a track in mkv toolbox, subler or remux or one of those?

 

[priitv8]

Drop the new file onto the old one or use the plus button.
Then tick the track(s) you want to add.

 

[HDFan]

I'm currently ripping blu-rays with Make MKV and transcoding them via Handbrake on a mac to stream via apple TV.

Why go to the trouble of transcoding the Blu-Rays? Just stream the MKV directly to the Apple TV using a player such as Plex or Infuse.

 

[priitv8]

You can also use Subler to wrap contents of MKV into MP4 and one can stream without Plex, with native Apple software.
Only exception would be the VC-1 encoded movies. Apple QuickTime needs H.264 or H.265