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What's going on with Handbrake and MKV files as of late?

I

ibglowin

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 1, 2005
216
3
I convert quite a few TV shows (and a few movies) from MKV to :apple:TV format via Handbrake. All are 720p. Been doing this for close to 18 months now mostly no problems. Last few months and especially the last few weeks everything I have grabbed and converted has turned out with garbled (stuttering) audio once I convert them to :apple:TV. It doesn't matter if it has 5.1 or just 2.0 audio. I have tried the :apple:TV preset as well as the :apple:TV legacy preset with no difference.

Visualhub sometimes comes to the rescue but since this is no longer being updated its not my first choice. Somtimes the Visual hub encodes have fine audio but the video comes out slightly jerky.


Am I missing something here? Are people encoding MKV files differently?

VLC plays the original MKV files just fine.

I am using the latest build of Handbrake (0.9.3)
 
I'm having the exact same issue with (what seems like) random mkv files! I haven't grabbed the report or whatever (from HandBrake) to post a question on the handbrake forums but haven't.

I'll try the snapshot as well with a file that I know was resulting the stuttering audio and see what happens.
 
Chad H said:
Im wondering whats going on with Meta-x? I can't get it to tag anything now. :(
Click to expand...

Same here.. It seems like the Meta X cannot correctly tag the M4V files produced by the latest Handbrake snapshot.. That's my theory anyway.

I get loss of audio on most all encodes after passing them through Meta X. :confused:
 
I was getting all kinds of unexpectedly quit errors with MKV files on Handbrake 0.9.3 and updated to the snapshot. Since then I've had no problems and it worked great on every one of the MKV files that the previous version was having problems with. They've released a new snapshot since the one I got about a month ago, but I'm gonna stick with what I have since it's working so well.
 
hitekalex said:
Same here.. It seems like the Meta X cannot correctly tag the M4V files produced by the latest Handbrake snapshot.. That's my theory anyway.

I get loss of audio on most all encodes after passing them through Meta X. :confused:
Click to expand...

Are these on files you've put through metax twice? I was having problems if I tagged them, then realized I forgot to add something and re-tagged them... it basically ruined the audio or video (or both sometimes)
 
Wow, the snapshot did the trick!

Downloaded the latest snapshot version of Handbrake and so far I am 3 for 3 with MKV TV shows that all failed with garbled audio. Very impressive fix!

Now trying out a 720p MKV movie that exhibited the same audio problems.

Can someone tell me why the new :apple:TV preset downsizes a 1280 x 720 video to a smaller 960 x ? Isn't it throwing away pixels and thus part of the resolution? Or am I missing something here? :confused:
 
hitekalex said:
Same here.. It seems like the Meta X cannot correctly tag the M4V files produced by the latest Handbrake snapshot.. That's my theory anyway.

I get loss of audio on most all encodes after passing them through Meta X. :confused:
Click to expand...

No, I meant I can't get Meta-x to bring up any tag information. I've tried several different movies and it doesn't work. It might bring up one listing but thats it. It used to bring tons. What gives? :(
 
Chad H said:
No, I meant I can't get Meta-x to bring up any tag information. I've tried several different movies and it doesn't work. It might bring up one listing but thats it. It used to bring tons. What gives? :(
Click to expand...

Actually, I noticed that as well. I usually tag everything myself but I had a bunch of movies to go through and was hoping to let MetaX do it. I couldn't find anything and I was looking for very popular movies that should have been there (old school, doubt, and x-men 2).
 
That's because MetaX no longer works with Amazon data.. They can only get data from TagChimp, which doesn't have a lot of movies in its database.
 
ibglowin said:
Can someone tell me why the new :apple:TV preset downsizes a 1280 x 720 video to a smaller 960 x ? Isn't it throwing away pixels and thus part of the resolution? Or am I missing something here? :confused:
Click to expand...
Since the atv can only handle 540p at 29.976 fps, the atv preset in hb assumes the worst from a compatibility standpoint. If you know you're source is 24 or 25 fps then go ahead and up the size to 720p.

.... and no, hb cannot determine the actual source fps until it actually encodes the movie, yes it is sort of guessed at from the preview scan's, but is often wrong.

A thought (and what I do) make you're own preset that uses 720p resoultion if you know you're hd sources are <= 25 fps.
 
weird I am having exactly the same problem I have been trying to convert 3 MKV movies for past 2 weeks now , all show different amounts of jerky video when finished. PLus Metax now no longer works, it must be an update from Apple I presume. Or as previous post says maybe they are enconding MKV files differently.

I have tried every app to do the conversions but none work , always this jerky frame rate. About to install Fin Cut Pro 3 and try using the new compressor in that, I tried it once before but it took forever and that was with a 8 core Mac pro.
If anyone finds a solution let us know please..
 
The issue with the mkv files was a mux issue. If the mkv file was produced with one of the newer versions of mkv tools, then you'd get the garbled audio. The fix was to re-mux using an older version of mkv tools and that would fix the problem (I'm using version 2.0). I have not tried the new snapshot of handbrake but I will now, since it apparently fixes the problem and saves me the step of re-muxing.
 
I am having both of the issues in this thread... The original HB MKV stuttering audio and the hijacked MetaX issue.

I, of course, will try the latest HB build as others have said that it fixes the problem. For some additional info, I am converting 720p Movies from MKV to :apple:TV. I found that any of the movies that had the issue showed a 'Bit Rate' in iTunes of less than 100 kbps. Not sure if that helps anyone...

MetaX on the other hand just sucks now. :(
 
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