Having issues muxing ac3 tracks into matroska...

[Benji99]

Hi guys, I'm having a devil of a time creating my first truly working moving rip into matroska.

Here's what I did.
From Guardian Knot, set up all the settings, basicly created the avisynth file with it. I then went and edited it, commented out the resize function (I'm doing an anamorphic XVID encode).

I Then loaded up VirtualDubMod, proceeded in encoding 1-pass quality 100% directly to mkv format.

That went well, and so far so good, the file plays perfectly in the 3 players I tried (TCMP 4.0 Reloaded, a slightly older version of Zoom Player and MPC).

I then proceeded in adding Chapter info in VirtualDubMod and muxed into a new mkv file, tried it in TCMP, and thos work again just fine.

Now comes the problem, I then added the 3 AC3 tracks to the streams in VDM and proceeded in Muxing again, process went by fine.

But then when I play the file back in either TCMP 4 build 44, I get following error msg:

TCMP's Core can not render the file:
Some of the streams in this movie are in an unsupported format

The video comes up, it recognizes the audio tracks, but doesn't play them. If I try in the latest version of Zoom, no sound whatsoever, but no error msg. The sound works however GREAT in MPC, all 3 tracks work well.

I then proceeded in muxing only one ac3 track in VDM, one track in mkmerge, and 3 tracks at once in mkmerge, still unable to get the sound to work in either Zoom or TCMP.

Anyone have any idea on how to fix this?

NOTE: The AC3 tracks are straight demux rips off of the dvd by dvddecrypter/robo4rip.

Thanks in advance!
Benji99

[Danzel]

have you tryed to open the ac3 files as they are in a media player.

if they wont play perhaps your dont have an ac3 codec installed (e.g ac3filter).

i havent used matroska yet, but i definately will in the near future... promise ;) hehe.

Try muxing to another container and see if it works then.

Danzel.

[Benji99]

Yeah the AC3 files play by themselves in TCMP fine.
And again, they also play fine in MPC.

I have used in the past AVI-Mux to mux AC3 and DTS tracks with AVI and few problems. (Some programs didn't switch between the streams properly).

I'll try it again tomorrow, but I don't think it's gonna fail.
I'm also gonna try encoding into AVI, then muxing the tracks, then muxing it all into a mkv file.

[robUx4]

If it plays in MPC it looks like a bug in TCMP. Maybe a problem with stream switching ?

[Benji99]

Well
TCMP, aside from the error, *sees* the streams, I can even select them, but no sound comes out.

Zoom, I can't even select any audio streams whatsoever, and obviously no sound there either

MPC, works like a charm

Hmm, i don't know if audio switching could be the issue, but common sense tells me that since I tried a matroska file with one audio stream, that would then not invoke any sort of stream switching...
But I'm just talking out of my ass here...

hehe

[robUx4]

You use 3 AC3 tracks or 1 AC3 track ?
None of them work in TCMP ? And work in MPC ?

[Benji99]

Well the final file has 3 AC3 tracks, all of them work in MPC, and none of them work in any of the other programs.

I was just doing some tests with 1 track after I saw that 3 tracks didn't work, I wanted to see if it would work

[Benji99]

Ok things aren't as rosy as I thought they were in MPC.
I just did a new encode, of a completely different movie, with completely different AC3 tracks.

And this encode has the exact same problems as the first, (TCMP no sound, Zoom no sound, MPC sound).

Except, I've just realized after checking both, is that the sound in MPC is very bad, it has all sorts of noises, and distortion sounds. And even there, MPC will crash a few seconds into the movie anyway. MPC will also crash with the first movie.

Now, those same AC3 tracks play and sound perfect if played on their own in either MPC and TCMP.

As such I seriously doubt the problem lies in my AC3 filter...
Next encode I'm not going to encode to mkv directly, but go to avi first, and mux the tracks using avi-mux, if that works well, I'll then mux all that into mkv using vdubmod or mkmerge...

[alexnoe]

I've taken and old AVI file with 5 AC3 audio streams, have remuxed it to mkv using VirtualDubMod as well as avi-mux gui (no, you can't download a version that can write mkv; it's far too beta atm to offer it for download), and both files work...