Basic Blu-ray DTS eac3to question

[comdw]

I was following a guide on Blu-ray to MKV conversion and it stated that for DTS audio tracks, the following command format should be used:

eac3to “<drive>:\<folders>\<file name>.m2ts” <track>: “<drive>:\<folders>\audio_track<track number>.dts” -1536

and further more that Surcode was required for this step.

However, from a bit of reading about I found that I could just extract the core DTS track by using the -core option in place of -1536 in the above command. This doesn't need Surcode and the resulting track still muxes and plays fine with the movie.

I assume I'm losing out somehow by doing the latter, but what? I know I'm not getting the full original quality DTS from the core track, but is there any advantage to doing that if you are going to re-encode it to "standard" 1538 kbps DTS anyway?

[dat720]

I do it the same and haven't noticed any degrade in audio quality, if it works for you stick with it.

[comdw]

Thanks. I'd still like to know the difference since I'm trying learn and understand as much as possible.

[Inspector.Gadget]

I know I'm not getting the full original quality DTS from the core track

Yes you are. You're getting the original DTS core bit-for-bit. There's NO reason to re-encode to the same format and bitrate.

[880]

But it's not the same as DTS HD.

[Inspector.Gadget]

The "core track" is only lossy DTS anyway. I don't mean to get sidetracked into semantics, just to make sure we're all talking about the same thing.

[comdw]

Yes you are. You're getting the original DTS core bit-for-bit. There's NO reason to re-encode to the same format and bitrate.

But it's not the same as DTS HD.

This is kind of what I'm getting at. If you take the full DTS HD and re-encode to a new 1536kbps DTS do you end up with something similar, better or worse than the original core track?

Guess I'll keep using the core. The guide I was following may have been giving a generic step to apply for any DTS/TrueHD audio tracks.