MeGUI and iPhone (or iPod Touch)

[Umat54]

After using several other tools I discovered MeGUI and found it to be the best in terms of versatility and features. Thanks to the authors! It works fine for all my needs - except for iPhone videos.

I have no problems using MeGUI creating iPhone videos with single audio track and subtitles burned into the image. However, I was not able to make the following features work on iPhone:

* Multiple (two or more) audio tracks
* Chapters
* Soft subtitles (subs that can be turned on or off during playback)

These features work fine in MeGUI created videos played back on my PC or several other hardware players, but not on iPhone.
These features work fine on iPhone too, but only when using other video conversion tools, not MeGUI.

My question is: Was anyone able to produce iPhone videos with the above features using MeGUI? Am I doing something wrong or MeGUI just cannot do this? Thanks!

[b66pak]

for multiple soft subs follow this tutorial:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=147494
_

[Umat54]

More than two months passed and no one confirmed that such thing is possible, so I believe I can safely pronounce this statement:

MeGUI does not support more than one audio track in iPhone (iPod Touch) video.
MeGUI does not support subtitles in iPhone (iPod Touch) video.

The reason I write this is to help others save time. I have spent two whole days trying all possible things to make it work, because I have not found any such statement anywhere on the internet.

[stax76]

Still could be possible or require only little changes, the issue is there is not much interest.

[Kurtnoise]

@Umat54: if you're ready for testing, I can provide you some samples...

[Theliel]

Some time ago, I wrote a guide for this too. The problem arent in megui, its Apple. Apple use special ATOM in her mp4 to identify additional tracks and soft subtitle. With a hexeditor you can change some atoms, and once this use QT to "configure" this tracks (Chapters, others tracks, subtitles...). I can post a sample video with all of them that i created time ago.

Kurtnoise, may be will be possible to see a future enhanced for this in yamb? Maybe a options to make subb and others stuff compatible? I can add them, but I spend a lot of time only adding a simple subb.

[Umat54]

Sure, I am ready and willing to help with testing or even more if I can.

[Umat54]

Originally Posted by Kurtnoise

@Umat54: if you're ready for testing, I can provide you some samples...

I do not want to nag and understand if you do not have time. I have not heard from you here or through PM, I am still ready to do as much testing as you want.


In the meantime, I use MeGUI + HandBrake combo for iPhone / iPod touch encoding.

MeGUI because it is great for all the options and works for AviSynth scripting, resizing, cropping, audio syncing, muxing etc. It just cannot produce iPhone compatible multiple audio files.

Handbrake is rather featureless when compared to MeGUI, does not even support AviSynth files as input (why??), but it does produce iPhone compatible multiple audio files.

So I let MeGUI do all the hard work and output everything into a MKV file with losless or very low audio and video compression, and then just let HandBrake to reencode the file.

I believe all that MeGUI lacks is writing a few bits somewhere in the MP4 headers. If I knew what bits and where then I could write a simple "patcher" app - does anybody have any pointers? Or is there any such patcher available already? Or, does anybody know some other MeGUI-like app that handles AviSynth files and can produce iPhone compatible multi-audio files?

Or am I the only one who wants to have more than one audio track in iPod Touch video?

[Adub]

MeGUI should be able to produce files with multiple audio sources compatible for the iPhone. Make sure you are using a LC-AAC profile. I usually use around 128-160Kbps.

Adub

[Umat54]

I do use the AAC-LC profile. I made a lot of experiments but nothing works. Can you confirm it really works for you?

Just to be precise what I mean by iPhone compatible multiple audio files:

MeGUI can create MP4 files with multiple audio tracks. These MP4 files can be played on all video players (software and hardware) that I tried. The individual audio tracks (e.g. original English sound, French dub, director's comments) can be accessed, chosen and played back on all the players - except on iPhone/iPod Touch.

On iPhone/iPod Touch, these MP4 files can be played, but only the first audio track will play. There is no way to select any other audio track - the audio track selector does not appear in these files on iPhone/iPod touch. The audio track selector does appear and audio tracks can be selected and played back in MP4 files created with other tools (like HandBrake).

The same problem is with soft subtitles.

[quantum5uicid3]

handbrake uses the more applecentric mp4v2 library for mp4 modifications as opposed to mp4box. with kurtnoise MIA, i don't think anyone is currently working on mp4box. so you might be stuck...

looking at the mp4v2 documentation running this would probably arrange the atoms in apple's special way, i dont know if this will save you time though

mp4file --optimize filename

ru setting the device type to iphone in megui?

[Umat54]

I do set the device to iPhone in MeGUI, but it does not help. I believe i tried everything possible However, no one yet confirmed that they really did create an MP4 file in MeGUI that would allow choosing the audio track on iPhone so I believe it is a problem of MeGUI, not mine. But I'd love to be proven wrong!

Thanks for the advice on the mp4file tool. Does anybody have a Windows build of this tool or a link to it? The official page only shows source code and the required work to build it myself (I do not have Microsoft's Visual Studio) is too much when I do not know if the "mp4file --optimize" is really going to help or not. Thanks!

[quantum5uicid3]

i'm pretty sure it's an mp4box issue. have you tried muxing the streams with YAMB/mp4box?

Does anybody have a Windows build of this tool or a link to it?

Kurtnoise built them for win32

[Umat54]

You are right, it is MP4Box issue. I did try muxing with the latest Yamb and/or the latest MP4Box-0.4.6-dev_20091013 but nothing works. MP4File --optimize does not work either.

However, I thank you a lot quantum5uicid3! You helped me immensely by pointing me to the mp4v2 tools which allowed me to experiment even more so that I could discover the MeGUI (or rather MP4Box) problem. Now I am finally able to create both multiple audio and multiple soft subtitle MP4 files compatible with iPhone / iPod Touch. I create them in MeGUI as before - nothing changed here, they are still not compatible, but I can now fix them with mp4v2 to make them fully compatible with iPhone or iPod Touch.

There are just two bits in the headers missing for each track to work properly. iPhone needs the audio and subtitle tracks grouped into a sort of radio button box control. All audio tracks must be marked as members of one group, and only one track must be on while the rest must be off. The same about subtitles. MP4Box does not group the tracks and turns every single one on.

This problem can be easily fixed by the mp4track tool. When it is done, all audio and subtitle tracks are accessible on iPhone, but the tracks do not have proper language codes (except for English, Spanish and perhaps a few others). It seems that MP4Box uses different language codes than iPhone. This cosmetic issue can also be fixed by the mp4track tool.

Here is a sample batch script that will fix a FILE.mp4 file with three audio tracks (English, French and German) and three subtitle tracks (again English, French and German):

REM group all audio tracks into group 1
mp4track --track-index 1 --altgroup 1 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 2 --altgroup 1 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 3 --altgroup 1 FILE.mp4

REM group all subtitle tracks into group 2
mp4track --track-index 4 --altgroup 2 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 5 --altgroup 2 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 6 --altgroup 2 FILE.mp4

REM turn the first audio track on and the rest off
mp4track --track-index 1 --enabled 1 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 2 --enabled 0 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 3 --enabled 0 FILE.mp4

REM turn the first subtitle track on and the rest off
mp4track --track-index 4 --enabled 1 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 5 --enabled 0 FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 6 --enabled 0 FILE.mp4

REM assign proper language codes to audio tracks
mp4track --track-index 1 --language ENG FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 2 --language FRA FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 3 --language DEU FILE.mp4

REM assign proper language codes to subtitle tracks
mp4track --track-index 4 --language ENG FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 5 --language FRA FILE.mp4
mp4track --track-index 6 --language DEU FILE.mp4