Container options for .ac3, .dts and .thd streams other than MP4?

[somethingcleveridunno]

Trying to make a parallel set of rips for my Plex server for when I'm out and about because 24/96 FLAC keeps getting throttled, and the Roku devices and Chromecasts my family members have are prone to compatibility issues with multichannel PCM and 4.0-channel files respectively, so I'm basically gonna end up either re-ripping or transcoding all these FLACs for Plex (and keep the FLACs for local playback only). So got a hard drive set up just to hold either demuxed streams from DVD, or DTS transcodes made from FLACs made from MLP or PCM when from discs that didn't have a Dolby or DTS surround stream on them.

They play fine but show up on the Roku and Android clients with no track names, so I need to put them in a container that can actually carry metadata.

But I don't want to put them in .mp4 containers because that'll cause confusion with an overlapping part of my library!

I tried MKA but MusicBrainz Picard doesn't support it, so it breaks my tagging workflow.

Any other ideas?

 

[pat bateman]

I use .M4A for everything. Tagging is fully supported and no need to transcode anything from bluray/dvd remuxs with the exception of MLP, as MLP is not supported in an m4a container.

A 6 channel 24/96 FLAC is only roughly a 4mbit bitrate. That really stinks if your ISP can't go faster than that - I feel for you. If your ISP is faster than that, and bandwidth isn't the issue, you have a bottleneck somewhere else, like try disabling the "relay" function in Plex. I would also consider setting up a cloud hosted Plex server. I actually did that as a backup - it costs me 15 bucks/mo, but I also use the cloud server for other things, so well worth the money.

Regarding your family members, I would be more pushing them to buy an Nvidia Shield and never worry about a format compatibility issue ever again.

But if neither of those are options, I would transcode to aac and make a separate Plex library for those files.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Technically there are three container options: .m2ts (which is a transport stream container), .mka (Matroska) and .mp4/.m4a (which are program stream containers). All have their limitations depending on the software or hardware player you intend to use.

Personally speaking, with the exception of my SACD (dsd) disc back-ups, the audio streams for all my surround sound disc back-ups are kept as their native streams and muxed within the .mka container (along with a cue sheet navigation file). But I have an OPPO UDP-203 which understands what to do with .cue sheet files and supports playback of all the current audio format types.

 

[Pablo]

Technically there are three container options: .m2ts (which is a transport stream container), .mka (Matroska) and .mp4/.m4a (which are program stream containers). All have their limitations depending on the software or hardware player you intend to use.

Personally speaking, with the exception of my SACD (dsd) disc back-ups, the audio streams for all my surround sound disc back-ups are kept as their native streams and muxed within the .mka container (along with a cue sheet navigation file). But I have an OPPO UDP-203 which understands what to do with .cue sheet files and supports playback of all the current audio format types.

Does it play .m4a for you? I remember I had to use .mka because it was skipping the songs otherwise.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Does it play .m4a for you? I remember I had to use .mka because it was skipping the songs otherwise.

If you're referring to 'playing' .mp4 contained files with the OPPO UDP-203 I don't know, as .mp4 is not a container I use (apart from storing 2-ch LC-AAC files on my phone). I use .mkv and .mka for just about everything now.

 

[somethingcleveridunno]

I use .M4A for everything. Tagging is fully supported and no need to transcode anything from bluray/dvd remuxs with the exception of MLP, as MLP is not supported in an m4a container.

A 6 channel 24/96 FLAC is only roughly a 4mbit bitrate. That really stinks if your ISP can't go faster than that - I feel for you. If your ISP is faster than that, and bandwidth isn't the issue, you have a bottleneck somewhere else, like try disabling the "relay" function in Plex. I would also consider setting up a cloud hosted Plex server. I actually did that as a backup - it costs me 15 bucks/mo, but I also use the cloud server for other things, so well worth the money.

Regarding your family members, I would be more pushing them to buy an Nvidia Shield and never worry about a format compatibility issue ever again.

But if neither of those are options, I would transcode to aac and make a separate Plex library for those files.

Plex seems to want to throttle/downmix the audio quite aggressively and I can't find options to make it stop. My upload bandwidth seems to shift with the wind, phase of the moon, Charter Communications stock price, and other forces that make no sense.

I've given some thought to cloud hosting, but right now self-hosting is working well enough, and most of the use of the server is LAN/WLAN based, also using it as a file server, pointing Foobar2000 at the FLAC files, etc. If I had everything in the cloud, the connection drops I get a couple times a day would be even more of a pain while listening, and the residents are four heavy data users (me a work-from-home IT technician, a pro adult streamer, and two freelance video editors, one with a very under-subscribed YouTube channel of her own). The moment we can get fiber will be cause for great celebration.

As for the family, some might be able to adapt to a Shield, but my septegenarian parents can't hear the difference between 24/192 and 640kbps AC3, and they're the ones aside from me who listen to surround music the most, so I'm just gonna make it easy for them to play through their Roku Plex client, which they're most comfortable with.

Looks like .m4a and a spreadsheet to track which albums are unaltered stream rips (that's the part that I didn't want to conflict with) and which are converted MLP/PCM/FLAC is gonna be the way to go, that I'm just creating unnecessary problems for myself trying to use a different container for the converted files.

Why would you do AAC over DTS, or is that just a solution because I didn't want to use an MP4 container?

 

[pat bateman]

Why would you do AAC over DTS, or is that just a solution because I didn't want to use an MP4 container?

I had a brainfart in my original post - meant to say .ac3, as it's widely supported by basically everything and is a compressed format since bandwidth is a concern. I *think* programs like Tagscanner can tag ac3 files, but it's been a while since I tinkered with that. As I said, I put everything in m4a containers because tagging is universal. That begs the question however - why don't you want to use an m4a container? mp4 and m4a are the same thing, just mp4 is meant for a video container and I think Plex ignores mp4 files in an audio library, where m4a works perfectly. If I were you, and wanted a parallel music library - just compressed for file size reasons, I would use AAC, as its a newer more efficient format, and then put it in an M4A container, which actually automatically is done for you when using a program like dbpoweramp and probably others.

DTS is fine too provided you can get past not wanting to use an m4a container, but will be larger file sizes. DTS on its own does not support tagging. To boil it down, AAC in an m4a container will compress multichannel audio to the smallest file size possible if that is the objective.

 

[somethingcleveridunno]

I had a brainfart in my original post - meant to say .ac3, as it's widely supported by basically everything and is a compressed format since bandwidth is a concern. I *think* programs like Tagscanner can tag ac3 files, but it's been a while since I tinkered with that. As I said, I put everything in m4a containers because tagging is universal. That begs the question however - why don't you want to use an m4a container? mp4 and m4a are the same thing, just mp4 is meant for a video container and I think Plex ignores mp4 files in an audio library, where m4a works perfectly. If I were you, and wanted a parallel music library - just compressed for file size reasons, I would use AAC, as its a newer more efficient format, and then put it in an M4A container, which actually automatically is done for you when using a program like dbpoweramp and probably others.

DTS is fine too provided you can get past not wanting to use an m4a container, but will be larger file sizes. DTS on its own does not support tagging. To boil it down, AAC in an m4a container will compress multichannel audio to the smallest file size possible if that is the objective.

Much obliged, I've got plenty of space, so I think I'm doing AC3 in .m4a containers for compatibility, and saving time transcoding. I can just dump everything that's already 5.1 into AudioMuxer, let it run, do the 5.0/4.1/4.0 files separately, and then run an ffmpeg script to put them in .m4a wrappers, and finally run they through Picard to tag.

I spent all day filling in the spreadsheet to track both the local and streaming libraries.

I didn't want to use .m4a because I have some fan upmixes that are in that format already, and I didn't want to lose track of what's what. But, spreadsheet now to track all of that.

Thanks again!

 

[HomerJAU]

Some players don’t recognise TrueHD (inc Atmos THD) in m4a files. JRiver, VLC and many BD players in this group.

 

[somethingcleveridunno]

Some players don’t recognise TrueHD (inc Atmos THD) in m4a files. JRiver, VLC and many BD players in this group.

Yeah, stuff's complicated. But I know from testing that E-AC3 in .m4a will play back on everything I'm aiming for.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Yeah, stuff's complicated. But I know from testing that E-AC3 in .m4a will play back on everything I'm aiming for.

Dolby Digital+ and Dolby TrueHD audio (with or without Atmos) are very different, not least because the former is 'lossy' encoded and the latter is 'lossless' encoded.

It also helps that 'lossy' Dolby Digital+ audio streams can be muxed within the .mp4 container with or without a 'lossy' Dolby Digital core. The same can not be said for 'lossless' Dolby TrueHD audio streams due to how the 'lossy' Dolby Digital core is combined within the stream.

Ultimately Dolby TrueHD audio (with or without Atmos) is not very user friendly, most likely due to Meridian being involved in its development. Yes the company that gave us 'Lossless Packing' for DVD-Audio disc back in 1998 and the same company that gave us the lossy Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) format in 2014. They should have stuck with speaker technology!

 

[AYanguas]

Does it play .m4a for you? I remember I had to use .mka because it was skipping the songs otherwise.

Try just renaming the extension of the file from *.m4a to *.mp4 (Just file renaming, not re-encoding at all).

My Oppo 203 then plays the MP4 file (with E-AC3)