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[Deribas]

Happy New Year to all,

Just moved recently from MC20 to 21 on a new Mac Mini.  My question is whether MC21 supports playback of Blu Ray multichannel high-resolution audio tracks (such as DTS HD master audio or Dolby True HD) in addition to the HD video.
In my setup, MC21 runs on the newest Mac Mini, which connects via HDMI to a Marantz AV8801 processor (which can for sure handle all these codecs). When I play my source concert BD discs via the Oppo player, all the hi-res 5.1 channel audio comes thru just fine. I then rip the blu ray disc, using MakeMKV, to create either a "backup" copy (full size) or a .mkv file (again, choosing the highest resolution audio track available), or both. Previously, I was using the VLC player to play back either the .mkv file or the "backup" file - but this plays only the lossy core audio track (e.g., DTS mch from the DTS HD-MA).  I believe this is a known limitation of VLC player. With the arrival of video-ready MC21 for Mac, I am hoping to finally put away my physical BD media, if I can play the audio at full resolution. Can anyone shed some light and give advice on how to do it? Perhaps transcode to full-resolution mch LPCM on the computer before sending out the HDMI signal?

Thanks

[Hendrik]

MC21 supports all HD audio tracks on Blu-rays, including full DTS-HD MA. It'll decode everything to PCM and output that over HDMI if thats how your audio is setup.

[Deribas]

Thanks for this info. Does MC21 ONLY transcode to full-res mch LPCM, or is there a choice to bitstream the encoded stream (if for no reason than to see that actual dts hd-ma stream is registering on the pre-processor display)?

[Hendrik]

MC on Mac does not support bitstreaming (yet). The Windows version does, however.

[Deribas]

With this knowledge, I was able to play back BD-sourced mkv files with full-resolution 5.1 audio tracks. Major goal thus accomplished. A couple of minor things:

1. If I make an .mkv file (using MakeMKV for Mac) that contains multiple audio tracks (say, stereo LPCM 24/48 track and a 5.1 DTS HD-MA track), when I play this file in JRiver mc21, only the stereo LPCM audio is available (as far as I can detect). Is there a setting to choose which audio track to play, either by default or file-by-file?

2. The .mkv file I make from a blu ray musical concert, for instance, is utterly devoid of any tag info that shows up in the tagging window in JRiver. Can .mkv files contain metadata, and should there be some info that gets populated automatically when I use MakeMKV to rip? In any case, any references to tagging .mkv files in JRMC21 would be highly appreciated.

[blgentry]

1. If I make an .mkv file (using MakeMKV for Mac) that contains multiple audio tracks (say, stereo LPCM 24/48 track and a 5.1 DTS HD-MA track), when I play this file in JRiver mc21, only the stereo LPCM audio is available (as far as I can detect). Is there a setting to choose which audio track to play, either by default or file-by-file?

You should be able to select any audio stream in the movie file with Player > Display Options > Streams > (choose audio stream).  Or when it's playing full screen:  <right click> Streams > (choose stream)

MC should remember the last stream you selected and use it the next time you play that movie.

2. The .mkv file I make from a blu ray musical concert, for instance, is utterly devoid of any tag info that shows up in the tagging window in JRiver. Can .mkv files contain metadata, and should there be some info that gets populated automatically when I use MakeMKV to rip?

As far as I know, MakeMKV doesn't populate any metadata at all.  I'm not even sure if the MKV container has metadata provisions.  In any case, MC puts metadata for video files in two places:  In it's internal database, and in a sidecar XML file which will be written in the same directory as the video file.

For Movies and TV Shows, the function "Get movie and tv info" does an automated lookup, based on the name of the file, to try to populate the metatdata fields.  I have very few concerts, but the one I tried it on did a successful lookup.  Try it and see:  <right click on concert> Get movie and tv info .

You can experiment with the name shown at the top of the Get Movie and TV info window to try to find information on your video, in case the name of the file isn't exactly perfect or contains extra words, etc.

Brian.