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[jmone]

I have a few Videos with the awful 6.1 DTS-HD Audio Tracks (Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and Star Wars 1-6) that my Yami AVR does not like if MC's DSP is set to "Source # of Channels" (I end up with poorly matched channel mask and missing Dialogue for example). 

The "easy" solution is to set MC to always mix everything to 5.1 but this seems overkill for just 9 Videos out of 50K+ items

The other solution would be to set a Zone Switch rule something like:
- Channels = 7 --> Use Zone (mix to 5.1)
- Media Type = "Movie" --> Use Zone (mix to 5.1)

Couple of downsides:
- This would require me to setup and maintain a Zone and Rule on each PC just to handle 9 Videos
- I also have two "false positives" of MC reporting Channels = 7 (Update Library from Tags does not fix them and you can not edit the "Channels" field by hand)

Any other ideas on how best to handle just these few files?

Thanks
Nathan

[RoderickGI]

Well 6.1 is pretty rare, and there aren't likely to be more created. Well, I hope not. It was a transient phase for the studios.

I would just convert those files to 5.1 or 7.1. If you are lucky, you should be able to just convert the audio, and leave the video untouched, depending on the tool you use.

I suspect you know more about converting videos than I do, so I shan't advise on what tool to use.

[blgentry]

I like Roderick's idea.  I recently converted a problematic movie's sound to a different format.  It's a weird case that has 4.1 audio, which MC could play.  I actually used MC itself to down sample it to 2.0.  When I had the resulting audio 2.0 track, I then used MKVToolnix (aka MKV Tools) to add that 2.0 sound stream as another selection for the video.  I made it the default so that it would get picked automatically.  But the 4.1 channel track is still there too if I ever want to use it.

My reasons for conversion were different, but this same technique sounds like it might fit your needs well.

Brian.

[jmone]

Good Idea - trying it now....

[fooze]

There is a quicker solution. Open windows explorer, highlight all the 6.1 files, then hold shift and press delete.

[jmone]

  fooze

The concept works using MC to "Convert Video to Audio" + DSP to convert the 6.1 track to 7.1 LPCM and I then used tsmuxer to mux it back in.  These 9 are however all in BD Structures on my HDD and 6 of them (Star Wars) use seamless branching across multiple M2TS so I'd then have to break up the audio.  + in theory I should then also use BD Edit to change the details of the Audio Track.  I'm thinking MKV looks alot easier at this point. 

I'm also not sure if I'll end up with the LFE issue on the Star Wars disks.

[jmone]

So I've tested the following workflow of both a LOTR and a Stars Wars movie:
- BD --> MKV (MakeMKV)
- Import MKV Into MC and convert the DTS 6.1 to a 7.1 FLAC file
- Create a new MKV mux using MKVToolNix GUI removing the DTS 6.1 and adding the 7.1 FLAC track (and fiddle around working out the Forced subs)
- Import the final MKV info MC (deleting the temp MKV and FLAC file)

All seems to be fine but still a PITA as I prefer to just rip and play the original. 

The other option would be better 6.1 handling as I don't think most users would want to try the above.  Maybe something like:
- selectable Channel Mask held in the data base or
- an additional DSP option like "Always mix 6.1 to ..../5.1/7.1...."
- ??

Thanks
Nathan

[Hendrik]

Personally I would generally recommend to just tell MC to always mix to your physical speaker count, and you never have any problems.
There are plenty other "uncommon" layouts that cause trouble with HDMI AV-Receivers, basically anything thats not 2.0, 5.1 or 7.1, to be honest. This would magically squish all of these!

[jmone]

I agree that it solves all the channel layout probs, and I've been using 5.1 Mixing due to the 6.1 issue... but I've been using "Source # of Channels" for the last few years as I found that on 2ch Video that dialogue with MC is less focused on the Center speaker than what the AVR does (eg it tended to be spread over the front 3 channels).... but let me check again as I could be wrong.

[RoderickGI]

I mix everything to 5.1 and encode to AC3 to send to my AVR because that's all it will accept in a 5.1 digital format. Not ideal, but it works.

However, I did notice on some programs that the dialogue could be a bit weak, and so I have boosted the Center channel a bit to compensate. Again, not ideal but it works.

Everything is a little bit of a compromise, but that is okay.

[mojave]

I agree that it solves all the channel layout probs, and I've been using 5.1 Mixing due to the 6.1 issue... but I've been using "Source # of Channels" for the last few years as I found that on 2ch Video that dialogue with MC is less focused on the Center speaker than what the AVR does (eg it tended to be spread over the front 3 channels).... but let me check again as I could be wrong.

Check "For Stereo Sources only mix to 2.1" in Output Format if you want 2ch Video to not be upmixed. You still get 6.1 and 7.1 downmixed to 5.1, but stereo doesn't have any upmixing if Subwoofer is set to Silent in Output Format.

If you want some stereo content upmixed and some not, then create another Zone and use ZoneSwitch.

I agree with Hendrik that one should almost always set Channels to the physical channel count.

[fitbrit]

I have a custom field called audio channels, where I put in 2.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 6.1 7.1 etc. You could make a zone switch rule based on the custom field. If empty or not 6.1 use source number of channels. If 6.1, mix to 5.1.

[squeedle]

I have had this same issue and think it would be nice for jriver to offer a conditional upmixing feature, same as it does for conditional resampling. E.g. if channels = 7 then upmix to 8. That's the only time i want jriver altering the #channels period. Until it does that--and I'm assuming it never will--I have to manually add the 8th channel via Audacity and save it as a FLAC file and remux it into the MKV file blablblaa.