My journey of making an HD movie with 5.1 AAC to work on WDTV Live + Onkyo 3300.
Finally with some work backlog out of the way, I was ready to play with my HTiB Onkyo 3300 acquired last decade
(23-Dec-2010) and watch my first movie on it. Picked up a backup of 720p Avatar with 5.1 Surround sound.
The setup - WDTV Live -> HDMI -> Onkyo 3300 -> HDMI -> LG 42PQ60
Loaded the movie onto the WDTV Live, powered on the Onkyo and ..... there was only Prologic II sign that came up on the AVR. Wait a sec... I was expecting to hear true 5.1 sound and not the one which is simulated by Dolby Prologic II.
Checked out my HD player and thought the culprit to be WDTV Live, changed the audio output mode to Digital instead of Stereo. But now the sound was completely gone!
Much to my dismay found that AVRs do not decode/play AAC and the audio was encoded in 5.1 AAC. Now not too sure whether Onkyo 3300 was not able to play it or not as there were dozens of posts online complaining on WDTV Live's inability to decode AAC 5.1.
So now the task at hand was to convert the AAC to AC3. A couple of hours and few trial and errors, the following recipe was able to solve the puzzle:
1. Downloaded AudioConverter.exe from http://audioconverter.heartware.dk/. The exe does not need any installation. Placed it in a work folder which I used for converting the file.
2. The tool auto downloads the required external utilities (close to 12MB) in a tools directory.
3. Read the entire tutorial from the following link Tutorial for converting audio tracks with HeartWare MKV Audio Converter.
4. Placed the MP4 file (Yes the file was in mp4 format) in the work folder.
5. Launched mmg (mkvmerge) from [work folder]/Tools/MKVtoolnix and added the mp4 file. It showed the 2 tracks part of the file - 1 for the video and another one for aac audio. Clicked on Start muxing to convert the mp4 contents into a MKV file. It took around 2 minutes and I had an MKV with the video stream and aac audio stream.
6. Launched AudioConverter.exe in the work folder, loaded the newly generated mkv file from step 5 and made the required AAC settings (unchecked all other options in the tabs other than AAC) - checked Convert AAC/SBR Tracks and selected the AC3 radio button (bitrate 448 kbps). Convert AAC 5.1 tracks (bitrate 448kbps). Clicked on Run.
12 minutes later had a MKV with HD Video and AC3 5.1 Video and I was all geared up to watch Avatar in 5.1 Audio. Loaded the file onto WDTV Live, fired up Onkyo 3300 and tried a run of the movie - could experience good surround, was about to head for making some popcorn, but in a minute the inevitable happened - my 4 year old came running from his room, noticed the TV was on and convinced me that its time to watch Toy Story :lol: So Avatar is still due for a run - will update on the experience of watching it soon.
Hope the above recipe is useful to all dear friends at HFV with the above gadget combination.
P.S. if there is a better and faster way to perform the conversion or run this file please let me know.
Quick edit - noticed the title of the post says only AAC audio it should have read playing HD movies with AAC 5.1 Audio...apologies!
Finally with some work backlog out of the way, I was ready to play with my HTiB Onkyo 3300 acquired last decade
(23-Dec-2010) and watch my first movie on it. Picked up a backup of 720p Avatar with 5.1 Surround sound.The setup - WDTV Live -> HDMI -> Onkyo 3300 -> HDMI -> LG 42PQ60
Loaded the movie onto the WDTV Live, powered on the Onkyo and ..... there was only Prologic II sign that came up on the AVR. Wait a sec... I was expecting to hear true 5.1 sound and not the one which is simulated by Dolby Prologic II.
Checked out my HD player and thought the culprit to be WDTV Live, changed the audio output mode to Digital instead of Stereo. But now the sound was completely gone!
Much to my dismay found that AVRs do not decode/play AAC and the audio was encoded in 5.1 AAC. Now not too sure whether Onkyo 3300 was not able to play it or not as there were dozens of posts online complaining on WDTV Live's inability to decode AAC 5.1.
So now the task at hand was to convert the AAC to AC3. A couple of hours and few trial and errors, the following recipe was able to solve the puzzle:
1. Downloaded AudioConverter.exe from http://audioconverter.heartware.dk/. The exe does not need any installation. Placed it in a work folder which I used for converting the file.
2. The tool auto downloads the required external utilities (close to 12MB) in a tools directory.
3. Read the entire tutorial from the following link Tutorial for converting audio tracks with HeartWare MKV Audio Converter.
4. Placed the MP4 file (Yes the file was in mp4 format) in the work folder.
5. Launched mmg (mkvmerge) from [work folder]/Tools/MKVtoolnix and added the mp4 file. It showed the 2 tracks part of the file - 1 for the video and another one for aac audio. Clicked on Start muxing to convert the mp4 contents into a MKV file. It took around 2 minutes and I had an MKV with the video stream and aac audio stream.
6. Launched AudioConverter.exe in the work folder, loaded the newly generated mkv file from step 5 and made the required AAC settings (unchecked all other options in the tabs other than AAC) - checked Convert AAC/SBR Tracks and selected the AC3 radio button (bitrate 448 kbps). Convert AAC 5.1 tracks (bitrate 448kbps). Clicked on Run.
12 minutes later had a MKV with HD Video and AC3 5.1 Video and I was all geared up to watch Avatar in 5.1 Audio. Loaded the file onto WDTV Live, fired up Onkyo 3300 and tried a run of the movie - could experience good surround, was about to head for making some popcorn, but in a minute the inevitable happened - my 4 year old came running from his room, noticed the TV was on and convinced me that its time to watch Toy Story :lol: So Avatar is still due for a run - will update on the experience of watching it soon.
Hope the above recipe is useful to all dear friends at HFV with the above gadget combination.
P.S. if there is a better and faster way to perform the conversion or run this file please let me know.
Quick edit - noticed the title of the post says only AAC audio
it should have read playing HD movies with AAC 5.1 Audio...apologies!
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