Mountain Lion Breaks Apple TV with 5.1 Surround Presets in Compressor

Here's what I did to fix it permanently.... First, this only happens with iTunes movies that have an AC3 soundtrack. Downloaded iTunes Store content works fine. For all the ripped movies in my iTunes Library( I use ripit, MakeMKV, occasionally AUNSoft MKV converter, and always finish in Handbrake. Metadata is added via Subler)... about 4 TB of movies..... Icopied them by drag and drop into a folder on my desktope, then opened in Subler and UNCHECKED the AC3 designation in the audio field. Next save and after deleting the movie from iTunes I copy the corrected file back into my iTunes library. This has not failed once nor required ay extra manipulation to play DD 5.1 sound. Pain... but works!

Honestly... For ATV2 The preset for Handbrake does not check the "surround" box even though it encodes AC3 as a passthrought. So I think it was actually my fault and the fact that it worked before was a boulean flag error in the APIs of ATV2 software which did not enforce the Apple standard for maudio which is AAC stereo.... I have noticed that there was some problem with audio after each of the last 3 ATV2 software updates. The Work around I used before was to sart checking the "surround" box.... a standard would be nice. I just finished redoing this part of the metadata on over 2200 hours of HD videos... whew!

Ok I have postet that to FCPX Bug Feedback:

I think the bug is in Mountain Lion and not in FCPX or Compressor 4.

Since this Update from Lion to Mountain Lion the exportetd Files of my FCPX surround projects do not include the AC3 Track. In Finder Imca see, that an AC3 apears for a second but the combining imto the final VideoClip does not work correctly.

Sincerely Yours

Karl Oberreiter

I posted it as well on the OSX Feedback Site

I have yet to get it working with compressor as well so I export movies as master movie files from FCPX 10.0.7 which keeps the 5.1 in the file and 422 codec, then compress it with HandBreak via Apple TV 3 preset and you will get a aac stereo and an ac3 pass through 5.1 track in the compressed video. iTunes won't play it in 5.1 via the Mac but it will with an Apple TV via home sharing. You can output the 5.1 via the Mac and hdmi to your surround amp using VLC with the proper settings in the audio options in VLC. It be nice if FCPX could do this via a Apple TV export preset as well as compressor. HandBreak does a great job with all 8 cores at full steam when compressing.

I use the same Procedere with handbrake and it Works well.

Dies anybody know a Methode to store the final Clip into a special Folder where ist will be imported into itunes automatically?

Overrider......Just drag and drop your movies on iTunes from the folder you designate as the output for handbrake. iTunes does a little processing of the movie during the copying (check the size using
Get Ifo" on the files to see the decreased file size in iTunes.

If you don't want to buy FCP or FCPX try just ripping with MakeMKV (free) I use it for DVD and Blu-Ray... very intuitive, very powerful. If the movie has a DTS soundtrack, for $10.00 AUNSoft's MKV Convertor does a stellar job. final processing either way is free with Handbrake,, using the applicable preset as you all note. The only trick is Do Not designate the AC3 track with a checkmark in Subler, Meta-x or whatever you use. It will be a passthrough that you will see.

No complicated software needed.. very simple. I have over 4TB of HD movies with 5.1 sound streaming to my ATV done this way. Don't overthink it... see my earlier post for movies already done... Subler can open and let you fix these also if you need to.

One other thing.... I have not upgraded from iTunes 10.x to 11.x because I love coverflow!