Blu-Ray Surround Track Reorder

[mixxed]

In Compressor, I created a blu-ray .264 with an embedded surround track in todays current ITU Standard, L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs.

When I burned the .264 in Toast, Toast seems to have altered the track order to L, R, C, Ls, Rs, LFE (resulting in the LFE in the Ls channel, and the Ls in the Rs).

Has anyone had a similar experience? And/or, what is the default surround order in Toast 11.1 (blu-ray enabled)

And finally, am I missing something, or are surround audio formats, and track order not even mentioned in the Toast 11 manual!?

Thanks in advance.

[mixxed]

When your audio is over 4GB, looks like CAF is the way to go. It would be great if Roxio would support CAF in future versions of Toast. Info on CAF here; http://developer.app...inkElementID_62

[tsantee]

My experience with Toast is that it always encodes 2-channel audio unless the source has ac3 surround. However, my experience doesn't include mpeg-4 Blu-ray videos with surround tracks. If Compressor's file is one that Toast multiplexes rather than encodes then the audio track is untouched. Otherwise I expect it to get converted to 2.0.

 

It may be that you need to have Compressor save the video as HD MPEG 2 with an .ac3 audio track. Add the m2v video to Toast and it will either automatically add the matching .ac3 or ask you to locate it. Choose Never re-encode from the custom encoder settings window so Toast will multiplex rather that encode the video. (Also change the encoder to MPEG 2 in the custom encoder settings window).

[mixxed]

Thanks, tsantee.

 

I've made a bit of headway.

 

First, when using Apple's Compressor to provide Toast 11 with a (pre-authored for Blu-ray) .264, optimally, one should provide an accompanying audio file in the same folder with an identical file name prefix. For example, in the same folder, My_Movie.264 and My_Movie.aif.

 

Toast 'passes through' the aif's channel count, whether it's 2 channel, or 6, whether Toast re-encodes to Dolby/PCM or not. And in the Audio Option menu, don't be confused by Toasts referring to stereo Dolby Digital, or PCM STEREO formats ONLY - 5.1 does in fact pass through.

 

Toast's undocumented handling of 5.1 is thus; Toast channel order is Lt-C-Rt-Ls-Rs-LFE regardless of the channel order of the pre-rendered AIFF, WAV, or Dolby Digital. So be certain your audio channels, 1-6, are Lt-C-Rt-Ls-Rs-LFE and you'll be fine.

 

It's a shame this isn't documented. Toast 11 is one of only a few workflows available to professionals authoring Blu-ray on Mac. And while Toast works with most Blu-ray recorders. Apple's compressor does not.