I back up my Blu-ray discs. I use MakeMKV to copy them to one of my computers running the GeckoLinux version of openSUSE Tumbleweed and then I compress the file(s) with Handbrake and put the resultant file(s) onto an external hard drive.
Normally this works perfectly. All discs carrying DTS-MA, DTS, AC3, etc. sound formats are encoded as they should be.
But lately I have received a number of Blu-ray discs (mostly from Criterion) which feature a main audio track recorded in the Linear Pulse Code Modulated Audio (LPCM) format.
I currently have two computers running the openSUSE Tumbleweed version mentioned above.
As stated, I first copy the disc with MakeMKV. But when I try to compress such files with Handbrake, using Handbrake on EITHER of these two openSUSE machines, Handbrake WILL NOT RECOGNIZE the LPCM track at all. When Handbrake is finished, I have a movie with no soundtrack.
This does not occur with any other operating system I have tried, including Manjaro, MX Linux, and Xubuntu.
The original MakMKV file has the LPCM track and the openSUSE computers PLAY it perfectly. But Handbrake does not recognize its existence at all. (I should mention that I update these computers daily and they always have the latest versions of both MakeMKV and Handbrake.)
I have to physically transfer the original MakeMKV file to another computer (running either MX Linux or Xubuntu) and encode it with Handbrake on those machines (which are not nearly as fast as my openSUSE machines). This always works but is, as you can gather, an annoyance.
Can anyone tell me why this is happening and if there is a ‘fix’ for this problem?
Thank you to everyone who reads this and to anyone who can offer an actual solution.
Unfortunately this is not helpful. I ALWAYS use the Auto Passthrough setting and have the fallback option set to AC3 Audio. I use Handbrake on several computers, two of which run GeckoLinux/openSUSE Tumbelweed (XFCE edition) and one currently running MX Linux. The two openSUSE machines are much faster than the one running MX Linux.
All Handbrake settings are exactly the same on all three computers.
The MX Linux machine’s Handbrake installation recognizes the LPCM track (as did a computer running Manjaro before I converted it to openSUSE and as did older computers running Xubuntu) but on the two openSUSE machines, an Alienware AW17R3-7092SLV 17.3-Inch FHD Laptop 6th Generation Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX980M and an ASUS ROG Strix GL553VE 15.6" Gaming Laptop GTX 1050Ti 4GB Intel Core i7-7700HQ 16GB DDR4 256GB SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD RGB Keyboard (both originally Windows 10-equipped but immediately converted to openSUSE), the Handbrake installation does not recognize the existence of an LPCM track at all. Sometimes there are other equivalent tracks, such as a DTS or AC3 carrying the main audio track and those are the ones which I encode. But other times the LPCM track is the only one with the main audio track and I need to be able to copy that.
As I mentioned in my original post, I can encode those files perfectly by physically transferring them to the MX Linux computer and encoding them from that but obviously this is a ‘clunky’ solution which I should prefer to avoid.
openSUSE is the only operating system on which this anomaly has occurred; as I mentioned, Handbrake/LPCM works perfectly with every other GNU/Linux operating system I have tried. But openSUSE remains my favorite (except for this problem!).
Can anyone help me to find a ‘fix’ or ‘workaround’ such that a computer running openSUSE and using Handbrake will allow Handbrake to recognize and encode an LPCM track contained on a Blu-ray (or DVD) disc?
OOTB multimedia issues in openSUSE but not other (less digital rights compliant) distros usually mean that a full change to packman repo was not done. Usually.
Yes I did change to packman repository. Thanks for trying anyway. I hope that someone else will have the knowledge as to how to fix this relatively minor yet vexing problem with Handbrake on openSUSE being unable to recognize an LPCM audio track.