Trying to produce MP4/HEVC/AC3 with X10, not succeeding

[dangelic0]

I am running VS X10 on Win 10 with an i7-7700 (Kaby Lake)
I am trying to output an MP4 container, with HEVC/H.265 video and AC# audio (2.0 is fine)
This is because PLEX says that is the only format that their Roku Client will play 4K (3840x2160) content

I have the AC3 codecs installed, and thanks to this forum I have just installed the HEVC codec from MS for Win 10.

I have in fact already prepared the audio track as AC3 using an outside format convertor

The problem is I can't set the Audio codec within X10 to AC3 AND the video codec to H.265 at the same time. I tried both the "Project Properties" and the set up in the SHARE output step.

In Project Properties, I can only get AAC (or AMR) audio as a choice, unless I go to an H.264 transport stream - no AC3. If I go to MP4 containers with H.265 video, only AAC audio is allowed. SO that's in the Project Properties section.

In the SHARE output step, similar problem - no choice for AC3 output exists.

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks
Dean

[lata]

Hi Dean
As far as I am aware Digital Dolby AC 3 is not supported by MP4.
I don't think any video editor can do that, but if you do have a sample MP4 using AC3 i would be interested in seeing that?

Video converters handbrake and the like may be able to do that but would be creating a non standard video format.

[asik1]

https://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/index.html

[dangelic0]

Thanks for the advice on Xmedia-recode. I may give it a try.

And Trevor -
Your information is also good - I should not be trying so hard to do what Plex needs from within VS.

Here is what Handbrake has to say:
"In an MP4 container, you can store MPEG-4 video created by ffmpeg or x264.Supports H.264, H.265, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 video. It stores audio in the AAC format. It is also possible to pass through Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound (AC3) audio from a DVD in an MP4 file, although it is a new standard and not widely supported."

And even the Plex chaps had to jump through some hurdles (which I have not tested myself):

1. Use eac3to (useac3to for GUI) to convert audio into AC3. (I had to extract the audio first using MkvExtract in useac3to first).
2. Use mkvtoolnix to remux the MKV file with just the HEVC video and AC3 audio, removing all other streams.
3. Use ffmpeg with the following command to switch from MKV to MP4:
ffmpeg.exe -i input.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mp4