Making a .MKA with many tracks (like a CD) - Need some help and clarification

[shoulders]

Background

I have recovered some tracks from a Sony miniDisc and I wanted to add the tracks from the one disk into one file.

The downloaded files have the extension .aea (ATRAC1) which I tried adding to a blank mkv, most tracks added but some did not, I never got to multiplexing them and I think they were not identified properly but instead as another format so it would not of worked.

So I then decided to convert them to FLAC files and add them as tracks to the MKV. The tracks added but only the first one played back and I believe this is because you cannot use mkvmerge on FLAC files

Appending & splitting FLAC audio tracks not supported

I know a MKV and MKA are the same file but with a different extensions.

Can I safely rename mkv to mka?

Hi there, I am curious if it is safe to rename a .mkv file that only contains audio and nothing else to .mka? Every program I’ve tried this with doesn’t complain and I haven’t run into any issues. My question is if this is against the specs or is the container the same and the extension difference is just for convenience purposes? Background info: I need to do some audio processing (mainly changing the audio pitch) on some .dts files. I’ve tried ffmpeg but sox gives me better results, however …

Questions

so with my notes above I have a few questions:

• I thought MKV was a container and did not alter the content, so why can I not just add FLAC files as tracks? or is MKV more than a container?
• If I cannot use AEA or FLACfor the format of my tracks so I can add multiple tracks to the one MKV file, what file should I use and are there any particular settings I should know about i.e. bitrate etc..

Thanks for any help

[mbunkus]

Welcome!

You have to append the tracks. Please see this FAQ entry about appending vs adding files.

As for ATRAC & FLAC: ATRAC is not supported. FLAC is supported, but appending FLAC files is currently disabled by default. You can enable it manually. Please see this FAQ entry for details & instructions.

[shoulders]

From the notes I read that technical difficulties meant I could add the files but only the first track would play, which is what I found to be true.

So basically in order to support appending and splitting FLAC tracks I would have to implement my own FLAC decoder, something I’m not willing to do.

[mbunkus]

A lot of people append FLAC with mkvmerge with the options given in the FAQ entry. For most of them playback works fine. However, this depends on the player.

The sentence you quoted should probably read “…appending and splitting FLAC tracks properly and widely compatible with other devices I would have…” or something like that.

FLAC is the only audio format for which this is a problem in mkvmerge.

[mbunkus]

And again, please read about adding vs appending, as “only the first track plays” is the usual symptom for when you add all files instead of appending the second & all following files, causing content of all files to be laid out in parallel instead of in sequence.

[shoulders]

Thanks for the feedback and I will have a play with the appending and clarification.

If I did not use FLAC what is the next best format to use? mp3 @ 320kpbs?

[mbunkus]

Personally I use Opus for everything. For my personal audio I usually encode at 140 or so, but please look elsewhere for evidence-backed info on which bitrates to use for it. It’s been a while since I looked into it.

Generally it depends on the devices you want to play your stuff on. Most software players support Opus, and I don’t think there’s really one that supports Matroska but not Opus. Hardware players are obviously a different topic.