Adding "Hidden tracks" to a Blu-ray

[Dr. Cooper]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a Blu-ray-authoring with Encore and got a little problem with it:
Unfortunately Encore isn't able to handle HD-tracks properly and it also can't mix AC3/DTS with PCM on one disc. So I just used a heavily compressed dummy in Encore and replaced it by using Booshman's tutorial.

Everything went fine, but now there's another issue that I couldn't solve yet:
Encore only allows 8 audio-tracks, but I'd actually like to put 14 tracks on the disc. Due to the issue that track 9-14 won't be available on the menu eitherway, because they can't be linked in Encore, I just wanted to add them as "hidden tracks" which will only play by using the "Audio"-button on the remote when playing the disc. However, it didn't work. After burning the disc only the first 8 tracks can be selected and the others are just ignored. All four players I've tested don't even seem to recognize them, as they say there are only 8 audio-streams available.

Is there any way to get around this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[deleted user]

Are those tracks actually in the M2TS file? Encore might have just skipped them if they weren't linked. Just a guess tho.

[Dr. Cooper]

They're not in the initial m2ts that comes from Encore since that has just 8 compressed dummy-tracks.
I added them in the step where the dummy-files are replaced with proper files in tsMuxeR.

[deleted user]

Ah, I didn't read properly again. My bad.

[alleycat]

Have you tried adding the extra tracks via MultiAVCHD?

[zoidberg]

I remember looking into this briefly many moons ago when I was interested in authoring blu rays although I never did get any further than that (I'm quite happy with just a plain auto-play disc or streaming off a portable HDD).

I think there's an extra step where you have to re-author the disc structure in something like multiavchd or bd-rebuilder in order to get the extra audio tracks to be 'seen' by the player, otherwise the player will stick to the structure set by encore (ie 8 tracks)

[Dr. Cooper]

I already tried to re-structure the disc by running it through BD-Rebuilder (where the hidden tracks could be seen). Can multiAVCHD do the same and keep all the menus and stuff? Then that might be another chance.

But I got another idea: Can the tracks probably be added with BD Edit in the clpi, so they'll be recognized?

[alleycat]

I already tried to re-structure the disc by running it through BD-Rebuilder (where the hidden tracks could be seen). Can multiAVCHD do the same and keep all the menus and stuff? Then that might be another chance.

But I got another idea: Can the tracks probably be added with BD Edit in the clpi, so they'll be recognized?

I recently did a project where I just replaced a track and I used multiAVCHD, really easy to do and everything else stayed the same. I'd give that a go.

[Dr. Cooper]

I found a solution!

You have to open your BDMV-folder in BD Edit and go to the PLAYLIST tab. Then select your .mpls from the dropdown-menu and after clicking on the playlist-file you should see the video- and audio-tracks listed in the STN-section.

Click on "Au" to see the audio-tracks. In this list only the 8 tracks from Encore will appear. If you want to add more, just click on the "+" and edit the specifications of your desired additional track. The mPIDs are as follows:

1100 - Track 1
1101 - Track 2
1102 - Track 3
...
1109 - Track 10
110A - Track 11
110B - Track 12
110C - Track 13
...

The other settings (format, channels, samplerate, language) have to match to your tracks. Once you're done click on "Save" and your BD-player will be able to see and play all tracks.

Here's a screenshot from BD Edit where all the sections are highlighted: