Transcode DTS with FFmpeg

Because of DTS licensing, several products cannot (legally) read DTS audio track. I am sure it’s a great format but I often need a reliable way to listen to audio track, whatever the terminal I am using.

Fortunately, the great ffmpeg can convert DTS to another format.

AC3’s patent expired in March 2017 and generally works everywhere, making it a not so bad lossy choice.

ffmpeg -i <input_video> \
    -map 0              \
    -acodec ac3         \
    -vcodec  copy       \
    -scodec copy        \
    <output_video>

Flags:

-i input
-map 0 select every streams
-acodev audio
-vcodev video
-scodev subtitle

For a free, lossless choice, flac is a great choice (but even with maximum compression level, the resulting file is often huge).

ffmpeg -i <input_video>                \
    -map 0                             \
    -acodec flac -compression_level 10 \
    -vcodec  copy                      \
    -scodec copy                       \
    <output_video>

Free All The Videos!

Using flac with ffv1 to free your videos is great, if you have enough storage space:

ffmpeg -i <input_video>                  \
    -map 0                               \
    -acodec   flac -compression_level 10 \
    -vcodec   ffv1 -level 3              \
    -threads  8                          \
    -coder    1                          \
    -slices   4                          \
    -scodec copy                         \
    <output_video>

For more information see here.