Jake Wharton

Users of the Popcorn Hour A-100 or older-model receivers might not be able to decode the DTS audio that is embedded within their movie files. It is for this reason that mkvdts2ac3 script was developed.

mkvdts2ac3 is a bash script for Linux and Mac OS which automates the task of converting DTS tracks in Matroska (MKV) files to AC3. There are a variety of arguments which control the resulting output file but running the script is as simple as:

mkvdts2ac3.sh Some.Movie.File.mkv

The DTS will be extracted, converted to AC3, and then appended to the file. Now when you play back the file you can switch to this AC3 track and finally enjoy the movie’s sound.

If you do not want to retain the DTS track or you want the new AC3 to be flagged you can indicate that with one of the script’s arguments. You can view all of the arguments in the script’s documentation here.

The source code is available for browsing and download from the GitHub project page.