H.265 · CRF 20 · 2160p · E-AC-3 · MKV

The scenario

4K Blu-ray rip for home theater with Dolby Atmos-capable receiver. H.265 at CRF 20 for near-reference quality, E-AC-3 for Dolby Digital Plus surround (Atmos metadata passthrough), MKV for chapter markers and multiple audio tracks.

The answer

Video Codec	H.265
CRF	20
Resolution	2160p
Audio	E-AC-3
Container	MKV

The command

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v libx265 -crf 20 -c:a eac3 -b:a 768k output.mkv

Why

Dolby Atmos is delivered as spatial metadata embedded in an E-AC-3 (or TrueHD) stream. When you re-encode the audio to AAC, all Atmos metadata is permanently lost — the 3D soundstage collapses back to flat 5.1/7.1.

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