Question about hd audio in wmv hd - is it ac3/dts compatible?

[yoda313]

Ok I've had another rethink in my quest for hd-dvd and bluray backups. Since I don't yet have a bluray burner compressed video files are my only recourse. I have at my disposal a ps3, xbox 360 and a wii. Obviously the Wii is out of the question since it maxes out at 480p and is not geared for multimedia use (I said not geared for, I didn't say its not capable of it, just wasn't nintendos focus).

What I'm aiming for now is to convert hd sources to wmv hd. My goal is to use the hfs mac format and format a 320gb external harddrive I have and use it with my xbox 360. That will allow me to skip the 4gb limit and encode to any size I want. I had tested a trial of macdrive 7 and confirmed it worked last summer on my setup on the 360.

Now what I want to know is about high def audio. Is wmv limited to just wma audio? I understand you can get 5.1 wma audio. How is the compatibility with 5.1 wma audio on earlier fiber optic dd/dts amplifiers?

I tried a downconversion of a hd-dvd to mp4 with aac audio and aside from stuttering issues I was unable to get 5.1 audio. I suspect that is because my digital amp is pushing 7 years old now. This is well before hdmi was the norm and before compressed audio became a consideration on amps aside from simply dolby and dts. So will I face similar issues with wma 5.1 audio on the xbox 360? The 360 is capable of wma 5.1 audio isn't it? I must assume that is how they deliver netflix videos via wmv hd, or at least a highly encrypted version of wmvhd.

So if I were to go this route would I be able to convert the hd audio from bluray and hd-dvd titles to wma 5.1 and encode it to wmv hd? What would be ideal encoding sizes? If I use the mac format as I mentioned I will not be limited to 4 or 8gbs as I would sticking to a fat 32 drive or to dual or single layer dvds.

However I do only have a 320gb external at my disposal currently. So I don't want to go overboard and do overkill if a smaller encoding size will suffice.

Are there any good sample sizes of wmv hd to download? Are there movie trailers encoded in wmv-hd and 5.1 audio to test? I know most of the movie trailers online are quicktime so that won't help in this matter.

Thanks everyone.

[Pastor0fMuppets]

Your receiver was ao-ok my friend. MP4's are unable to contain any audio other than 2 channel stereo so it was the format and not your setup.

As for WMV w/WMA, it works flawlessly on any receiver supporting DD 5.1. The receiver actually recognizes it as DD 5.1 (at least mine does; not sure if it would recognize it as WMA if that were supported).

I'm interested in using DTS with the WMV container and am currently on the hunt for how to do this. I currently use Microsoft's Mindows Media Encoder and use a custom template where my only option is to select bitrate and frequency, but not the actual audio type. This always ends up as WMA. While this works, there are a large portion of originals that contain DTS that I'm having to downcnovert that I would rather not.

[poisondeathray]

PoM - You're welcome to try these samples I made. They work fine on most PC software players e.g. MPC, KMplayer,etc... ; whether or not they will be compatible with your hardware setup is another issue. Let me know if you to learn the steps

WVC1 5.1ch AC3 in WMV
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S7ACE34Q

WVC1 DTS in WMV
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZSY37IZ4

[jagabo]

Your receiver was ao-ok my friend. MP4's are unable to contain any audio other than 2 channel stereo so it was the format and not your setup.

AC3 was recently added to the MP4 spec.

[yoda313]

Your receiver was ao-ok my friend. MP4's are unable to contain any audio other than 2 channel stereo so it was the format and not your setup.

AC3 was recently added to the MP4 spec.

Really? That's interesting.

I'm wondering if the xbox360 supports that yet?

Actually I don't need this thread for myself anymore. I am using ripbot264 to make high def mkv's with 5.1 audio (aften at 448kpbs). Now that I finally bought the wd tv media player this works perfectly.

But I hope pastorofmuppets can get some use out of this thread.