How to ac3???

[taz291819]

Ok, captured a show last night with VirtualDub using the Huffyuv codec, 48khz-stereo-pcm. After finishing the capture, I edited out the commercials using VirtualDub, frameserved to TMPGEnc for encoding to dvd compliant mpeg-2. Everything worked great, but now I want to try re-encoding again from my original Huffyuv capture to get a better picture. BUT, I also want to convert the pcm sound to 2-channel AC3. How do I do this? After I edit out the commercials using VirtualDub, where can I frameserve the capture to convert the audio to AC3? I understand when I frameserve the capture to TMPGEnc to encode just the video (not the audio). Need some help on this. Thanks in advance.

[spidey]

I'd render both streams seperately.

Load the Huffy cap in Vdub, edit the commercials, and save the audio out as a wav

then (without shutting down vdub - so you're using the same clip) frameserve the Vdub edited stream you have just saved the audio from into CCE and render the video.

Then ac3 your audio. For ac3 I use Scenarist's engine. You can also use Vegas Video 4.

If you're authroing a dvd, you have your elementary streams ready to go. If not multiplex them together and you're done.

[Donny661]

BeSweet can encode ac3, but i'm noe sure how compliant it is, and you would want to save the wave from virtualdub to input that into BeSweet. Also, BeSweet is free so it's worth a try.

[taz291819]

I used the BeSweet method and it worked perfectly. Burned to dvd, popped in player, and there it was DD Surround. Thanks!

[Gazorgan]

Most DVD Players (90%+ ?) will support MP2 audio for the USA(it's a standard for PAL regions). It's a snap to take the 2 channel PCM into MP2 (also ala' BeSweet for best results).

[spidey]

BeSweet is excellant, my only beef with it is it doesn't compress the stream any more than Mpeg1 Layer 2 - whereas the Scenarist engine drops it another 20-30 meg. So if space is an issue, I'd find the scenarist one. If not, you can't beat the speed BeSweet gets them done by as well It's much quicker.