need help with why i can't use ac3 when burning a dvd

[vampirexxi]

I reciently ripped 2 movies and wanted to try to back them up on one disk, just to see the quality and if i could do it.

I extracted the audio from each movie into a wav file, then converted that wav file into an .ac3 file using besweet and cut the size of each from 1.3 gigs to 350mb.

I then used tmpgenc dvd author to put the movies in, but changed the audio stream to use the ac3 ones.

it worked all fine, made my menue, and it took 14 minutes for it to do it's thing.

now i have a dvd that is 6.5 gigs.

next step was to put it in instantcopy (the 039 version w/ the patch to resize everything how you want).
-on the part you hit ok after decreasing the size of the movies to fit in 4.31gig (about 63% for each movie in this case), it looked like it was working then immediatly gave me a fatal error and said it must close. tried many times with no luck.

so i tried a newer version of dvd2one and i checked the ac3 audio track. 5 seconds in and it gives me "encrypted data detected. dvd2one can not decrypt protected data."

i'm assuming this "protected/encrypted data" is the ac3 file? because when i tried this same processes all again w/ wav, both programs worked fine. (of course the audio took up half the disk)

what other format of audio can i use if the ac3 is causing me the problems, while still keeping the audio tracks relitevly small in size?

[Dennis1968]

try using another WAV to AC3. BeSweet AC3 converter gave me trouble as well.

[vampirexxi]

can you recommend another one? i didn't see any in the tools section that are still up on the homepages of those companies. i'll look around for headac3he, can't seem to d/l it off his site.

[anosis]

Converting sound and making it lip sync again is kinda messy. I would stick with keeping the original sound format and just reauthor the two movies.

If you want to keep 3/2 sound from the AC3 track, you cannot convert it to WAV. If you want to retain the suround sound, look at my little guide below.

This is what I would do:
1. Demux the VOB files from the 1st movie into the AC3 sound files with DVD2AVI. One AC3 file per VOB and not the complete AC3 track - more about why later.
2. Use VOBEdit and also Demux the video part of the VOB files into M2V streams. Again one M2V file per VOB.
3. Recap: You should now have x amount of AC3 and M2V files for the first movie. x = amount of original VOB's
4. Redo this procedure for the second movie in a seperate folder
5. Open TMpegAuthor and open the first M2V file form the fist movie and in the edit clip section add the first AC3 file to this clip. Redo this to the rest of the M2V and AC3 files.
6. Create a second track and repeat the procedure in step 5 for your second movie.
7. Make up your menu for the two flics and your ready to author your new DVD
8a. Obviously the size of this DVD will be a lot greater than 4.3Gb, but you can use DVDShrink or other software to shrink it to size.
8b. Should DVDShrink or the software of your choice not be able to handle the size, you may need to reencode the M2V files with a lower bitrate.

Sounds kinda like a lot of work, but it has done fine with me.