No audio when encoding DVD vobs for DVD-R from TMPGEnc

[weedenbc]

I am using TMPGEnc to make a MPEG-2 file of the specific size that I need then using an authoring program to take several of these files and burn them onto a DVD. The process works fine - except that when I play the resulting DVD back in either of my set top DVD players there is no audio. However, audio playback is there in either of my PC DVD players.

The input to TMPGEnc are a d2v project file and associated wav file that I got from DVD2AVI working on vob files. I don't understand how the audio can be there from the PC DVD player and not the other. The only way I have found to make the audio work is to replace the audio track in the authoring software with the original wav file, basically repeating what TMPGEnc did. However, doing this changes the filesize and I end up losing about 1GB of space.

Is there something I am missing in the process? Is there a certain format of audio that set top DVD players require that PC ones do not? I have tried both DVD Moviestudio 2 and DVD Lab. Both have the same issue. I also tried from within DVD Lab to import the mpg that TMPGEnc created, demux it to video and audio, then remux those on creation. Still no sound.

[bugster]

Let me guess, you are in NTSC land, probably the US.
When TmpGenc encodes a .mpg file, the audio is encoded into mp2 format. Although this is valid for DVD, playback of mp2 audio is not mandatory on NTSC DVD players, though it is required in european players. Of course all PC players handle it fine. PCM playback (wav format) is mandatory on ALL DVD players, so that explains why that works.

Anyway, thats my guess.

If I am right, you should investigate converting the wav to stereo Ac3, as this is also widely supported, and takes up much less space than PCM.

[weedenbc]

Hmm, well it seemed to work. Thanks. Here is the procedure I have settled on:
1) Rip the vobs to the HD with Smartripper
2) Use DVD2AVI to make d2v project files with the sections of video that I want and corresponding audio .wav
3) Use Besweet to convert the .wav to .ac3
4) Use TMPGEnc to encode the d2v to a mpeg-2 file of the filesize I need
5) Import the MPEG-2 to DVD-Lab and have it demux it
6) Compile and burn the DVD using the mpv video and ac3 audio files

Thanks for the help.

[Vejita-sama]

You can use smartripper to demux the original AC3 file, no need to generate a wav file then encode it to an ac3 file all over again.