No digital audio output

[magicrat]

Hi everybody,

first of all I'd like to apologize in case this is not the right forum to post.

Second, I'd like to apologize because I'm not a technician and some terms could be not the right ones to use.

Third, finally, here's the question: I've converted a VCD on a DVD-R (but the same thing happened once when I was copying from a DVD-R) and when I played it on my DVD player I had to enable the analogic ouput since the digital output didn't worked.
I've tried to copy another DVD and everything was fine, so I suppose it depends on the original DVD or on the settings of the tools that I use (ISOBuster, DVDShrink and TMPGEnc DVD Author).

Can you give some info? Can I fix it somehow?

Thank you in advance

Riccardo

[garryheather]

You might find that the digital out only works on DVD's - try playing an audio CD and see if that comes out of the digital output of your player. Most players should do this, but I bet there are a couple that don't - especially if there is an option as to what to apply to the output (for example, you might have a setting that only routes say Dolby 5.1 or DTS to an output, neither of which a VideoCD has).

Just because you've put it on a DVD doesn't suddenly make the audio the same - if your player isn't configured correctly or your decoder / amp isn't expecting 44.1KHz audio, then it's probably just muting the output.

[Baldrick]

VCD to DVDR isn't DVD to DVDR. Moving your topic.

[bugster]

The audio on a VCD is mp2 format. The audio format required by your external amp is Ac3, or DTS, or PCM. Most DVD players can be set to output audio as 'bitstream' in which case the audio is output exactly as read off the disc and so the Ac3 or DTS soundtrack is decoded by the external amp. The other option is to select 'PCM' output. In this case the audio track is converted to stereo PCM by the DVD player and output to the amp. As the audio on your DVD is probably mpeg-2, and your player outputs 'bitstream', and your amp does not have an mp2 decoder (few do), you hear nothing.

Check your players settup menus to see if it has an equivalent setting.

If I am right you have two choices.

1) Switch the player to PCM whenever you play a disc with mp2 audio
2) Convert the mp2 audio to 2ch Ac3 when you create such a disk.

1 is easy but frustrating to have to make sure you have the right setting for thsi currnt DVD all the time, 2) is more complex but could make life easier in the long run.

[Baldrick]

Sorry...didn't read the entire topic. Moving back your topic.

[magicrat]

Thank you all for your quick replies.

Bugster, I'm not sure that I have all understood (as I stated, I'm not a technician) but I try to briefly report it: the problem is not related to the copying process but it depends on how I've connected my DVD player and my amp and how my DVD player read the audio tracks of the dvd.

Well, I've been connected them in two different ways: only through optical cable on DVD input plugs of the amp and with the 2 RCA analogic cables on the CD input spots on the amp (by the way, my amp is a Yamaha 630 and my DVD player is a Sony 705). This configuration allows me to switch between different DSP programs (one for watching movies, the other one for listening CDs)

Since I agree with you that switching from PCM to bitstream is annoying, I'm interested in your second choice. How could I do what you're suggesting?

More than that, should it happen again if I shrink (or copy) a complete DVD (I mean complete with DTS and DD5.1 tracks) using DVD Shrink?

Thank you again

Riccardo

[bugster]

Assuming my guesses were right (does your player allow sitching between bitstream and PCM outputs? You don't make this clear)
When copying, ensure you keep the Ac3 5.1 soundtrack.
When authoring your own DVD's from other sources, convert the audio to Ac3 (2 channel) and use an authoring program that accepts Ac3. Look in the user guides for more info on doing this.