Getting the audio right -step by step please...

[surreal]

Hi,

I'm trying to preserve some original VHS tapes on DVD, and need a bit of audio advice as I'm new to this...

The audio on one of the tapes is Dolby Surround. I have a Stereo VHS deck. I assume that I will capture an .avi with uncompressed PCM, then split the audio off into a .wav with virtualdub. Is this correct?

What then is the next stage in order to get it all back together on DVD, so it will sound good thru my home theater audio kit? Advice on software and settings/methods please...

cheers

[Poppa_Meth]

essentially that would be correct depending on how you are capturing. if you cap to a finished AVI then yes extract the audio with VDub. then you should use a program like Sound Forge or Gold Wave to normalize the audio to a good audio level (I usually max it since AC3 audio tends to be low once encoded). then use ffmpegGUI or BeSweet to encode the .wav file to AC3 audio. I prefer ffmpegGUI myself. after you encode the video in whatever program you use, TMPGEnc for example(see guides), use a tool such as the MPG tools in TMPGEnc to mux the AC3 audio with the video stream you generated. then its ready to run through an authoring program like TMPGEnc DVD Author. you can also use the DVD author to mux the Audio and Video instead of doing in through the encoder tools.

[surreal]

Thanks for that - much appreciated...

So when I then play the DVD in my player, my audio decoder should recognise it as Dolby Surround automatically? Is there a marker in the audio or something? I was just wondering how it would go from Stereo into Surround...

cheers

[Poppa_Meth]

that part I'm not really sure on. I haven't done a great deal of capture yet and what I have done has been a bit of older anime with nothing but normal stereo soundtracks.

[berru]

Hi Poppa_Meth,
I'm having a problem trying to burn DVDs with AC3 audio.
If I convert my .wav audio source to AC3 with besweet, and then mux it with the video with TMPGENC DVD Author, the reuslting VOB file play without sound in both my PC player and my stand alone DVD player.

On the other hand, I can't mux both video and AC3 audio in TMPGENC (not the DVD Author). It says it doesn't support AC3.

How do you mux the AC3 and the video with TMPGENC?

Could it be that Besweet is not generating a fully compatible AC3 file that my player will decode?

Thanks!

[Poppa_Meth]

BeSweet does have some issue with making a fully compliant file. there are a few brands of players that don't like the files it makes. try it with ffmpeg gui instead.

[berru]

Thanks a lot!
I tried with ffmpeg and it worked!
I hadn't tried because I had read that besweet and ffmpeg both use the same encoder engine. So either this is not true, or I was screwing some besweet parameter.
In any case, WinDVD can play the audio now, and I'll try my standalone DVD right now... but I guess it'll work.
Do you know if there are still compatibility issues with the Pioner DVD players and the AC3 generated by ffmpeg?

Anyways I'm super happy now! Thanks a lot!

[surreal]

Any tips on getting audio back in sync with video?

I did an hour of capture with iuVCR which reported no dropped frames, but when I played it back the audio was slipping about 5 minutes in and getting worse as it went along.

Are there some settings in something like VirtualDub to correct this?

cheers

[Poppa_Meth]

FFMPEG GUI and BeSweet do use the same engine but FFMPEG doesn't have the issue that BeSweet does for some reason, though I think it use to. and so far as I know Pioneers work fine with teh FFMPEG files, though I don't have a pioneer to test it on.

I haven't really had to correct Sync issues yet so can't help there.