No ac3 sound in PowerDVD?

[ZAP]

Hello -

I have been using PowerDVD 5 to play DVD folders on my hard drive for some time, but all of a sudden it is not working for a DVD that I'm authoring. The audio was created in BeSweet and authored using DVD-lab, but PowerDVD plays it with no audio whatsoever. I do get audio when I open this same folder in Windows Media Player, so why not in PowerDVD?

I've re-installed the AC3 Filter as well as the Gordian Knot codec pack, but no luck.

Ideas?

THANKS in advance for your help.

[jeex]

powerdvd 5 sucks.

powerdvd 4/XP (w/ upgrade) is much better.

[ZAP]

I uninstalled PowerDVD 5 and reinstalled 4 (with the latest update), but I still couldn't hear any ac3 sound in DVD files. So I guess that's not it. I reinstalled 5 once I saw that 4 was no better, but I'm curious as to why you think that 4 is better than 5 (since they seem about the same to me).

Any other ideas as to how to fix this?

[OkAtanAdam]

Your problem IS BeSweet...
It does NOT comply to the DolbyDigital standard...

BeSweet does NOT add the needed headers in the AC3 file...
So your Application doesn't know what to do with the AC3 code...

You need an AC3 encoder that is "certified" DolbyDigital in order to be able to decode it properly...

SonicFoundry's SoftEncode and Vegas4 AC3 Encoders are DolbyDigital certified...

Lots of things to read at: http://www.dolby.com/digital/

[ZAP]

You're absolutely right.

I meant to come back to this thread and post the resolution to my issue before, but I neglected to do so. Your reply reminded me again. Thanks!

I gave up on BeSweet and started using ffmpegGUI instead, and since then I haven't had this problem. Supposedly the ac3 files that it creates are also non-standard, but since I don't have a Pioneer DVD player, I haven't run into any issues. I would like to try the Sonic software to make fully-compliant ac3 files, but money is tight (and paying for software is immoral), so I'll stick with this for now.