Making 5.1 audio

[aguinsburg]

Hi folks. I am converting familiy video to DVD. Instead of stereo sound, can I generate 5.1 sound splitting audio in the five channels? How to do that? Is there a way to balance between channels automatically?

Thanks

[BJ_M]

well you can - but honestly if it is family video's , it will sound better as stereo ..

as the 5.1 is fake and will in all probability cause voices to become not as clear ..

that being said - you can remix the stereo in apps like vegas ...

you better tell us what tools you have - then we can better suggest a method ..

[aguinsburg]

I still didn´t get any application for this task... I need suggestions to go further.
Actually, I use Premiere for editing, TMPGEnc for encoding to mpeg video and DVD Author for DVD Authoring.

[Drakng]

Try AC3 Machine

[VidHack]

Use HyperCube Transcoder, FREE.

VidHack

[yoda313]

Hello,

If you have a digital receiver with dolby pro logic 2 on it that will make the stereo a fake 5.1 for you. The new pro logic 2 takes the stereo track and forces it into 5.1. That would be a quick way to do it on the fly without reencoding.

Kevin

[thor300]

I wouldnt do it. Remember some DVD players got problems with homemade AC3 audio, so just to be safe i try to keep homevideo DVDs short, like an hour, and use the uncompressed PCM audio directly from the DV cam. It ensures max player compatibility.

[Suntan]

Hey Oliver Stone, what makes you think 5.1 is going to help your home movies? 8)

Anyway, assuming you don't already have 5 different mono wav files from seperate mics... I would spend some time in Audacity splitting the stereo file into the dicrete channels mixed to your liking. Then output to 5 (or 6 if you want the .1) mono wav files and convert to AC3 with BeSweet/AC3Machine.

Or you could check out this thread.

-Suntan

[jabloomf1230]

Suntan pretty much summed it up, But I thought I'd add a bit more. My experience is with Vegas (see screen shot) and it's fairly easy to take the stereo output from DV and "fake it" to 5.1. Whether you'd want to waste your time doing this is another story, as other have emphasized previously in this thread. First, you already have the Front Left and Front Right Channels. Second, Vegas and most other similar software will automatically generate an LFE track for your subwoofer from the addition of FL and FR. If you want to use the Center Channel for dialog only it can be made from the mono version of FL+FR by using various filters that accentuate either male or female voices. Vegas also has filters that simulate the ambiance on the RR and RL channels from their respective front channels. Vegas also has some interesting panning options that allow you to use your joystick to pan certain channels. If you were really geeky or bored (or both), you could simulate someone's voice moving through the sound field by panning the joystick to match the action in the video.

One drawback to Vegas. You also need the companion Sony program DVD Architect to unlock the AC3 filter in Vegas. Why this is, I don't know.

[BJ_M]

Suntan pretty much summed it up, But I thought I'd add a bit more. My experience is with Vegas (see screen shot) and it's fairly easy to take the stereo output from DV and "fake it" to 5.1. Whether you'd want to waste your time doing this is another story, as other have emphasized previously in this thread. First, you already have the Front Left and Front Right Channels. Second, Vegas and most other similar software will automatically generate an LFE track for your subwoofer from the addition of FL and FR. If you want to use the Center Channel for dialog only it can be made from the mono version of FL+FR by using various filters that accentuate either male or female voices. Vegas also has filters that simulate the ambiance on the RR and RL channels from their respective front channels. Vegas also has some interesting panning options that allow you to use your joystick to pan certain channels. If you were really geeky or bored (or both), you could simulate someone's voice moving through the sound field by panning the joystick to match the action in the video.

One drawback to Vegas. You also need the companion Sony program DVD Architect to unlock the AC3 filter in Vegas. Why this is, I don't know.

you can get the ac3 "unlock" separately from Sony Vegas -- it is a stand alone lic also - for use without DVDA ... it is a global lic (works in acid and sound forge also)

[jabloomf1230]

@BJ_M,

Thanks. A while back, I looked all over the Sony website for it, but the link to purchasing the AC3 Filter unlock must be obscure. I just gave up and bought DVD Architect, since I wanted Vegas and already had Sound Forge.

[BJ_M]

@BJ_M,

Thanks. A while back, I looked all over the Sony website for it, but the link to purchasing the AC3 Filter unlock must be obscure. I just gave up and bought DVD Architect, since I already had Vegas and Sound Forge.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Products/ShowProduct.asp?PID=772

[guns1inger]

I have used Vegas to mix 5.1 for DV footage of my daughter's dancing performances. Some of these were in open air forums, and the original audio had a lot of ambient noise (including a hotdog vendor with a microphone - ******* !). By using the original music tracks from CD, doing some vocal removal to produce the surround tracks, and mix this down with the original audio, I came up with a couple of pretty good arrangements. It would be much harder to do this with dialogue and other noise though.

[overloaded_ide]

Pretty interesting reading here.

Ok my question on this subject then, is there any low cost good way to make 5.1 surround sound.

We all know Row row your boat right
You get 3-5 people each starting at seperate times so they are out of sink singing the same song. So say for something simple like that, each person is also singing on a seperate speaker then, LF RF LR RR and maybe all at once on the front center. Maybe the woofer just keeping time, boom boom boom.

I suppose if I could get row row your boat correct that way I could do some really neat other stuff too. But I don't have a fortune to spend on software.

Also then how do you add sounds into just one small part of a video on just one channel? Like a gunshot on just the LR and a scream on the RR. And also NOT remove the existing sound? Haven't worked on WAV files like that since about 1994 and that was just 2 channel, and I forgot how I even did it back then. Is this basically just working with 6 WAVs?

[Suntan]

@overlaoded_ide

Audacity will allow you to seperate sounds into 6 mono wav files. BeSweet/AC3machine will convert to AC3.

All free (pretty sure AC3machine is freeware...)

-Suntan

[jabloomf1230]

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Products/ShowProduct.asp?PID=772[/url]

LOL. And I thought DVD Architect was expensive.