5.1 surround sound DVD authoring software recomnadation

[amir77a]

I am looking for DVD authoring software which supports 5.1 Surround Sound and also support importing multiple WAV files for 5.1 Surround Sound.

Thanks.

[farnlc]

The easiest software I can think of is Vegas 5 from Sony with the AC-3 plugin. Ive messed around a little with it and it works pretty good.

[amir77a]

Vegas was too complicated for me.

can you recommend another software?

[guns1inger]

It is worth taking the time with Vegas, as it offers the best value 5.1 mixer and encoder around. Give it another go, and I think you will find it is very powerful.

Premiere Pro 1.5 has multi-channel audio mixing, although I don't know if it encodes AC3.

[Paul Simmel]

Vegas was too complicated for me.

can you recommend another software?

Stick with Vegas... it's easy compared to others... there's nothing better out there.

[amir77a]

Any guide out there how to do it with Vegas?

[guns1inger]

Try to ggole for it. Otherwise, here is a starting point

1. Set the project properties to have 5.1 AC3 audio (File -> Properties, Audio Tab, Master Bus Mode set to 5.1 Surround). In the bottom half of the screen, you should now have extra audio sliders (by default in the centre)

2. Drag a video clip from the explorer window onto the time line. You should now have one video and one audio clip visible. The controls at the start of the audio track should have a box with a red dot.

3. Load in your other audio clips either on their own time line, or onto an existing timeline.

4. The red dot indicates the percieved source of the audio for the track. Move it around to change the audio position. Look up keyframes in help if you want to animate the movement over time.

5. For the LFE channel (subwoofer), you can leave vegas to work it out, or you can explicitly set one (or more) of the audio tracks to be the LFE. To do this, right click the positioning box on that track, and select LFE from the menu.

6. Play through the track and watch the meters. The audio should never reach 0db, and should average around -6db. If it going too high, or clipping, use either the master sliders or the track sliders to adjust the volume levels down.

7. Now go File -> Render As, and select AC3 as the save type. For Template, select 5.1 Surround DVD. Eneter a file name and click save. Vegas is pretty quick to encode. You now have a shiney new AC3 audio track to play with.

This is very superficial, but it is enough to start with. I worked this out for myself simply by playing around. You wont get perfect results first or even tenth time out, but keep playing and tuning until you are happy. The best way is to set up a small project, maybe 30 seconds to a minute, and keep working on that. It will be quick to render, so changes can be checked quickly and easily.

Good luck.