DVD Authoring with AC3 audio

[ktnwin]

A lot of folks here use (basic) CCE or TMPGenc to convert AVI to MPEG-2 file for authoring DVD. However, DVD standard calls for LPCM audio or AC3 audio. M2P audio is not standard.
How do you guys go about this ?

[tim6661234]

I live in Europe where MPEG audio is in the standards
There are utilities to convert to AC3 stereo and some of the authoring packages do it for you like Adobe Encore.

[akrako1]

Personally, I encode with PCM audio, this generates a video file (m2v) and an audio file (wav). After the encoding completes, I use BeSweet to convert/encode the .wav to .ac3. When authoring, make sure to choose the .ac3 file for the audio, instead of the .wav.

I've found this the best way to go. I use TMPGEnc DVD Author, and I don't have the ac3 plugin. But that's fine, because the plugin in only needed to encode to ac-3, and I'm already doing that with BeSweet.

[ktnwin]

I just found that the new TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 and TMPGenc Express can support AC3 if you bought the plug-in module. (79$ for the whole package).
For me, I use neoDVD Plus (I paid 50$ about 18 mo ago), to convert AVI either directly to DVD (video shorter than 90min as the quality is excellent in this case), or to DVD structure then extract AC3 audio using VOBEdit in case the video is longer than 90min (neoDVD Plus generate terrible video quality in this case, some said acceptable but I found it terrible).
I have tried the BeSweet approach before but my Pioneer DVD player has serious trouble with the DVD created this way (it's a known problem that many ran into).

[reboot]

Get ffmpeggui and transcode all audio to AC3, then author.

[FulciLives]

TMPGEnc DVD Author has a cheap "plug-in" that you can buy that will convert LPCM WAV audo to AC-3 and I have heard that it works really well. In fact I think it is possible to buy the "plug-in" and use it as a stand alone AC-3 encoder giving you the option to use whatever DVD authoring program you want to use.

In short this "plug-in" for TMPGEnc DVD Author seems to be the cheapest way to make quality bug-free AC-3 audio.

Some people have noted that when you use BeSweet or ffmpeg to convert to AC-3 audio that the resulting AC-3 file may not be 100% compatable with all DVD players. Perhaps this has been resolved by now but I do not know.

As for myself I use an "old" program called SoftEncode but that program was very expensive and no longer made so "good luck" trying to find it these days.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[reboot]

In the over 200 dvdr's I've burned, authored with dvdlab, using ffmpeggui's AC3, I have yet to have one with audio problems.
It would be interesting to know just what players don't like it...Nothing built in the last 2 years I would surmise.

[FulciLives]

In the over 200 dvdr's I've burned, authored with dvdlab, using ffmpeggui's AC3, I have yet to have one with audio problems.
It would be interesting to know just what players don't like it...Nothing built in the last 2 years I would surmise.

In the past Pioneer players were infamous for not liking BeSweet created 2.0 AC-3 audio files and I understand that ffmpeg uses the same AC-3 engine for encoding.

However I know this AC-3 encoding engine has been "updated" since those days of "problems" so maybe it no longer is a problem.

I also found a Samsung DVD player that a friend had that also didn't like such AC-3 files.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jimmalenko]

I'm in MP2 land so it isn't a great concern for me, but I use ffmpeggui or a yet-to-be-released-to-the-public GUI called Audio Batch Converter (it's a GUI for ffmpeg) and have not had any problems so far.

[ktnwin]

I use PS8 extensively to capture and edit my video. It also has good menu creation (good enough for me). Too bad it does not encode audio to AC-3.
Does PS9 do this ?