Free or Low-price mpeg+ac3 editor

[jrfuda]

I have an mpeg file with an ac3 soundtrack that I want to edit.

I tried TMPGEnc 2.5, but it does not handle the ac3 at all

I tried TMPGEnc 3 plus, but you cannot get a trial version of the ac3 plugin, so I'm not able to test it - plus the total solution price is a bit more than I want to spend.

I only have about 5 or so pieces of material I want to edit. Most of them are Soundtrack trailers (DD, DPL, etc.) that I want to edit (make anamorphic by clipping off the black bars). I was able to to the video part without a problem using TMPGEnc, but could not get audio due to no AC3 support (although TMPGEnc had no problem demultiplexing the audio into a .ac3 stream, it could not convert it into a wav or mp2 either as a separate stream or as part of the output mpg.)

I have an old copy of Adobe Premiere (maybe 2 versions out-of-date) that I've never really messed with. Could it pull this off?

If not, what other solutions do you recommend?

I've performed several searches here, but did not find the answer I was looking for (I found the use TMPGEnc answer here, but - as I said - it doesn't quite fit my scenario).

I've only found this board in the past week. It's very informative and I look forward to participating - or at least lurking - quite a bit!

[BJ_M]

to really edit the ac3 - you will have to convert it to wave ..

[BJ_M]

old versions of Adobe Premiere are really weak in the audio editing dept ..


you would want something that can edit 5.1 audio locked to video ... like vegas

[jrfuda]

Thanks BJ. A simple and effective solution.

I used HeadAC3he and TMPGEnc.

- I demulitplexed the AC3 out of the MPG using TMPGEnc, resulting in a mv2 and ac3 file.
- I then took the resulting .ac3 file and converted it to mp2 using HeadAC3he.
- I then used TMPGEnc to reassemble the mv2 and mp2 and made the changes I wanted (cropping off some matting to make the video anamorphic).

It worked like a charm!

[BJ_M]

oh its just cuts --

you could have used mpeg2vcr for that and skiped a bunch of steps --

i thought you wanted to do some major editing ..

[jrfuda]

I'll give that a look. I have a few more to edit.