SureCode DVD DTS

[wizzy]

i cant understand one thing...to make a DTS stream i need to load a mono file??? so where is all the streo in here going??
i probably ended with a poor quality....anyone can explain please?

[BJ_M]

SureCode has excellent customeer support with that product .. they will walk you through how to use no problem at all ...

they should for a $2000 product


http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com

[wizzy]

i just download the Demo trying to load a wav file and he said that only Mono file can loaded.....my question is why?

[BJ_M]

because it is a multichannel product (5:1) , if you loaded a stereo signal , how would it know where to put each channel ..?

dolby encoders work the same way ..

so you load a mono file for each of the 6 channels ... premixed and panned .


the demo doesnt encode though .. all you can do is load the files and look at it , which is fairly useless ..

[wizzy]

yeh i know the demo is useless ...so if it load only mono so, downmix from stereo to mono will lose some quality no?

[BJ_M]

well you lose all imaging information completly ..

[shutts318ci]

When you say you lose imaging information... what does that mean? If you were to extract the 6 channels from DD5.1 and convert using SurCode into DTS5.1, would the resulting file not be of better quality than the original DD5.1?

I suppose my actual question is....

Does Surcode give you the same quality of soundtrack in DTS as you would get on a Professionally produced DTS DVD?

[BJ_M]

When you say you lose imaging information... what does that mean? If you were to extract the 6 channels from DD5.1 and convert using SurCode into DTS5.1, would the resulting file not be of better quality than the original DD5.1?

I suppose my actual question is....

Does Surcode give you the same quality of soundtrack in DTS as you would get on a Professionally produced DTS DVD?

it would be of worse quality because you would be extracting data from a lossy format and re-encoding it to another lossy format ..

you can't make something better this way -- at the best you have something almost , but not quite, the same .. at worse , it would sound worse ..

Does Surcode give you the same quality of soundtrack in DTS as you would get on a Professionally produced DTS DVD

Since i make DTS sound tracks for film and DVD -- the answer to your question is - yes , to a point .. IF YOU HAD access to the original sound tracks ... film dts tracks are mixed in the studio but DTS makes the encoding (it is different than dvd) ... dvd encoding we do on hardware ..

ive compared the results with surcode and the results are very alike ..

but it all hinges on you having the orig. source files -- extracting from a dvd is not going to make anything better .

[Drakng]

How about extracting from a DTS Audio Disc? How do you do that? Will the quality be as good?

[BJ_M]

extracting it how ? and doing what with it?

and quality be as good as what ?

[Drakng]

I have a dts audio disc The format is CDA I want to ripped it to WAV 6- channel to be used in TMPG for encoding to mpeg2 DVD compliant and played it like a dvd disc

[BJ_M]

dts audio disc's (cd's) will play in most dvd players -- though not all dvd players will decode it. see the dts web site for more info ..

also - as mentioned , how are you going to decode it (rip it)?

[shutts318ci]

OK, so if I was to Rip a DD5.1 soundtrack from a DVD and use Surcode to encode it to DTS, would there be an improvement in the soundtrack?

[BJ_M]

that was answered here https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=679501#679501

but in short -- no

[Skynet107]

Logically it would seem that it is not possible to get higher quality by re-encoding audio material. But it is possible and here is why. Firstly, The process of decoding the AC3 audio stream can be done with higher quality if not done in real time. In other words, loading the AC3 file into an audio program with a very high quality AC3 decoding engine will extract the bits very accurately and this accuracy can exceed most real time decoders built into audio equipment. Secondly, because DTS is a much higher resolution format with exceedingly natural sound, the accurately decoded AC3 stream can be re-encoded with the utmost accuracy which preserves the maximum extracted resolution. Not only that, but the higher resolution can smooth out the audio highs and lows considerably. Also, the audio shaping envelope (read dynamic range) of DTS is exceptional which can actually serve to smooth out the inherent harsness of the highly compressed AC3 bitstream. To my ears AC3 sounds like digital grung compared to DTS.

Like it I said, logically it would seem that increasing the audio quality through re-encoding is impossible but in my experience I have proven that it is possible, although very tme consuming. Thoughts?

EDIT: I just wanted to add that I came up with this mindset, or idea, from an experience I had. A friend of mine had an ultra cheap CD player that he had hooked up to his VCR to record music. He would make music compilations onto the video tape and play them back. He asked me one day why the music sounded better on the VCR than from the original CD. I thought he was nuts but I listed to it and he was correct, it DID sound better from the VCR, logically impossible. People don't realize it but the PCM audio recording resolution of a helical scan VCR is very high quality, and it is analog which is even better. So what was happening is the VCR was smoothing out the poor digital mess that the CD player was outputing. The concept of re-encoding AC3 to DTS is similiar. The digital bits are re-distributed in a way that perceptually are more natural on playback.

[BJ_M]

in reality - the FM modulation audio of a standard vcr is pretty crappy. But a Hi8 is much better - so was betacam (much much better audio than VHS)

If it (VHS) sounds better to you than a CD - how can i prove to you than decoding a lossy format ANYTHING and re-encoding it will not sound as good.. Though I suppose one could argue that it would make a half hearted attempt to be a bandpass filter -- as you would certainly lose bits in the higher freq. .

Yes --a good quality analog signal can blow the doors off a cd also -- so can some digital sources (in fact many) .. though "sounds good"is a subjective term..

it doesnt mater how you extract the ac3 audio and doesnt mater the speed -- the resulting audio would be the same more or less ... quality would be dependent on a number of other factors (more or less -- some decoding chips do a better job -- to a degree) in the analog chain ..... if what you were saying is true -- i guess i better turn in my dolby and dts certification..

[Skynet107]

BJ_M I'm sorry to say you completly missed the point I was trying to make. Maybe you should trade in your pre-conceived certifications for some abstract thinking. I never said AC3 to DTS would somehow increase the audio resolution beyond what was already there. Besides that is narrow thinking. It is putting it into a format that can fully express it's potential. By your logic there would be no reason to put an old recording onto CD because the original recording is of less quality than the CD format. Yet now we are seeing very old recordings put onto HD-CD and DVD-Audio and they sound even better. How can this be? I realize the analogy is not perfect but it has parallels.

I agree that your run of the mill VCR has terrible audio, but the PCM audio track on a VHS tape is very high quality. It has tremendous bandwidth, very good S/N ratio and it is ANALOG. I have a 5 year old Mitsubishi S-VHS VCR that records amazing audio quality. I have many video tapes with recording taken from Laser Disc and they sound stellar, very clean and pure, much better than CD. Laser Disc has even better sound, some of the best audio I have ever heard came from Laser Disc. The only thing I have heard that surpases it is DVD-Audio and Sony's HD-CD.

But I am quite sure your ego will never allow this discussion to supersede your certifications.

[shutts318ci]

Thanks BJ. Does the same apply to the audio captured from a DV Camcorder? If I encode the audio through Surcode, would it then sound better at all? I find that when I export using Surcode DD5.1 plugin for Premiere Pro, the audio is noticably better. Or maybe that is because it is using all 6 speakers instead of 2?

If not then I am struggling to understand the point in Surcode DVD-DTS at all? And it's very high price tag..? Is it just so the DTS Aplifier will be used as opposed to the DD?

Many thanks for all your advice on this.

[BJ_M]

Yet now we are seeing very old recordings put onto HD-CD and DVD-Audio

because they were re-mastered from the original tapes of course -- which have to be baked in a oven to stablize them -- if no tapes , the best source that can be had .. and expensivly re-mastered -- the source in no case was from a lossy compressed format ..

it has nothing to do with any ego --just the known facts by 100's of audio engineers and other people ..


you never said s-vhs before -- which yes, has better sound that VHS -- but the bandwidth on ANY home type VCR rather is the pits for a number of reasons (a lot due to the inferior cases) . Metal tapes will hold up better -- but even then after a few plays - much HF info is gone bye bye ..
S--video reocders are still used for recording a lot though - in courtrooms and town halls and such where 6 hours of recording is cheap on VHS tape.

I never said AC3 to DTS would somehow increase the audio resolution beyond what was already there.

well you DID say this right here 4 posts above --

[BJ_M]

Thanks BJ. Does the same apply to the audio captured from a DV Camcorder? If I encode the audio through Surcode, would it then sound better at all? I find that when I export using Surcode DD5.1 plugin for Premiere Pro, the audio is noticably better. Or maybe that is because it is using all 6 speakers instead of 2?

If not then I am struggling to understand the point in Surcode DVD-DTS at all? And it's very high price tag..? Is it just so the DTS Aplifier will be used as opposed to the DD?

Many thanks for all your advice on this.

the BEST quality sound (most pure) from a dv source would be to leave it in stereo LPCM format on the dvd ... of course that takes a lot of room -
It would often help the sound quality to bandpass it and clean up background noise (which some of which is lost in compression) and a few other things approaching mixing and mastering (two different things) your audio.

ussually people say that Dolby Digital sounds lower in volume -- most of this is due to only using the default settings which will lower volume .. as to why it sounds better is due to the Hass effect of multiple speakers as well as Fletcher-Munson curves built into dolby encoding. Perceptially it will sound better (not a bad thing) .. over time it can be annoying also (not natural) - but sound companies know people in the short term want big bang and breaking glass and for movie effects it works perfect..


DTS (to me) sounds better than Dolby Digital but there is a lot of debate on this and good/badpoints either way .. DTS does use a much higher bit rate (in fact it can be three times the bitrate of DD).. ALL of our speciality film and D-Cinema are done DTS only .. HD and DVD we do both ways but more often as DD (note: FILM Dolby Digital and DTS are different than the type on DVD's -- in the case of Dolby Digital , DVD DD is better quality than movie theater DD (but becuase of the higher quality playback - it often can sound better in a theater (not always))..

[Skynet107]

DVD DD is better quality than movie theater DD

I was under the impression that the DD bitstream in a movie theatre was indentical to what is mastered onto a DVD. Same goes for DTS. This is not the case?

I seem to remember a lengthy article in Widescreen Review that discussed this and stated that DD in a theatre and DD on DVD uses the same bits, identical

[BJ_M]

they are not -- its a different compression used .. also the film DD is carried optically (of a digital picture) and picked up by a small camera -- the "picture" is located betwenn each sprocket and there is error correction...
Theater Dolby predates DVD dolby and is an older technology (not bad -- just older and a lower resolution) .. I believe you can find this on the dolby web site .. but non the less - its true ..
it is an option for theater decoders to decode DVd type DD .-- if they were the same thing why would it be a 1000$ option to be able to decode both formats ?

you can see that in the DD hardware section ..

As for DTS -- much the same thing, DTS (partially owned by Spielberg and many others) was first developed for Jurassic Park (1993) -- it is played off a cdrom (and now also can be played off a Harddrive in the new DTS decoder) and is sync'd to the film by use of a special timecode printed outside the sprocket holes.. it can also be sync'd using SMPTE time code ..
The compression is different for dvd and film also for DTS as DVD came later --

DTS and AC3 were first used on laser disks of course (laserdisk DTS versions are really nice to own)

[Cornucopia]

Logically it would seem that it is not possible to get higher quality by re-encoding audio material. But it is possible and here is why. Firstly, The process of decoding the AC3 audio stream can be done with higher quality if not done in real time. In other words, loading the AC3 file into an audio program with a very high quality AC3 decoding engine will extract the bits very accurately and this accuracy can exceed most real time decoders built into audio equipment. Secondly, because DTS is a much higher resolution format with exceedingly natural sound, the accurately decoded AC3 stream can be re-encoded with the utmost accuracy which preserves the maximum extracted resolution. Not only that, but the higher resolution can smooth out the audio highs and lows considerably. Also, the audio shaping envelope (read dynamic range) of DTS is exceptional which can actually serve to smooth out the inherent harsness of the highly compressed AC3 bitstream. To my ears AC3 sounds like digital grung compared to DTS.

Like it I said, logically it would seem that increasing the audio quality through re-encoding is impossible but in my experience I have proven that it is possible, although very tme consuming. Thoughts?

EDIT: I just wanted to add that I came up with this mindset, or idea, from an experience I had. A friend of mine had an ultra cheap CD player that he had hooked up to his VCR to record music. He would make music compilations onto the video tape and play them back. He asked me one day why the music sounded better on the VCR than from the original CD. I thought he was nuts but I listed to it and he was correct, it DID sound better from the VCR, logically impossible. People don't realize it but the PCM audio recording resolution of a helical scan VCR is very high quality, and it is analog which is even better. So what was happening is the VCR was smoothing out the poor digital mess that the CD player was outputing. The concept of re-encoding AC3 to DTS is similiar. The digital bits are re-distributed in a way that perceptually are more natural on playback.

I'm gonna take issue with a number of things you're saying...

#1 AC3, DTS, MP2, MP3, AAC and many others are psychoacoustically loaded lossy encoders that use BUFFERED realtime streams for decoding. Whether you have a hardware or software decoder, it still is just going by buffered packets--and that's all. One decoder might be better than another because of better error/entropy prediction, or because of closer corellation with a better/newer psychoacoustic model, but NONE of them are better because of being able to work in non-realtime. Sounds like you're getting encoding and decoding mixed up.

#2 When you talk about extracting the bits with the AC3 decoder, think of this analogy:

• You can make home-made pudding. Or, if you are a cook at Betty Crocker, you can take home-made style puddiing and evaporate the water/fats and save the result as Instant Pudding. All it takes to reconstitute it is maybe re-add water and heat up. Or for the premium brand, add water and milk and heat up. Either way, you won't end up with the original home-made pudding. You may come close. Even with the milk & water version, it's not the real thing, although for many people it might be good enough.

This is what LOSSY compression is all about. You'll get close to the original, but NEVER back to the PCM master (unless you already have that available).
And Re-encoding with another lossy encoder ONLY COMPOUNDS THE LOSS/ERROR/ARTIFACTS. Check out the hundreds of posts that go over the same thing re: XVID downloads to VCD/DVD.

#3 You keep talking about DTS being higher RESOLUTION than AC3. Now, maybe you're just using confusing terminology, but maybe you should say that DTS's psychoacoustic model is more "musical/pleasant-to-the-ears" than AC3's (at a given bitrate), because guess what--both DTS and AC3 are spec'd as being 48kHz sample rate (only) and 16-to-24 bits in depth. So SAME AVAILABLE possible RESOLUTION (how it was actually preset in authoring/encoding is another matter).
The major difference is still mainly available bitrate. AC3: 64kbps min-448kbpsmax, with 192, 224 or 384 typical. DTS: 64 kbps min-1536kbps max, with 768 or 1536 typical.
If AC3 were given as much latitude as the usual DTS, it would be a whole lot harder to guess the outcome of people's bias.

#4 You talk here and in another post about Process B fixing the glaring omissions of Process A (DTS vs. AC3, VHSHiFi vs. ?). What you may not understand is that everybody like things shaded their own particular way. If you get a picture that is high contrast with lots of blues, but you like a medium contrast, more indoor/orangy picture, any process that adds the coloration that shifts it more to your liking would seem to be a "correction". But that is looking at it from only your own point of view.
Using more objective terms, if you add coloration to something (to suit your own purposes), it's not really going in the direction of higher fidelity. That's like somebody using a graphic equalizer in their car to crank up only the boominess.

#5 Stop using the term PCM when referring to VHS audio tracks. VHS and SVHS doesn't have and never has had PCM audio tracks, they have HiFi tracks (in addition to their standard linear low-quality audio tracks). These HiFi tracks are recorded on the tape FM-style in a band near the color signal. Thus, they have quality that is comparable to an FM radio station. Much better than AM, but not PCM by a long shot! Once again, your predisposition to it's particular brand of coloration happens to be a lucky break for you, but I wouldn't ever recommend it to anyone over PCM digital.
**Note: Do not confuse these tracks with the short-lived format championed by Sony, where the whole of a VHS or Betamax tape was used to record PCM digital audio (and only the audio).

#6 BJ_M probably doesn't really need me to back him up, but I'm going to anyway. He got where he is today by experience, not anecdote. You can tell by checking out the volumes of wisdom in his past posts. I am at a somewhat less illustrious point in my audio career, but it still happens to span 20 years.

...phew! That's enough for now.

Scott

[jdd2000]

I´ve been trying to create DTS CD audio extracting from DVD. Using SmartRipper and Besure I got 6 wav files.
Now I´m trying to use SureCode CD Pro version 1.0.9 to encode to final DTS wav file. It seems to encode it but all I get is a wav file just with a constant and irritating noise.
Anyone could help me ?

[BJ_M]

thats what you are supposed to get, you are listing to a digital signal -- did you read the manual ? did you call the SureCode people? -- who are very willing to help ..


you just have to now make a cd with the wav file and use a compatable dvd or cd player to decode or feed strream to decoder ..

you cant just play it in a normal cd player .. !

[jdd2000]

Thanks.

After burning to CD an playing in a DVD Player it sounded really great !!!

[muskgrave]

BJ_M I'm sorry to say you completly missed the point I was trying to make. Maybe you should trade in your pre-conceived certifications for some abstract thinking.

Oh boy you really put your foot in your mouth on this one...using your logic I can turn particle board into solid oak!

I never said AC3 to DTS would somehow increase the audio resolution beyond what was already there. Besides that is narrow thinking.

***news flash..the truth is as narrow as it gets***

dlv

[kamuixtv]

Yes the sound is better, I can hear the instruments closer.

[offline]

there would be no reason to put an old recording onto CD because the original recording is of less quality than the CD format. Yet now we are seeing very old recordings put onto HD-CD and DVD-Audio and they sound even better. How can this be?

Simple.

1) Old recordings are often edited/filtered prior to re use.
2) Even if not edited, the increased noise per resolution factor is
often overcome simply due to the superior sounding technology
many more can afford to purchase today.