Why convert MP2 to WAV when authoring?

[kpoman]

I noticed in "Lord Smurf's Way - From Capture to Final DVD" he captures to AVI, then converts to MPEG-2, then demux's the file in TMPGEnc. My question is why does one then need to convert the MP2 audio file to WAV?? Is WAV better the MP2 or does TMPGEnc DVD Author require this WAV file? Thanks.

[adam]

I don't know if TMPGenc requires wav or not but mp2 is not supported for NTSC in the DVD standard. Many authoring programs will still accept it and many players will still play it, but not all. Unless you have tons of free space to kill, don't use wav. Its uncompressed so yes it has the potential to be higher quality than something like mp2 or AC3 but if you use a decent bitrate, the latter two formats sound just fine, and if you are just taking audio from something you captured, well then its literally just as good.

Get yourself the latest version of BeSweet or a commercial AC3 encoder and use that instead. You will get great compression so you can fit much more content or use a higher bitrate on your existing content, and it will be completely compliant. Using uncompressed wav is a horrible waste.