Using CCE for video encoding, but what about the audio ?

[Xymox]

I encode my DV footage (PAL) with CCE 2.70 to MPEG2 to use in DVD authoring and making holiday DVD's.

Reading several CCE documents on the net i'm not sure using the audio encoder in CCE or not.
It is stated that the CCE audio encoder is not very good (it uses MP2 compression).

So i wonder, does it really make sence to use CCE only for the video encoding and encode the audio with another encoder ?
The DV footage i use are home movies and holiday footage. So no fancy stuff. Audio is shot in 16Bit stereo.
Is the CCE audio encoder really so bad ?

If so, which encoder for audio can be best used ?
The encoded video/audio should be played on normal DVD players.

Can anyone give some tips on this ?

[greymalkin]

for max compatibility you really need to get your audio track to AC3 (dolby digital). There are a few free programs that will do this for you. If you want the best compatibility there is a good plugin for TMPGENC DVD Author that will compress to AC3. It's called TMPGENC Sound Player I beleive. You have to make sure your audio file is already set to 16 bit, 48khz.

Vegas 5.0 also has an option when you load up your video to render as AC3..it will take just the audio track and compress it to AC3. I usually do this after all the video cuts/edits have been done and before the mpeg compression is done so the audio only gets compressed once after being captured to my computer. Then I just swap the mp2 track from the video with the newly created AC3 during the authoring phase.

If you want to edit the audio first you can make all the cuts/edits to your dv file, then render to .wav, edit and convert to 16/48khz if needed..then compress to AC3.

TMPGEnc Sound Plug-in AC-3 is only $29 at www.pegasys-inc.com.
It is sold as a plug-in but it has a stand-alone application that will encode .wav files to stereo AC3. If you want to do surround you'll need the beefier programs such as vegas 5.

[mike909]

PremierPro will output to ac3. So will Encore DVD. What program are you using to author?

[Marty2003]

But isn't MP2 required in Pal-land players? So compatibility shouldn't be an issue at all.

[Xymox]

I use Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.1, the CCE 2.70 plugin to encode straight from the timeline. The MPEG2's are used in Adobe Encore DVD 1.5.1 for authoring and burning the DVD.

I play the DVD's on my Pioneer DV470 player on a PAL widescreen TV.

So if i'm not mistaken, it is possible to encode only the audio from the Premiere timeline to AC3 to a seperate audio file. Then encode only the video from the same timeline to a seperate file and mux them together (or load them into Encore) ?

[mike909]

Xymox,
what you want to do is possible with premier. You can encode audio only or video only, or both. You can then use encore to mux them.

[Xymox]

Thanks for that info.

What is a good ratio between AC3 and video rate to keep within the max bitrate specs for DVD video ?

So when i encode the video at say 9000bmps, which datarate should the AC3 be ?

I want to press the most possible quality out of the DV footage where video has more priority over audio. I dont care to use more DVD's to fit the footage, so i seek the best 'mix' which is a good compromise between the visual and audial. And ofcource it should stay within the specs for DVD media to be played in default players.

Is it save just to add the video bitrate and AC3 bitrate and keep this below 9800bmps ? Or is there some other calculation needed.

[mike909]

under tools there is a bitrate calculator. Basically the total bitrate (video+audio) needs to be below 9.57
https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm It all depends on the length of footage you need to put on one dvd. If it's short, then I usually do 8mbps for the video, and the max ac3, which I believe is 448 (keeping in dvd spec). According to the calculator...a half hour of footage can be at 9341 for video and 448 audio. I think some players have issues with bitrates that are too high (above 9) but that is totally a guess, maybe someone here can say if I'm wrong or not...i'm kind of curious myself.