Compatibility using AC3 Encoder

[Pinstripes23]

Which is better as far as compatibility for dvd players, besweet or ffmpeg? I just started converting to dvds and have been using besweet with no problems whatsoever. They all play in the dvd players around the house, ranging from cheap to expensive. But from browsing the forums the other day someone suggested to ditch besweet and switch to ffmpeg when encoding ac3. I have no problems using both but I am looking for the more compatible encoder. If I want to loan these dvds out to friends or family they might not have the same dvd players I got and so there might be an issue. So which is it, besweet or ffmpeg? Thanks

[guns1inger]

They are probably pretty much on par. ffmpeg seems to be slightly more compatible, but this is anecdotal. If you want real compatatbility across the widest range of playback devices, you need to also consider the authoring software you use, as well as looking at Dolby certified encoders such as Sony's encoder in Vegas+DVD or Surcode.

If you want free, I would use ffmpeg.

[celtic_druid]

They use the same lib for encoding. Compatiblity should be indentical. Older versions of BeSweet used an older version of the lib that suffered from compatiblity problems. Same is true of older ffmpeg code though.

[redwudz]

I use ffmpeggui as it's much easier to use than Besweet. And welcome to our forums.

[Pinstripes23]

Thanks for the responses and the welcome.

If you want real compatatbility across the widest range of playback devices, you need to also consider the authoring software you use, as well as looking at Dolby certified encoders such as Sony's encoder in Vegas+DVD or Surcode.

If you want free, I would use ffmpeg.

The authoring software I use is DVD-lab. I know it's a mid-range type software as I haven't dove into one of the high-end programs yet. I've looked into surcode but never really tried it. And getting Vegas may seem impractical just for audio encoding as I use avisynth+cce for video and am satisfied with it.

I guess for now I will switch to ffmpeg and have besweet as a backup.