DTS & AC3 not muxing with WMV properly

[soadtrails]

I am not sure if this is the correct thread to post in because this is kind of a combination audio/video question.

My problem is this. I have been unable to add a 5.1 ac3 or 5.1 dts audio signal to a vc1 encoded wmv file and maintain the 5.1 sound. My receiver says it's receiving a 5.1 signal, and tells me that it is outputting a 5.1 signal. Only my stereo speakers are working.

Let me give you a quick overview as to the process I'm using, to see if I'm doing something off the wall.

1 - RIP bluray disk to HDD

2 - Load M2ts file into tsmuxer and create 1 m2ts file with the video and single audio stream that I want (if it's a DTS HD feed, I downconvert to standard DTS.

3 - Load the m2ts file into Microsoft Expression Encoderd 2 and encode/compress to a wmv file

4 - Load the muxed m2ts file containing the vid and audio signal I want into TMPGEnc xpress. When I do this, I get some basic info about the streams contained within. The audio portion NEVER says anything about 5.1 sound. It will always tell me 2 channel sound.

5 - I then select an audio output only option, choose wma professional 10 option. There is a dropdown box where I have incredible amounts of choice to select what audio qualities I want. I have tried varying bit rates and sampling rates.

6 - I combine the WMV and the WMA file with windows media stream editor. When I play it on my xbox 360, only 2 channel sound will play.

Does someone have an idea as to what is going on? Is there another process I should be doing instead of the tsmuxer step? I know I can get a legit ac3 file from the m2ts file, but I do not know how to mux that with the wmv file...any ideas on how to do that? Is there a way to convert the ac3 to a wma? Is there a better program to use other than tmpgenc xpress?

I've been struggling with this for a while now, and have been getting irritated with my varying degrees of success. Any help from anyone would be great!!!!!

[yoda313]

It needs to be wma audio pro 10 if your doing 5.1 on a xbox 360.

YOu may be encoding with wma 9 and it won't work properly. I found that out. edit 2 - didn't see you mentioned you are using audio 10 - sorry about that.

EDIT - to do ac3 to wma - you need to convert ac3 to six mono wav files. From there you can convert to wma 5.1 but be sure to use wma audio 10 pro as I mentioned earlier. There are many tools to do this. There is a program called aften that should help for part of the steps. BESWEET also is very useful. THe original program is rather complex and not very graphic friendly for novices - there is a belight version that is a little more straight forward. There is also a program called wmv muxer for mixing audio and video into wmv.

[soadtrails]

I appreciate the quick response. As soon as I hit post I had a thought that I tried out, and it seems to have worked. I did a small 5 minute clip and was able to get 5.1 sound. I did this by extracting the ac3 stream out of the m2ts file with eac3to. When I got to the tmpgenc step, I was able to select the ac3 file, and it converted it to wma. I am currently encoding a full length movie right now, so when i get up in the morning I will try to mux the audio back and to see if there is anything funky going on in a full length feature.

I would like to try wmv muxer, to see if i can combine a wmv and an ac3 file together. Every time I try to do something that seems to be simple like that step, I run into a brick wall...lol

I will also try the other proggies you mentioned to convert to wma 5.1 if necessary. If i can eliminate the tmpgenc program, that would eliminate another program that i would have to buy...so we'll see!

once again, even though i was sucessfull (I think), your advice is great because I can use it and expand upon it.


Thanks!!!

[yoda313]

@soadtrails - sorry to burst your bubbles but as far as I know wmv only accepts wma audio. It is not like avi that can accept other types of audio. I may be wrong on that but wmv is very particular about its requirements.

But like I mentioned earlier if you take the ac3/dts and extract to mono wavs you can then rebuild to wma using wma audio pro 10 and you'll be good to go.

[Midzuki]

@soadtrails: you can try muxing AC3 + VC-1 into a .WMV (read: .ASF) with
SolveigMM ASF Muxer — but as Yoda already said, I don't know whether
the XBox will swallow the "beast".

You could also try a direct conversion from 5.1 AC3 to 5.1 WMA Pro via
WmNicEnc + a proper Avisynth script (NicAudio plugin recommended/required).

P.S.: AFAIK, Crypto's WMVmuxer cannot generate multichannel WM Audio.

\\\

[poisondeathray]

Since you are re-encoding the blu-ray anyways, Midzuki's option #2 is probably the best, probably the most compatible, and best of all, free. For such a "professional" application, I've never been able to "persuade" expression encoder 2 to do 5.1 audio.

You can test these samples if you want, to determine if the Xbox will "see" the audio correctly. I did these tests a while back on another thread, and they play fine (5.1 audio) in PC media players, but I don't have an xbox360 to test

WVC1 5.1ch AC3 in WMV
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S7ACE34Q

WVC1 5.1ch DTS in WMV
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZSY37IZ4

[frosty47]

Since you are re-encoding the blu-ray anyways, Midzuki's option #2 is probably the best, probably the most compatible, and best of all, free. For such a "professional" application, I've never been able to "persuade" expression encoder 2 to do 5.1 audio.

I couldn't either, but apparently there is a way. Someone suggests it in Koadic's forum
http://www.freepowerboards.com/koadic/koadic-about63.html
Go down to the second post, under his guide

[soadtrails]

I have modified my process from what I was doing originally. It is now as follows:

1 - AnyDVDHD to put bluray onto HDD

2 - TSMUXER to remove any unnecessary streams from the m2ts file.

3 - Use eac3to to extract audio stream from original movie file. This program will automatically convert DTS or DTSHD to a standard ac3 file.

4 - TMPENC4.0xpress: Load movie file from step 2, load audio file from step 3, adjust the settings how I want and encode the movie. TMPENC is also quite a bit faster to encode that EE2. I can encode a 1080p movie at 12000kbs in about 16 hours. EE2 would have taken ALOT longer than that. I only go that high on visually stunning movies, I don't need to be watching Super Troopers in that kind of resolution, I key it way back for those movies. Still looks light years better than SD and I can do an entire movie in about 8 hours.

I had to pony up the money for TMPENC4.0xpress, but it's been working out pretty good for me. I was able to cut out a few steps in the whole process. I tried to shorten it up a bit more by......

1 - anydvdhd
2 - tsmuxer to remove all unnecessary files, but keep the audio stream intact
3 - tmpenc4.0xpress: load movie from step 2, load the embedded audio file from the tsmuxed file in step 2 and then encode. If the movie has dts sound, tsmuxer does not like that at all! If the movie has dolby, it will encode the movie with audio, but only in 2channel....no matter what settings I use.

Still, 4 steps are better than my original number I was going through. If anyone has any other suggestions, or any detailed questions about what I do, feel free to ask!

Thank you everyone.