Create Surround Sound?

[benzel]

Is there a program that you can create Dolby surround, or pro-logic surround, or Dolby Digital sound? For example, a home-shot movie with discrete, or semi discrete (dolby surround) sound coming from the rear speakers, center speaker etc. I hope I'm making sense..
Ben

[Kdiddy]

Need more info...create a dolby surround or digital for what use VCDs??, I assume that is case since you are here...now you say a home shot movie, is this movie being shot with some sort of surround premix??, if not, then no it cant be done...basically need a little more info on exactly what you are trying to accomplish

[Greg12]

what he wants is to produce a dolbey surrond sound of the event.

sonic soft encode can produce dolbey 5.1 audio tracks.

but you gotta pay and it's hard to find.

i thought i saw a program that let u combine 5 mono wav files and use sonic softencode to create a 5.1 ac3

[Kdiddy]

no trust me..he wouldnt have to pay for it but that would seemed to be useless...if it is shot on typical video cam, you only get mono sound, why would want 5 tracks of the same audio coming front each speaker??..doesnt make sense...but then, if he wants it VCD/SVCD format to be played back on a standalone DVD player, he will then have to reencode it back to mp2 which would lose the 5.1 surround...so I think we best let him reply to exactly what he is trying to do

[vitualis]

You can definitely make Dolby Surround effects yourself. All you need is an audio editing program like CoolEdit.

Dolby Surround encoded audio will be decoded by a Pro Logic decoder to yield the additional centre and surround channels.

Note, the following method wasn't written by myself and is only grossly correctly. I'm pretty sure there is a frequency cut off for the centre and surround channels. If you look up the tech. documents in the Dolby website, you will find some more info on how Dolby Surround works.

A method
The Dolby Pro Logic Guide
written by Freezy3000

This is a guide for all who want to make Dolby Pro Logic encoded WAV files. I suppose you now what this means. Most of the VHS videos today use such kind of encoding to get two additional channels (center and surround). To decode these channels you need a Dolby Pro Logic decoder. The file you will get is a normal PCM Stereo file.

All you need is a audio software like Cool Edit Pro. In the following example I'll use Cool Edit Pro 1.2.

1. You must have one stereo file ready for left and right channel and two mono files for center and surround channel.
2. Open Cool Edit Pro.
3. Open the stereo file you've got for the front channels (btw all files must have the same sample rate and resolution).
4. Now adding the center channel: Select Mix Paste from Edit, choose Select File and select the mono file you've got for the center channel. Then pull down the volume to 70.7 percent. Be sure that you blend it over the stereo file to both channels.
5. Adding surround channel: Again Mix Paste but choose the surround file now. Pull down the volume to 70.7 percent but check that the right channel is inverted.
6. That's it. Easy huh?

By the way, the main formula is:
Ltot = L + 0.707C + 0.707S
Rtot = R + 0.707C - 0.707S

If you wonder why there is more on the center channel than in the file you used, think that the Pro Logic decoder takes all what's equal on left and right an interprets it as center.

Regards.

[benzel]

Thanks for the replys guys, I actually plan on using this information for animation projects, and for ambient/environment sounds for homeshot films (I'll record nat sounds of the area seperately, and put them in the surround speakers. Someone also responded to my question by e-mail telling me how I could create the DD 5.1 track with Softencode, and then downmixing it to a Dolby surround track. Again, thank you all for helping me out, I really appreciate it.
Ben

[vitualis]

Creating a DD5.1 track and then downmixing that back to Dolby Surround encoded audio is really a very roundabout way of doing this. It is comparable to creating a DVD and then ripping to make a VCD!

You can directly and easily create a Dolby Surround encoded WAV file with the instructions I wrote above.

Regards.