I'm encoding AVI streams captured from a DV camera to DVD standard MPEG-2 using TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress. I'm finding that if I choose to create the MPEG as "SYSTEM" (Video + Audio) that when I author the DVD (Using TMPGEnc DVD Author 3) I get only 1 channel of Audio on DVD playback, in this case the left channel only. When I encode the MPEG as an elementary stream (mv2 file + wav file) I get sound on both channels on the final DVD. Why? It seems more convenient to encode it all to one file than to separate it into two separate files but I find the one channel sound annoying. That's the first question. Second question is: Should I encode the audio as PCM, MPEG-1, or Dolby Digital? I can see no clear recommendations on this. Third question: When I play the MPEGs encoded with both video and sound Windows Media player won't play the audio, while other media players will. Why would this be? Man do I hate fooling with video. Can't they simply make just make this stuff work? Any help would be appreciated.
I've answered some of my own questions here by doing a series of short tests. The original video camera used for some of the footage had only a single audio channel. The older version of the TMPGEnc encoder (version 2) must have automatically selected mono, so mpeg files created with that would play on both channels. The newer of TMPGEnc encoder (version 4) defaults to "stereo", so if you have only a single channel you must select "mono" or you will only get sound on 1 channel. What I found out about Windows Media Player is that it will ONLY play the MPEGs that are encoded with MPEG-1 Layer II audio. Go figure. Just in case someone needed this info...
