I was wondering if there is any way to optimize my VCD to take advantage of my Surround sound set up, I've got an optical audio link, and a DTS and 5.1 decoder. Is there any way to add digital quality sound to a vcd? It would have to be split into the 6 channels....
VCD doesn't support other than mono and stereo MP2s and that's it. Anything else is a hack and very likely wont work with most of the DVD players and therefor should be avoided (you make a VCD now with 5.1 surround and it works with your player, but what happens when you upgrade to a better DVD player and it doesn't support those?). But if you insist, simply encode the video normally, but don't demux the AC3 audio to WAV, but keep it as AC3. Then simply mux it to the ready MPEG-1 video and burn the thing with Nero -- just switch the standards compliance off.
Well the DTS and 5.1 Decoders aren't on my DVD player they're in my receiver, and I won't be upgrading that for a long time. But the thing is I don't rip DVD's, I download AVI's, and they have MP3 sound compression(correct me if i'm wrong) so I'd have to go from MP3 to ACM? Or would that just be completely useless? And will I even be able to fit 50 minutes on a CD with ACM sound??
Well, if your AVIs have MP3 audio, then they've already been downmixed to stereo and there's no way to get the surround audio back to them, sorry. Sure, you can convert MP3 to AC3, but what's the point, it has already been destroyed and the surround effect has been stripped out of the audio track when it was downmixed and by changing the format to surround format doesn't somehow "find" the once-lost surround audio again to the audio track.
Thanks, DRD. That's kinda what I thought from the beginning, but I thought I'd ask. If only there was a program that would split an MP3 into 6 channels, come on all you coders...get on this!!
You still have some confusion? You _can_ split the MP3 into six channels if you wish, but it doesn't matter since when the DVD was encoded into DivX, the surround was lost and changed to stereo. There are, however, tons and tons of DivX movies in the Net that have AC3 audio track (5.1 surround) instead of MP3 and those actually _do_ have the surround audio intact (the DVD audio track was taken directly from the DVD and just "glued" to the DivX video without any changes, so it _is_ exact same audio as in DVD).
There's no confusion I understand completely. But it seems to me that in the world of sound editing it would be possible to get a bass channel, a right and left background channel, and keep the speech and some background noise for the center, left and right speakers. And it seems to me this would just have to sound better on a 5.1 system than just using analog input with pro logic sound. I know it would never have the actual channels that were originally with the movie, but I'm just looking for a simulation of surround sound, something that's better than analog. Just to be sure, have you ever tried splitting an MP3 track into 6 channels, and tested it on a surround system, to see if the sound quality IS any better?? I'm not gonna bother right now cause i trust you when you say it won't be any better, but if you've never actually tested it, i could and let evryone know the difference in sound quality, if there is one. But thx for all your help, and I'll keep my eye peeled for AVI with AC-3 compression, and when I find one I'll try this out. One last question, what's the file size on an AVI that has AC-3 sound, compared to one with MP3. thx bro
AC3 audio normally takes 2-4 times more space than MP3 audio, bitrates are normally 300-450kbps for AC3 audio. So, normally if you find AC3 version of a movie, it will be split into two CDs instead of normal one CD releases.
