Belight's ac3 lowers the volume of the sound stream

[GGuyZ]

Hi guys.

This is the process I'm doing: capturing analog-to-dv using canopus advc110. Then I save the audio stream to WAV using Vdub. Eventually I encode the audio stream to 2 channel AC3 using Belight(it has a built in profile I'm using).

After authoring the DVD and playbacking it, I noticed that the sound stream's volume is significally lower than the original. The even more disturbing issue is that the great acoustics of the original movie is lost.

If I don't encode to AC3 and just use the WAV, then I get results similar to the original.

What can I do about it? and if the WAV actually works on a DVD - why am I better off using AC3?

[tebasuna51]

If you have the wav file, and play ok, use Aften/AftenGUI (http://kurtnoise.free.fr/index.php?dir=Aften/) and encode to ac3 with 192 Kb/s and rest to default. (recent BeLight version can use also Aften, never use the old ac3enc)

If your wav and the new ac3 play different, check your player configuration, the ac3 must play at equal volume and similar quality (of course is a lossy format) than wav.

You can use the uncompressed format (wav) to authoring DVD, but using ac3 you save space (more if you can use mp2 in DVD, not in all countries). The bitrate for a wav stereo 48 KHz is 1536 Kb/s.

[GGuyZ]

Thank you!

My mistake - I didn't take into account the WAV size.
Is Aften/AftenGUI better than Besweet?
How can Belight use After? Should I just use AfterGUI instead?

[tebasuna51]

Is Aften/AftenGUI better than Besweet?
BeSweet is not an ac3 encoder, is ac3enc.dll (in BeSweet package) the encoder surpassed by the new Aften.
Aften is developed over the same liba52 than ac3enc but with many improvements.
How can Belight use After? Should I just use AfterGUI instead?
If you don't need modify (samplerate, timestretch, volume, ...) the wav file you can use AftenGUI directly (the GUI is developed by Kurtnoise like Belight)

If you want use BeLight you need the last daily Belight build and the last bsn.dll (http://corecodec.org/projects/belight/), and of course the last build of Aften.

[GGuyZ]

I see. Thank you :)

I will use Aften+AftenGUI then.

I'm trying to find an option to only encode the sound into 2 channels(since that's what my source is).

I'm not sure where it is though. there is an option called "Audio Coding Mode" under "Filters & overrides tab". Is that what I need to adjust and only that?

If so, should I choose "1+1 (Ch1,Ch2)" or "2/0 (L,R)", or anything else?

[tebasuna51]

I'm not sure where it is though. there is an option called "Audio Coding Mode" under "Filters & overrides tab". Is that what I need to adjust and only that?

If so, should I choose "1+1 (Ch1,Ch2)" or "2/0 (L,R)", or anything else?
Aften work automatically then you can let "unspecified" or "2/0 (L,R)" never "1+1 (Ch1,Ch2)" used for independent channels (two languages for instance).

All the defaults values must be used if you don't know what is it.
If you want to learn over the most important parameters you can see the Sticky: GUIDE: How To Properly Encode Dolby Digital Audio (AC3) (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=56020)

Only the bitrate (CBR Mode) must be set, for 2/0 is recommended 192 Kb/s (448 for 5.1)