BWF to EAC3 and back again

[brxxthe]

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a way to archive my production recordings that are originally in the form of Broadcast Wave which is a multitrack or Poly wave file with timecode stamp and metadata. I'm looking for a way to archive them in Dolby Digital, preserving timecode which I have been able to do - but also decode them back to the original Poly Wave with a timecode stamp which I believe is in the file header.

I have been using Dolby Media Producer tools and that is a great software suite for encoding but looking for a tool to decode back to BWF - does anybody know?

[Blue_MiSfit]

That's a really good question, actually.

Dolby Media Producer comes with a Decoder license as well, if I recall correctly. Have you tried that?

I immediately think of what I know best (Digital Rapids, or Rhozet Carbon Coder).. I've always found most freeware tools to be lacking when it comes to things like timecode and "pro" formats like BWF. Still, there may be a free solution out there.

Derek

[brxxthe]

The Dolby Decoder does not directly write to a file. However you could route the decoder through an audio interface and then run another application that would re-record the decoded audio back into a BWF but this is all real-time re-recording.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Ahh yes. I remember this being an issue as well. How silly, huh?

It looks like my usual go-to (Rhozet Carbon Coder now aka ProMedia Carbon) does support exporting BWF, and importing Dolby Digital Plus. Whether or not it will preserve metadata and timecode is another story, but I'd suggest you give them a call and arrange for a demo license.

If you want to spend a lot of money, but also guarantee that everything will work as expected, you could buy a Dolby DP600... It's an amazing tool, though it's occasionally VERY frustrating and quite expensive. We upgraded to this from Dolby Media Producer, and it makes doing large scale workflows (batch transcoding etc) much easier / faster. I'm not sure if it would be appropriate for you from that perspective, but at the very least it should decode into BWF while preserving all metadata.

Derek

[Ghitulescu]

There are several tools that can add [back] the missing TC to a BWF file, be it poly or mono.