What is AC3?

[zed]

Am i right in thinking AC3 is a form of dolby surround sound? if so how can I convert the sound from an mpeg2 file (captured using dvd standards using dazzle dvc2) in to AC3 for authoring with maestro - I take it doing this will provide me with good surrond sound as the audio from the normal mp2 sound file does not play out of my surrond sound system and sounds a bit 'lacking'!

Any help appreciated

Zed

[SiC]

Yes AC3 is Dolby Digital sound. You can create AC3 files with softwares like Sonic Foundry Soft Encode. You'll need to decompress your mpa to wav first then import your wav to Soft Encode. But the quality of your sound file will not change if you convert to AC3. Rule of the thumb "garbage input = garbage output". But you will be able to use "virtual surround sound" with A/V amps that support DD surround.

[jeffnoone]

AC3 sound can be of many formats, AFAIK
It is Dolby Digital sound, but could be just 1 channel, or 2, or 2 with Surround info, or 4, or 5:1 sound

If you want Dolby Surround as SiC describes, it is important that the Dazzle capture the "surround" info, and not just the right and left stereo. The surround info is apparently encoded into analog R and L, using the phase of signals

If SoftEncode is to create proper 2 channel Dolby Surround for you (right, left with info for centre and rear), your Dazzle capture must include the surround info, and your original source must also do so

A quick Net search does not confirm that the DVC2 can cature with Surround info, altho that doesn't mean it won't

[zed]

Hi All,

Thanks for your input, its a shame that the DVC2 card will not capture the surrond sound info as the picture quality is perfect, is there any way to rip a movie from dvd and author it using maestro without having to re-encode the movie file?

cheers

Zed

[jeffnoone]

Note that I did not confirm that that the DVC2 does not cature Surround info (sorry for double negative)
It may capture surround info - confirming the situation would be up to you, by either seeing if this is mentioned in your DVC2 manual, or by contacting Dazzle tech support

With regard to ripping a DVD, this is possible and Doom has excellent guides on this using Ifoedit and other approaches - suggest reading these
If the resultant ripped video and 1 soundtrack (+/- subtitles) are less than about 4.5 Gbytes, then it will fit on DVD-R, larger requires re-encoding, or use of 2 DVD-r's.