Guide to DIY DTS on DVD

[VinnieB]

Hi Guys,

It's not so much a guide, as it is a simple hack. Sometimes I make my own live recordings (in surround), and want to put these on DVD with the recorded video. I triend encoding with Soft Encode and Surcode, and DTS definately sounds much better, given the same source material.

So you start with about 6 44.1 wavs for respectively the 6 channels. Surcode CD Pro can encode these nicely to make a DTS Cd. Unfortunately I want to make a DVD. And I don't have the money to buy Surcode DVD Pro.

Step 1) Resample the 44.1 wavs to DVD compatible 48khz wavs with any editor

Step 2) Before saving, change the audio properties to 44.1khz _without_resampling_

Step 3) Save and repeat for all wavs

Step 4) Fire up Surcode and convert to DTS

Step 5) Load the DTS wav in the audio editor and change the audio properties to 48khz (without resampling or anything!!!)

Step 6) add in any DVD authoring software as a regular LPCM audio. (as I mentioned in another thread, also non-dts compliant authoring tools will work because formally it is 48Khz LPCM audio!!!)

Step 7) Create DVD files

Step 8) Burn the DVD

The (standalone) DVD player will recognize the track as LPCM audio, but if it has the possibility to be programmed to put LPCM data raw to the (optical) output, the receiver will recognize it as DTS. At least, in my configuration this works.

And the 44->48->44 trick works fine because DTS encoding doesn't fuck with frequencies, as does Dolby.

The only disadvantage is that the DVD player recognizes the audio track as LPCM, so I'm working on

Step 7b) With IfoEdit, change the audio properties of the track to DTS.

This last step doesn't seem to work quite correctly (yet). DTS setting doesn't give any sound. SDDS plays ok , but is still not recognized as DTS. Not recognized at all, really. Just a little better as LPCM.

Even neater would be to convert the cd-dts-wav to a formal .dts file that can be imported in dts compliant authoring software. I'm looking into this, but as I'm not a great (understatement) coder I'm not expecting great results. cd dts wavs have very different headers and block sizes as the dvd steams.

I'm looking forward to hear from you DVD authoring guys...

greetz,
VinnieB

[auenf]

Originally posted by VinnieB
Even neater would be to convert the cd-dts-wav to a formal .dts file that can be imported in dts compliant authoring software. I'm looking into this, but as I'm not a great (understatement) coder I'm not expecting great results. cd dts wavs have very different headers and block sizes as the dvd steams.

theoretically that should be just removing the LPCM headers off the .wav

ive got a tool somewhere that i could try that with, ill get back to you on it.

Enf...

[kempfand]

@ auenf:

Any chance you could share that tool to handle the header ?

It would save alot of work (i.e. avoiding going through an editor any applying the 44->48->44 trick), since I would like to use some dts WAV's (44.1kHz) on my DVD-R (from homemade mini.DV).

@ VinnieB:

Thanks for this nice trick - it works. It also looks like a nice method to get dts in to a non audio dvd !

Regards,

Andreas

[auenf]

the tool is on gear recording software, but its at work somewhere, will take a while to find.

my original thought was this:

using your 44.1khz wav converted to 48khz, then header edited to 44.1khz, then encoded to a 44.1 DTS .wav, THEN using this program, it (if i remember correctly) will remove the redbook compatible header off the file, and you *should* be left with a 48khz DTS file that can be put into your authoring program.

if it works, its almost worth not paying the price for surcode DVD DTS ;)

Enf...

[kempfand]

I see - I guess I mis-read VinnieB's guide (shame on me).

I was actually testing the other way round, and it works great:
- Take a finished 44.1 dts (Surcode CD encoded), opened it in an editor, changed the properties to 48kHz (without resampling !), saved the file.
- This "44.1_dts with_a_48.0_header" then imports fine into DVD-athoring SW (I used Maestro). I added a still for the movie-timeline, complied and burned.
- The thing played fine (in true dts), I couldn't hear a difference to the original Audio-CD :-)

I was (wrongly) assuming that the tool you mention would patch the header of the 44.1 dts into 48 (leaving the actual sound-info on 44.1). This would have saved time (opening and re-saving via a sound-editor), but it is still quick and doesn't need any 44.1->48 conversion.

Regards,

Andreas