Normalizing DVD Audio

[specul8]

Hi all.

I have looked thru the stickys at the top of this forum and at the headings of the other postings on this page. I've also been thru the doco index for audio in Doom9's web site... I just can't seem to find an answer to this question...

When backing up DVD's, the audio is too soft on the backup. What is the fastest way to get the AC3 Audio track previously extracted via Smartripper, normalize it to a good volume in as few steps as possible and convert it back to AC3 audio for remuxing?

Thru the normalization process, I would like to maintain the quality of the audio and the encoding as well (DTS OR DD). I can't see any other way apart from creating 6 WAV streams and normalising them all. This would be a fairly tedious process...

Any help or links to articles I may have overlooked would be great.

Thanks all - Specul8

[OvERaCiD23]

5.1 DD tracks often appear soft because they leave enough room in the sound levels to allow the loudest effects to be loud, thus everything else must be quiet. DVD players have dynamic range control (DRC) to aid this, and control the volume levels without risk of damaging speakers by turning the volume up. (not the most technical explanation, i hope someone else will chime in using correct terminology and such).

there is no way to reencode the audio to AC3 with a louder volume, as the AC3enc.dll used to encode AC3 files has a problem/bug with encoding the audio at an even lower volume level (no amount of gain applied can solve this, it WILL be too quiet). your best bet is to keep the original AC3, or convert to MP3/OGG (MP3/OGG allow gains to be applied and the output volume WILL be higher).

[specul8]

Thanks OvERaCiD23.

That would explain why there's very little info on it.

So from what I understand, you're saying that I can use an MP3 file or an OGG file as my soundtrack? Do either of them maintain the 5.1 sound, or is that a lost cause? Do I have to convert them back into AC3 files, or can some DVD creation tools accept these as legitimate audio files?

I have the following DVD creation apps available for use -
ReelDVD
DVDit PE
DVDMaestro
SpruceUp
IFOEdit / VOBEdit combo

Which would be the best one to use with a CCE resampled vid and an MP3 or OGG Audio file? Up until recently I have been happy with SpruceUp, but I think that now I'm getting more interested in backing up DVD's another one might be more flexible.

TIA - Brad

[MaTTeR]

You could try using Valex's AC3filter which has a "1pass normalize" function. This might help the volume quite a bit.

Dolby Digital tracks generally are almost 5db lower compared to the orginal master track unfortunately. Another reason why I like DTS more;) OvERaCiD23 explination is about spot on.

To be honest, not very many other 5.1 formats are very useable for the moment for various reasons. AAC might be an option but I haven't seen much feedback on it yet. In regards to your problem your best bet at the moment is to maintain the original DTS track which should be much louder overall.

[specul8]

Thanks to both Matter & OverAcid for their contributions.

The info on the other thread has answered all my other questions.

Brad (Specul8)