Impossible? DVD video with 96kHz 24-bit sound track - How to author?

[2Bdecided]

Hi,

What an amazing resource this site is! All the tools and guides and knowledgeable helpful people! So here's my question... :-)

The DVD video spec allows Linear PCM audio up to 96kHz 24bit 2-channel, or 48kHz 24bit 6-channel. Neither is used on a film or video disc, because it doesn't leave much space for the video! However, it's a great way of authoring a high resolution audio-only or "audio with unimportant video" disc. The alternative is to use the DVD-audio format, but this requires special DVD-audio players, whereas most people have DVD-video players.

This "using a DVD-video disc as a high quality audio carrier" format has been exploited commercially, so it is possible. (see http://www.chesky.com/ for details of these "DADs" - Digital Audio Discs - the site also contains more recent DVD-audio and SACD discs).


I want to create a DVD-video disc with a 16 or 24-bit 96kHz sampled 2-channel audio track. My problem is that I cannot find a DVD-video authoring package that will let me create a disc with 96k Linear PCM audio. They all seem to be limitted to 48kHz sampling.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'd really appreciate any help on this, because it seems that the software simply doesn't exist.

Thanks,

David.
http://www.David.Robinson.org/

[rjamorim]

Hello, Dr. Robinson. I'm glad to see you here. :)

I suggest you check out Sonic Scenarist Advanced Edition, or Professional Edition. According to the specifications page (http://www.sonic.com/products/scenarist/specs.asp), these versions support 96 kHz PCM Audio.

Worth checking out Pinnacle Impression DVD pro (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage.asp?Product_ID=464&Langue_ID=7) too. Although I couldn't find info about audio modes supported, people I know of that work with DVD authoring consider this one of the best solutions.

Regards;

Roberto.

[2Bdecided]

Hi rjamorim!

Well, first of all, thank you (and congratulations) for answering a question which no one else has ever managed to.

However... Scenarist Professional £14,995.00 (£17,619.13 inc.VAT)!!!!?!?!?

So, let me see, should I buy a cheap house, a nice car, or a piece of software?!?! :eek:


It's a shame that 96kHz support is seen as something that only the Pros would want (and are willing to pay for). Browsing Hydrogen Audio or the Cool Edit Forums show that there are plenty of us "amateurs" who would like the chance to play with higher sampling rates. The sound cards to do this are relatively cheap, and DVD writers are coming down in price - it's stupid that the software to link the two is so astronomically expensive!!!


Anyone got any cheaper solutions? Preferably 100x cheaper :D

Cheers,
David.

[DJ Bobo]

I don't have the equipment to judge, but that 96KHz thing is senseless IMHO.
Most people aren't able to hear more than 20KHz, so 40KHz sampling should be enough. 48KHz will be then more than enough!

24-bit quantization *MAY* sound better than 16-bit quantization, but again, who will hear the difference?!

CD-DA is still the reference for perfect audio quality IMHO. SACD or DVD-Audio are just new marketing "toys".

[2Bdecided]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
CD-DA is still the reference for perfect audio quality IMHO. SACD or DVD-Audio are just new marketing "toys".


Well, I like new toys, and I'm not in marketing!

Seriously, I don't want to get into an argument about the pros and cons of 96k vs 48k - there are enough of those discussions on the web already! (most are full of opinions, but lack any facts and direct experience)

I would like to find some software to try 96kHz on DVD-V for myself.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I suppose reverse engineering an existing DVD-V with 96k audio is out of the question? I wouldn't know where to start!

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
I don't have the equipment to judge, but that 96KHz thing is senseless IMHO.
Most people aren't able to hear more than 20KHz, so 40KHz sampling should be enough. 48KHz will be then more than enough!

24-bit quantization *MAY* sound better than 16-bit quantization, but again, who will hear the difference?!

CD-DA is still the reference for perfect audio quality IMHO. SACD or DVD-Audio are just new marketing "toys".

LOL. Here we go again.

(Dude: David didn't ask for your opinion, AFAIK, he already has his opinion about this subject. Let's not go offtopic like this (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=21&t=5968) horrendous thread.)

David: I tried, but I couldn't find any other authoring solution that mentioned support for 96kHz audio. I guess you would need to mail the manufacturers and ask about this personally.

Here's a list of some programs:
http://www.dvdirect.com/TSS/charts/DVDAuthoringComparison.htm

My concern here is, since 48kHz is the de-facto standard for DVD audio, wouldn't some DVD player DSPs have problems with 96kHz?

Regards;

Roberto.

[DSPguru]

Hi David,
i'll ask mpucoder (http://www.mpucoder.com/) to take a look at this post, he might be able to come out with a freeweare solution.

Originally posted by rjamorim
Dude: David didn't ask for your opiniondisregard Bobo. 99% of his posts doesn't make sense to most of us.. :o

[mpucoder]

This is a twofold problem. First is making a wav file, the second is authoring with that file. Just about any authoring program that accepts LPCM should handle 48/96, 16/20/24 and 1 to 8 channels - operative word is should. IfoEdit accepts LPCM, but we were never able to test with anything other than 48KHz 16bit stereo.
Since I have some questions about the packing order maybe we could kill 2 birds with one stone here if somebody can get me a small sample. I'll see what various programs, including IfoEdit, do with it.

As for opinions - the only one I have is a business one. The DVD-Audio people dragged their feet too long and now have an uphill battle.

OK, couldn't resist - "CD-DA is perfect" - I have an analog tape deck with higher S+N/N than CD-DA (102Db using Dbx) and lower THD.

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by DSPguru
disregard Bobo. 99% of his posts doesn't make sense to most of us.. :o

Hehe. Right. He reminds me of SK1 @ HydrogenAudio. :D

[2Bdecided]

My concern here is, since 48kHz is the de-facto standard for DVD audio, wouldn't some DVD player DSPs have problems with 96kHz?


Apparently some players downsample the 96k to 48k - I'm not sure how many, and I'm not sure how well they do it. This is an issue, because lousy downsampling could cause a 96k disc to sound worse than a 48k disc in these players. However, some certainly do play 96k no problem, and some correctly send it to their digital outputs. What home theatre amps would do with this is anyone's guess - most would choke. However, many hi-end DACs (and now cheaper ones too) are 96k capable, so it wouldn't be difficult to build a 96k capable system - if only I could burn the discs!


i'll ask mpucoder to take a look at this post, he might be able to come out with a freeweare solution.


Thanks - I was wondering if this might be a possiblity. In essence, the kind of disc I'm trying to author would be much simpler than most DVDs. However, I understand that the DVD licensing policies make freeware DVD utils an uphill struggle. It's amazing what IFOEdit manages to do.


disregard Bobo. 99% of his posts doesn't make sense to most of us..


Well, he makes a vallid argument - but I just don't have the time to discuss this again!

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

Originally posted by mpucoder
[B]This is a twofold problem. First is making a wav file, the second is authoring with that file. Just about any authoring program that accepts LPCM should handle 48/96, 16/20/24 and 1 to 8 channels - operative word is should. IfoEdit accepts LPCM, but we were never able to test with anything other than 48KHz 16bit stereo.
Since I have some questions about the packing order maybe we could kill 2 birds with one stone here if somebody can get me a small sample. I'll see what various programs, including IfoEdit, do with it.


Thanks for the reply - it's great to hear this is a possiblity!

As you probably know, there's a bewildering number of greater than 16-bit .wav "standards", though 96k 16-bit is a logical extension of 48k 18-bit.

There are a number of 96k 24-bit files at
http://www.pcabx-pro.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm

To be honest, any software that accepts ANY 24-bit 96k format would be great since Cool Edit will save to most of them.

If you want some samples, I'm very happy to send them to you - though (if you're running windows) it would be quicker to download the CE2k demo from syntrillium and generate them yourself - the different sample rates and bit depths are available from File:New, and the different file formats are available under Options in the Save box. "24-bit packed int (type 1 - 24-bit)" is the "real" 24-bit format; 32-bit 16.8 float (type 1 - 32-bit) is the default Cool Edit format for all files greater than 16-bit. What the others are compatible with is anyone's guess.

Cheers,
David.

[DSPguru]

Originally posted by rjamorim
Hehe. Right. He reminds me of SK1 @ HydrogenAudio. :D Objection! i personally like SK1 :).

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by DSPguru
Objection! i personally like SK1 :).

Well, it's your opinion. I won't complain. :)

But you'll see what I mean if you read the thread I linked here earlier.

[mpucoder]

I'll have a look at those formats a little later. I was concerned about the DVD 20 and 24 bit packing, now you tell me there's more choices for wav - this should be fun.
Right now I've had a little setback, the computer I used most had a meltdown. Don't know whether the MB or CPU went, but it shut itself off, and now when it powers up nothing happens. Don't worry about it, though, as a new computer was already in the making, just waiting on the MB. Problem is the backup machine, and I can't believe this, has a 6-channel Mad Dog, and I can't get sampling rates to go above 44.1!

[DJ Bobo]

@ DSPguru
It's just that I don't use your bebuggy software, that's why you have a grudge against me ;)
I personally think most of your posts doesn't make sense to most of us, because you're talking as if everybody have ultra high-end audio systems :p

[DSPguru]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
@ DSPguru
It's just that I don't use your bebuggy software, that's why you have a grudge against me ;)i don't have personal grudge against you. i just disagree with most of your opinions.
I personally think most of your posts doesn't make sense to most of us, because you're talking as if everybody have ultra high-end audio systems :p this proves my point that most of your suggestions are bad in terms of quality.
and this got nothing to do with BeSweet.

[blah]

I read this thread about a week ago and got a bit excited because this is what I am trying to achieve too. In answer to 2Bdecided, I found the demo of Sonic Foundry DVD Architect enables me to author these dvds: see ftp://files1.sonicfoundry.com/current/DVDArchitect10.exe. I used CoolEdit to record the 24 bit packed int wavs. I tried emailing you directly but your address is broken.

I am interested in using these DVDs both to directly play in a DVD Video player and for archiving these recordings such that the 24/96 wav data may be extracted at a later date.

I guess I am addressing this to DSPGuru: I can't seem to extract the wav data from the vob files. When trying to convert VOB -> wav in one step, BeSweet seems to limit me to 96kHz 16bit wav (which plays as static). The azid "-F wav24" doesn't seem to be supported in BeSweet.

Failing that, I tried to use BeSweet to produce an ac3 file and then use azid directly to convert to a 24/96 wav but no matter what I tried, I always got CRC errors. From the log, azid seems to be assuming a 6 channel input. I don't have my command lines and logs with me at the moment but I can send them later if necessary.

I really want to avoid having to archive the wavs separately from the DADs - blank DVDs still aren't cheap enough for me to justify burning two disks per recording yet.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I trying to do something which simply isn't supported? I always thought that if I fiddled with the flags enough I'd be able to get a result.

Spencer

[2Bdecided]

Hi Spencer,

Sorry I didn't reply before. There shouldn't be a problem with my email address listed here - it's just my first name AT my last name dot org. Appologies if it's out of date on my website.

Anyway, I've downloaded the SF DVD architect manual from ...
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step2.asp?DID=437

... and as far as I can see, the only audio formats it will accept to burn to DVD without transcoding are AC-3 stereo or 5.1, or PCM 48kHz 16-bit stereo. I'm reading this from page 16 of the manual - any other audio formats will be transcoded to one of these (I assume).

Does your experience contradict what the manual suggests? (This wouldn't be a first in the world of software manuals!) Anyway, I'll install the software demo and see what it does or doesn't do.

Cheers,
David.
http://www.David.Robinson.org/

P.S. the ftp link you provided didn't work for me, but the download page does - I assume it's the same product? It's a pity I can only buy it with Vegas and their AC-3 encoder; but then, if it's no solution, I won't want to buy it anyway.

[ChristianHJW]

Hmm .... authoring a 96/24 DVD-Video ! Sounds good to me ... a couple of people could finally convert their old analog master LPs to well sounding copies of them, without having to spend a fortune for that.

Just visit a friend with a well set-up and fine tuned Linn LP12, chase the LPs through the nitty gritty ( LP washing machine ) first, connect your battery powered analog MC preamp with a nice Terratec 24/96 or better installed and here you go !! The perfect, well sounding ananlog LP backup, to last forever plus a couple of days :D !

Sidenote :

/me sets matroska advertising mode switch to 'on' :

matroska can handle PCM 24/96 already, and as the file size of matroska can be arbitrary its a good alternative to WAV in this respect. Steve 'robux4' Lhomme, our chief coder, had this usage always in mind when designing matroska, as he is making music himself. I hope the Cooledit people do read here ... lol .. :D

/me sets advertising switch mode to 'off'

[DJ Bobo]

bunch of freaks! :p

This proves again, that the human being always wants more and more and more.
CD-DA is here, is widely supported, gives perfect sound (relatively to our ears) and you're chasing after DVD-audio and such, which are in theory better, but just in theory! well, I'll never understand you guys.

@ DSPguru
No, my methods are not worse than yours, yours are overhyped (just because of some theoretical advantages, I precise "theoretical" ;))

[DSPguru]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
/me sets matroska advertising mode switch to 'on'will you stop that already ?!
wtf are you talking about here ? what is the big advantage of matroska over wave when it comes to plain, simple, linear, trivial, pcm ?!
yea, native musepack support in matroska is a neat feature, but what is this hype about PCM ?

1. your attention to the forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm), Christian.
2. pay careful attention to rules 5 & 11.
3. pay attention to your own words :
Originally posted by ChristianHJW (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38855&perpage=23&pagenumber=2
)
I have promised him to make it a bit easier now, also because some friends warned me already that users might get annoyed by the constant mentioning of something that will be excellent once its here, but is not yet available for the time being :( ...


@Spencer
you're right. sorry, only 16bit is currently supported..

[blah]

The DVD Architect demo link didn't work because of the full stop at the end.

When I drag 24/96 PCMs into a music compilation project, DVD Architect recognises them as the correct format and allows them to be previewed. I was wrong earlier - the demo doesn't allow image preparation. However, using the full version, the final VOB is as big as the two wavs combined. This plays properly in a software DVD player (I haven't burnt a test disk yet).

@DSPguru
Cool - thanks - I can stop tearing my hair out now. I guess that means extracting 24/96 from DVD-V really *is* an impossibility at the moment. I also tried extracting directly to wav using Smartripper but that also only supports 48kHz max too.

I have figured out that archiving the wavs onto DVD may not be as bad as I thought. Using a freeware lossless compression format like Monkey's Audio means I could archive ~5LPs on a DVD.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by DSPguru wtf are you talking about here ? what is the big advantage of matroska over wave when it comes to plain, simple, linear, trivial, pcm ?!

Am i stupid or doesnt RIFF/WAV has a 2 GB file limit still ? Has this been improved somehow, so that bigger files are possible now ? Sorry if i was wrong here.

If not, well, you may easily calculate for yourself how many minutes of audio you may store in a 2 GB file, at 24/96 ... ;) ....

[DSPguru]

Chris, stop bullshitting! we are talking about linear pcm here. we really don't need a container for that.

and if you still feel like putting a 13.8mbps of audio in a container, interleaved with video (at lower bitrate!!!), you could use opendml avi. you should know that for a long time now, 2gb is not a limit.
(wave is riff is avi. right ?)

do us a favor, Christian, keep your promise (quoted above) and stop spamming this board.

[robUx4]

Originally posted by DSPguru and if you still feel like putting a 13.8mbps of audio in a container, interleaved with video (at lower bitrate!!!), you could use opendml avi. you should know that for a long time now, 2gb is not a limit.
(wave is riff is avi. right ?)[/B]

If this kind of data can be stored on a DVD, I see a reason for an authoring app to be able to store/manage it. I don't think authoring apps use compression except during the rendering process. And I think it's easier to have each track in a file that all tracks muxed together, during the authoring process. So in this case WAV is not enough (1h of 96/24 LPCM max). So you suggest using AVI for the audio files ? That's a solution. But I'm not sure an AVI file without video is legal or can be played on most players. And you can't just rename it to .wav... So I think it's good to have another alternative.

[DSPguru]

.pcm is the alternative!


EDIT :
why can't you guys admit that there are cases when matroska simply isn't needed ?

no need to push it everywhere. it's ridiculous.
it's annoying!

[ChristianHJW]

I have to apologize here, i guess i know now where the confusion is coming from.

Steve was once telling me that he would like to use matroska in the studio for mixing up stuff, as it can easily hold several big PCM tracks in one file, one track for each instrument.

IIRC he said that this is a pain to do with WAV,due to file size limitations and the fact you need one file for each track.

I guess i swobbed the 2 purposes, so DG is correct that for authoring a DVD Video with a singel Stereo PCM track there is no need/use for matroska.

BTW, DG : i am perfectly keeping my promise ;) If you want me to upload a sample PCM file in matroska to some server, so you can start supporting matroska as input/output format it in BeSweet, drop me a PM :D .... if you dont want to support it i will understand also. Never mind

Christian

[DeXT]

Raw PCM is not enough IMHO because by definition it's a headerless format. You have to know the number of bits (16, 20, 24), the sample rate (22.05, 44.1, 48, 192 etc), wether it's signed or unsigned, packed or unpacked, data alignment, motorola or intel bit order, mumber of channels and of course order of them... too much information.

I think having a container for these is a must, specially now that a full set of new raw audio formats are starting to be widely adopted. Of course any container capable of handling >2GB of data would be more than enough. But WAV is simply not suitable for this, and this is by far the most widely supported format.

A dirty hack has been making WAV files with a dummy data chunk size, and taking the filesize as a basis for the total audio time. It works but it's simply not acceptable. About AIFF I'm not sure but seems it also has a 2 GB limit as chunk sizes are also expressed as 16 bit signed values.

So having a container supporting unlimited file sizes and a wide variety of audio formats is a good thing IMO ;)

[DSPguru]

Originally posted by DeXT
Raw PCM is not enough IMHO because by definition it's a headerless format.
:
I think having a container for these is a mustif any, there's only a need for an header. nothing more.
this is linear pcm audio we're talking here. a stream of raw samples. no segmentation, no data protection, no timestamps, no metadata, nothing.

[Hippo]

I can confirm that SF DVD Architect 1.0 indeed allows for recording of 24/96 LPCM audio on DVD-V, even when this feature is not mentioned in the manual or is given in the specifications of the program.
Use "Music Compilation", drag and drop your audio tracks in the submenu list, insert some optional pictures to every audio track, choose "Optimize DVD", select for the audio property "PCM (automatic)" and select "Make DVD --> Prepare and Burn". That's all.
By the way the estimated file sizes of such a audio-only DVD project are completely miscalculated, so don't trust the progress bar indicator of SF DVD-A. In fact, the burn is much quicker done than the program indicates.

The DVD audio-only discs made by DVD Architect play fine on stand-alone DVD players or PowerDVD, and even allows SP/DIF digital output of the 24/96 audio at full resolution on certain DVD players (e.g. Samsung DVD-S324). You still need to include a menu on the DVD-V, but the menu can be in principle empty. Therefore it is not necessary to connect a TV set to play your high-resolution DVD-V audio disc over the hifi-installation !

There are however still some issues regarding gapless track transitions between continuous audio tracks on 24/96 DVD-V, that still have to be resolved.

For details see thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51492

Unfortunately, during my tests of the new version of DVD Architect 1.0b, gapless track transitions of 24/96 audio appear not possible anymore. It worked fine before with the earlier 1.0 build 160 version of the software. Can someone else confirm this behaviour ?

Hippo

[tigre]

I'd be interested in a cheap sollution for authoring of DVD-V containing 24/96 audio too.

Originally posted by mpucoder
... This is a twofold problem. First is making a wav file, the second is authoring with that file. Just about any authoring program that accepts LPCM should handle 48/96, 16/20/24 and 1 to 8 channels - operative word is should. IfoEdit accepts LPCM, but we were never able to test with anything other than 48KHz 16bit stereo.
Since I have some questions about the packing order maybe we could kill 2 birds with one stone here if somebody can get me a small sample. I'll see what various programs, including IfoEdit, do with it.
...

At the moment I have a DVD-V by Chesky Records containing 24/96 LPCM audio. If you're still interested, I'd be glad to send you what you need.

If I missed something and there's already a cheap way of creating DVD-V wit 24/96 audio, I'd be glad if someone could tell.

[bitsnbytes]

@ Mr. Robinson,

For A better solution forget the video altogether. As you are correct dvd authoring software is not cheap. I suggest investing in A highend dvd audio player... now some are more useful than others... for instance my Rotel
shows files on a burnt dvd data disk like .mp3 .ac3 and .dts so then you can burn a dvd-r and not be hampered by some dvd video spec
but only the ability of the hardware to play them. The reason we have dvd audio disk setup with 6 cables coming from player to reciever as per the manual is the digital connection limitation they are apparently met with at this time.
Instead of sending such high freq etc information over digital coax or optical cables they are decoding and sending over the 6 analog cables... but what I dont know is at what point this has to happen. I Imagine its the 6 ch 24/96.
So 2 ch 24/96 is fine in fact Rotel says it will do 192 so I suggest making A dvd-r and taking it to local highend shop and testing the disk before purchase... note Rotel will not play dvd-rw + or - works fine.
In fact since the rotel reciever has multi input from the dvd audio player I would say if you play a 6ch 24/96 non mlp file and select the multi it should play it.. but untried.

gl on your experiment

[roweezy]

i have recorded 48/24 from a sony tape deck to my pc using cool edit pro and sb live sound card and i CAN hear a difference when i convert it down to 44/16. i dont have audiophile tape decks,speakers,etc, just a dell pc with the included 4.1ch speakers. i do hear a CLEAR difference between them, so you critics that claim cd is 'best'/'pristine' quality w/o actually listening to some samples, dont jump to conclusions, dvd-audio isn't 'theoretically' better than cd, it actually is. i have a dvd-audio disc and it is hands down better than the cd version. the extra resolution and bit depth make it come more alive, simply putting it. :helpful:

i used dvd architect to author a dad just like the previous post said, and yes the burning completion times are way overstated. i can't verify 96/24 output cuz my dvd player doesn't show that info, and i have no decoder/receiver that could tell me even if i used the player's digital outputs.

[Sycho]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
bunch of freaks! :p

This proves again, that the human being always wants more and more and more.
CD-DA is here, is widely supported, gives perfect sound (relatively to our ears) and you're chasing after DVD-audio and such, which are in theory better, but just in theory! well, I'll never understand you guys.
The may reason for high sampling rate is for better quailty not higher frequency responce. Think at 44.1khz a 20khz sound only gets about 2.205 samples while at 96khz it gets 4.8 samples

Edit: only analogue can provide perfect sound

[blah]

i have recorded 48/24 from a sony tape deck to my pc using cool edit pro and sb live sound card and i CAN hear a difference when i convert it down to 44/16.

Not surprising really. I would guess this is caused more by your downsampling to 44kHz than reduction to 16 bits. The downsampling has to interpolate samples and the result will be audio degradation.

I'll bet you won't hear as much difference if you recorded at 44/24 and then converted to 44/16.

BTW Since when did the sblive support 24 bit recording?