eac3to - audio conversion tool

[ACrowley]

Originally Posted by madshi

Argh, just got a reply from Nero. The reason why the 16bit TrueHD decoder output is not 16bit is because the TrueHD decoder applies Dynamic Range Control. Nero has to do that to fulfill the Dolby license. They say Dynamic Range Control can be turned off in Nero ShowTime. But unfortunately that doesn't have any effect on the decoder when using it through GraphEdit...

It gets worse: The Nero support told me that in future Nero versions the Nero license will not allow, anymore, to use the Nero filters outside of the Nero software.

So I'm sad to say that at this point I cannot recommend to buy the Nero HD DVD/Blu-Ray plugin, anymore.

If you don't like this, please complain to Nero. The more people complain the better chances we have to achieve a change. Thanks.

really bad, hopefully Sonic comes up with new allround Decoder (without TrueHD backround noise)
The current 4.3 Audio Decoder from Cinevision 2.0.2 Final isnt working without Noise

So, we have to use older Versions in the Future to decode TrueHD.
Maybe it works again with Graphedit.exe to recode.exe renaming.
Who knows. Offic. you never cant use Nero Decoders out of Showtime

I have no big Problem with the Nero TruHD 24Bit Output.
Would be bad when output when the Output is always to low with 16bit instead of 24bit.
I mean you can encode to 16bit flac or to dts fom 24bit wave without Problems
I think Sonic will apply Dynamic Range Control on TrueHD too ?

But EAC3 decoding would be bad without Nero ,because i dont want get back the DynmicRangeCompression from Sonic

[xkodi]

Originally Posted by ACrowley

really bad, hopefully Sonic comes up with new allround Decoder (without TrueHD backround noise)
The current 4.3 Audio Decoder from Cinevision 2.0.2 Final isnt working without Noise

File Source (Async.) -> Sonic HD Demuxer -> Sonic Audio Decoder 4.3 -> Nero Sound Processor -> Default DirectSound Device

when 'Nero Sound Processor' is set to stereo there is no noise and that is very interesting, so most probably the Sonic decoder works and as i mentioned before the noise is caused by incompatibility with DirectShow filters or something like that, plus both new versions - 4.2.0.84 and 4.3.0.151, that can play TrueHD have the same noise problem, so if it is 4.2.0.84 bug and is so obvious, why it's not fixed in 4.3.0.151...

[jdbuckeye2009]

ugh, it sounds kinda iffy as to whether the nero HD plugin will work, so I am a bit reluctant to shell out the $30+ for it. Maybe I'll just rent the Casablanca DVD, grab the audio, and mux it in or something. I kind of doubt that I am going to encounter a whole lot of HD-DVDs with mono DD+ audio anyways...

Thanks for the responses though.

[ACrowley]

Originally Posted by xkodi

File Source (Async.) -> Sonic HD Demuxer -> Sonic Audio Decoder 4.3 -> Nero Sound Processor -> Default DirectSound Device

when 'Nero Sound Processor' is set to stereo there is no noise and that is very interesting, so most probably the Sonic decoder works and as i mentioned before the noise is caused by incompatibility with DirectShow filters or something like that, plus both new versions - 4.2.0.84 and 4.3.0.151, that can play TrueHD have the same noise problem, so if it is 4.2.0.84 bug and is so obvious, why it's not fixed in 4.3.0.151...

Can be that Sonic 4.3 Decoder will work without Noise when we can reg the 4.3 Decoders correctly in System.
At the Moment we can only overwrite them with 4.2 Decoder cause when you try to re them you will ge the Error Message

Maybe theers no Noise cause Sonic has Problems with Mutichannel Decoding on TrueHD

File Source (Async.) -> Sonic HD Demuxer -> Sonic Audio Decoder 4.3 -> Nero Sound Processor -> Default DirectSound Device

[xkodi]

Originally Posted by ACrowley

Maybe theers no Noise cause Sonic has Problems with Mutichannel Decoding on TrueHD

but Sonic output to 'Nero Sound Processor' is in multichannel and then 'Nero Sound Processor' converts that multichannel output to stereo:



"Channel Mask: 0x3f" means 5.1 channels and "Channel Mask: 0x03" means stereo.

when i use the following graph, i.e. dump the multichannel output from Sonic to file:

File Source (Async.) -> Sonic HD Demuxer -> Sonic Audio Decoder 4.3 -> Dump

and then convert the dump file to WAV file with sox and split that file to 6 mono WAVs with Wavewizard there IS noise in all 6 channels, so 'Nero Sound Processor' do something very interesting, because there are two possibilities:

1) somehow 'Nero Sound Processor' converts multichannel WAV file with noise in all channels to stereo WAV file without noise, which seems impossible to me, because multichannel to stereo conversion basically should be mixing those 6 channels to 2 channels and thus the noise will be mixed too.

2) somehow 'Nero Sound Processor', when set to stereo, prevents Sonic to do errors and thus the multichannel output that Sonic produces in this case is different (error free) from the multichannel output that it produces, when is connected to Dump.ax filter and this option seems the right one, at least for me.

or maybe someone have other ideas how to solve that puzzle...

[Wilbert]

@xkodi, please respond:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...85#post1021485

[DeepBeepMeep]

eac3to looks to be a very interesting tool. Is there a guide somewhere that explains how to use it to convert a Blu-ray LPCM track to DTS for instance. There seems to be lots of ways to extract the LPCM from the Blu-ray and I end up with garbage noise wav tracks.

Thanks.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by DeepBeepMeep

eac3to looks to be a very interesting tool. Is there a guide somewhere that explains how to use it to convert a Blu-ray LPCM track to DTS for instance. There seems to be lots of ways to extract the LPCM from the Blu-ray and I end up with garbage noise wav tracks.

Try xport to demux the LPCM and then "eac3to some.pcm some.dts". You may need to specify the bitdepth ("-16" or "-24") when calling eac3to, if it can't figure that out on itself. If you don't get this to work, let me know which movie you've problems with.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Wilbert

@xkodi,


Is this true? I'm unable to connect a mlp stream to this decoder, but i haven't bought this HD plugin yet.

Does it work when you remux MLP (from AOB) in EOV? Or is this remuxing not possible yet?

IIRC the latest Sonic filters (Sonic HD Demuxer -> Sonic Audio Decoder) work good for demuxed MLP. Just demux the MLP and name the file "*.MLP". I can drop such a file in GraphEdit and it works at once. I wouldn't recommend the Nero filters at this time due to the processing (probably Dynamic Range Control) they're applying to the decoded data.

[Roscoe62]

Madshi,

on the previous page you said that eac3to could be used to convert a TrueHD track into LPCM. Could I trouble you to explain how this can be done? I'm guessing using the gui is NOT the way to go here.

Also, I'm trying to do the same thing with some of my DD+ audio tracks (convert to LPCM) - and I felt sure that eac3to could also do that.

Please let me know if I'm wrong, and thank you for your patience.

FWIW...the only reason I want LPCM is to preserve as much quality as possible (I see AC3 as a reduction in quality) and also to not have to use Sonic or Nero filters at playback time.

Thanks again!

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Roscoe62

on the previous page you said that eac3to could be used to convert a TrueHD track into LPCM. Could I trouble you to explain how this can be done? I'm guessing using the gui is NOT the way to go here.

Also, I'm trying to do the same thing with some of my DD+ audio tracks (convert to LPCM) - and I felt sure that eac3to could also do that.

Basically you'd do "eac3to source.eac3 dest.raw" or "eac3to source.evo dest.raw". The raw file is then basically LPCM. However, eac3to outputs little endian in the raw file while a Blu-Ray LPCM track is usually big endian. So you may need to use "sox" to change endian from little to big. Furthermore you may have to remap the channels cause the Blu-Ray LPCM channel mapping is kind of strange. Eac3to uses "-0,1,2,5,3,4" to convert Blu-Ray LPCM files to the usual channel mapping. You need to do the reverse, so try calling eac3to with "-0,1,2,4,5,3". So in short again:

(1) "eac3to source.whatever dest.raw -0,1,2,4,5,3"
(2) call "sox" to convert little endian to big endian

Don't have the sox parameters available right now, sorry.

[DeepBeepMeep]

Thanks Madshi for your answer. When converting Blu-ray to DTS or AC3 do I have to remap channels even I have already used the -Blu-Ray option ? Many thanks again for your great tool and your help.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by DeepBeepMeep

Thanks Madshi for your answer. When converting Blu-ray to DTS or AC3 do I have to remap channels even I have already used the -Blu-Ray option ? Many thanks again for your great tool and your help.

The "-blu-ray" option is no more in the current version. eac3to now defaults to the options necessary for Blu-Ray handling if you feed it a PCM file. The only thing you may have to specify is the bitdepth ("-16" or "-24"). Channels are automatically remapped correctly.

[eas4uk]

Hi Madshi

Great tool which I have now been using for a few weeks - big thanks to you mate

Is there anyway that this tool can be used to convert DTS-HD to .ac3 from the command line?

Cheers

eas4uk

[madshi]

Originally Posted by eas4uk

Is there anyway that this tool can be used to convert DTS-HD to .ac3 from the command line?

Can't you can already do that with e.g. BeHappy? DTS-HD contains a standard DTS core, I believe, so basically BeHappy should be able to do the conversion. Of course you'd lose the additional information of DTS-HD this way.

[DeepBeepMeep]

Thanks Madshi.

I may need the sonic audio decoder. I would like to buy them but can't find them on the sonic website. Are they part of some package? Thanks

[xkodi]

Originally Posted by Wilbert

@xkodi,


Is this true? I'm unable to connect a mlp stream to this decoder, but i haven't bought this HD plugin yet.

Does it work when you remux MLP (from AOB) in EOV? Or is this remuxing not possible yet?

yes, it's true, however to use Nero decoder you need first to mux the MLP into EVOB and its not easy at all to do that and EVODemux can't correctly mux AOB into EVOB, so the good choice for MLP is the Sonic decoder, it can playback raw MLP stream, so you need only to extract MLP tracks from AOB using DVDAExplorer, both Nero and Sonic do not apply DRC when playing MLP.

[eas4uk]

Originally Posted by madshi

Can't you can already do that with e.g. BeHappy? DTS-HD contains a standard DTS core, I believe, so basically BeHappy should be able to do the conversion. Of course you'd lose the additional information of DTS-HD this way.

I never had any joy with BeHappy, however, eac3to has never let me down yet, no worries I'll persevere with BeHappy until I get it to work...

Thanks again for eac3to though

[madshi]

Originally Posted by eas4uk

I never had any joy with BeHappy, however, eac3to has never let me down yet, no worries I'll persevere with BeHappy until I get it to work...

Thanks again for eac3to though

I might add DTS(-HD) support to eac3to sooner or later. But it's not a priority right now.

[eas4uk]

Originally Posted by madshi

I might add DTS(-HD) support to eac3to sooner or later. But it's not a priority right now.

That would be great if you can at some point