eac3to - audio conversion tool

[rik1138]

And next week someone else uses a different encoding software which expects "SL" and "SR" or something completely different and I have to change names again? I don't think there's a fixed standard on how to name these files. If there was such a standard, I'd be happy to make use of it. But as long as different encoders expect different names, I'll not adjust to one specific encoder.

It's not just one specific encoder, but the encoders written by DTS and Dolby (both of them). There is a fixed standard on how to name the files in the DVD/Blu-Ray industry:
For 5.1:
L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs
For 6.1:
L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs, Cs
For 7.1:
L, R, C, LFE, Lss, Rss, Lsr, Rsr

All capitals are acceptable. These are the extensions that are printed on the labels of the tapes delivered from the studios to be encoded for Blu-Ray. These extensions are also used by the two professional audio encoding suites: DTS-HD Master Audio Suite Encoder and the Dolby Media Encoder. You can see both of these encoders expecting these extensions here:
Dolby:
http://www.dolby.com/professional/pro_audio_engineering/DMP_02.html
(Click on the image to make it bigger)

DTS:
http://www.dts.com/Pro-Audio_Software/DTS-HD_Master_Audio_Suite/DTS-HD_Encoder.aspx
(Again, click on the image...)

These two pieces of software will auto-fill the WAV files when you select one if the file names are correct.

That's the only reason I mentioned it... People keep reversing the letters, or in some cases, use completely different letters, and it can get confusing sometimes...

Again, it's not really a big deal (there's probably more imortant things you have to worry about)... It's not like it's hard to rename the files. I was just making an observation... :cool:

[kypec]

Hello madshi,
any chance you could put the most recent version of libFLAC.dll (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1266310&postcount=8628) in your package at next release? Just for the sake of having up-to-date libraries included with eac3to.

[tebasuna51]

It's not just one specific encoder, but the encoders written by DTS and Dolby (both of them). There is a fixed standard on how to name the files in the DVD/Blu-Ray industry:
For 5.1:
L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs
For 6.1:
L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs, Cs
For 7.1:
L, R, C, LFE, Lss, Rss, Lsr, Rsr
...

You are free to name the channels inside DD/DTS, but still the channels are in wav format you must use the wav names and order:

Front Left - FL
Front Right - FR
Front Center - FC
Low Frequency – LF
Back Left - BL
Back Right - BR
Front Left of Center - FLC
Front Right of Center - FRC
Back Center - BC
Side Left - SL
Side Right - SR
...

[kartman_canada]

I've been pulling some of my older DVDs to disk for storage on my server. Being a user of EAC3TO for HD-DVD and BD, I was trying to stick with a similar process. Does EAC3TO do "joined VOB" correctly?

command line: eac3to.exe VTS_01_1.VOB+VTS_01_2.VOB+VTS_01_3.VOB+VTS_01_4.VOB+VTS_01_5.VOB+VTS_01_6.VOB 2: movie.m2v 3: movie.ac3

The info returned identifies the source as a "joined VOB" but the the total length is way off and I often get errors such as large gaps in the audio or video overlaps during the demuxing of the streams.

Am I doing something wrong or is this just not the correct way to use the tool?

[SamNZDat]

Welcome home madshi!

I'm trying to serve a live 16-bit 44.1 FLAC stream via Tribler, but so far, so stumped. Tribler uses Python to convert live input (FLAC in my case) to .mpegts, but thus far, none of my .mpegts output is readable. There is one thing I should mention about the FLAC I use as input: VLC can play it as a live stream (from another instance of VLC) but foobar2000 can only play it once it has been saved as a finished file.

Any tips on how to proceed? madshi, especially would appreciate your weighing in here.

Hmm (hear effete Brit accent in your mind's ear) ... I have serious doubts as to the efficacy of message boards for achieving results ... supposing one were to pay for them?

[Jeff Flowerday]

I've been pulling some of my older DVDs to disk for storage on my server. Being a user of EAC3TO for HD-DVD and BD, I was trying to stick with a similar process. Does EAC3TO do "joined VOB" correctly?

command line: eac3to.exe VTS_01_1.VOB+VTS_01_2.VOB+VTS_01_3.VOB+VTS_01_4.VOB+VTS_01_5.VOB+VTS_01_6.VOB 2: movie.m2v 3: movie.ac3

The info returned identifies the source as a "joined VOB" but the the total length is way off and I often get errors such as large gaps in the audio or video overlaps during the demuxing of the streams.

Am I doing something wrong or is this just not the correct way to use the tool?

No it doesn't. Currently eac3to isn't capable of reading IFO and handling SD DVDs. When or if Madshi will add support can only be answered by him.

Use DVD Decrypter.

[The_Keymaker]

I just ripped my copy of Iron Man Blu-Ray using eac3to and have two questions.

1. It appears that MKmerge does not support muxing of TrueHD audio tracks (at least the version I'm using (v 2.53) doesn't. How can I mux a TreuHD audio track into mkv? Is this possible? My audio file has the extension *.thd.

2. For playback i use Zoom Player which as you know is highly configurable, allowing me to select directshow filters for play back. Howver, I can't seem to get the Iron Man TrueHD audio track to play. In graphedit I tried using Nero File source (Async) > Nero Splitter > Nero Audio Decoder 2 > Audio Renderer. But nothing connects (yes, I renamed graphedit to "Recode"). Any suggestions on a working graph for TrueHD playback??

Thanks,
The_Keymaker

[Mark_A_W]

I just ripped my copy of Iron Man Blu-Ray using eac3to and have two questions.

1. It appears that MKmerge does not support muxing of TrueHD audio tracks (at least the version I'm using (v 2.53) doesn't. How can I mux a TreuHD audio track into mkv? Is this possible? My audio file has the extension *.thd.

2. For playback i use Zoom Player which as you know is highly configurable, allowing me to select directshow filters for play back. Howver, I can't seem to get the Iron Man TrueHD audio track to play. In graphedit I tried using Nero File source (Async) > Nero Splitter > Nero Audio Decoder 2 > Audio Renderer. But nothing connects (yes, I renamed graphedit to "Recode"). Any suggestions on a working graph for TrueHD playback??

Thanks,
The_Keymaker


You could convert the TrueHD track losslessly to FLAC - that's what most of use do.

Flac is easy to decode, thanks to Madshi writing the Madflac decoder ;)

[kypec]

No it doesn't. Currently eac3to isn't capable of reading IFO and handling SD DVDs. When or if Madshi will add support can only be answered by him.

Use DVD Decrypter.
Yes, definitely use DVD Decrypter and pay attention you choose only one PGC to decrypt in IFO mode. Select None file splitting as to finish with only one (rather huge) VOB file instead of many smaller ones. eac3to has (probably as many other tools) problems with multiangle VOB stuff and such. I recently used eac3to with 2 joined VOBs ripped via IFO mode (one PGC only) successfully - The Lion King 2 Special Edition.:)

[kypec]

Hmm (hear effete Brit accent in your mind's ear) ... I have serious doubts as to the efficacy of message boards for achieving results ... supposing one were to pay for them?
No offense man but what has your problem to do with eac3to? Tribler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribler) seems to me as completely unrelated to HD-DVD/BD/DVD audio/video processing for which eac3to is targeted. You shouldn't put your hopes in getting fast and effective answers from the forum members when you post at the wrong forum in the first place. If you anticipate to receive help directly from madshi on your problems you better try to contact him personally via PM/IM.
If I was in a bad mood I'd say your post is nothing but violating our forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm), especially point 12. :readrule:
My advice to you is find Tribler discussion forum and try to ask for solution there.

[The_Keymaker]

You could convert the TrueHD track losslessly to FLAC - that's what most of use do.

Flac is easy to decode, thanks to Madshi writing the Madflac decoder ;)

Thanks Mark_A_W,

Converting to FLAC is what I usually do, but I've noticed, at least on my system (Krell PrePro, Pass Labs Amplification and B&W Nautilus 802s) that the bit streamed audio track sounds a little better than the same audio track when it is FLAC encoded/decoded. Technically there should be no difference as FLAC is a lossless compression format, but it sounds like something is missing...

In any event, if there is not a way to mux and playback a TrueHD audio track, i'll have to revert back to FLAC encoding/decoding.

Thanks!

[xkodi]

Technically there should be no difference as FLAC is a lossless compression format, but it sounds like something is missing...

In any event, if there is not a way to mux and playback a TrueHD audio track, i'll have to revert back to FLAC encoding/decoding

and why are you sure that TrueHD decoder you are using is bit-perfect decoder like bit-perfect eac3to to FLAC conversion and doesn't do some post-processing which makes the difference?

[rik1138]

You are free to name the channels inside DD/DTS, but still the channels are in wav format you must use the wav names and order:

Front Left - FL
Front Right - FR
Front Center - FC
Low Frequency – LF
Back Left - BL
Back Right - BR
Front Left of Center - FLC
Front Right of Center - FRC
Back Center - BC
Side Left - SL
Side Right - SR
...

I'm not sure I follow you... The letter codes I posted are the file names for the WAV files themselves. It's got nothing to do with being inside DD/DTS. That's how the individual WAV files are supposed to be named. It's a professional industry standard in Blu-Ray and DVD production. I've never seen WAV files or audio channels labeled like you've mentioned above... I'm not an audio engineer though, that might be where those designations originally came from...

Are you talking about when making a 7.1 channel single WAV file? Maybe that's where the confusion is coming from... I'm talking about when each channel is a separate mono WAV file. That's all the professional encoders will accept, they don't recognize multi-channel WAVs (well, anything above a stereo WAV that is). Uncompressed audio is never delivered that way to a BD/DVD production facility. It's always delivered as each speaker in it's own, mono WAV file... That's helpful, too, if there's a problem with one channel, they don't have to re-deliver or re-capture the entire audio track, just that one channel.

For example, if we were to get .WAV files for a 5.1 project, here's what they'd be named:
Dolby_C.wav
Dolby_L.wav
Dolby_LFE.wav
Dolby_LS.wav
Dolby_R.wav
Dolby_RS.wav

Each one is a 24-bit, mono WAV file. Those are the extensions that would be required by the encoding software...

Hope that helps explain what I was referring to... Individual WAV files, not multi-channel WAVs.

Rik

[tebasuna51]

That's all the professional encoders will accept, they don't recognize multi-channel WAVs
For what? professional?
Hope that helps explain what I was referring to... Individual WAV files, not multi-channel WAVs.
Yes I say individual mono wav files:

Channel_FL.wav
Channel_FR.wav
Channel_FC.wav
Channel_LF.wav
Channel_BL.wav
Channel_BR.wav
...

[The_Keymaker]

and why are you sure that TrueHD decoder you are using is bit-perfect decoder like bit-perfect eac3to to FLAC conversion and doesn't do some post-processing which makes the difference?

I'm not sure. I can only trust my ears.

By the way legions of posters on AVSforum have observed the same thing: Bitstreamed audio sounds different (better) than LPCM (decoded FLAC) from the SAME audio track. Some suspect it has something to do with the metadata.

In any event Until there are HDMI audio/video cards that support non-Protected Audio Path bit streaming, I'll have to make do with FLAC.

The_Keymaker

[honai]

By the way legions of posters on AVSforum have observed the same thing: Bitstreamed audio sounds different (better) than LPCM (decoded FLAC) from the SAME audio track.

Where's the double-blind listening test to support that statement? ;)

[StephenB]

Yes, definitely use DVD Decrypter and pay attention you choose only one PGC to decrypt in IFO mode. Select None file splitting as to finish with only one (rather huge) VOB file instead of many smaller ones. eac3to has (probably as many other tools) problems with multiangle VOB stuff and such. I recently used eac3to with 2 joined VOBs ripped via IFO mode (one PGC only) successfully - The Lion King 2 Special Edition.:)

This often works, but not always. The Studio splash stuff at the beginning often creates a gap that results in lipsync errors. Processing again with the video gap info sometimes fixes it, but often does not.

I've had better luck with the old PGCDemux tool, using its "by VOB id" mode. This creates one file per VID. You can then delete the very short ones at the beginning, and use EAC3TO to join/process the remainder.

[TinTime]

By the way legions of posters on AVSforum have observed the same thing: Bitstreamed audio sounds different (better) than LPCM (decoded FLAC) from the SAME audio track. Some suspect it has something to do with the metadata.

I think there are four options (none to do with metadata, unless you prefer DRC and channel down-mixing - I'm guessing not :D):

1. Transcoding TrueHD to flac with eac3to (i.e. libavcodec or libflac) is not perfect.
2. Windows and/or audio drivers are interfering with LPCM en route.
3. The decoding device processes TrueHD differently to LPCM in a way that sounds more pleasing, but is not perfect.
4. Placebo.

Point 1 seems unlikely as it can be tested (and I assume has been?) by anyone with access to a TrueHD encoder.
Point 2 is a distinct possibility and kind of hard to check. A DTS wav file is one way, although it's only 2 channel.
3 and 4 can be sorted out with the double-blind listening test mentioned by honai. It might also allow points 1 and 2 to be ignored :)

[The_Keymaker]

I think there are four options (none to do with metadata, unless you prefer DRC and channel down-mixing - I'm guessing not :D):

1. Transcoding TrueHD to flac with eac3to (i.e. libavcodec or libflac) is not perfect.
2. Windows and/or audio drivers are interfering with LPCM en route.
3. The decoding device processes TrueHD differently to LPCM in a way that sounds more pleasing, but is not perfect.
4. Placebo.

Point 1 seems unlikely as it can be tested (and I assume has been?) by anyone with access to a TrueHD encoder.
Point 2 is a distinct possibility and kind of hard to check. A DTS wav file is one way, although it's only 2 channel.
3 and 4 can be sorted out with the double-blind listening test mentioned by honai. It might also allow points 1 and 2 to be ignored :)

I trust eac3to and I can rule out placebo effect (listening to a movie I THOUGHT was bit streamed but sounded odd, is what set me on my quest). So I guess 2 and 3 are possibilities (based on the choices given).

By the way, the differences seem to be greater with the TrueHD/DTS-MA vs LPCM than the DD/DTS vs LPCM.

I have a high resolution audio playback system and suspect many people's systems do not possess enough resolution to distinguish the small differences I am hearing (Indeed, I recall reading once that studies show some can't distinguish the differences between 640kbps vs High bit rate formats).

Anyway, thanks for all the help. I do not want to go off-topic anymore in this thread!

The_Keymaker

[rik1138]

For what? professional?

Yes I say individual mono wav files:

Channel_FL.wav
Channel_FR.wav
Channel_FC.wav
Channel_LF.wav
Channel_BL.wav
Channel_BR.wav
...

Yeah, that's incorrect (for DVD/Blu-Ray delivery). Files are never delivered from the studios with names like that.

When I say professional encoders, I'm referring to Dolby's Media Encoder and DTS's DTS-HD Master Audio Suite Encoder as I mentioned in a previous post. These are the encoders the studios use for their titles. Neither one of these encoders would be able to automatically assign any of the WAV files you named above to a channel.

From the Manual for the DTS-HD Master Audio Suite Encoder:

Abbreviation Description
L Left
R Right
C Center
LFE Low Frequency Effects
Ls Left Surround
Rs Right Surround
Cs Center Surround
ss Surround Side
sr Surround Rear
S Surround
Lt/Rt Left Total/Right Total

The manual spells it out in even more detail when discussing every possible abbreviation that it recognizes (any other abbreviation is ignored and would have to be manually entered into the encoder):

Channel ID Definitions
L Left Speaker
R Right Speaker
Lt Left Total
Rt Right Total
C Center Speaker
LFE, LF, or SW Low Frequency Effects / Subwoofer
Ls Left Surround Speaker
Rs Right Surround Speaker
Lsr Left Surround Rear Speaker
Rsr Right Surround Rear Speaker
Lss Left Surround Side Speaker
Rss Right Surround Side Speaker
Lw Left Wide Speaker
Rw Right Wide Speaker
Lh Left Height Speaker
Rh Right Height Speaker
Lhs Left Height Side Speaker
Rhs Right Height Side Speaker
Cs Center Surround Speaker
S Surround Speaker
Ch Center Height Speaker
Oh Overhead Speaker

The Dolby Media Encoder expects the same abbreviations... Nothing is ever referred to as 'Front' or 'Back'. Front is assumed if there's no designation, and 'Back' is always referred to as 'Rear'.

Where did you get your abbreviations from? Is that from ProTools or something? I've never seen anything used in DVD/Blu-Ray production that uses those abbreviations...

[yesgrey]

By the way legions of posters on AVSforum have observed the same thing: Bitstreamed audio sounds different (better) than LPCM (decoded FLAC) from the SAME audio track. Some suspect it has something to do with the metadata.
I suspect they are not bypassing microsoft internal resamplers (kmixer in XP and WaveRT in Vista). Are they using reclock with Kernel Streaming in XP or with WASAPI in VISTA?

[tebasuna51]

Where did you get your abbreviations from? Is that from ProTools or something? I've never seen anything used in DVD/Blu-Ray production that uses those abbreviations...

Nope, is for wav specs (no dts or dd or ...)

This is a old doc http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~rwd/mulchaud.rtf

but you can see the same in M$ docs:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa474697.aspx

[73ChargerFan]

Where did you get your abbreviations from?
Microsoft programming documentation.

On another note, mkvmerge now muxes TrueHD.

[rik1138]

Nope, is for wav specs (no dts or dd or ...)

This is a old doc http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~rwd/mulchaud.rtf

but you can see the same in M$ docs:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa474697.aspx

I suppose that makes sense... Like I said, I only work in the DVD/Blu-Ray industry, not audio or recording. Dolby and DTS do not use the WAV file naming conventions created by Microsoft (and you don't use WAV files on DVD and Blu-Ray discs either, only as a source file before encoding/converting to DD/DTS/PCM). Microsoft created the WAV format, so they created the channel naming abbreviations. So, for a WAV file, that's probably accurate, if it's going to stay a WAV file. If the intent is to convert the WAV file to another format, the naming convention of that format should be used. Especially if the tools used to convert the file expect a certain naming convention.

I only brought this up because Madshi asked if there is a set standard for channel naming. The channel naming standard for DVD/Blu-Ray is like I mentioned above, not the one created by Microsoft. :D

His program is widely used in the professional industry, so I thought he might want to conform the file naming to match the other industry tools... It's up to him I suppose.

[The_Keymaker]

Microsoft programming documentation.

On another note, mkvmerge now muxes TrueHD.

Thanks ChargerFan, I'll download the latest revision from Mosu.

The_Keymaker

[TinTime]

I suppose that makes sense... Like I said, I only work in the DVD/Blu-Ray industry, not audio or recording. Dolby and DTS do not use the WAV file naming conventions created by Microsoft (and you don't use WAV files on DVD and Blu-Ray discs either, only as a source file before encoding/converting to DD/DTS/PCM). Microsoft created the WAV format, so they created the channel naming abbreviations. So, for a WAV file, that's probably accurate, if it's going to stay a WAV file. If the intent is to convert the WAV file to another format, the naming convention of that format should be used. Especially if the tools used to convert the file expect a certain naming convention.

I only brought this up because Madshi asked if there is a set standard for channel naming. The channel naming standard for DVD/Blu-Ray is like I mentioned above, not the one created by Microsoft. :D

His program is widely used in the professional industry, so I thought he might want to conform the file naming to match the other industry tools... It's up to him I suppose.

I guess the point is that eac3to doesn't know what your intent is. Its task in this case is to split an audio file into its individual channels and store them as wavs. That's it. Given that this is the end of its role it makes sense to follow MS naming conventions for what is an MS format. After all, if you wanted to process the wavs in some way and join them back together to make a multichannel wav then you'd want to stick with MS names anyway.

The only way around this is a switch for eac3to to tell it what your future intention is for its output, i.e. whether you want MS names, or DTS names, or Dolby names, or whatever. I think madness lies down that route :eek:

As you say it's up to madshi. My vote would be to stick with names as they are though, not least because suddenly changing them would probably cause grief to anyone with batch scripts containing the current names. Like me :)

[rik1138]

I guess the point is that eac3to doesn't know what your intent is. Its task in this case is to split an audio file into its individual channels and store them as wavs. That's it.

I would tend to disagree with that. The entire purpose of almost every application discussed here is ways to convert video/audio from one format to another for playback on computers, DVD players, Blu-Ray players, etc... I doubt anyone here leaves their audio in WAV format for that. You use eac3to to extract from one format and encode into another format... Thus the WAVs created from eac3to are specifically used to be re-encoded into another format, again, for the most part. Most people are trying to convert DTS to AC3, or the other way around, or to convert lossless codecs into PCM or FLAC. Me, I use it mostly to convert HD DVD Dolby to Blu-Ray Dolby/DTS. I also use it to extract DTS-HD MA audio and re-encode it into Dolby TrueHD (or the other way) so I can have both formats on my disc. That's good for A/B testing (or showing off) of sound systems and such... Not too many commercial discs put both lossless formats on the disc (technically, it's probably kind of pointless for the average viewer...)

And, as far as I know, any audio editing tool of any kind will recognize the DTS/Dolby standard naming convention, as well as the Microsoft one. You see, it's not just DTS/Dolby, it's _everyone else_, and then Microsoft (which is a common thing with Microsoft anyway... :rolleyes: ). Pro Tools, master tape layback, etc all use the same naming convention that DTS/Dolby use... Which Dolby/DTS probably just adopted from the standard convention used in the video industry. So if you put a switch in the tool for the output files names, the switch would be 'Microsoft names' or 'Everyone else's names'. That's all you'd need... Dolby and DTS do use the same naming.

As someone who works in the industry, I was just trying to help bring the tool up to industry standards, that's all... I didn't think it would cause such a huge debate! :D

It's funny you mention that your batch application wouldn't work if he changed the naming convention... Well, none of _my_ tools will work with current naming convention, and I don't have the ability to change that (since I didn't write the tools...) But I guess if everyone is used to using it the way it is, maybe it should just be left alone... I can rename files easily enough... :cool:

[kastrom]

On another note, mkvmerge now muxes TrueHD.

How about eac3? I can see it in the changelog but I havn't been able to mux in eac3 in an mkv. Is it possible? Should be very nice to have the original sound in the mkv.

/Kent

[xkodi]

I also use it to extract DTS-HD MA audio and re-encode it into Dolby TrueHD

and what tool are you using to create Dolby TrueHD?

[ACrowley]

and what tool are you using to create Dolby TrueHD?

theres NO Software Encoder or "Tool" available on Windwos Plattform. Not one single one!

So he can only use Dolby Media Encoder (SE) for MAC
http://www.dolby.com/professional/pro_audio_engineering/DMP_02.html

other Questions :
1. Its not possible to extract the German KingKong Bluray with eac3to.
Nothing happens after i select the Playlist.....

But it was possible to join the M2TS Files for the extended Version with TSMuxer

2. eac3to is patching the Bitdepth from DTS-HR Audio Tracks from 16 to 24bit ? I think it cant cause Problems/trouble (HDMi Passtrough for example)?

[rik1138]

theres NO Software Encoder or "Tool" available on Windows Plattform. Not one single one!

Officially, you are correct. Dolby has no plans to release a PC based encoder, which _REALLY_ sucks as the entire DVD/Blu-Ray productions workflow is PC based (film capture, encoding, authoring...) Dolby claims that there is no market or interest in a PC based encoder. And the Mac encoder is slower than sin... It can literally take half a day to encode a TrueHD stream. (We could probably put it on a faster Mac, but still... everyone complains about how slow it is...)

But, there's is a PC based MLP encoder that Dolby has written, but it's a beta only, and they will only loan it to you (as in, loan you the entire computer...) if you convince them you have a need for it (and they probably have no intention of releasing it). Currently it's required for doing segmented multi-angle features, so that's about the only place it's used. It only encodes the MLP stream (lossless part) of the TrueHD though, you still have to encode the AC3 separately and then use Scenarist or something to mux it together. But it encodes MLP 100s of times faster than the Media Encoder which makes it worth using just for that. They are incorporating the multi-segment processing into the Mac tool, so that will eliminate the 'need' for the PC encoder I suppose...

Fortunately, DTS-HD MA works perfectly with segmented features, so that's a far easier-to-use option... And it encodes faster than Dolby on either platform...

[nonymous]

I Love eac3to! It's great and versatile. Used in on a couple of occasions and always find it being able to do the one thing I need to do.

Would you be open to a Linux / Mac OSX port? I'd be willing to help with the autoconfig, make and conditional compilation tricks required! Especially since I would myself love to have a command line version for my mac. I understand that you have hook-ups with Nero and other things but eac3to is still VERY USEFUL even without ANY of those external programs. Let me know, I'd love to help. I understand you may not want to share the code but it could still be distributed in the binary form (we could have a rpm for linux and dmg for mac or something like that). PM me please.

[buzzqw]

Hi Madshi

could you add support for avs (audio) files ? as wavi ?

would be handy for using a unique tool for audio encoding (i use eac3to for decoding AND piping to nero/ogg/lame...)

thanks!

BHH

[tebasuna51]

could you add support for avs (audio) files ? as wavi ?

I can't understand your request, please explain it.

[ACrowley]

Officially, you are correct. Dolby has no plans to release a PC based encoder, which _REALLY_ sucks as the entire DVD/Blu-Ray productions workflow is PC based (film capture, encoding, authoring...) Dolby claims that there is no market or interest in a PC based encoder. And the Mac encoder is slower than sin... It can literally take half a day to encode a TrueHD stream. (We could probably put it on a faster Mac, but still... everyone complains about how slow it is...)

But, there's is a PC based MLP encoder that Dolby has written, but it's a beta only, and they will only loan it to you (as in, loan you the entire computer...) if you convince them you have a need for it (and they probably have no intention of releasing it). Currently it's required for doing segmented multi-angle features, so that's about the only place it's used. It only encodes the MLP stream (lossless part) of the TrueHD though, you still have to encode the AC3 separately and then use Scenarist or something to mux it together. But it encodes MLP 100s of times faster than the Media Encoder which makes it worth using just for that. They are incorporating the multi-segment processing into the Mac tool, so that will eliminate the 'need' for the PC encoder I suppose...

Fortunately, DTS-HD MA works perfectly with segmented features, so that's a far easier-to-use option... And it encodes faster than Dolby on either platform...

yeah youre right.
When i would have the choce : Ofcourse i would by the DTS HD MAS Suite. But its to expensive (~1500$)

[Jeff Flowerday]

I Love eac3to! It's great and versatile. Used in on a couple of occasions and always find it being able to do the one thing I need to do.

Would you be open to a Linux / Mac OSX port? I'd be willing to help with the autoconfig, make and conditional compilation tricks required! Especially since I would myself love to have a command line version for my mac. I understand that you have hook-ups with Nero and other things but eac3to is still VERY USEFUL even without ANY of those external programs. Let me know, I'd love to help. I understand you may not want to share the code but it could still be distributed in the binary form (we could have a rpm for linux and dmg for mac or something like that). PM me please.

You do know that madshi develops in delphi?

[buzzqw]

I can't understand your request, please explain it.

eac3to.exe audio.avs 1: stdout.wav | lame - -cbr 128 audio.mp3

where audio.avs is
nicac3source("c:\audio.ac3",2)


as example

BHH

[Kurtnoise]

why not using wavi for that ?

or this ?
eac3to.exe audio.ac3 1: stdout.wav | lame - -cbr 128 audio.mp3

[tebasuna51]

If eac3to is not used to decode, or to demux from a container, for what you need eac3to?

Like Kurtnoise say use wavi if you need avs for a complex change or use directly the eac3to decoders (the same than nicaudio at least).

[buzzqw]

within avs i can use directshowsource for input file

and i prefer to not use another program (like wavi) but, if possibile (as request) to add avs support to eac3to

for example FLV video file isn't supported by eac3to, BUT with AVS/DSS support would be easy to handle it

BHH

[rik1138]

yeah youre right.
When i would have the choce : Ofcourse i would by the DTS HD MAS Suite. But its to expensive (~1500$)

It's cheaper than Dolby's though. :D Dolby Media Encoder SE is about $2500-3000.

Rik

[StephenB]

Quote:
Originally Posted by StephenB
I would also like a switch that suppressed the second pass.

If you can find a good reason for that?

When I use EAC3TO to extract from vob files, on about 1 DVD out of 20 the audio gap processing causes a lip sync error. (The vob files seem clean BTW, and only contain the PGC I am interested in). Re-processing (using the video gap) does not help. If I do the same extraction with version 2.80 using -ignoreDiscon there is no lipsync problem. I'd rather not have to keep version 2.80 around; I'd prefer it if the flag was put back.

[Snowknight26]

madshi, mkv files edited with the header editor in mkvmerge aren't recognized by eac3to.

[kalia]

Hi Madshi

could you add support for avs (audio) files ? as wavi ?

would be handy for using a unique tool for audio encoding (i use eac3to for decoding AND piping to nero/ogg/lame...)

thanks!

BHH

yeah madshi, it would definitely be handy! http://www.photopile.info/img/c/8.gif

[sucker]

i tried importing a converted TrueHD2WAV track into Scenarist, but scenarist MUI Generator tells me "The Scpecified ChannelAssign is not corresponding to data"
i also tried the same TrueHD track converted to PCM and PCM2tsmu both won´t be accepted by Scenarist, so i´m hoping it´s a mixup between the eac3to channel layout and the layout that Scenarist expects, anybody able to help here?

[rik1138]

Well, we know eac3to doesn't follow the standards used by the DVD/Blu-Ray industry for channel naming, it's using Microsoft's naming convention instead.. It's possible that the layout is affected the same way. I'm not sure exactly how Scenarist knows what channel is what, unless that's indicated in the WAV header/meta somewhere (and it might be expecting a specific layout). It would be expecting the channels to be in this order: L, C, R, LS, RS, LFE for 5.1

Just extract your TrueHD into individual mono WAVs instead, and use the MUI Generator to create your multi-channel PCM that way. (Open the MUI Generator, select your _LEFT_ channel WAV in the ES File box. Then select 'Use Multi LPCM function' and click Input LPCM Files. You can then select the rest of your files and it will create a .VES file you can drop into Scenarist.)

[AnryV]

eac3to v3.15
command line: eac3to eng.thd eng.wavs
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TrueHD, 5.1 channels, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Removing TrueHD dialog normalization...
Decoding with libav/ffmpeg...
Writing WAVs...
Creating file "eng.R.wav"...
Creating file "eng.SL.wav"...
Creating file "eng.LFE.wav"...
Creating file "eng.SR.wav"...
Creating file "eng.C.wav"...
Creating file "eng.L.wav"...
The original audio track has a constant bit depth of 16 bits.
Superfluous zero bytes detected, will be stripped in 2nd pass.
Starting 2nd pass...
Removing TrueHD dialog normalization...
Decoding with libav/ffmpeg...
Reducing depth from 24 to 16 bits...
Writing WAVs...
Creating file "eng.R.wav"...
Creating file "eng.C.wav"...
Creating file "eng.SL.wav"...
Creating file "eng.L.wav"...
Creating file "eng.SR.wav"...
Creating file "eng.LFE.wav"...
The processed audio track has a constant bit depth of 16 bits.
eac3to processing took 20 minutes, 35 seconds.
Done.

eac3to v3.15
command line: eac3to eng.thd eng.wavs -nero
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TrueHD, 5.1 channels, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Disabling DRC for Nero (E-)AC3 decoding...
Removing TrueHD dialog normalization...
Decoding with DirectShow (Nero Audio Decoder 2)...
DirectShow reports 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
Writing WAVs...
Creating file "eng.SR.wav"...
Creating file "eng.C.wav"...
Creating file "eng.L.wav"...
Creating file "eng.SL.wav"...
Creating file "eng.R.wav"...
Creating file "eng.LFE.wav"...
The original audio track has a constant bit depth of 24 bits.
eac3to processing took 12 minutes, 9 seconds.
Done.

What bit depth the original track has? 24 or 16?

[rik1138]

If it's TrueHD, it should be 24bit original audio. This line is interesting:

"Superfluous zero bytes detected, will be stripped in 2nd pass."

Maybe libav can't do true 24 bit, so it's making all the bits above 16 zeros, which eac3to then strips off...

I'd stick with the nero decode.

[TinTime]

Although TrueHD is always 24 bit not all of those bits are necessarily used. There are plenty of TrueHD tracks with only 16 or 20 bits per sample used. When eac3to decodes TrueHD it does so as 24 bit but if it reaches the end of file and discovers that 8 of the 24 bits are just zero padding it will strip them and produce a 16 bit output file, as has happened here.

What I'm not sure about is why Nero output isn't identical. I thought it was for 5.1 channels or under. It is outputting a message "Disabling DRC for Nero (E-)AC3 decoding..." but not mentioning TrueHD. If DRC is still being applied by the Nero TrueHD decoder then that would account for it. I suspect it's just a generic message for the Nero filter though.

Because of Nero's limitation to 5.1 channels, libav (i.e. the default) is the recommended decoder to use for TrueHD.

[The_Keymaker]

Microsoft programming documentation.

On another note, mkvmerge now muxes TrueHD.

OK, I've installed the latest release of MKVmerge and it still gives me an error message and says it is an unknown type when I try to mux the TrueHD audio of Iron man.

Am I missing something?

The_Keymaker