eac3to - audio conversion tool

[madshi]

Madshi, which one is the latest? http://www.db-instable.org/misc/truehd-decoder-v2.patch (from 16-jan-2008)
The latest is shipping with eac3to. The MLP patch is contained in the "legal stuff" folder.

[scarbrtj]

someone above was mentioning HD DVD AVC files and the 29.97 framerate... I just wanted to mention that h264info (alpha 18 v) will remove pulldown. I just check that option and don't even type in a new framerate, and you get a 23.976fps AVC file which plays very nice and muxes into mkv without juttering. If you take the 29.97fps file and mux it into mkv and specify a 23.976 framerate in mkvmerge, it will play at the right speed but there will be occsional juttering and stutters.

[The_Keymaker]

Please download the latest version (v1.65) of EAC3toGUI from the following link:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5xsiqz

Version 1.65 changes and upgrades:
1. Added -resampleToX and -quality=X options
2. Added *.mkv as a valid destination file type
3. Changed file type error message to support new file types

I will work on adding more options and enhancements soon. In the meantime you can always use the "Other Options" tab to input options manually.

Please report any bugs or suggestions for improvements.

Regards,
The_Keymaker

[scarbrtj]

madshi, do I need to install ffdshow to get the libav decoders? I have just been using Sonic & Nero and have been using v2.14 since it was released.

[nautilus7]

"Normal" AC3 and E-AC3 tracks have one (E-)AC3 frame per audio frame. 7.1 E-AC3 tracks have two E-AC3 frames per audio frame. The first E-AC3 frame is a conventional 5.1 E-AC3 core. The 2nd E-AC3 frame is an E-AC3 frame with 4 channels in it. Two of those channels replace the surround channels of the 5.1 core. The other two channels are the back surround channels. The surround channels of the 5.1 core are totally dropped when a decoder decodes the 7.1 extension. The surround channels of the core contain a downmix of the surround and back surround channels.

The Nero and Sonic E-AC3 decoders can handle 7.1 E-AC3 tracks, but they ignore the 7.1 extension. The current version of the libav/ffmpeg E-AC3 decoder complains and stops decoding if you feed it 7.1 E-AC3. You can feed it the 5.1 core, though, then it decodes the track just fine (but only in 5.1, of course). eac3to v2.21 automatically extracts the core if you use the "-libav" switch for 7.1 E-AC3 decoding.

This "two E-AC3 frames per audio frame" logic means that delaycut 1.3 doesn't handle E-AC3 tracks correctly. delaycut doesn't make any difference between core and extension. As a result the audio tracks may be messed up by delaycut. eac3to v2.21 should be able to delay 7.1 E-AC3 tracks just fine, though.


You should ask how I managed to slow muxing down so much in the older versions... :o The video parsers had a bad loop design which slowed everything down a lot. I just did a tiny bit of optimization which fixed the problem. VC-1 and h264 handling is about 4x faster, I think. With MPEG2 the difference was smaller in my test. I still use the Haali Media Splitter followed by mkvtoolnix timestamp rewriting for h264 and MPEG2 content.
Did you know that you explain things very well? Thank you. :)

[nautilus7]

madshi, do I need to install ffdshow to get the libav decoders? I have just been using Sonic & Nero and have been using v2.14 since it was released.
If you need the decoders just to use them along with eac3to, then no, you don't need anything. The libav decoders come with eac3to, as madshi already told you.

[Thunderbolt8]

Which FLAC decoder are you using? Try both ffdshow and madFlac. Does the problem occur with both decoders?

The "blu-ray" switch only shows effect with multi channel tracks. So it's not needed for stereo tracks.
the problems occured when using madflac, tested it now with ffdshow audio and then it works fine.

[madshi]

Please download the latest version (v1.65) of EAC3toGUI from the following link:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5xsiqz

Version 1.65 changes and upgrades:
1. Added -resampleToX and -quality=X options
2. Added *.mkv as a valid destination file type
3. Changed file type error message to support new file types

I will work on adding more options and enhancements soon. In the meantime you can always use the "Other Options" tab to input options manually.
Thanks! Have uploaded it to my homepage.

Please report any bugs or suggestions for improvements.
Here are my suggestions:

(1) *.vc1 files are also supported as input files.

(2) eac3to can combine multiple source files, which is especially useful for EVO files cause most HD DVD movies come in two separate EVO files. So it would be useful to at least allow two source file edit boxes.

(3) It would be nice to have WM_DROPFILES support, so that source files can be drag&dropped to the GUI.

[madshi]

someone above was mentioning HD DVD AVC files and the 29.97 framerate... I just wanted to mention that h264info (alpha 18 v) will remove pulldown. I just check that option and don't even type in a new framerate, and you get a 23.976fps AVC file which plays very nice and muxes into mkv without juttering. If you take the 29.97fps file and mux it into mkv and specify a 23.976 framerate in mkvmerge, it will play at the right speed but there will be occsional juttering and stutters.
FWIW, with a future eac3to version it should be possible to get stutter free muxing to MKV without having to remove the pulldown flags first.

Did you know that you explain things very well?
:)

the problems occured when using madflac, tested it now with ffdshow audio and then it works fine.
Could you please post a description of the problem to the madFlac thread? If possible, a small sample would be great. Thanks!

[Yraen]

The latest is shipping with eac3to. The MLP patch is contained in the "legal stuff" folder.

I don't think I've seen that folder since 2.14. I've got it, but it hasn't been contained in the zip since 2.14 so I'm not sure where I got it.

@ The_Keymaker
Check your PM

[The_Keymaker]

@Madshi,
Multiple source file feature already in the works and *.vc1 files will be supported on next release.

@Yraen,
Thanks for the PM. I will be in contact!

The_Keymaker

[madshi]

eac3to v2.22 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* gap/overlap logic changed completely (optional two pass muxing now)
* "-ignoreGaps" parameter is gone
The new gap/overlap logic works like this:

You mux a HD DVD to MKV. Gaps/overlaps may be detected or not. If no gaps/overlaps are detected, everything is just fine and you're done. This should be the default behaviour. However, if gaps are detected, the MKV is still muxed straight and without taking care of the gaps. As a result the MKV will play very smoothly, but audio sync might be lost with some rare movies. The gap information is not lost, though, it will be stored by eac3to to a file named "whatever.gaps". eac3to will print out a long and detailed warning in this situation. If you see the warning, you'll have to manually check whether audio is in sync or not. If it's in sync, again everything is fine and you can delete the "whatever.gaps" file and be done with it. If audio is not in sync, you should simply ask eac3to to redo the MKV muxing. eac3to will then automatically load the "whatever.gaps" file and use the information stored in that file for the new mux. The resulting MKV file should finally be fully in sync.

The main reason for going to 2 pass muxing is that most movies have no gaps at all, or only very minor gaps (which might not even be real gaps but just caused by bad EVO timestamps). For all those movies the MKV created by eac3to in the first pass is always the best solution. The gap/overlap detection logic used by v2.21 and older versions was by design (because it was a one pass muxing solution) not able to look into the future. Because of that there was sometimes misdetection of gaps/overlaps. This problem should be solved now by the 2 pass design. The new design collects all information during the first pass muxing and cleans the information up after the first pass is done. This way unstable timestamps in the EVO files shouldn't throw eac3to off that much, anymore.

[Yraen]

madshi,

Where does the "whatever.gaps" file need to reside? With the source, the destination or with eac3to? Is it possible to specify the folder in the command line where this file resides?

[shlap]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but can eac3to do this:

Join 2 EVOs, Demux them, and give me a video file and an ac3 audio file.... by running a single command? I've tried
eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo movie.mkv
but I ended up with 1 video stream in the mkv and a separate flac audio file. Thanks!

[Yraen]

Just use mkvmerge to join the audio to the mkv. Unfortunately there is no single command line to join them together.

[shlap]

Just use mkvmerge to join the audio to the mkv. Unfortunately there is no single command line to join them together.


OK, thanks man. One more quick question, how do I convert flac to ac3? thanks again.

[Yraen]

eac3to input.flac output.ac3

[shlap]

Easy enough, thanks again!

[menlvd]

why eac3to (latest ver) when decoding ac3 2.0 to wavs produsing a large files (2gb for channel), and sounds is wery bad, plays to slow :)
but it's only 1:21h
AC3, 2.0 channels, 1:21:06, 384kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Removing dialog normalization...
Loading white noise (needed for dithering)...
Writing WAVs...
Creating/writing file "e:\fl_away.L.wav"...
Creating/writing file "e:\fl_away.R.wav"...
eac3to processing took 3 minutes, 43 seconds.
Done.
resulting file
size - 2ch each 2gb
time - 4:03:17

[nautilus7]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but can eac3to do this:

Join 2 EVOs, Demux them, and give me a video file and an ac3 audio file.... by running a single command? I've tried
eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo movie.mkv
but I ended up with 1 video stream in the mkv and a separate flac audio file. Thanks!Type

eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo

to get the audio/video track list. Then type

eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo video_number: video.mkv audio_number: audio.ac3

Finally you need mkvtoolnix to mux audio & video together.

[nautilus7]

why eac3to (latest ver) when decoding ac3 2.0 to wavs produsing a large files (2gb for channel), and sounds is wery bad, plays to slow :)
but it's only 1:21h
AC3, 2.0 channels, 1:21:06, 384kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Removing dialog normalization...
Loading white noise (needed for dithering)...
Writing WAVs...
Creating/writing file "e:\fl_away.L.wav"...
Creating/writing file "e:\fl_away.R.wav"...
eac3to processing took 3 minutes, 43 seconds.
Done.
resulting file
size - 2ch each 2gb
time - 4:03:17You're decoding with -libav, right? Do you have another decoder to try? Maybe a bug in libav with 2.0 ac3 tracks. Can you upload a sample?

[madshi]

Where does the "whatever.gaps" file need to reside? With the source, the destination or with eac3to? Is it possible to specify the folder in the command line where this file resides?
The file is written to the same folder where the mkv file is written to with the same name as the mkv file. Only the file extension differs. Instead of "whatever.mkv" it's "whatever.gaps". There's no way to specify a different folder for that file.

[madshi]

Join 2 EVOs, Demux them, and give me a video file and an ac3 audio file.... by running a single command? I've tried
eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo movie.mkv
but I ended up with 1 video stream in the mkv and a separate flac audio file. Thanks!
Demux or remux? You can do "eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo numberOfVideoTrack: video.vc1 numberOfAudioTrack: audio.ac3". Is that what you want?

why eac3to (latest ver) when decoding ac3 2.0 to wavs produsing a large files (2gb for channel), and sounds is wery bad, plays to slow :)
Strange. AC3 decoding seems to work just fine for me. Which decoder are you using? Eventually whatever software you're using for playback doesn't work properly? Lots of software has problems with WAV files with more than 2GB. What does eac3to report if you do "eac3to whatever.wav"?

[Yraen]

The file is written to the same folder where the mkv file is written to with the same name as the mkv file. Only the file extension differs. Instead of "whatever.mkv" it's "whatever.gaps". There's no way to specify a different folder for that file.

Thanks. That will work well. I tend to buy HD-DVDs in 3 packs or find good deals on them, so I usually batch process. I can now check to see if that file exists, and if it does run it once more.

Edit: Just wanted to add that Four Brothers, The Italian Job and Shooter muxed with no errors.

[fofwp]

madshi,

Just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work in this program. I was a bit intimidated at first, but I think the more I will use it the better I will get at it. Thanks!

Does anyone know the disadvantages of using libav for E-AC3 and TrueHD compared to the other "pay for" offerings?

[nautilus7]

Does anyone know the disadvantages of using libav for E-AC3 and TrueHD compared to the other "pay for" offerings?

Libav TrueHD decoder is the most complete option right now, as it's the only decoder that can output 7.1 channels. Regarding quality it is equal to nero TrueHD decoder cause thd format is lossless and all decoders have to output the same data.

Libav E-AC3 decoder is still under development but works very well in most cases. Quality might be a click lower compared to nero, because nero is a reference decoder.

[Thunderbolt8]

is nero still the eac3 default decoder in eac3to ?

[nautilus7]

Yes, nero is the default.

Madshi, what is that YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS thing i get every time i run eac3to? Is it something like the 1,2,3,4,5,6 you 'd done in madflac? :p

[Yraen]

Yes, nero is the default.

Madshi, what is that YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS thing i get every time i run eac3to? Is it something like the 1,2,3,4,5,6 you 'd done in madflac? :p

I don't get it every time, just on a few files. I was wondering about it too, but I thought it might have been something I was doing wrong testing automation of some of the steps.

[Thunderbolt8]

does delaycut also work with dts-hd (ma 2.0) tracks? eac3to reports me that the dts-hd ma 2.0 track from a movie is not clean and therefore I should try to process it with delaycut, before I could convert it to flac. but can delaycut handle those tracks at all (correctly)? if not, I guess i'll have to re-rip the disc?

[Thunderbolt8]

btw. has eac3to become more strict regarding the acceptance of some audio tracks over time? back then i rebuilt the dts-hd ma track of pans labyrinth as seperate evo with evodemux and now I tried to make a flac out of it again but i get the same "not clean" error as above. but back then it worked :S

could it work with an older version? can I download older versions somewhere? my oldest is only 2.14

[rickardk]

I got a log file of almost 70kB when remuxing The Good Sheperd. Is this really right?

Filled by:
Video overlaps for 0 frames at playtime x:xx:xx


http://www.earselect.se/log.txt

[Thunderbolt8]

btw. when getting those overlap messages then you/eac3to told us to check whether the video is really in sync. do you mean at that place where that overlap occured? or could a possible overlap desync result in desync of the complete rest of the movie?

and what if we arent really sure, whether possibly gaps have an influence of a certain movie, would it then hurt still do to the 2nd pass? (i mean apart from that the video wont play that smoothly anymore or its harder to skip could there be a negative impact on syncronization if the 2nd pass wasnt really necessary?)

[shlap]

Demux or remux? You can do "eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo numberOfVideoTrack: video.vc1 numberOfAudioTrack: audio.ac3". Is that what you want?


Strange. AC3 decoding seems to work just fine for me. Which decoder are you using? Eventually whatever software you're using for playback doesn't work properly? Lots of software has problems with WAV files with more than 2GB. What does eac3to report if you do "eac3to whatever.wav"?

That's exactly what I need. Thanks nautilus7 and madshi!

[madshi]

Madshi, what is that YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS thing i get every time i run eac3to? Is it something like the 1,2,3,4,5,6 you 'd done in madflac? :p
Yes, it's a debug message I forgot to delete. Will be gone in the next build.

Thanks. That will work well. I tend to buy HD-DVDs in 3 packs or find good deals on them, so I usually batch process. I can now check to see if that file exists, and if it does run it once more.
Before redoing the movies that have a "gaps" file please check whether you need to redo the muxing in the first place. In many cases you will not have to redo, although there is a "gaps" file.

btw. when getting those overlap messages then you/eac3to told us to check whether the video is really in sync. do you mean at that place where that overlap occured? or could a possible overlap desync result in desync of the complete rest of the movie?
You should check audio sync in the beginning and in the end of the movie. If you find no problems, everything's fine. If there's only one gap in the movie you can also check audio sync somewhen before the gap and somewhen after that. But the simplest way of checking sync is always the beginning and end of the movie. If audio is in sync there, it's very unprobable that it's not in sync somewhere in the middle of the movie.

and what if we arent really sure, whether possibly gaps have an influence of a certain movie, would it then hurt still do to the 2nd pass? (i mean apart from that the video wont play that smoothly anymore or its harder to skip could there be a negative impact on syncronization if the 2nd pass wasnt really necessary?)
If the gap detection went wrong it could eventually hurt to do the 2nd pass. I hope that gap detection won't go wrong, but I can't guarantee that. The number of movies where gaps are detected should be rather low. So it shouldn't harm that much that you there have to manually check audio sync. It's not as if you'd need to do that with every movie.

I got a log file of almost 70kB when remuxing The Good Sheperd. Is this really right?

Filled by:
Video overlaps for 0 frames at playtime x:xx:xx

http://www.earselect.se/log.txt
Ouch. This is definitely not right. Is audio in sync? Will have to double check that movie.

does delaycut also work with dts-hd (ma 2.0) tracks? eac3to reports me that the dts-hd ma 2.0 track from a movie is not clean and therefore I should try to process it with delaycut, before I could convert it to flac. but can delaycut handle those tracks at all (correctly)? if not, I guess i'll have to re-rip the disc?
delaycut can not properly handle dts-hd. It should be able to extract the dts core, but probably that's not what you're after.

btw. has eac3to become more strict regarding the acceptance of some audio tracks over time? back then i rebuilt the dts-hd ma track of pans labyrinth as seperate evo with evodemux and now I tried to make a flac out of it again but i get the same "not clean" error as above. but back then it worked :S
I don't think eac3to has become stricter, at least not in one of the more recent versions. Maybe somewhen in v1.xx. Does the "not clean" message appear right in the beginning of the track? If so, can you upload a little sample? 2MB should be plenty, if those 5MB contain the not-clean part of the audio track.

could it work with an older version?
I don't think so, but I'm not 100% sure.

can I download older versions somewhere?
Not from me.

[rickardk]

Ouch. This is definitely not right. Is audio in sync? Will have to double check that movie.


I think audio is a little bit off at the end...

[Yraen]

Before redoing the movies that have a "gaps" file please check whether you need to redo the muxing in the first place. In many cases you will not have to redo, although there is a "gaps" file.


It's an automated process for me. I'm usually away or asleep when I'm running these batches. I've rewritten the gap feature so that if the gap file exists the original mkv is renamed and the process ran once more. This way, I can compare both and discard the one that is not needed.

[Thunderbolt8]

has someone else still some older eac3to versions?

[Thunderbolt8]

I don't think eac3to has become stricter, at least not in one of the more recent versions. Maybe somewhen in v1.xx. Does the "not clean" message appear right in the beginning of the track? If so, can you upload a little sample? 2MB should be plenty, if those 5MB contain the not-clean part of the audio track.
heres a 10mb sample from that rebuilt .evo. I remember back then I rebuilt the dts-hd ma track and then demuxed the audio track from it and proceeded with the eac3to version back then and everything was fine :S

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1arirz

[rickardk]

The latest H264info, I think, can remove or add pulldown to avc streams.

Thank you!
Now the correct frame rate is shown for H264 HD DVDs.

[B4tm4n]

has someone else still some older eac3to versions?
http://dl2.afterdawn.com/download/7df599d249195b4838aa2b4e1787c167/47b0642f/eac3to_v2.17.zip

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_software/audio_tools/ac3to.cfm

[Thunderbolt8]

thanks! will test if these are far back enough

[Thunderbolt8]

heres a 10mb sample from that rebuilt .evo. I remember back then I rebuilt the dts-hd ma track and then demuxed the audio track from it and proceeded with the eac3to version back then and everything was fine :S

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1arirz
madshi, with v2.20 it works already for me, I didnt get the "not clean" error at the beginning with that track, as I get it with v2.21 and v2.22

test it with the sample i sent you, it should be the same there.

does delaycut also work with dts-hd (ma 2.0) tracks? eac3to reports me that the dts-hd ma 2.0 track from a movie is not clean and therefore I should try to process it with delaycut, before I could convert it to flac. but can delaycut handle those tracks at all (correctly)? if not, I guess i'll have to re-rip the disc?

though v2.20 apparently cant handle dts-hd MA 2.0 tracks?
G:\eac3toX>eac3to G:\ele1.evo+G:\ele2.evo 4 G:\ele.flac
EVO, 1 video track, 3 audio tracks, 2:03:12
1: Joined EVO file
2: VC-1, 1080p24 /1.001
3: DTS, 2t channels, 16 bits, 768kbit/s, 48khz
4: DTS Master Audio, 2.0 channels, 16 bits, 48khz
5: DTS, 2t channels, 16 bits, 768kbit/s, 48khz
Track 4 is used for destination file "ele.flac".
This audio conversion is not supported.
and this is what I get when I try to convert this dts-hd ma track from that other movie to .flac with v2.20, while I get this with v2.21 and v2.22:
G:\eac3toX>eac3to G:\ele1.evo+G:\ele2.evo 4: G:\ele.flac
EVO, 1 video track, 3 audio tracks, 2:03:12
1: Joined EVO file
2: VC-1, 1080p24 /1.001
3: DTS, 2t channels, 16 bits, 768kbit/s, 48khz
4: DTS Master Audio, 2.0 channels, 16 bits, 48khz
5: DTS, 2t channels, 16 bits, 768kbit/s, 48khz
This EVO file contains authoring faults. Will try to work around that.
Extracting audio track number 4...
Decoding with DirectShow (Sonic Audio Decoder)...
This track is not clean. Processing aborted.
Please clean the track with delaycut and then retry eac3to.
DirectShow reports 2.0 channels, 16 bits, 48khz
Encoding FLAC...
Creating/writing file "G:\ele.flac"...
(theres no output file because of abort) so is this a bug of v2.20 or were dts-hd ma 2.0 tracks really not supported until then? or is this not supported just another message that it couldnt be handled because its not clean?

edit: tested furthermore, for me this dts-hd MA 2.0 tracks works with v2.19! so could it be possible that within the work of the last versions eac3to really doesnt accept that many possibly damaged tracks any more? which would be ok for me, if the output track was really garbage or would create a continuous delay for the rest of the movie. but if these problems only occured because of a possibly .evo acceptance problems and dont even create problems in the final track or even if only that that one place in the movie without affecting the rest of the movie, I'd still prefer this over having to choose another lossy audio stream.

just to sum up:
1. the demuxed track (evodemux) from pan's labyrinth rebuilt .evo with DTS-HD MA works with v2.20, not with v2.21 and v2.22 (works also with the .evo itself with "eac3o dts-hd_ma.evo 1: track.flac" command structure; eac3to is applying a delay here, because apparently its written in the .evo, could this value be right, since its only the rebuilt audio track and not the whole movie, is this nevertheless the correct delay data?)
2. the DTS-HD MA 2.0 track from elephant man in evo structure with "eac3to part1.evo+part2.evo track: track.flac" works with v2.19, not with v2.20, v2.21 and v2.22

edit²: heres a 10mb sample from 1st .evo of the elephant man dts-hd ma 2.0 as well, so you have both samples now from what im talking about :P
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ag74tv
edit³: for some strange reason the elephant man dts-hd ma 2.0 track now also works with v2.20, while it wouldnt before. anyway, it still doesnt with 2.21 and 2.22

[K-rnivoro]

eac3to v2.21 released

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

* latest libav MLP/TrueHD decoder fixes "lossless check failed" bug
* latest libav MLP/TrueHD decoder fully decodes 7.1 TrueHD tracks now
* Matroska muxing speed dramatically improved
* eac3to now detects and handles E-AC3 7.1 tracks correctly
* option "-core" extracts 5.1 core from E-AC3 7.1 tracks
* added support for small DTS files (< 300kb)


Madshi, you have to change your first original post. It says "(1) (E-)AC3 decoding is limited to 5.1." at the bottom.

By the way: No one knows about encoding Dolby Digital EX? As I posted before, I'm looking for a way to reencode 6.1/7.1 THD/EAC3 tracks to a non-"BlueRay/HD-DVD format" my Pioneer tuner can handle, and I believe DD EX is the way because it is only AC3 with one or two extra surround channels matriced in the originals surround channels.

[nautilus7]

E-AC3 decoding is still limited to 5.1 But now the libav decoder doesn't crash and can extract the 5.1 core.

[jmrenrav]

I'm having a problem with a audio track from X-Men 3 Bluray. I think its a DTS-ES audio track. I'm getting the "not clean" error message AFTER i run it though the cut program, otherwsie it says the "source is not reconized" any optopns?

[Phorze]

Hey i have a question about dialog normalisation. Startpost says it's best to remove this information but i'm not sure what to do in this particular situation:

I am converting the DD+ track of my HDDVD to DTS because my receiver does not support DD+. Converting it to DTS would still give me the best possible sound quality.

EAC3TO reports DIALnorm -27
So if i am positive about this the surcode module doesn't have this info when creating the new DTS track?

I am under the impression my receiver does use the dialnorm information provided by most tracks. it usually reports DIALNORM +4 or something similar the moment a movie starts.

So my final question is, is this "meta" information crucial for playback on my hometheater as the creators of the DD+ track intended or not?

[Thunderbolt8]

I'm having a problem with a audio track from X-Men 3 Bluray. I think its a DTS-ES audio track. I'm getting the "not clean" error message AFTER i run it though the cut program, otherwsie it says the "source is not reconized" any optopns?
just curios, try it please with v2.20 or v2.19, which you can get here: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/au...ools/ac3to.cfm

[menlvd]

You're decoding with -libav, right? Do you have another decoder to try? Maybe a bug in libav with 2.0 ac3 tracks. Can you upload a sample?
same bug with nero decoder and this is only a bug eac3to
here is a sample of mine ac3 i'll cut off small part with delaycut 1.3
all my ac3 from dvb cap. remuxed with haali splitter
same resulting file with nero splitter
http://rapidshare.com/files/90978719/Flushed_Away_fixed.ac3

delaycut - report:
====== INPUT FILE INFO ========================
File is ac3
Bitrate (kbit/s) 384
Act rate (kbit/s) 384.000
File size (bytes) 2133504
Channels mode 2/0: L+R
Sampling Frec 48000
Low Frec Effects LFE: Not present
Duration 00:00:44.448
Frame length (ms) 32.000000
Frames/second 31.250000
Num of frames 1389
Bytes per Frame 1536.0000
Size % Framesize 0
CRC present: YES
=============================================
====== TARGET FILE INFO ======================
Start Frame 0
End Frame 1388
Num of Frames 1389
Duration 00:00:44.448
NotFixedDelay -1.0000
=============================================
eac3to report:
D:\minep\me_gui\tools\eac3_to>o.exe "e:\Flushed Away_fixed.ac3" e:\fl_away.wavs
AC3, 2.0 channels, 0:00:44, 384kbit/s, 48khz, dialnorm: -27dB
Removing dialog normalization...
Decoding with DirectShow (Nero Audio Decoder 2)...
Disabling DRC for Nero (E-)AC3 decoding...
DirectShow reports 2.0 channels, 24 bits, 48khz
Writing WAVs...
Creating/writing file "e:\fl_away.R.wav"...
Creating/writing file "e:\fl_away.L.wav"...
eac3to processing took 2 seconds.
Done.
when playing MPC report that the file is ac3 6 channel

sample of resulting file: left channel only
http://rapidshare.com/files/90980436/fl_away.L.wav
maybe it a problem with a header in ac3 or eac3to not correct detect this type file

[nautilus7]

So my final question is, is this "meta" information crucial for playback on my hometheater as the creators of the DD+ track intended or not?No it's not crucial. It actually does what it says: Normalizes the dialog volume in order not to disturb other people around. Note that if you decode a track while keeping DN, it's something you can't undone. Your resulting dts track (and the receiver also) won't have an option to turn it off.