eac3to - audio conversion tool

[madshi]

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

New versions here https://www.rationalqm.us/board/viewforum.php?f=18

eac3to v3.36, freeware by madshi.net

- can show information about audio, video, VOB/EVO/(M2)TS and MKV files
- can decode and encode various audio formats
- can remove dialog normalization from AC3, E-AC3, DTS and TrueHD tracks
- can extract AC3 stream from Blu-Ray TrueHD/AC3 tracks
- can extract TrueHD stream from Blu-Ray TrueHD/AC3 tracks
- can extract DTS core from DTS-HD tracks
- can remove DTS zero padding and repair outdated DTS-ES headers
- can apply positive or negative audio delays
- can reduce bitdepth of decoded audio data by using TPDF dithering
- can resample decoded audio data (using SSRC or r8brain)
- can apply/reverse PAL speedup on decoded audio data (SSRC/r8brain)
- can demux video / audio tracks of EVO/VOB/(M2)TS and MKV sources
- can list available titles of Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs
- can extract Blu-Ray and HD DVD chapter information and subtitles
- can mux MPEG2, VC-1 and h264 video tracks to Matroska
- can remove pulldown flags from MPEG2, VC-1 and h264 video tracks

eac3to sourcefile[+sourcefile2] [trackno:] [destfile|stdout] [-options]

Examples:
eac3to source.pcm destination.flac
eac3to source.thd destination.flac destination.ac3
eac3to blurayMovieFolder movie.mkv
eac3to source.evo 1: chapters.txt 2: video.mkv 3: audio.flac 5: subtitle.sup
eac3to feature_1.evo+feature_2.evo movie.mkv

Options:
-448 use e.g. "192", "448" or "640" kbps for AC3 encoding
-768 use "768" or "1536" kbps for DTS encoding
-core extract the DTS core of a DTS-HD track
+/-100ms apply a positive or negative audio delay
+/-3dB apply a positive or negative audio gain (volume change)
-0,1,2,3,4,5 remap the channels to the specified order
-edit=0:00:00,0ms loops or removes audio data at the specified runtime
-silence/-loop forces usage of silence (or looping) for audio edits
-down6 downmix 7 or 8 channels to 6 channels
-downDpl downmix multi channel audio to Dolby Pro Logic II
-downStereo downmix multi channel audio to simple Stereo
-phaseShift shift phase (when doing stereo downmixing, see "down2")
-mixlfe mix LFE in (when doing stereo downmixing, see "down2")
-down16 downconvert decoded audio data to 14..23 bit
-slowdown convert 25.000 and 24.000 content to 23.976 fps
-speedup convert 23.976 and 24.000 content to 25.000 fps
-23.976/... define source fps to be "23.976", "24.000", "25.000", ...
-changeTo24.000 change source fps to "23.976", "24.000", "25.000", ...
-resampleTo48000 resample audio to "44100", "48000" or "96000" Hz
-r8brain use r8brain resampler instead of SSRC
-quality=0.50 Nero AAC encoding quality (0.00 = lowest; 1.00 = highest)
-8 define PCM file to be "1".."8" channels
-16 define PCM file to be "16" or "24" bit
-little define PCM file to be "little" or "big" endian
-96000 define PCM file to be 44100, 48000, 96000 or 192000 Hz
-override forcefully overrides PCM auto detection with manual values
-sonic/nero/... force the use of a specific decoder (not recommended)
-keepDialnorm disables dialog normalization removal (not recommended)
-decodeHdcd decodes HDCD source track (usually 16 -> 20 bit)
-demux demuxes 1st video track and all audio and subtitle tracks
-stripPulldown strips the pulldown from MPEG2 video tracks
-keepPulldown disable removal of pulldown for MPEG2, h264 and VC-1 tracks
-seekToIFrames make all h264/AVC "I" frames seekable
-check checks if the source EVO/(M2)TS file is clean.
-test checks if the external filters are installed & working
-lowPriority moves processing to background/idle priority
-shutdown automatically shutdown the PC after processing is done

Supported source formats:
(1) RAW, (L)PCM
(2) WAV (PCM, DTS and AC3), W64, RF64
(3) AC3, E-AC3
(4) DTS, DTS-ES, DTS-96/24, DTS-HD Hi-Res, DTS-HD Master Audio
(5) MP1, MP2, MP3 audio
(6) AAC audio
(7) MLP, TrueHD, TrueHD/AC3
(8) FLAC
(9) EVO/VOB/(M2)TS and MKV

Decoded audio data can be stored as / encoded to:
(1) RAW, (L)PCM
(2) WAV (PCM only), W64, RF64, AGM
(3) WAVs (multiple mono WAV files, PCM only)
(4) AC3
(5) DTS
(6) AAC
(7) FLAC

For best AAC decoding you need:
(1) Nero 7 (Nero 8 won't work!)

For DTS encoding you need:
(1) SurCode DVD DTS - version 1.0.21 or newer

For AAC encoding you need:
(1) Nero AAC Encoder

For video muxing you need:
(1) Haali Matroska Muxer

wiki:

Not written by me, not finished yet, but definitely worth a look:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Eac3to

bug tracker:

http://eac3to.bugs.madshi.net

GUIs:

If you prefer a graphical user interface, here are three choices (not written by me):

Eac3to and More GUI:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=135095

HD DVD/Blu-Ray Stream Extractor:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141829

Clown BD:
https://www.videohelp.com/software/Clown-BD

eac3to µGUI:
Link don't work, GUI obsolete[www homecinema-hd com/index.php?page=eac3tougui&lang=en_US]

links:

arcsoft: http://www.arcsoft.com
dcadec: https://github.com/foo86/dcadec [Recommended replace the libdcadec.dll (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1953397#post1953397) from the eac3to package with the updated v2.0 in the link]
nero: http://www.nero.com
NeroAacEnc: https://web.archive.org/web/20160923100008/http://ftp6.nero.com/tools/NeroAACCodec-1.5.1.zip
sonic: http://www.sonic.com
dts: http://www.surcode.com
libav: http://www.mplayerhq.hu [The avcodec-54 and avutil-52 can't be replaced by new ones (now 59/58)]
aften: http://win32builds.sourceforge.net/aften/index.html
flac: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=13478&package_id=12675[you can replace the libFLAC.dll with the 1.4.2 (2022-10-22) last version from here (https://www.rarewares.org/lossless.php) (rename the 32 bits libFLAC_dynamic.dll)]
r8brain: http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain
haali: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv
mkvtoolnix: http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix

WARNING:

Nero 8 won't work for eac3to cause Nero 8 doesn't allow its DirectShow filters to be used from outside of Nero ShowTime. Nero 9 is currently not supported, either. So please use/install Nero 7 if you want to use Nero DirectShow filters in eac3to.

background information:

Please note that there are three common problems with "properly" decoding compressed audio tracks. The first problem has to do with that the purpose of a media player is different than the purpose of people like us who want to reencode audio tracks. A media player may want to adjust volume levels to specific parameters and circumstances. We reencoders absolutely want to avoid any processing on the precious audio data. This is a conflict which can not always be solved. The three known problems are:

(1) Some decoders apply DRC (Dynamic Range Compression). Stupidly Dolby's license requests that DRC must be applied, unless your decoder has an option to turn it on/off. Only then the decoder is allowed to not apply DRC. The purpose of DRC is to limit the dynamic range of an audio track, mainly to not annoy neighbours or to accomodate to noisy living room conditions. For our purposes DRC is catastrophic.
(2) Some decoders forcefully downconvert to 16bit, or raise volume for unknown reasons or do other stupid stuff.
(3) Some decoders don't make use of the full available information, but just extract and decode the "core" of the compressed audio data, which obviously results in less than optimal audio quality.

evaluation of available decoders:

The Sonic (E-)AC3 decoder forcefully applies DRC. As a result I do not recommend to use the Sonic (E-)AC3 decoder. The current version of the Sonic TrueHD decoder doesn't work properly at all. The Sonic DTS decoder is good for DTS, DTS-ES, DTS-96/24, DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution tracks. It's quite slow, though and it decodes DTS-HD 7.1 tracks only as 5.1. Most DTS-ES and DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 tracks are fully decoded as 6.1, though. The Nero TrueHD decoder is working perfectly fine, but is limited to 5.1 channels. The Nero (E-)AC3 works fine for most audio tracks, but sometimes DRC is still enabled, so it's not really recommended. The Nero DTS decoder ignores the additional DTS-HD information and only decodes the DTS core. The Cyberlink decoders always only output 16bit and can't be used outside of PowerDVD. So they currently do not make a lot of sense for eac3to. The libav/ffmpeg (E-)AC3 decoder works really well, but don't support 7.1 decoding yet. The libav/ffmpeg DTS decoder works well, too, but currently ignores the additional DTS-HD information, so especially DTS-HD Master Audio can't be decoded in full quality. The libav/ffmpeg TrueHD decoder works perfectly fine including full 7.1 decoding. The ArcSoft DTS decoder works well for DTS and DTS-HD decoding, but decodes many 7.1 tracks either incorrectly or with forced processing/mixing. It does support every format and channel configuration, though. The ArcSoft TrueHD and ArcSoft (E-)AC3 decoders are currently not supported by eac3to. The dcadec decoder works great for all kinds of DTS formats and channel configurations, except LBR/XSA (low bitrate) content is not properly supported yet.

default decoders used by eac3to:

AAC: Nero
MP1, MP2, MP3: libav/ffmpg
(E-)AC3: libav/ffmpeg
TrueHD: libav/ffmpeg
DTS(-HD): dcaDec
DTS-LBR/XSA: ArcSoft

making the ArcSoft DTS decoder work in eac3to:

Sometimes the ArcSoft DTS decoder doesn't work even after you've installed the full retail software. This can usually be fixed by manually adding the ArcSoft "Bin" folder (e.g. "C:\Program Files\Common Files\ArcSoft\Bin") to your environment path. If you don't know how to do this, google "environment path".

Don't ask for pirated versions of ArcSoft, Nero, Sonic and Surcode. You should buy those.

EDIT (2016-02-13 and later) by tebasuna51:
At this moment only Nero 7 DirectShow are needed to decode AAC, ArcSoft and Sonic are not needed at all (libdcadec and libav can do the job).
There are troubles decoding some new implementations of EAC3, then for decode AAC and EAC3 is better use a modern version of ffmpeg.
And Surcode can be replaced by the experimental ffdcaenc encoder to dts like you can see after

In addition to eac3to audio outputs: PCM, AC3 (libAften), DTS (Surcode), AAC (NeroAacEnc M4A) and FLAC (libFLAC), you can use the eac3to stdout to pipe PCM to any encoder than support stdin.

Generic syntax:

eac3to INPUT stdout.wav [-EAC3TO_PARAMETERS] | ENCODER PARAMETERS - OUTPUT

Where:
- INPUT, ENCODER and OUTPUT must be in quotted full paths if aren't at same folder than eac3to.
- INPUT can be any supported audio file or a track from a supported container: "D\tmp\input.mkv" 2:
- PARAMETERS can be any supported encoder parameters.
- The order of: PARAMETERS - OUTPUT, can be different for some encoders. See examples below.

You can use also Aften.exe, NeroAacEnc.exe and Flac.exe encoders to override eac3to defaults.
Also you can use other soft to filter output: eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | sox ... | encoder ...
Some tested examples:

eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | Lame (http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php) -V 2 - output.mp3
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | TwoLame -b 192 - output.mp2 (Twolame v0.3.10b)
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | ffdcaenc (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1702067#post1702067) -i - -o output.dts -l -b 1509.75
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | OggEnc2 (http://www.rarewares.org/ogg-oggenc.php) -q 3 --ignorelength -o output.ogg -
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | opusenc (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1714809#post1714809) --ignorelength --bitrate 128 - output.opus
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | qaac (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1395355#post1395355) -V 99 --ignorelength --adts --no-delay -o output.aac -
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | fhgaacenc (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=161806) --vbr 5 --ignorelength - output.m4a
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | NeroAacEnc -br 192000 -he -ignorelength -if - -of output.m4a
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | Flac -5 --ignore-chunk-sizes -o output.flac -
eac3to INPUT stdout.wav | Aften -b 640 -pad 0 -readtoeof 1 -exps 32 -s 1 - output.ac3
eac3to INPUT stdout.w64 | ffmpeg (http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/) -i - -c:a ac3 -b:a 640k -center_mixlev 0.707 output.ac3

Note than last ffmpeg example require PCM data with w64 header, the other encoders support wav data greater than 4GB with special parameter -ignorelength or equivalent.
Of course ffmpeg can be used for other supported audio output format, but is highly recommended for AC3 because libAften.dll is outdated and can cause troubles (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1794293#post1794293)

[twan69666]

Awesome, we've needed a separte thread for a while. Cant wait to play with some TrueHD tracks! Thanks for all the hard work Madshi

[Darth Pinous]

Thanks for the tool.

It's good to know that it's finally possible to convert TrueHD.
As I've been playing around with Nero these past days, could you tell what sort of working graph permit the decoding of TrueHD ?
Is it Nero Splitter -> Nero Audio Decoder 2 ?
Do you need to specify anything in the Nero Audio Decoder 2 options ?

[madshi]

I'm using this graph:

"Nero File Source (Async) -> Nero Splitter -> Nero Audio Decoder 2 -> Dump"

You need to rename GraphEdt.exe to Recode.exe, otherwise the filters won't connect. I didn't change anything in the audio decoder settings. Make sure you have the "Remix" mode set to "None", though, otherwise the audio decoder might mess around with the audio data.

[Kurtnoise]

Why the Nero filters are needed ? The Haali Media Splitter is not appropriate for this task ?

[madshi]

The Haali Media Splitter doesn't "export" the TrueHD track. And even if it did, we'd still need the Nero Audio Decoder for TrueHD decoding. Haali's Media Splitter isn't decoding, of course, it's only splitting.

One thing I just found out is confusing me quite a lot:

The TrueHD track I was testing (Vendetta) is supposed to be 48kHz 16bit. The Nero Audio Decoder always outputs 24bit. Ok, so I thought I could simply convert that to 16bit without any loss. However, I've just checked: If I convert the 24bit Nero output to 16bit and then back to 24bit, the result is different to the original. It seems that there's more than 16bit real information in the Nero output. But the TrueHD track is only 16bit! I don't quite understand this. My only explanation would be that the Nero audio decoder does some processing on the decoded data, e.g. volume adjustment or something like that. That's kind of bad, though, since that means that converting to 16bit may end up harming the audio quality. But keeping 24bit *significantly* increases the final FLAC file size. Arghh.......

[zgx]

Awesome work with TrueHD!

We just need to figure out the 24/16 bit thingy. As you say you don't want to harm the audio but at the same time you don't want your FLAC files to be larger then they need to be.

:thanks:

[Rectal Prolapse]

Perhaps this can be modified to work with Blu-ray m2ts files, at least for Blu-ray TrueHD tracks?

Anyways - great work!

[Neo Fagin]

Unfortunately, 64k 1.0 eac3 (Dog Day Afternoon) is still unsupported when using Sonic. Is this a limitation of Sonic's decoder?

[madshi]

Mono files are not supported by eac3to, simply because I don't have such a file for testing. If you can send me the first 5MB of an eac3 mono file, I can probably add support for that, I guess.

About m2ts: Probably Nero supports that, too. But again I need a sample file. If you can get me a m2ts file with only TrueHD in it and no video (e.g. by using the Transport Stream Remuxer), 5MB should be enough.

[Rectal Prolapse]

madshi, do you know if TrueHD is decoded in Stereo only or multichannel? Damn, I should have asked before I bought the decoder pack.

[madshi]

Definitely in multichannel. All 5.1 channels have valid information in them. Even more so than I'd like... :D (see problem I explained above with 24 -> 16 -> 24 conversion)

[Neo Fagin]

Mono files are not supported by eac3to, simply because I don't have such a file for testing. If you can send me the first 5MB of an eac3 mono file, I can probably add support for that, I guess.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5ahu3b

a 5MB sample of a mono file

[Rectal Prolapse]

Thanks madshi! I just realized that when I look at filter properties (in GraphEdit) it always says the audio is 2 channel PCM, even when it isn't. :)

[tebasuna51]

The TrueHD track I was testing (Vendetta) is supposed to be 48kHz 16bit.
For what 16 bit?

BitDepth have no sense with encoded audio in frequency domain.
In the document 'Digital Audio Compression Standard (AC-3, E-AC-3) Revision B' say:
"8.2.1.1 Input Word Length
The AC-3 encoder accepts audio in the form of PCM words. The internal dynamic range of AC-3 allows input wordlengths of up to 24 bits to be useful."

Then if a input of 24 bits is appropriate for ac3 encoder also the output can be 24 bits.

Edit: and Aften accept 24 bits input without problem.

[madshi]

For what 16 bit?

BitDepth have no sense with encoded audio in frequency domain.
In the document 'Digital Audio Compression Standard (AC-3, E-AC-3) Revision B' say:
"8.2.1.1 Input Word Length
The AC-3 encoder accepts audio in the form of PCM words. The internal dynamic range of AC-3 allows input wordlengths of up to 24 bits to be useful."

Then if a input of 24 bits is appropriate for ac3 encoder also the output can be 24 bits.

Edit: and Aften accept 24 bits input without problem.
You are correct - but only when talking about (E-)AC3. Things are totally different with TrueHD. TrueHD is a lossless codec. That means, it takes 16bit, 20bit or 24bit input data and does *NOT* convert that into frequency domain (doing that wouldn't be lossless), but simply compresses the audio data similar to how ZIP works. So if you feed e.g. a 16bit track into the TrueHD encoder and if you then feed the encoded data into a TrueHD decoder, you should get a perfect 1:1 copy of the original data out of the decoder.

[shon3i]

Any chance to implement stdout, so we can use in BeHappy or other 3rd party app as decoder?

[madshi]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5ahu3b

a 5MB sample of a mono file
Here's version 1.6 with mono E-AC3 support:

http://madshi.net/eac3to.zip

Please note that Sonic's audio decoder crashes with mono E-AC3 files. Nero's audio Decoder works fine, though. So eac3to automatically switches to Nero, if you feed it a mono file. I think for E-AC3 decoding you don't need the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray plugin, btw. That plugin is only needed for TrueHD decoding, if I'm not mistaken.

[madshi]

Any chance to implement stdout, so we can use in BeHappy or other 3rd party app as decoder?
Which format would I have to output to stdout to make BeHappy happy? Raw or Wav? Or something else? What you can do right now is to ask eac3to to decode to a WAV file. You can then use this WAV file in BeHappy. The main problem is that eac3to doesn't directly receive the data from the decoders. Instead eac3to asks the decoders to dump the output into a file (and there's no way for me to change that). So the raw decoded data must be written to a file first, anyway. No way around that. Of course, once that raw file is written, eac3to could open and read it and feed it into stdout. Or eac3to could first ask Sox.exe to convert the raw file into a wav and feed *that* file to stdout. But I'm wondering how much would be won by doing that.

[tebasuna51]

@madshi
Sorry by my previous post, I was thinking in ac3 of course.

@shon3i
For BeHappy we need AviSynth plugin decoders, stdout is useless.
But maybe we can open graph filter files (.grf) with DirectShowSource().

[Neo Fagin]

E-AC3, 1.0 channels, 2:04:39, 64kbit/s, 48khz
Mono E-AC3 tracks can only be decoded by Nero's filters, switching to Nero.
Muxing eac3 file to raw. Please wait...
The file size of the raw file doesn't seem to fit.

Nero 7.8.5.0 premium

[Rectal Prolapse]

madshi and others: According to this insider (a mixing guy), TrueHD decoders always output 24 bit:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10386940&&#post10386940

In TrueHD, it is unnecessary for the codec to know the wordlength, as it delivers exactly what was input to the output. All TrueHD decoders support up to 24 bits. If the source is, say, 16 bits, the output is 16 MSB bits with lossless data, and 8 LSB bits of zeros.

[Thunderbolt8]

E-AC3, 1.0 channels, 2:04:39, 64kbit/s, 48khz
Mono E-AC3 tracks can only be decoded by Nero's filters, switching to Nero.
Muxing eac3 file to raw. Please wait...
The file size of the raw file doesn't seem to fit.

Nero 7.8.5.0 premium
already seeing 7.9.8.2 just normal version though, not premium -.-

[dchard]

Madshi:

1. is there any way to convert the trueHD track to mono wavs?

2. What nero version should I need, if I need trueHD decoding?

Thank you, very impressive work.

Dchard

[madshi]

E-AC3, 1.0 channels, 2:04:39, 64kbit/s, 48khz
Mono E-AC3 tracks can only be decoded by Nero's filters, switching to Nero.
Muxing eac3 file to raw. Please wait...
The file size of the raw file doesn't seem to fit.

Nero 7.8.5.0 premium
That's strange. It works for me! Please make sure you have the "Remix Mode" set to "None" in the "Nero Audio Decoder 2" filter.

Can you please try eac3to on the 5MB chunk you sent me? Maybe it works with the 5MB chunk but not with the full size file?

[madshi]

madshi and others: According to this insider (a mixing guy), TrueHD decoders always output 24 bit:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10386940&&#post10386940
Thank you for the link! Roger Dressler actually is working at Dolby.

Hmmmm... What he sais is exactly what I was expecting to see. However, the least 8 LSB bits were not zero in my tests with the Nero audio decoder. That's exactly what is confusing me. I was expecting them to be zero, but they aren't.

[madshi]

1. is there any way to convert the trueHD track to mono wavs?
What do you need that for? DTS encoding? Anyway, there are multiple ways to get mono wavs. One way would be to ask eac3to to give you a wav file. You can then with appropriate tools convert that to mono wavs. I think there are some freeware tools that can do that. Sorry, don't know which.

2. What nero version should I need, if I need trueHD decoding?
I'm using the latest version with the latest version of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray plugin. I don't know if earlier versions work. Or is your question not about version numbers, but about which edition I'm using? I'm using the Ultra Edition, but I guess that any edition works, as long as you have the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray plugin installed. Not sure which edition you need to have to be able to install that plugin, though. Also please note that I'm just guessing here.

[MacGyver2k]

E-AC3, 1.0 channels, 2:04:39, 64kbit/s, 48khz
Mono E-AC3 tracks can only be decoded by Nero's filters, switching to Nero.
Muxing eac3 file to raw. Please wait...
The file size of the raw file doesn't seem to fit.

Nero 7.8.5.0 premium

got the same problem as mentioned above, here is a complete mono eac3 file for ya to test with:
http://rapidshare.com/files/32135670/falke_eng.rar.html

[pasta03]

Where I can find Nero Audio Decoder 2

[madshi]

Where I can find Nero Audio Decoder 2
http://www.nero.com

[madshi]

got the same problem as mentioned above, here is a complete mono eac3 file for ya to test with:
http://rapidshare.com/files/32135670/falke_eng.rar.html
It works for me !!!

Which size does the raw file have when eac3to complains? Mine is 1026344448 bytes.

[mikeyakame]

to activate the nero truehd/eac3 decoding in nero you need to enter the serial number for the bluray/hddvd plugin as far as i know, this opens the features up on the dshow filters, (dont ask me how as I dont have a clue/dont care since they work perfectly when paid for) as I couldnt decode dts/eac3 with the filters until I activated them with the serial....

so dont bother asking people for these filters, as they are useless to you without a working serial.

madshi,

if you want to decode the truehd in 16bit, add the nero sound processor to the chain in graphedit, and set it to output 16bit lpcm, i always use this method to transcode eac3 to ac3, so im pretty sure it should work for truehd as well, ill give it a go later on this evening when ive got a sample track to test.

edit: ill test out that mono eac3 track too, and see what results i get.

[mikeyakame]

madshi,

i believe their problem with it not working is the filters arent fully activated, thus not outputting a readable eac3 stream, rather outputting garbage as they require activation for eac3 support.

edit:

and for whomever asked, the nero plugin supports m2ts demuxing and all that, it finds all the streams, etc, you can use a chain with nero file source (async) -> nero audio decoder -> directsound (output) and select whichever streams you want to play back, as this method works great for dumping the lpcm / eac3 from bluray to raw output, with all channels in tact.

[mikeyakame]

D:\Temp\Encoding\HDDVD Tools>eac3to falke_eng.eac3 test.ac3 -640
E-AC3, 1.0 channels, 1:58:47, 64kbit/s, 48khz
Mono E-AC3 tracks can only be decoded by Nero's filters, switching to Nero.
Muxing eac3 file to raw. Please wait...
Audio Decoder output was 24 bit this time.
Converting the raw file to wav. Please wait...
Converting the wav file to ac3. Please wait...
Starting "aften" failed. A valid *.wav file was created successfully, though.

19/05/2007 08:35 PM 1,026,344,528 test.wav

works perfectly for me too.

edit:

Macgyver,

I just noticed when you tried to process it the time stamps are wrong, you have 2:04:xx, I have 1:58:xx, seems like you need to activate the filters to be able to use eac3 support.

[madshi]

if you want to decode the truehd in 16bit, add the nero sound processor to the chain in graphedit, and set it to output 16bit lpcm
But this will not tell the decoder to output 24bit in the first place. Instead it will take the decoder's 24bit and downconvert it to 16bit. Of course that's possible to do. But it shouldn't be any better than using sox to downconvert 24bit to 16bit (which is what eac3to is currently using). The problem we need to solve is to find out why the 24bit output of the Nero filter seems to contain information in the least significant 8 bits when being fed a 16bit TrueHD track. That shouldn't be the case. And downconverting such a 24bit output may result in quality loss... :(

[madshi]

add the nero sound processor to the chain in graphedit, and set it to output 16bit lpcm, i always use this method to transcode eac3 to ac3
Btw, IMO that's a bad idea!! There's no advantage whatsoever in cutting the eac3 decoder output down to 16bit, if you plan to reencode in ac3. The size of the final ac3 file does not depend on which bit depth you feed it. And cutting 24bit down to 16bit can actually hurt sound quality. So you'll get better audio quality with the same file size if you keep the eac3's decoders at 24bit!

[zgx]

Just to confirm your findings about "V for Vendetta" Madshi. The movie is 132 min long and when I demux the TrueHD track I get a file that is "1 368 231 154" bytes. That equals ~1350 Kbps. The source that was losslessly compressed has to be 16bit/48Khz or else TrueHD would have had to compress increadibly much better then all other available lossless codecs.

[mikeyakame]

im pretty sure i had to do that to get sonic dd encoder to accept the input mono waves, im pretty sure it had some kind of problem accepting 24-bit input..its been a while so I dont really remember the reason, but its either that or wave wizard had problems with 24bit wave files.

and for the record, i haven't been able to hear any quality loss, as a matter of fact, the encoded ac3 sounds as good as the eac3 source after i encode it with sonic dd encoder. aften and the few other encoders i tried did produce a slight quality loss on the resulting ac3...the db levels and range seemed to be a little out compared to the original track

[madshi]

im pretty sure i had to do that to get sonic dd encoder to accept the input mono waves, im pretty sure it had some kind of problem accepting 24-bit input..its been a while so I dont really remember the reason, but its either that or wave wizard had problems with 24bit wave files.
Ah well, don't know, maybe the Sonic DD encoder doesn't like 24bit input, I don't know. I've no experience with tha encoder.

[madshi]

Just to confirm your findings about "V for Vendetta" Madshi. The movie is 132 min long and when I demux the TrueHD track I get a file that is "1 368 231 154" bytes. That equals ~1350 Kbps. The source that was losslessly compressed has to be 16bit/48Khz or else TrueHD would have had to compress increadibly much better then all other available lossless codecs.
Did you have a chance to check out the content of the decoding? Can you confirm that the least significant 8 bits are not zero? It's really too bad cause if true it means that we don't have a 1:1 lossless decoding yet... :(

[mikeyakame]

if the true-hd is outputting in 24bit..try changing the settings for your sound card to 16bit output depth...

im trying it now...ill let you know in a couple of minutes whether it works

edit: nope makes no difference, nero doesn't have a setting for outputs...not sure...ill play with a true-hd track later on

[zgx]

Did you have a chance to check out the content of the decoding? Can you confirm that the least significant 8 bits are not zero? It's really too bad cause if true it means that we don't have a 1:1 lossless decoding yet... :(No have not gotten around to buy the filters yet so cannot try it myself at the moment. But if you take the original 24 bit PCM file that you got from the decode and then open it in a HEX editor you should be able to figure out if one third of the bits contains zeros (8bit, 8bit, 8bit, 8bit, 8bit, 8bit, 8bit, 8bit...). In an hex editor "00" probably represents 8bit with just zeros.

[Austin Forgotten]

Hi there,

I am very curious about the TrueHD format, as I have spent a considerable amount of time looking at MLP. I do not own any HD equipment to rip HDDVD or Blueray. I have a few questions and I sure would like to get my hands on a demo/test file to have a look. For one, what is the file extension used for TrueHD format? Oh, I suppose I should have asked this 1st.. Has anyone been able to demux TrueHD to a file yet? Anyway if someone could provide a link to a test file [doesn't have to be to large :-) ]. Thanks.

-AF

[zgx]

Hi there,

I am very curious about the TrueHD format, as I have spent a considerable amount of time looking at MLP. I do not own any HD equipment to rip HDDVD or Blueray. I have a few questions and I sure would like to get my hands on a demo/test file to have a look. For one, what is the file extension used for TrueHD format? Oh, I suppose I should have asked this 1st.. Has anyone been able to demux TrueHD to a file yet? Anyway if someone could provide a link to a test file [doesn't have to be to large :-) ]. Thanks.

-AFThere are a few programs able to demux TrueHD streams out of a HD DVD. The most common is probably EVOdemux available at http://pel.hu/down

I think different programs use different extensions for TrueHD.

At the moment the major problem is that the only way to play TrueHD or decode it is from within EVO files (using PowerDVD for example or now eac3to).

[zgx]

Anyway if someone could provide a link to a test file [doesn't have to be to large :-) ].Check your mailbox in a few minutes.

[Rectal Prolapse]

madshi: I just looked at a raw PCM dump and I see the same thing - the 3rd byte of each sample is not always zero! What is going on here...?

[mikeyakame]

this is the info for The Matrix TrueHD track.

Audio attribute :
Audio application mode : surround
Audio format : MLP
Sampling frequency : 48000
Sampling quantization : 24
Number of audio channels : 6
Number of audio streams : 8
Bitrate: 2544 Kbps

I get both 24-bit outputs with this track on Nero Showtime & PowerDVD 7.3.2911

[pasta03]

Someone can give me direct link to Nero Audio Decoder 2 not to all nero recording only for decoder

[Revgen]

Nero packages the recorder and every software it makes together without any separate packages. You cannot get it any other way. At least not legally.

[Revgen]

BTW do Nero's decoders work in Windows XP.