Why is the simple "DVD Authoring" so hard and why do i need half a dozen tools?

[Flexy]

Guys,

i had troubles the last few days with some very BASIC tasks - and even with an Array of DVD authoring software, commercial and free as well as a range of current tools available....i couldnt understand why this caused so much headache.

Isnt there a SIMPLE tool which does this??


Situation/Problem:

* Extract DTS audio-track from DVD
* Convert DTS track to AC3
* Add/Replace AC3 track to DVD


Let me recap how i finally did it:

Used DVDAudioextractor to extract DTS track to 5.1 ch WAV.
Used WavToAc3 encoder to encode extracted WAV to 5.1 AC3.

Used DVDShrink to rip DVD Vobs in ONE large VOB.
Used Vobedit to Demux this VOB.

Then used Vobedit and Ifoedit to reacreate IFOs and correct VOB

Used DVDArchitect 8.0 to add AC3 track to new VOB and make new DVD, consisting of the movie with AC3 track.

I hope i remember everything right.

There is a plethora of programs which claim to convert DTS....like besweet...or DAudioK...but here under Vista64 all of those programs didnt work or crashed.

The biggest surprise i got when i learned that "DVDArchitect", a commercial DVD authoring software can NOT read VOBs..respective you cant just add a number of VOBs from a DVD, it treats all VOBs as separate media files.Thats why i had to rip those VOBs first w/ DVDshrink as one big single file ans then add the AC3 track.

Its also way beyond my logic why DVD Archtitect or Nero 8 Suite (incl. Nero Recode) is unable to eg. delete or add audio tracks to an existing DVD? Or did i just miss something?

For such a "simple" task a lot of bizarre work...IMHO.

[Southstorm]

Do some research on the structure of a video DVD and you'll see why it's not so simple.

[Eric69]

I guess you need to ask yourself why you would need to do all this work. What exactly are you trying to do and why? Then you will possibly have the answers to your question.

[n0mag!c]

You can demux numbers of VOB from DVD with VobEdit and then mux all back with IfoEdit adding new AC3 track. You get simple DVD without menu.

[kumi]

Personally, I would
1) demux with PgcDemux
2) convert DTS to AC3
3) create temporary stub DVD with AC3 track + original assets (incl. celltimes.txt) with MuxMan
4) replace original title with your new title, using Vobblanker

[manono]

Yep, that's how to do it. Much of what Flexy wants done in one app has nothing to do with authoring.

[QuadcoreHD]

Use eac3to