AC3 creation

[poopity poop]

How does one take a wav and make it into an AC3? Soft encode does this right? Is there any free-ware program that does this?
What exactly is an AC3?
How big when compared to a wav is an AC3? Let's say a 2 hour wav is 1500megs or so, how big would its AC3 counterpart be?
I'd liek to know this because I'm thinking of using AC3 for some SVCD's.

[sibe]

I don't want to rain on your parade, but SVCDs with AC3 are not possible!

Sibe

[poopity poop]

darn really? My DVD player can play up to 4 different audio tracks, I've tried mp1, mp2, and mp3 with different combinations, and so far the only thing that works is up to 4 different audio tracks of mp2 audio. I was just wondering if I had an ac3 if I put that...since my player can read ac3(from dvds) I thought it could read that audio with the mpeg-2 video. So I think my DVD player can play it.. I just really want to knwo how to make some audio sample and try it :)...so...the question still stands: how do you make an ac3?

[sibe]

You can't use AC3 with SVCDs even if your player reads AC3 from DVDs (as naturally all DVD players do), because it's not part of the SVCD specification, so the player doesn't understand it.
You could of course try to create a MiniDVD. This is a CD-R that follows the DVD specification and so supports AC3. But you need special authoring for this, which is not at all easy. You'll find more info on this in the MiniDVD forum.

To answer your original question, yes, SoftEncode does encode AC3 and no, there is no freeware program (at least none that I know of) that does it. To make a sample you could just take the ac3-track of a DVD and try it.

Sibe

[poopity poop]

thanks, I'll try that.