Accessing different Audio Streams with Maestro?

[CorkSucker]

Didn't see this clearly in the guide (maestro). ON my LOTR project, I have the PCM audio and I have AC3. How do I create the choice in my menu using maestro?

Please include detail, as I am sure that others would like to know this too?

TIA,

Corky

[TRILIGHT]

What you're wanting to do is create two "Command Sequences". Here's a very simple example...

Audio Stream #1: AC3
Audio Stream #2: PCM

Let's call our command sequences, AS1 and AS2 for the purposes of this example. Let's also assume that when we select that stream's button, we want to return to the main menu (Menu1 in this example) and highlight the play button (button #3 in this example)...

AS1 should include the following two lines:

No. Command
1 SetSTN Au(1)
2 Jump To Menu1(#3)

AS2 should include the following two lines:

No. Command
1 SetSTN Au(2)
2 Jump To Menu1(#3)

You get these entries by using the "Command Type" buttons "Set System Stream" and "Jump" at the top. Bear in mind, this is just an example and there are endless combinations you could use to fit your given project.

Once you have these command sequences, you can use them as button targets. For instance, if you had a button that said "AC3" on it, you would assign the target as "Command Sequence AS1". When you clicked on this button, the audio would be set to the AC3 stream and you would be returned to the main menu "play" button.

This gets into the programming aspect of DVD authoring and you will find it can get complicated quick. Sometimes it helps to draw yourself a flowchart to assist in your design. You can also go as far as to make multiple menus and assign "display conditions" to them (found on the "Advanced" tab when editing a menu). You could have one for each audio stream that would be displayed depending on the stream that was selected at the current time. This would give the viewer the ability to check which stream was currently selected.

[Jestorius]

Here is an other solution. The result is the same without Command Sequences.

Menu ->Buttons ->Set audio to (Ch nr.)->Target -> Menus -> Menu Nr x -> Button nr.

Or just choose Resume to continue to play the movie with an other audio track.

[easy2Bcheesy]

Er, PCM audio takes up a HUGE amount of space on DVD. If you have a 2 channel PCM file and a 5.1 AC3 file, you will save a MASSIVE amount of space (about 65%-70%) encoding your PCM file into a 2 channel AC3 file.

So what I'm saying is, have both in AC3! Or better yet just stick to 5.1 and let the standalone DVD player downmix it into stereo.

You would need hearing 10x Mr Spock in order to tell the difference between the PCM original and the compressed AC3 file.

[CorkSucker]

Easy 2B,

I only threw the PCM on the disk to give a choice, I was already over the DVD-5 limit, so I figured what the hell. More features = better doesn't it?:D

Corky

[DaveF71]

Originally posted by CorkSucker
Easy 2B,

I only threw the PCM on the disk to give a choice, I was already over the DVD-5 limit, so I figured what the hell. More features = better doesn't it?:D

Corky

Silly question here. How do you convert a standard PCM WAV file to an AC3 file? There are tons of utilities to go from AC3->WAV, but I haven't found any that go the other way. Sonic Foundry apparently had something called "Soft Encode" at one point, but it no longer seems to be available.

[amirkhan]

Sonicfountry softencode WAV -> AC3

Dont think you can buy it anymore, but it you search you might find stockists etc.

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/softencode.html

and a tutorial

http://www.doom9.org/transcode_ac3.htm

Amir