Is there a way to get Audio 3 & 4?

[Kvark]

Does anybody know how to get more audio channels on an SVCD?

My stand-alone player has also "Audio 3" and "Audio 4", and according to Philips, the SVCD has "up to 2 stereo or 4 mono" channels. Mono is just as fine in this case, because that's exactly what the original DVD audio tracks are.

I have been trying to experiment with this, but it seems that bbMPEG doesn't support anything else than max two stereo channels.

Any experience/experiments and recommendations of some other tools which support this?

Kvark

[wmansir]

You have to mux with TMPGenc.

[htc10825]

TMPGeng-Muxer does not help.

Yes, SVCD doesn't support anything else than max two stereo channels.
But some DVD Karaoke players do support 4 mono channels on SVCD!

You can mux two mono ch. to a stereo ch. and then encode them in "dual-mono". The Karaoke player can identify such audio tracks and give you the choice to play: 1. left ch. only, 2. right ch. only, 3. stereo.
Some player offer für dual mon tracks only the option for left or right, not stereo(so it says audio 1/2/3/4).
If you dont have a karaoke player, you can also encode the "dual-mono" waves in "stereo"(but not "joint stereo) and turn the "balance" controll of you HiFi equipment(not DD-Decoder!) to left or right to get the wished channel.
Use "Wavelab" or sth. else to combine two mono to a stereo.

[Kvark]

Thanks for the answer.

As a matter of fact, I have some "bi-lingual" original VCD's, where you can choose between the two mono channels - or have them both on simultaneously (which is absolutely confusing).

I just gave one of them a try: In my Raite-family stand-alone player I have a "Vocal Assist" button, which gives me the alternatives "Mono Left", "Mono Right" and "Stereo" on both speakers without touching the balance button on TV or Stereo Equipment.

In addition to this I have a "Language" button, which rotates choices "Audio 1" through "Audio 4" on an SVCD. On a SVCD with two languages, I get output only on "Audio 1" & "Audio 2" on stereo, while 3 & 4 remain completely silent. Of course I can use "Mono Left" etc. on both of these tracks, which means I could use the way you suggested and might just give it a try one day. However, it doesn't seem to be the way of the SVCD Standard, if I look at behavior of my DVD player. As far as I know, Raite is a Taiwan company, and I believe that SVCD is quite popular there, which gives me a reason to believe that the player is pretty much made according to standard. I hope I'm right. :)

Of course I would love to get all the four choices of sound in full stereo, but according to the earlier quotation from the Philips document, it's not possible.

Maybe I'll ask the guy who wrote the bbMPEG how the sound channels are marked. Actually I tried just adding the lines "audio2" & "audio3" after each reference to "audio0" & "audio1" in bbMPEG's default.ini file, but because the program doesn't seem to support more than two separate audio tracks, it didn't work out the way I wished.

Still wishing further information and searching for enlightment
Kvark

[wmansir]

I know it's probably not to spec, but it works for my Apex player. Like you, my Apex player cycles thru audio 1-4 when I play an SVCD.

Just try TMPEGenc's mux tool. Add your video and then the audio streams in the order you want them on the disk. I have done this several times with 1 stereo and 2 mono. I have never tried 4 mono.

[Kvark]

Thanks, wmansir, this sounds to be exactly what I'm looking for.

What do you use to make mono .mp2 tracks out of the extracted .ac3 files? BeSweet doesn't seem to have an option to mono. Or do you use some other tool to convert the .mp2 tracks to mono?

Of course, I could just convert the stereo .mp2 files to .wav, convert them to mono with the tools I have, and then convert the mono .wav tracks back to .mp2, but I'd love to hear that there's a more straightforward way.

Could you be kind enough to make a "Mini-Howto" about this, just listing short step-by-step what do you do and what programs are needed? Nothing more fancy than what you prefer, just something like
1. Run aaaa
2. Run bbbb
3. Edit file cccc and change text dddd into eeee
4. Run ffff
...

I will certainly manage to figure this out all by myself in the end after enough try-and-fail, but it would be nice to skip inventing just some more gunpowder :).

Just for the fun of it, I just tried to make a definitely non-spec 4-stereo-audio-tracks SVCD, but for one or another reason it didn't quite work out :) ... TMPEGEnc was first to complain about the result, WinSubMux was skipping lots of unknown headers, and finally the VCDXBuild told me to "fix this MPEG file".

Cheers
Kvark

[wmansir]

As part of my SVCD process I make .wav files anyway, so that doesn't add a step for me. You could see if HeadAC3he supports mono, it may save a step for you.

Basicly I:

1. rip DVD, use to use smartripper, now DvD Decrypter.

2. Create .d2v with DVD2AVI.

3. Create Avisynth script (with a little help from Gnot).

4. Cut up the film into 1-CD size chunks, so I have movie1.avs, movie2.avs.

This part is key, because if you cut the movie before encoding you have frame accuracy when cutting, and you can calculate the bitrate for each segment so it fills the whole CD. I hate changing discs in the middle of a scene, that's why I do it this way.

5. Calcualte bitrate for each segement and encode. (pulldown resulting .mpv if needed)

6. Convert any soundtracks I want to keep to .wav files, using BeSweet. Using AutoGain and setting a/v Delay.

7. Use AudioDub command in my avisyth scripts to dub my movie segments and use Vdub to save the wav file for that segment.

Here's an example for the movie Dune. The Audiodub line is commented out when encoding, for speed. To extract the audio for this segemnt, just uncomment the Audiodub line, open in Vdub, and Save Wav. Edit the .avs for the next .wav soundtrack, and repeat. For mono tracks I set Vdub to convert audio to mono before saving.

#
# Created with Gordian Knot
#
# http://thewef.nav.to
#
# PLUGINS
# get them from http://users.win.be/dividee
LoadPlugin("C:\easyenc\GORDIA~1\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\easyenc\GORDIA~1\simpleresize.dll")
#
# SOURCE
mpeg2source("F:\Dune\dune.d2v")
ResampleAudio(44100)
#Audiodub(mpeg2source("F:\Dune\dune.d2v"),WavSource("e:\dune\whole.wav"))
#
# TRIM
#trim(startframe,endframe)
#
#0,64070
#63879,131017
#130964,0
#
temp=trim(0,64070)
temp+temp.blackness(120) #because my DVD player cuts of the last few seconds of video
#
# IVTC
#Telecide()
#Decimate(cycle=5)
#
# CROPPING
crop(0,102,718,270)
#
# RESIZING
# for NTSC Progressive-SVCD
SimpleResize(480,272)
#
# BORDERS
AddBorders(0,96,0,112)

8. Use Toolame to encode .wav to .mp2 for each segment.

When I have problems finding cut points in the movie I sometimes process the audio first, so I can dub the video and encode (with divx) a small segement in the area where I want to cut.

9. Mux segments.

If I have 2 audio segments or less I use bbMpeg. If I have more than 2 I use TMPEGenc. In TMPEGenc just go from the File menu->MPEG Tools, and click on the tab 'Multiplex'. Set the video type to 'MPEG2 Super VideoCD (VBR)' Click the add button and select your video, then do the same with you audio tracks (in the order you want them on the disc). Enter an ouput name and click Run.

10. Use VCDeasy to create bin/cue for SVCD. Sometimes test with Deamon tools. also I usually extract the DVD chapters and add them when creating the SVCD.

12. Burn with CDRWIN.

That's it.

[Kvark]

Wov. That was what I call a proper answer!

At the moment I have the "Encoded_Video_TMPGEnc.mpv" file & the four stereo "Encoded_audio_1-4.mp2" files on my hard disk, and was kind of hoping to find an easy way to convert the sound files to mono and muxing it all together with TMPEGEnc. I have been choosing the chapters, so the cut point is where I wanted it, and all the audio files should be of right length.

It looks like I have to rip encode everything all the way again instead :( .

Many thanks anyway, now I know at least a proper way to reach the goal, even though I would have liked to use DVD2SVCD to do most of the job in a batch. If I find another easy way to do this, I'll probably post it here.

Kvark

BTW: What do you use in point 4 to cut up the film? VCDCutter?

[wmansir]

I think you will have to start agian. At least with the audio. I don't use DVD2SVCD, so I don't how much work you can save.


To cut the film I use Avisynth (that's what the TRIM secion of the script does) to cut the film up before encoding.

#0,64070 <--- these are just comments, noting which frames I want to cut at
#63879,131017
#130964,0
#
temp=trim(0,64070) <---this actually does the cutting

I then save a script for each segment (Dune1.avs, Dune2.avs, ect) and then encode each segment to fit on one CD.