Help: MP3 -> AC3 using BeSweet is just silence

[surreal120]

(First let me apologize if this has been posted before - I tried searching already but couldn't find an answer...)

I'm trying to encode the Director's Commentary track of a DVD. I used BeSweet to encode the orignal ac3 to a 48Kbps mp3 file (that seemed to be the low end of acceptable quality). Mp3 gave much better quality than just downsampling the ac3 file, but now I am having problems getting the mp3 back into ac3 (I'm assuming I need to convert it back to work with scenarist when I reauthor, right?)

Anyway, I tried converting the mp3 to an ac3 with Ac3Machine but got a completely silent track (at least with the volume turned up as loud as it will go on my computer). I read a post about BeSweet creating almost inaudibly low volumes when downsampling ac3 files and I tried using the auto-find max gain and normal dynamic compression but I still can't hear anything. I also don't have volume problems when I simply downsample the ac3 to a lower bitrate ac3 - so this seems like there's a different problem going on.

Does anyone know if it is even possible to go from mp3 to ac3 (using this method)? Is there a better program out there instead of besweet? Or is there a way to fix this? Thanks!

[pacohaas]

:logfile:

[surreal120]

BeSweet v1.4 by DSPguru.
--------------------------
Using hip.dll v1.13 by Myers Carpenter <myers@users.sf.net>
Using Shibatch.dll v0.2 by Naoki Shibata & DSPguru (shibatch.sourceforge.net).
Using AC3enc.dll v0.2 by Gerard Lantau & Dg (http://ffmpeg.org).
Manual Dynamic-Compression algorithm by LigH (author of WaveBooster).

Logging start : 06/19/03 , 15:30:35.

C:\BeSweet\BeSweet.exe -core( -input C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\Desktop\12MONKEYS\12monkeys MP3 T03 2_0ch 48Kbps.mp3 -output C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\Desktop\12MONKEYS\12monkeys AC3 T03 2_0ch 48Kbps.ac3 -logfilea C:\BeSweet\BeSweet.log ) -ssrc( --rate 48000 ) -boost( /b=2db ) -ac3enc( -b 48 ) -profile( The AC3Machine v0.4 )

[00:00:00:000] +------- BeSweet -----
[00:00:00:000] | Input : C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\Desktop\12MONKEYS\12monkeys MP3 T03 2_0ch 48Kbps.mp3
[00:00:00:000] | Output: C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\Desktop\12MONKEYS\12monkeys AC3 T03 2_0ch 48Kbps.ac3
[00:00:00:000] | Floating-Point Process: No
[00:00:00:000] +------ Shibatch -----
[00:00:00:000] | Source Sample-Rate: 16.0KHz
[00:00:00:000] | Dest. Sample-Rate: 48.0KHz
[00:00:00:000] | Attenuation : 0.0db
[00:00:00:000] +-------- BOOST ------
[00:00:00:000] | Algorithm by : LigH
[00:00:00:000] | Boost Factor : 1.3
[00:00:00:000] | Limit Factor : 0.99
[00:00:00:000] +------- AC3ENC ------
[00:00:00:000] | Bitrate method : CBR
[00:00:00:000] | AC3 bitrate : 48
[00:00:00:000] | Channels Mode : 2.0
[00:00:00:000] | Error Protection: Yes
[00:00:00:000] +---------------------
[02:09:30:421] Conversion Completed !
[02:09:30:421] Actual Avg. Bitrate : 47kbps
[00:08:30:000] <-- Transcoding Duration
Logging ends : 06/19/03 , 15:39:05.

[surreal120]

My post (above) got moved onto this topic but it is actually a different issue. I also upgraded from 1.4 to the latest beta and that helped me fix the problem. Apparently, BeSweet was not accepting source files which didn't have a 48kHz sample rate when encoding to mp3. Version 1.4 went ahead and transcoded anyway, but the ac3 was just silence. The new version just popped up the log file right away and didn't do any encoding.

Took me a while of messing around, but finally got it working with the force input to 48kHz option checked.