AudioGK & audio

[a_m_28]

Hallo all,

I use WinDVD in stereo mode for watching DVDs. In order to convert a DVD to a DIVX AVI I used GK before. I converted the audio to mp3 and always had the problem that with GK's default audio settings the audio was never as loud as WinDVD made it on the original DVD. On the AVIs I always had the music and SoundFX being louder than the dialogue volume. The dialogue volume was too silent. So finally I've found out that I would get the audio the way I got it from WinDVD when using azid with heavy option for the audio decompression. It's strange, because as I remember, WinDVD used normal decompression and not heavy, but I'm not sure anymore.

My question is, how does AutoGK decompress the audio and converts it to mp3? All I want is the same or similar audio loudness as I get from WinDVD with dialogue and music/soundfx having more or less the same loudness.

The second question is, how would I tell AudioGK to use mp3 ABR encoding? There's only the auto,vbr or cbr option available.


Thanx in advance


Andreas

[Wolfman]

I also asked for loudness switch... maybe... someday... however I would think that loudness of dialogue as opposed to music/fx is nothing to do with how the sound is compressed (mp3/ac3) and more to do with equalizer settings in windvd. Dialogue needs the midband boosted (around 1khz-5khz AFAIK). Normalizataion comes into this also.. as does dynamic range control in dvd2avi..maybe some control over this would be useful (eg +3db +6db).

[len0x]

will "-L -3db" do for azid parameters ?

[Wolfman]

All I know is that +3db doubles the volume and +6db doubles it again (maybe thats too much). Of azid I know nothing.

[a_m_28]

nothing to do with how the sound is compressed (mp3/ac3) and more to do with equalizer settings in windvd

Well, I'm not sure here. We have 5.1 AC3 sound which gets downmixed by azid into 2 stereo channels. I think that here seems to be the problem, maybe the downmixing options for azid were wrong and resulted in the audio problems I described. I did not use any equalizer in WinDVD, so I suppose that it only downmixed the audio from 5.1 > 2 channel stereo. I just have 2 channels available here.


Normalizataion comes into this also.. as does dynamic range control in dvd2avi

I think that it depends which software does this step. GK used DVD2AVI with normalization deactivated and also dynamic range control being deactivated as defaults. So the dynamic range control was done by azid . Then the default GK options for azid were:

azid -a -c normal -L -3db

I suppose that the -c normal is the same as to giving this option to DVD2AVI with dynamic range control set to normal.

As much as I understand it, GK moved from using azid to BeSweet (or is BeSweet just a frontend to azid?).

Anyway the option -L -3db was always there from the beginning, but I had to replace -c normal for -c heavy in order to get better results.
Maybe someone who understands more about ac3 5.1 > 2 channel conversion can tell me which options would be appropriate to get best results with 2 channel stereo.

So which audio options does AutoGK use as default for downmixing?
And how would I make AudioGK encode to abr mp3? e.g. like:

lame --abr xxx -h
or
lame --alt-preset xxx -h

[len0x]

Originally posted by a_m_28
So which audio options does AutoGK use as default for downmixing?
And how would I make AudioGK encode to abr mp3? e.g. like:

lame --abr xxx -h
or
lame --alt-preset xxx -h

Atm, azid params: "-c normal" (but will be "-c normal -L -3db" in the next version), for mp3 --abr (but will be --alt-preset)