Fed up with ac3 encoding

[nimrodim]

What about a utility which will link besweet to any of the commercial ac3 encoders, such as surcode, softencode, digigram?
I really don't like jumping from program to program....

Some other thoughts - what about testing ac3 encoders speed?
I have tried surcode through premier - very slow...
I have tried softencode - slow.

The fastest still seems to be the one no one likes!

Nim

[Matthew]

If you are performing the same particular operations over and over again then you can quite easily write a batch file or 3 that will use besweet and then encode the besweet output to AC3 using softencode.

e.g.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73098

As to AC3 encoder speed...why shouldn't good AC3 encoding be slow? Video encoding is slow...

[opsis81]

I'm using for all my AVS to AC3 encodings Intervideo Directshow Audio Encoder and GraphEdit.It's the fastest AC3 encoder I've ever seen!I'm encoding at 192 Kbps and the quality is great to my ears.
PS:It supports only stereo encoding.

[nimrodim]

Thanks Matthew - i will look into that once i find out more about softencodes command line...by the way a few questions about that:
1. DlgNorm=27 - why not 31?
2. RFCmpInUse=On - why? that is not what the guide says for ac3....
3. NOnIntel=Off - If i use that setting i cannot play the ac3 on my computer.
4. TimeStamp=On - whats the point in this?

Thank you opsis81...-could you give an example of your GRF and AVS file?
By the way which software provides you with the Intervideo Directshow Audio Encoder filter?

Ps. wonder what other people think of the quality of Intervideo Directshow Audio Encoder filter for ac3?

Nim :)

[opsis81]

@nimrodim
Intervideo Audio Encoder is included in Intervideo DVDCopy,in WinDVD Creator,in WinDVD Recorder and in WinDVR.

It can read not only any avisynth script that includes audio,but everything directshow is able to decode(avi,mpg,ogm,mkv,wav,cda,mp3 etc)

My sceenshots you wanted:

http://myimages.fourvalve.com/opsis81/capture1.jpg
http://myimages.fourvalve.com/opsis81/capture2.jpg
http://myimages.fourvalve.com/opsis81/capture3.jpg

[Matthew]

@nimrodim, I just filled out the ini using default settings (even though this is not strictly necessary...it's easier for future tweaking), I'm not defending any of the settings used. I don't pretend to have a clue about the best settings to use.

I turned on timestamps because of importation problems with dvd authoring apps, well at least I think that setting was the cause of the problems.

BTW I'm sure intervideo's encoding quality will be in line with what you'd expect given the speed ;)

[opsis81]

@Matthew
I don't think that speed always means loss of quality!
For example,Sonic Foundry SoftEncode vs Sonic Foundry Acid Pro.Acid is faster than SoftEncode and always produces better results.

[P0l1m0rph1c]

Maybe because Soft Encode is old and no longer developed, using Dolby v6.2.2 libraries, whereas Acid is much newer, optimized, and using Dolby v7 libraries? :p

[opsis81]

@P0l1m0rph1c
You're 100% correct:)
We can have speed and quality.We don't have to choose between them!

[nimrodim]

Thanks to you all...
Matthew - what authering program do you use? i am using maestro with no problems with time stamp off...
opsis81 - thanks for your posts...i have tried this encoder, i coded the ac3 directly from the avi file in Graph edit...- was really fast...but it is a pity it does not have dialoge normalization parameters (or others...).

Nim

[Matthew]

Originally posted by nimrodim
Matthew - what authering program do you use? i am using maestro with no problems with time stamp off...

I use Maestro too. Probably a mistake on my end then. Including timestamps shouldn't do any harm though :)

[nimrodim]

Does anybody know what libraries are used by surcode?

[Matthew]

I read that the newer surcode (presumably verison 2) uses the newer libraries. Regrettably I can't try it myself =(

Did try the demo, and it does have command-line support, although it is more annoying that softencode's in that it seems the settings must be configured via the GUI beforehand. Although a workaround would be to make up a registry file with the desired settings and have a line in the batch file that automatically imports it prior to encoding.

[nimrodim]

I persume you are talking about the stand alone....Is that correct also regarding surcode pluging for adobe premier?
It seems we are lacking a freeware tool which has all the basic features for dialoge normalization and dynamic range compression type.
Also a simple fast utility for measuring total\average RMS would be nice...
By the way does anybody have any thoughts on the following:
Lets say we had RMS range (low and max) could we use these values to make a better decision as to which dynamic range to choose.

Nim

[P0l1m0rph1c]

Surcode v2+ does use Dolby v7 libraries.