AVI to DVD audio encoding problems

[cyberbob25]

I am trying to put some of my friend's home movies onto a DVD. He had previously endoed them with XVID and I'm having some trouble converting them to DVD standards. So far I've followed this guide:

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/avi2dvdr.htm

I've already encoded the video with no problems, however, the audio is driving me nuts. The original audio track is Mpeg 2, layer 3, which I've successfully demuxed into a WAV file as per the above guide. GSpot tells me that the WAV is at 24KHz. I load the wav file into AC3machine, set the options as outlined in the guide http://www.doom9.org/ac3machine.htm, check the option for downsampling to 48000HZ, and try to encode. AC3machine immediately crashes with a windows generated fatal error. I also can't get AC3machine to bring up a log file no matter what options I select. I can however run it successfully with all of the same options, except for the downsampling. Obviously though, without the downsampling, it doesn't fit DVD standards. I tried a second movie, this time gspot says that it's an Mpeg 1, layer 3 @ 32KHz. This stream encodes no problem with downsampling enabled.

I then tried using BeSweetGUI (which I've never used before, so I attempted to use the wizard). Selected my problem WAV file as the source, selected all of the same options (downsampling to 48KHz, stereo, etc). After trying to process, it also gives the same exact Windows fatal error. However, this time I'm given a log, though I don't think it will help.




BeSweet v1.5b29 by DSPguru.
--------------------------
Using hip.dll v1.19 by Myers Carpenter <myers@users.sf.net>
Using Shibatch.dll v0.24 by Naoki Shibata & DSPguru (shibatch.sourceforge.net).
Using AC3enc.dll v1.20 (Feb 18 2004) by Fabrice Bellard (http://ffmpeg.org).

Logging start : 07/28/04 , 21:57:20.

C:\Program Files\DVD\besweetgui\BeSweet\BeSweet.exe -core( -input D:\Movies\DVD\avi\miko.wav -output D:\Movies\DVD\avi\miko - New - [28.07.2004] - [21.57.20].ac3 -logfilea C:\Program Files\DVD\besweetgui\BeSweet.log ) -ssrc( --rate 48000 ) -ac3enc( -b 384 )

[00:00:00:000] +------- BeSweet -----
[00:00:00:000] | Input : D:\Movies\DVD\avi\wedding.wav
[00:00:00:000] | Output: D:\Movies\DVD\avi\wedding - New - [28.07.2004] - [21.57.20].ac3
[00:00:00:000] | Floating-Point Process: No
[00:00:00:000] +------ Shibatch -----
[00:00:00:000] | Source Sample-Rate: 24.0KHz
[00:00:00:000] | Dest. Sample-Rate: 48.0KHz
[00:00:00:000] | Attenuation : 0.0db
[00:00:00:000] +------- AC3ENC ------
[00:00:00:000] | Bitrate method : CBR
[00:00:00:000] | AC3 bitrate : 384
[00:00:00:000] | Channels Mode : 2.0
[00:00:00:000] | Error Protection: Yes
[00:00:00:000] +---------------------


Does anybody have any ideas how I can get this audio stream encoded?

Also, is there a way to use CCE to re-encode a .wmv file? I know how to do it using TMPGENC, but I much prefer CCE and avisynth.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

[killingspree]

another idea to encode this audio file would be to simply encode it to mp2 (mpa) - it's also dvd compliant and will not yield much worse quality when you're reencoding from mp3. also wav files are within the dvd specs (PCM wavs) - so perhaps, if you're not very limited in space, just try to author the dvd with the wav file!

cheers
steVe

[cyberbob25]

I had thought about using just the wav file, but when importing into DVD Lab, it gave me the error that it is still the wrong frequency. As for the .mp2, I had wondered about that also, but the guide had stated that for DVD compliance, you must have either an AC3 or PCM stream. So, having only an .mp2 stream would violate the standard and may not be playable on all players.

[Nick]

So, having only an .mp2 stream would violate the standard and may not be playable on all players.

True...
But you'd be very unlucky to encounter one!
The vast, vast majority will play a DVD without an AC3 or PCM stream. In fact, whilst they probably exist, I have never encountered one that chokes on such discs.

To create a DVD with mp2 audio, you might want to try DVD2SVCD. There is a guide on Doom9 for AVI2DVD using DVD2SVCD. It may not suit your needs but if it does it removes a heck of a lot of the legwork.

Cheers
Nick

[cyberbob25]

Besweet would also crash when I tried to encode to .mp2 at the correct frequency. However, I did end up solving my problem. I'll post here just in case somebody someday has the same problem.

After running the .wav files through ssrc to attempt to downsample to 48000, it bombed out with the error that these weren't valid PCM wav files. So, I loaded these problem files into besweet, this time converting from .wav to .wav with no downsampling. I was then able to downsample these new .wav files using ssrc, then re-encoded with besweet to .ac3.

I'm assuming then that I probably could have just loaded the .wav file that besweet converted in the first step directly back into besweetgui and downsampled and converted to .ac3 all in one step, however, I didn't try this.