No sound in DVD created with DVD-Lab Pro

[adoniscik]

To be specific, my Cyberhome DVD player thinks the 448kbps 5.1 AC3 stream is in fact stereo and plays no sound. The menu, in 192kbps stereo AC3, plays fine. I do not have any problem playing the DVD on computer. Does this mean my DVD player is fussy, or does DVD-lab Pro create non-standard DVDs? I will try to test the DVD on another player.

[reboot]

It means your cheap cyberhome doesn't like audio at such a high bitrate. If it were 224kbps, it might actually play.
You, and a few million others, are finding out that Cyberhome is a VERY fussy player.
DLP creates totally compliant DVD's, within the assets you import.
If someting is non-standard, DLP will give you a warning, unless you've turned them off manually.
Other Cyberhome users have had better luck with mp2 audio, although this defeats the purpose of having 5.1

[mrg]

Originally posted by reboot
DLP creates totally compliant DVD's
That's wrong, DVD-Lab Pro don't create compliant DVD's.
On my DVD-Player (Medion 7457 - MT1389) don't work any DVD with mpeg-audio from DLP. By all mpeg-audio-streams write DLP 20 bps to the IFO's. If I change it to 16 bps by ifoedit, the DVD's play fine on all DVD-Players.
@ adoniscik
Check the IFO's with ifoedit, that the AC3-Stream is set correct by DLP.

[adoniscik]

I made a mistake: the DVD drive is a cheapo Norcent, not a Cyberhome.

Thanks to mrg's suggestion to use IFOedit I was able to determine that DLP has indeed messed up: the audio codec incorrectly carries an ID of 0xA0, which suggests that it is LPCM, rather than AC3. Indeed, PowerDVD 6 reports the audio codec as LPCM 5.1 448kbps, and plays it correctly anyway -- smart thing!

The good thing is that I know why: there are two program chains in the title set, and the second one is in LPCM 2.0. This raises the question: do all program chains in a title set have to share the same codec? If not, surely DLP should warn me! My educated guess is that this is a bug (I used version 1.0 041215) and should be reported...

[mpucoder]

Originally posted by adoniscik
This raises the question: do all program chains in a title set have to share the same codec? Well, we don't call them codecs, but coding modes. All the titles in one title set are limited to a set of 8 audio types (coding mode, number of channels, language, etc) for the titles. The titles can use any or all of them as needed.

I've seen this problem in other authoring programs, where no allowance is made for different audio in different titles. The usual workaround is to get a dummy file of each type of audio so that both kinds can be added to a title. ie title 1 wants to use just ac3, but because title 2 will use lpcm add a dummy track of lpcm to title 1. Then in title 2 start with a dummy track of ac3 (for title 1) and add the lpcm track.

jsoto's audio tools (http://www.videohelp.com/~jsoto/audiotools.htm) can be used to make short files of silence in any type needed.

[adoniscik]

Hey, lookie: (http://www.mmbforums.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=50668#50668)
Yes, this is very probably the problem. In VTS you can set only one audio parameter per audio track in whole VTS so simply the 24bit was played as 16bit as described in IFO. In AC3 or MPA the frames have header where the decoder can read what is it so mixing these formats my work but the PCM data are just data the player has no clue what it is playing.

You are right; DLP should not allow this...
If Oscar (DLP's author) is right, then I have to pick one coding mode. This seems rather limiting. I assume the alternative is to use multiple VTSes?

[reboot]

The Pro version always uses multiple VTS by default.
It would be easier than transcoding all audio to the same format I suppose.
This isn't a dvdlab problem, it's DVD specs.

[mpucoder]

This is a DVDLab problem, not a problem with the specs. There are 8 audio tracks per VTS, each title can use any or all of them. Scenarist can do this.

[mrg]

@ reboot
I always use multiple VTS for each stream, but why write DLP for all my mpa streams the wrong 20 bps to the IFO's?