AC3 Cutter

[GaveUp]

Here is the initial release of my most recent program. Below is a copy of the program's description from the README.

AC3 Cutter is a utility designed to fix corruption in AC3 streams that can
typically occur during a digital broadcast. It is also designed to cut AC3
streams given frame numbers of corresponding video, entered either manually,
read from a vcf file, or read from an avs file.

AC3 fixes corruption in AC3 files by first validating an AC3 frame is valid
by it's CRC values. If it is not a valid frame it is then replaced by a silent
frame of equal bitrate. Then each frame is compared to the maximum bitrate
found in the stream and if it is less than the max the frame is patched and
converted up to the max bitrate. This is to solve the problem of VBR AC3 files
not playing properly when in an AVI file. When an AC3 Frame is patched to a
higher bitrate it is NOT reencoded. The original audio remains untouched so
there is NO quality loss.

This program arose out of my inability to encode to my format of choice, recordings I made off of some stations due to the fact they change the audio bitrate during commercials. This program has solved my problems and I hope some of you guys find it as useful as I have.

There will be a second release within a few days to fix some known bugs in the program. Being that these do not affect the end product, I am releasing this now in the hopes people will test it and let me know of any bugs they find. I am sure there are more than just the ones I know about (aren't there always?).

[GaveUp]

Have a little bandwith to burn on my webhost still so here is a link to it until the attachment is approved.

AC3 Cutter v0.1.zip (http://vidphiles.com/AC3%20Cutter%20v0.1.zip)

[Pookie]

This is a really nice little app. The best kind - simple, and effective. Thanks :)

[GaveUp]

Thought this app was abandoned? Sorry to disappoint, but here is a new version. A word of warning. The VCF cut and Last Frame sync methods are extremely beta. The last frame sync method is completely untested. The VCF cutting has a known rounding error that leads to a triple the maximum needed desync (48ms vs 16ms). Expect a bug fix for that in the next version. Here is a copy of the changelog for this version.

=================
v0.2 - 07/02/2005
=================
+Added get Frame by Last Frame option (-lfm)
+Added quiet mode (-q)
+Added Logging option (-o <filename)
+Added do not sync option (-ns)
+Added do not patch option (-np)
+Added Byte Sync Get Frame method (-bsm)
+Added support for cutting ac3 files
+Added VCF parsing support (-vcf <filename>)
+Added delay ac3 option (-d <ms>)
+Added video fps option (-fr <fps>). Used for cutting ac3.
*Fixed bug with frames replaced with silence not passing CRC checks.

Enjoy this release, and please report any bugs or problems you find. Feature requests are also welcome.

Grab v0.2 here (http://vidphiles.com/AC3%20Cutter%20v0.2.zip).

[GaveUp]

There was a nasty bug in v0.2 that caused the program to crash if there was no vcf file specified. Here is a quick bug fix for it.

=================
v0.2.1 - 07/05/2005
=================
*Fixed bug causing crashes if a VCF was not specified.

Grab v0.2.1 here (http://vidphiles.com/AC3%20Cutter%20v0.2.1.zip).

[Karl Beem]

What is the format of the vcf file?

[GaveUp]

What is the format of the vcf file?

It's a processing settings file made by VirtualDub. I'm not sure if it's fixed in recent versions but for a while I know VirtualDub stopped writing the AddRange() to the VCF file (this is what the cutter uses to determine cut points) so if the audio does not appear to cut open up the vcf file in notepad and verify there are AddRange()'s in there. If there aren't you will have to use a version of VirtualDub that does write the AddRange()'s. I'm using VirtualDub 1.4.10 (old, I know) and it writes the AddRanges()'s.

The format the cutter looks for is:
VirtualDub.subset.AddRange(startFrame,numOfFrames);
where startFrame is the first frame to include and number of frames is how many frames after it to include.

[GaveUp]

Here's the latest version of AC3 Cutter. No major changes in this version as far as the functionality is concerned, but there are some updates to make it work better with a GUI.

=================
v0.3 - 07/09/2005
=================
+Added code to make live update via AC3CGUI possible.

Grab AC3 Cutter v0.3 here (http://vidphiles.com/AC3%20Cutter%20v0.3.zip).


As mentioned above, changes were made to make AC3 Cutter work more nicely with a GUI. So here's the GUI frontend for AC3 Cutter.

Grab AC3CGUI v0.1 here (http://vidphiles.com/AC3CGui%20v0.1.zip).

[stax76]

Will I get sync issues? I was told the AC3 framesize is 40 ms which is problematic.

[GaveUp]

Will I get sync issues? I was told the AC3 framesize is 40 ms which is problematic.

Under ideal conditions, you'd have a +/- 16ms. Right now there is arounding error I'm working on trying to fix that makes it about +/- 48ms. Even at 48ms off I, personally, can't tell the difference. Your best bet is to try it and see if you notice a sync problem. Of course, this issue is only when you use the VCF.

[GaveUp]

Here's an updated AC3CGUI that fixes some bugs and missing features (oops!) in v0.1.

Grab AC3CGUI v0.2 here (http://vidphiles.com/AC3CGUI%20v0.2.zip).

[berrinam]

Great program -- small and powerful. I have two things to ask about it:

It is also designed to cut AC3
streams given frame numbers of corresponding video, entered either manually,
read from a vcf file, or read from an avs file.Is this true? I can only find cutting based on vcf files.

Under ideal conditions, you'd have a +/- 16ms. Right now there is arounding error I'm working on trying to fix that makes it about +/- 48ms. Even at 48ms off I, personally, can't tell the difference. Your best bet is to try it and see if you notice a sync problem. Of course, this issue is only when you use the VCF.Does this mean 48ms per cut, or in total?

[GaveUp]

Is this true? I can only find cutting based on vcf files.

As the TODO file says, avs cutting still isn't added in yet, and honestly I'm debating whether or not to put it in.

Does this mean 48ms per cut, or in total?

Total, at any given point. That is at one cut point it can misround and cut or add an extra frame. From that point on, until the next cut point it can be OOS up to 48ms. At the next cut, however, the program will compensate and add/cut frames so that the sync does not go even further out.

[babaz]

this is really weird
are 0.2.1 and latest 0.3 archives really working or what?
both AC3 Cutter.exe's give me "application initialization error", just like a faulty .exe

meanwhile the 0.2 gui shows up correctly
really strange...
UPDATE: winxp sp2 with athlonXP - maybe has that been compiled with some sort of PIV/sse2-3 only code?!?!

[GaveUp]

this is really weird
are 0.2.1 and latest 0.3 archives really working or what?
both AC3 Cutter.exe's give me "application initialization error", just like a faulty .exe

meanwhile the 0.2 gui shows up correctly
really strange...
UPDATE: winxp sp2 with athlonXP - maybe has that been compiled with some sort of PIV/sse2-3 only code?!?!

This is unusual. As a secondary test platform I was using a Pentium 200 laptop and everything runs fine on it, so I'd almost lean towards it being a problem on your end. I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem (I would have thought someone would have mentioned someone like this!).

When I get a chance tonight I'll take a look and see if I can find any glaring reasons why you might be having this problem. Unfortunatly (in this case, fortunatly in all other cases) my only athlonXP machine runs linux and not windows so I don't have similar hardware to try reproducing the problem on.

Update: I grabbed the programs and tested on the comp I'm on right now. Both run fine (pretty stock Win2k setup). Did find a small bug in the GUI and the cutter, though (both are completely unrelated to this issue). Now why can't those buggers show up when debugging. :/

[babaz]

i've a pretty clean machine, no BSODs, no virus, no malware, no nothing so it's a bit unuasual to have an .exe that refuses to launch like that... i suspect my unzipping utility is at fault (i use 7zip, FYI) albeit is nearly impossible

[Pookie]

Runs fine on my system (XP, SP1, Athlon 64)

[GaveUp]

I am unable to duplicate your problem. First, tell me if the cutter runs fine from command line. This should as it is just a standard dos program with no calls to external libraries. The GUI should have everything compiled statically, but it is possible that I could have missed something, though, again I'd still suspect if that were the case other people would have had the problem too.

If it is just the GUI that is giving you problems PM me a log of regmon/filemon output so I can try to narrow down the problem.

[GaveUp]

The URLS for the programs have changed. The new URLs are:

AC3 Cutter v0.3 (http://ac3c.vidphiles.com/AC3%20Cutter%20v0.3.zip)
AC3CGUI v0.2 (http://ac3c.vidphiles.com/AC3CGUI%20v0.2.zip)

[babaz]

I am unable to duplicate your problem. First, tell me if the cutter runs fine from command line. This should as it is just a standard dos program with no calls to external libraries. The GUI should have everything compiled statically, but it is possible that I could have missed something, though, again I'd still suspect if that were the case other people would have had the problem too.

If it is just the GUI that is giving you problems PM me a log of regmon/filemon output so I can try to narrow down the problem.

it's me again, babaz
just a fast update on the "not working" issue... it's a NET framework issue
infact as soon as i installed the .NET framework, your GUI started to work :D
btw, ... i think u should make it clear that this GUI needs such a framework (afaik it's still not so widely popular, mainly 'coz XP does not install it by default)

cheers :stupid:

[GaveUp]

Well, actually, the GUI has some major bugs that for one reason or another hang the cutter sometimes. I haven't bothered to track them down since I'm working on another project that will essentially replace that GUI anyway so right now I'm just focusing on fixing the worst of the cutter problems and I'll probably leave it at that.

[E-Male]

thx for releasing this open-source

[nnigam]

I found this program today and have a few questions. First my problem. I have a dvd created from my NTSC video camera of a family function. Since I no longer have the original pictures, the best way to do this I found to do this was.

1. Process the VOB files to a d2v file/wav file using dgindex.
2. Create an avs script to process the video using quenc. The script changed the size from 720x480 to 720x576 and used ChangeFPS to change to 25fps from 29.976. I could not use dgpulldown since I was going down in video frame rate.
3. Process audio using ac3machine to convert to ac3 audio.
4. Create DVD using muxman/dvdauthorgui.

Problem came up when I found that some video was in the wrong place. I can change the order using Trim functions in AVS script for the video. How can I do this for the audio. I do not want to convert to AVI first since conversion from dvd to avi to dvd there will be some quality loss due to compression. Some additional questions. 1. Since Change FPS has been used, time should still be the same so audio/video will be in synch, but how will this affect the frame/time location using an avs or vcf script to process the audio using ac3cutter. I am asking instead of testing because I have a 4.5 hour video to process, and it will take my pc the whole day to process this. An alternative I was thinking of was to use dgindex to cut the video into separate d2v files and then put them together in the correct order, but if I can process the audio it would make the work a whole lot easier. I am not worried about fixing the ac3 as most of the ac3 cutter apps seem to want to do.

Thanks in advance for any advice, including a better way to do what I am trying to do.

[cweb]

Funnily on my XP SP2 Athlon 64, the gui runs but the command line program gives me "the application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application".

[GaveUp]

Funnily on my XP SP2 Athlon 64, the gui runs but the command line program gives me "the application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application".

Make sure you have the .NET framework installed.

[cweb]

I have it.

I tried recompiling it using gcc and the command line program worked then.
So I guess it's something to do with the compile.

[stax76]

Thanks for this tool, do you mind me use it with StaxRip? One feature request, would be awesome to use it with cmdl only without creating a vcl file. AviSynth uses Trim(Start,End) so I'm proposing -trim start,end -trim start2,end2 ...

[GaveUp]

That is one of the features I had planned to implement. First I need to fix the cut and delay code, though, as it is broken. All of that is on hold because I'm working on a rewrite that will hopefully make this easier to maintain, and make other projects I want to work on easier. I don't have any problem with you including the app as part of another program.

[stax76]

Thanks, maybe you can tell me how it differs from VirtualDubMod which can also cut AC3.

[GaveUp]

The cutting would essentially be identical, different codebase but the results should be just about identical (assuming the cut code wasn't bugged.) The thing Vdubmod doesn't do is the corruption repair and CBR patching.

[icezellion]

AC3 Cutter v0.3
AC3CGUI v0.2

Links are dead? Anyone have these :p?

[setarip_old]

Hi!

This may be a similar program:

http://www.digital-digest.com/software/download.php?sid=263&ssid=0&did=1

[GaveUp]

This program has more or less been abandoned by me. It was buggy and it was more proof of concept than anything else. I've been meaning to do a redesign of it, but I haven't gotten around to it. If you're looking to use it for cutting I'd recommend using another cutter as this one never functioned properly cutting ... one of those things I didn't get around to fixing. If it's the CBR patching that's needed I'll see if I can't pull an archived version of tapes to throw up somewhere.

[Turtleggjp]

I still use your program a lot for cutting. However, instead of relying on your program to decide on the cut points, I wrote an Excel spreadsheet to figure out what AC3 frames to take. It then gives me a list of VirtualDub.subset.AddRange lines that I can feed into AC3 Cutter using a frame rate of 31.25 (AC3 frames per second). This works about 95% of the time. When it doesn't work, AC3 Cutter misses one or two of the cut points by +/- 1 frame. A little hand tweaking of the input lines can usually coax it into giving me the frames that I want. The results are excellent, and I've tested it with one TV show that I made about 20 cuts on (for testing purposes) and it maintained sync beautifully! Since the program is open source, I have tried modifying the cutting code to do what my Excel spreadsheet does, but I haven't actually tested it yet. If anyone is interested, I could try to continue to fix this part of the program.

Matt

[Pookie]

From our dear friend in Italia...

http://www.64k.it/andres/data/a/AC3_Cutter_v0.3.zip

[Leinad4Mind]

No one can put again the links of
AC3 Cutter v0.3
AC3CGUI v0.2

[cweb]

No one can put again the links of
AC3 Cutter v0.3
AC3CGUI v0.2

Here's ac3cgui v0.2, I happened to have downloaded it, so I uploaded it for you:
http://www.bestsharing.com/files/t8UKA0270875/AC3CGUI%20v0.2.zip.html

[Turtleggjp]

Two things.

#1 that is not an AC3 file, so don't expect AC3 cutter to be able to work on it.

#2 Judging by the file name, it might be a rule 6 violation to offer further assistance with it.

[Owyn]

ac3cgui v0.2

links are dead? Anyone have these :p?
: (

[GaveUp]

You can find the applications here (http://ac3c.vidphiles.com/), but I can't guarantee how they will work. It's been years since I've touched them.

[Karl Beem]

You can find the applications here (http://ac3c.vidphiles.com/), but I can't guarantee how they will work. It's been years since I've touched them.

They still work or at least the ones I have do.

[leosmendes]

i'm trying to cut with ac3 cutter + gui, and obtaining a uncut file, with marked "enable cutting". the log speak of cut mode is disabled. another question, is possible cut at end of file?

http://imageshack.us/a/img441/1480/erroac3cut.jpg

[Selur]

DelayCut (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162984) might be worth a try,..