using BeSweet w/DD2.0 causes my Pioneer to freeze!

[ou8thisSN]

I have been learning how to convert a NTSC DV file into a NTSC DVD following the DV => DVD guide. i made a couple of discs and each time there was a problem relating to the audio, here's the problem:


I have a Pioneer DV-434 player and a Cyberhome POS player. It works just fine on the Cyberhome but not at all on the Pioneer. On the Pioneer it gets to the menu screen, and i click the play button, and it freezes after it plays about a second of video, and audio. You hear a buzz right before it freezes.

I posted this problem in the DV section of the forum and BB responded by saying:

Of course you can use a commercial AC3 encoder, but unfortunately there aren't any free alternatives as far as I know. Another option is to encode MP2. Should work even with NTSC, although NTSC DVDs should contain an AC3 stream. PAL DVDs are specified to work with MP2 alone, by the way. But I guess you won't find any NTSC standalones either that don't play your MP2-only DVD nowadays.

While he said this, he didnt elaborate on what commercial encoders work universally with these streams...

I would like to know, is there a list of compatible DVD players that play the AC3 stream produced from AC3Machine, etc?

if not, If i were to buy a "commercial AC3 encoder", would that be universally accepted by any DVD player, just like Retail DVD discs?

Also, I noticed that one can encode onto DTS using software available (freeware) here. Are there lesser compatibility problems with DTS vs DD?

I am making a library of all our home movies shot on DV, onto DVD. We have a Pioneer DVD player and a Cyberhome. Sony we will be buying another DVD player, dont know what brand though, so I would make my DVD home movie discs that will play on any player that accepts DVD+R/DVD-R discs.

Please help or point me in the right direction. thanks

[johnman]

I've heard that the cheaper brand dvd-player you use, the bigger the chance it will play your files. The "real" brands like sony and pioneer can bee pretty picky about what they can handle and what not. I've got a cheap divx player and it can handle everything... even seperate ac3 and dts files.

If you want to make dvd's i would get an autohoring program and let this handles your audio stream. This way you are shure to get compatible streams. BTW isn't tmpgenc capable of making mpeg-audio. Im not shure but i believe dvd' can be made with mpeg audio stream. There is a testversion so you can atleast try it.

About those free ac3 and dts encoders. I would never use something like that on my own dvd's. Dvd authoring can be hard enough without using incompatible audio streams.

[ou8thisSN]

while thats true, cheaper DVD players dont have the same quality as good dvd players. Once HD-DVD/Blu Ray comes out, I will be getting a new DVD player from a well known brand and I would like to play my discs that I made here on it.

What are some good commercial Encoders? I have a friend who has Sonic ReelDVD and it says on the website that it encodes in DD Stereo.

I also have DVD-Lab but that uses the TmpegEnC DD encoder or something, is that compatible with all brands of DVD players that play DVD-Rs?

[johnman]

About the quality of dvd-players you are absolutely right. Fortuantely i got a cheap dvd-player with superb image quality :).

I've never used ReelDVD, but i think it will pretty good since sonic has some other profesional dvd-authoring applications. If the application makes a dvd according to the specifications EVERY player should be able to read it.

DVD-Lab also looks as a sollid peace of software, but i can find nothing about audio encoding. I would make a testdvd with it, and if it works on your computer and on your standalone your pretty save.

Worst case scenario when your future dvd-player cant read them is that you have to re-rip and reaudthor the dvd's. You can always re-rip and reauthor as long as you computer can read it correctly.

[ou8thisSN]

i have trial versions of all these software encoders. I found a site called SurCode that supports Dolby Digital encoding in Adobe Primiere Pro. That seems to be legit from Dolby direct, do you know anything about this encoder?

here's the link:

http://www.surcode.com/

they have all the logos from the companies... does that mean that they are the official versions?

[johnman]

Yes those logos mean they are official so they should and probabely will work.
I dont got any experience with them, but I would thrust them blindly. If you want my advice, i would not do dts for stereo recording. This would be a waste of bitrate. Use ac3 instead (or maybe mpeg if thats possible) Have you tried dvd-lab already? When i used a trial i liked it very much.

[ou8thisSN]

its a very good trial software indeed, but i am wary of BB's comments. He must seem to be very knowledgeable if he's a moderator and he says that any third party Ac3 unlisenced encoder will be rejected by Pioneer. So I am assuming the TmpegEnc encoder in DVD-Lab will also produce a disc that is invalid. Anyway thanks for the advice.

Btw: I have about 30 DV tapes to convert to DVD and I dont have the time or inclination to sit there and edit it so that I can get the most video on one Disc. DVD discs are cheap now, so I will be doing a straight 60minute DV tape per DVD conversion. So i'm not really worried about bitrate issues. I was only suggesting encoding in DTS because I was hoping I could "trick" the Pioneer player to work, by not sensing the DD stream or something. To me, bitrate doesnt really matter, i have enough to spare with less than 60 minutes of video per disc in most cases after editing.

[johnman]

I see your point. But to be accurate on this: if you create an invallid mpeg2/dts/ac3 stream which you want to add to a dvd compilation, the authoring software should reject the file as being incompatible. So the authoring software is IMO more important then the stream creation software. So if you create some a buggy audio stream you shouldnt be able to use it in ther first place. But the software obviously cant check the quality, so if you use some crappy software which creates horrible but vallid streams, you get a crappy sounding but playable dvd.

Good luck with the conversion

[ou8thisSN]

OKAY! I finally got my Pioneer DVD player to recognize the DVD stream.... I had to use the officially lisenced Dolby Digital Encoder to do it.

Its a shame really, for the amount of money Dolby makes, they should make their lisence free...