Soft Encode Alternatives

[jriker1]

I currently use Soft Encode and let me start by saying it's great. I had a lot of problems with DVD lockups in standalone players that all stemmed from poor, non-compliant Dolby AC-3 encoding. Moving to Soft Encode resolved all that. Supposably, from what I have read, the software is very slow by todays standards. This also does not concern me.

Regardless of that, my company has funding for some replacement software and was looking for suggestions. What I am looking for is a WAV to AC-3 encoder that will guarantee the most compliant Dolby Digital AC-3 files are generated. I am not looking for hardware based solutions, just commercial software based.

I have looked at items like Sony's Vegas+DVD, however have concerns as they do not carry the Dolby Digital logo and make reference that their AC-3 is certified by Dolby which sounds like they use their own algorithms to create the AC-3 file.

One other question besides software alternatives, with Soft Encode, it obviously has older Dolby libraries. Is this an issue at all?

Thanks.

JR

[johnman]

What I am looking for is a WAV to AC-3 encoder that will guarantee the most compliant Dolby Digital AC-3 files are generated.


I believe software is compliant, or its not, nothing in between :)

If sonic gives good results i wouldnt change it. Being slow is IMO not a bad sign. If you would buy some software that was 4x as fast, i would have serious doubts about it. Encodeing can be very time consuming when you want optimal results.

What might be handy is combining a dvd-authoring program with a good ac3 encoder. This way its a tad easier to make dvd's. But i dont know how you use the encoder, so this advise might not be relevant.

I dont have to much experience with encoding ac3 so i cant help you futher... If you still want some more advice maybe someone else can help you out.

[daphy]

Inside Scenarist you will find the further developed version of softencode from sonic - I never tried it but according to an article (http://www.edv-tipp.de/dvd/047_dvd_sound08.htm) from a german site this encoder is much better than most of the others and of course it´s certificated!

[johnman]

I thought the one from scenartist only does stereo ac3 encoding.

[jriker1]

I tried the one in Scenarist once. Besides having to create a new dvd authoring project to access it, which is not a huge deal, it kept crashing after I added the last of the 6 wav files into it. No errors, just completely closed. Seems not to be a further developed version of Soft Encode in some respects as Soft Encode could take a single WAV file and split out the channels for you where Scenarist wants six separate WAV files. Since Soft Encode crashes on WAV files greater than 4GB, it is becoming a necessary evil anyway.

JR

[johnman]

Isnt there a program in the scenarist directory called ac3enc.exe ??

Scenarist only calles this program to make ac3's so why not use it yourself directly.

Sonic soft encode can also work with 6 mono files. So you arent limited to 4 gb for 6ch anymore. And i think 4gb per channel is more then enough.

[Video Dude]

You could have your company buy SurCode, since it sounds that you want a standalone ac3 encoder.

surcode. com