Subject:How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Posted by: dvddude

Date:3/25/2003 1:49:40 PM

This question seems to be asked over and over, but I see no clear answer!

The advertizing for Vegas+DVD says "AC-3" all over it. But just try to find something about it in any of the manuals!

I have this suite, I've installed everything, registered everything... what little help there is on the subject says to encode a DVD project for DVD Architect from Vegas using the MainConcept MPEG-2 plug-in. But AC-3 does not show up on its audio menu!! The ONLY place I can find AC-3 mentioned anywhere is as a single audio export from Vegas... yet DVD Architect, according to the Sonic Foundry whitepapers, does not take separate elementary streams--only multiplexed MPEG-2 files.

So how are you supposed to export an MPEG-2, with AC-3 stereo audio, to DVD Architect, with chapter markers intact? Exactly what sequence of events is required?

And why is this not in the manual!?! It's sold a s a "one-step" bundle, but there are no instructions as to how to do this!!

Thanks in advance. Very frustrating. I spent the whole day trying get this thing registered and now that I'm into the program I can't find the reason that I bought the thing in the menus!

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: vonhosen

Date:3/26/2003 7:02:34 PM

What you are supposed to do is render the MPEG-2 .mpg file (but make sure that the include audio on the audio tab is UN-CHECKED) & a render of just the soundtrack as an .ac3 file (same filename as your .mpg though) and DVDA should deal with them.

DVDA won't accept an elementary (.m2v) video file, it needs a .mpg containing video only. The reason it has to be .mpg is that apparently the .mpg file is needed for tranfering markers for chapters etc when transfering from V4 to DVDA.

I'm not using DVDA myself at the momment until it's feature set increases & bugs decrease.

There is a script to render the required video only .mpg & .ac3 file in one go.
Check this thread for details
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=157558

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: dvddude

Date:3/27/2003 10:10:30 AM

Thanks so much for the information!

Before I bought Vegas+DVD, I read a bunch of whitepapers, and I was sure it said that you could not load separate audio & video files, so that confused me; probably it specifically meant elementary streams (e.g., m2v), not just any two files. Then I bought the software and initially made an MPEG-2 *with* audio, then tried to replace it with an AC3 file, and it wouldn't. Even if I dropped a same-named AC3 next to it, it wouldn't "see" it and there was no way to tell it to use that audio, so that's what threw me. If I do it your way from the beginning, it *does* see it, but you need to do it exactly this way. Sure wish this was covered in bold print in the manual...

I find DVD-A very inconsistent in this way. For 'First Play,' you need to manually define the audio & video separately, but for your main content, you can't do that even if you WANT to. Also, First Play doesn't preview! I'm trying to set up a short First Play clip that leads into the top-level menu, and I can't even test it! Prior to this, I used MyDVD and Ulead's DVD Workshop, so I find some of these little weird points very frustrating. There's a lot I like about it, but just as much that I find infuriating.

So I tried what you said, and in fact it does seem to now show that the AC3 file is pulled in alongside the video. But I'm still having all sorts of problems. For the record...

1--I have to report something that others on this list have reported. When exporting AC3 from Vegas 4, with several attempts from the *exact same* 2-hour Vegas project, sometimes it takes 20 minutes, and other times it takes 5 or six *hours*! And some of the AC3 files, when used as background sound loops for menus, seem to REALLY screw up DVD-A... it always complians that they need to be recompressed, for one thing, and the looping length never works, cutting the file far short of its length (20 seconds to 4) even if I try to set the loop length manually.

2--I have a 3.5 GB MPeG, a 175 MB AC3, and three menus with still background JPG images and very short AC3 sound loops. Yet every time I go to make the DVD, it wont let me telling me that the size of the DVD would be 5.9 GB and exceeds disc size, even though the actual file sizes are about 3.7 GB and my limit set in options is 4.2 GB. What voodoo is this program doing?? I never had this happen with DVD Workshop. Also, the "Make DVD" dialog has two weird slider for setting a CBR bit rate... very scary. I'm assuming that if I leave it at 8000 and my video was compressed at VBR ~4000 that it wont touch it, but that's not clear.

3--Snap to grid in DVD-A is hard to set and is counter-productive. The padding/margins of the image & text bounding boxes are not settable and seems random; things line up all screwy. You end up having to do it by eye, and on a 1600x1200 monitor, the screen is the size of a postage stamp and you can't zoom in! ARGH! Also needed are "space evenly H & V" tools to go with the alignment tools for spacing 3 or more items. And some easier method of repositioning text, such as to the side of the thumbnail, instead of under it. Or a global resize for all thumnails on a page, since the default size for, say, 6 thumnails is ridiculously tiny for no reason.

Anyway, thanks again for your advice!

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: dvddude

Date:3/27/2003 2:33:37 PM

Addendum:

In my last post, above, I reported that the "First Play" wasn't previewing.

In fact, it isn't working at all. The FP is an MPG/AC3 export from Vegas, I go to the project properties screen and pull it in, but apparently even though the paths to the two files aree correct, it is not pulling them in.

I'm stumped.

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: Bill_Wood

Date:4/8/2003 3:30:22 PM

Dude

I am also a new user of Vegas 4+DVD. I bought it expressly to master DVD's with Dolby Digital audio capabilities. You are right about NO instructions in the supplied documentation. However there is quite a bit of help in the supplied Help files that can be accessed from inside either Vegas 4 or DVD Architect. That is how I got started.

You need to Render a file in the AC-3 format using the Render As menu after you set up the audio tracks in the surround mode. You also need to speicfy 5.1 Surround in the Audio Properties to turn on all the AC-3 capability. After rendering the AC-3 file you can burn a DVD using DVD Architect. I used the Music Compilation mode. It suprised me by producing a good 5.1 DVD on the first try!

Play with things to get familiar with it. One day SF should include a Dolby Digital/AC-3 users manual.

Bill

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: edmellnik

Date:4/16/2003 3:39:02 PM

Bill,
Since you have had success at 5.1 Maybe you could shed so light.

I have a stereo wav track for my dvd program.
I import it to the time line and set my properties settings to 5.1
I am having a had time figuring out how to get this stereo track to 5.1
Ed

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: swattum

Date:4/16/2003 8:29:20 PM

I'm guessing that for some reason you don't want to simply render as AC3 stereo.

My suggestion would be to use an audio editor to split the stereo wav file into 2 seperate right and left mono wave files. Then you can bring these individual files into Vegas and using the surround panner, specify where you want the sound for each track coming from.

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: edmellnik

Date:4/18/2003 1:02:23 PM

I tried saving the separate left and right channels ...did not make a differenc.
but I see that I am getting a delay or echo between my front left and rear left and my front right and rear right...??/

anyone know why?

ed

Subject:RE: How do you make an AC-3 DVD with Vegas+DVD?

Reply by: rnair

Date:4/26/2003 8:56:49 AM

Which Sound Card you use ?

Thanks,

Radha