Comments

SonySDB wrote on 8/10/2004, 4:15 AM
DVDA does not support MP2. Audio must be compressed as PCM or AC-3.
bStro wrote on 8/10/2004, 7:51 AM
MPEG audio is not an "official" audio format of the DVD specs, so DVD Architect does not support it.

Not sure why anyone would want to use MPEG audio, anyhow. AC3's compression, as far as I know, is at least as good and sounds better. Confirmation / rebuttal, anyone?

Rob
johnmeyer wrote on 8/10/2004, 8:48 AM
Not sure why anyone would want to use MPEG audio, anyhow. AC3's compression, as far as I know, is at least as good and sounds better. Confirmation / rebuttal, anyone?

Because MPEG audio is used by many, many applications, and is easily and cheaply available. Sometimes you have to deal with what others give you, and it would be nice to be able to produce the end result much faster by not having to wait for a re-encode to AC3 (although this is not a huge deal compared to having to re-encode video).
JaysonHolovacs wrote on 8/10/2004, 1:24 PM
John,
I can see the value of supporting MPEG audio in Vegas(which exists), because, it's a valid audio compression format like any other. However, to my understanding, DVD-A is primarily targeted toward preparing and creating DVD-Video discs. It doesn't do DVD-Audio. It doesn't do data DVDs. Now, as I understand it, very few DVD-Video players support MPEG Audio, so why would you want to have it on a video DVD? For newbies, it might be better that DVD-A re-encodes it to AC-3, otherwise they might not be able to understand why their discs don't play any audio in their set top player. In fact, when I was a complete newbie a few months ago(compared to the experienced newbie I am today), I actually made this mistake when creating a DVD(from some other trial software package that would actually just encode MPEG audio to a disc without question). It's a completely honest mistake: you know your DVDs are MPEG2, so why would MPEG audio not work?

I'm not trying to be argumentative; actually, I want to better understand your viewpoint. As a computer file format, it's just another codec, so support for it in Vegas makes sense(the more codecs supported, the better). But specifically for DVD-Video, it seems not to have much value. Why do you feel that MPEG audio is a useful thing to author to DVD-Video discs? In what circumstances can you actually make use of it?

-Jayson
Kal_Vegas wrote on 11/13/2004, 10:17 AM
In Europe (DVD Region2 with at least 350 to 500 million people) MPEG audio is a standard requirement for all DVD-Video Players. In the US PCM and AC3 were the minimum standard with DTS, MPEG etc. an option. In Europe PCM and MPEG audio were the minimum because I think they didn't want a proprietary standard in the min requirements. AC3 was an option, it might be part of the minimum standard now.
There are reasons for DVDA2 to support MPEG audio streams. I even know of some early Hollywood commercial titles released with MPEG audio and not AC3 in Europe.