Subject:Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro Missing from DVDA

Posted by: DanWC

Date:8/15/2011 5:39:03 PM

When trying to render a project's audio in Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro, I get the following error message:

"The AC-3 plug-in is currently unavailable. You can unlock this plug-in by installing and registering DVD Architect Pro"

I have registered both Vegas Pro 9.0 and DVDA when I bought it. Because of some glitch with DVDA and Windows 7 (according to Sony's Tech Supoort) I'm forced to "Run as Administrator" in order to use DVDA. I am frustrated now THIS!!!

Can anyone help??

Subject:RE: Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro Missing from DVDA

Reply by: FrontierDK

Date:4/20/2013 6:50:37 AM

It's not a glitch - when you bought your products, most features were activated right after installation. One feature, however, isn't. AC3 pro must also be bought. It's a separate license.

The Microsoft way of saying this - it's not a bug, it's behavior by design.

Subject:RE: Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro Missing from DVDA

Reply by: FixitMad0

Date:4/27/2016 2:32:11 PM

DanWC,


I just came across your post!

I also have Vegas Pro 9 and DVDA 5 and I could not get Vegas to Render as in AC-3 working. I also kept getting the message "The AC-3 plug-in is currently unavailable. You can unlock this plug-in by installing and registering DVD Architect Pro"

I registered both software while I was active on the Internet so I would have also thought that my purchase would have registered correctly between Vegas and DVD Architect. Since I still could not find any help that worked, I did some digging around on my system and found this:

The ac3plug.dll under Vegas Pro 9 has a different file size than the same file located under the DVD Architect Pro 5.2 folder.

What I did is this:


I copied the ac3plug.dll located (on my system) under C:\Program Files (x86)\Sony\DVD Architect Pro 5.2\FileIO Plug-Ins\ac3plug

to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Sony\Vegas Pro 9.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\ac3plug

REMEMBER to First rename the ac3plug.dll under Vegas 9 to ac3plug.dll.old or something similar. I like to keep backups just in case. Do not have either DVDA or SVP running.

Once I performed this, AC-3 Render as NOW WORKS under Vegas Pro 9.

Not sure this is helpful now since your original post was back in 2011, but it still may apply especially for newer versions of Vegas and DVDA.

Just a note: This is on a Windows 7 x64 system that I tried this and it is working.

Hopefully others will be able to get this working for their Paid For copies of Vegas and DVD Architect Pro