5.1 Surround !?!?

Larkero wrote on 4/2/2003, 2:23 PM
I made this Music VideoClip project in Vegas4 and the Soundtrack was rendered in AC3 5.1 Surround format...

I loaded the AVI file and the AC3 file into DVD Architect and burned it...

When I played the DVD with WinDVD, all I heard were 2 channels, WinDVD reported that the Audio track was "Dolby Digital, 16bit 48k 2ch !?!?!

When I load the AC3 file into WinDVD, it reports the Audio track as "Dolby Digital, 16bit 48k 5.1ch !!!

Why DVD Architect did not burn the AC3 Audio track as a 5.1ch ???

Comments

sms wrote on 4/2/2003, 4:34 PM
When you create a 5.1 audio track in V4 by default volume is only provided to the front L & R speakers. If you want the center channel to have volume click on the surround sound panner icon on the audio track and increase the center channel slider at the bottom to the desired level. If you want sound from the rear speakers you need to click on the surround sound icon and move the little diamond to the speaker you want sound to come from. Click on Insert, audio envelop and surround sound key frame to move sound around the 5.1 field.
Cheno wrote on 4/2/2003, 9:13 PM
Did you create 5 separate channels, each at their respective locations?
Larkero wrote on 4/3/2003, 1:16 PM
As I mentioned, the rendered 5.1 AC3 file from V4 plays OK with WinDVD, meaning that all 6 channels are clearly individualy audible.

But after I burned the AC3 file along with the AVI file, the 6 audio tracks got mixed down to 2 channels only !!!
Udi wrote on 4/3/2003, 1:19 PM
Did you check in the optimised that the audio format is ac3 5.1 ?
Larkero wrote on 4/3/2003, 1:22 PM
No problem with the "Speakers" assignment in V4 as the resulting AC3 file does play very well in 5.1 format with WinDVD, the problem occurs after the file has been burned...
DavidMurray wrote on 4/3/2003, 1:46 PM
DVDA doesn't necessarily output the same format that was imported. This is true for video as well as audio. Still .jpg files are converted to a DVD playable format, for example.

When you "Prepare DVD" in DVDA, check your audio settings and make sure it is set to output in 5.1 format. I think the default is .ac3 stereo. I know someone else on this forum was commenting previously that PCM .wav files would be rendered as .ac3 stereo if you didn't manually change the setting. I suspect the same thing is true for .ac3 5.1.

Also, be sure you're actually getting the .ac3 5.1 file when you import the .avi into DVDA. Importing an .mpg will automatically bring an .ac3 audio file along if the names are identical, but I'm not sure about .avi. You may have to import the audio manually.
Larkero wrote on 4/4/2003, 1:55 PM
Thanks for the infos David...

In DVDA, I effectively went into the "Optimize" section of the "Prepare" module and I set the "media Audio Settings" to "AC3 5.1 Surround"...

The result was perfect...

Thanks again David...