Yes. I am beginning to consider that the activation is completely messed up as a result of installing and uninstalling the trial version of Vegas Pro about a year ago? I really hope that's not the case.

I still can't open a ticket with Magix.

My understanding is that Vegas Pro & MS no longer use Dolby codecs but rely on Windows components for AC3, and Windows possibly doesn't cater for 5 channel, only 2 channel. If you search the forum there are threads on this.

I recall reading a workaround suggesting exporting the audio channels from VMS as separate wav files to use in DVDA.

Perhaps that is the case, however, if it was why would Vegas be calling an exception to activate the plugin. I am currently having to do some very complicated work arounds to get my work done. Hours of extra time to export to mp4 and then into DVD Architect, then manually recreating chapters because markers aren't importing as expected. I've also reverted to an older install of DVD Architect on a previously retired Win 7 machine. Something that Vegas doesn't seem to handle properly is permissions. I've temporarily elevated my regular user account to try to get this to activate, per their exception, but it still says that I'm not an admin. It is unfortunate that Magix seems to be taking this product into the realms of neglect. Their direct product support is rediculous. I regret that I rushed to upgrade thinking that would solve the problem. Total waste of money. I will not recommend this product to my customers anymore. 🙁

BTW I wanted to thank you Eric for your thoughts.

Rob, I have experienced a similar issue as you, attempting to activate AC-3 (for stereo, not 5.1). Even though I'm running Movie Studio 16 Platinum (build 175, not Pro version), I was routed over to this forum.

I am able to import VOB (MPEG-2 video) into the timeline. The AC-3 Stereo audio plays fine. However, I am unable to render the audio track out via DD AC-3 studio format (stereo). I'm getting that familiar message "Unable to install... re-launch program as admin..." - also includes an error code. As others have stated, this is bogus. I did not think version 16 was affected by Magixs' new policies abandoning AC-3 support.

The reason I say this is because this same process was operating fine on my old PC (same program version, build 167, different Win version). That computer died and I've since built a new desktop, downloaded and re-installed the latest program (build 175). With this new install, I no longer can activate AC-3. The question I ponder is, would re-installing my original build 167 allow me to activate AC-3?

After digging out whatever info I could find on this subject, I resorted to rendering out my audio to a WAV and then converted it back to AC-3, via FFmpeg - not convenient and very aggravating.

I don't believe this older MS 16 is supported any longer so of course I wouldn't expect any sort of remedy from Magix.

Best of luck.