can vegas 5 read AC-3?

weasel_ferret wrote on 1/6/2005, 10:03 PM

Hey,

I used a set-top DVD video recorder to transfer some analog video to DVD. Then I put the DVD in my computer, copied the .VOB files to my hard drive and renamed them to MPG. Vegas reads the video fine, but it can't read the AC-3 audio.

Premiere has no problem reading the audio. Nor does Windows Media Player, nor does The Core Media Player. So it would seem that although Vegas can **OUTPUT** to AC-3, it cannot read the selfsame format? What up with that?

Please advise

Comments

farss wrote on 1/6/2005, 10:43 PM

You're right it cannot read them.
However I think I've had it read them. Installing a DVD player app adds a ac3 decoder to Windows and somehow Vegas was able to use it. Wierd.

But you see the thinking is that ac3 is a lossy system for output only so even if you could you wouldn't want to read it back. I agree this is a problem with the STB recorders. Some I think you can get to record PCM audio which you should have no problems with in Vegas.

Bob.

gordyboy wrote on 1/7/2005, 1:39 AM

I'm using Vegas 5 and it plays AC3 files ripped from DVD without any problems.

However, I always convert the VOB files to AVI files first (actually, I didn't know you could just rename VOB files as MPG).

From memory, I think Sound Forge handles AC3 so if you have that, perhaps you could open the files with SF and then re-save in .wav format?

Cheers

gordyboy

weasel_ferret wrote on 1/8/2005, 6:32 PM

Thanks for your thoughtsm guys, but I would really like to hear some official word on this.

Sure, AC-3 is a lossy format, but so is MPG. And Vegas reads MPG video streams just fine, so the "we don't want to support reading lossy formats" argument does not hold up.

I do have an AC-3 reader installed (AC3 Filter), and it seems to work with all applications except Vegas. Don't know if this is AC3 Filter's fault, or Vegas' fault, or what.

What other AC3 reader plugins have y'all used?