OT Determining AC3 Specs

Former user wrote on 5/26/2010, 9:53 AM

With the various settings for AC3 (bitrate, channels) there are also filter type settings for Preprocessing, Dialog normalization, DC High and Lowpass filters, etc.

After you create an AC3 file, is there any way to determine what settings were used other than just bitrate and channels? I need to match an AC3 file that was done previously, but I don't have a record of what settings were used. Is this written in a header than some software can read?

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Dave T2

Comments

MarkWWW wrote on 5/26/2010, 12:14 PM

You can find a description of the AC3 header format here which will enable you to determine the characteristics of your file, but it's a complicated format so if you haven't done anything like this before it may be a bit confusing.

The only software I know of that would read and display this data in a nice, easy to read format was the old Sonic Foundry Soft Encode which hasn't been available for many many years.

If you can't puzzle it out, post the AC3 file somewhere I can download it and I'll work out its details for you.

Mark

Former user wrote on 5/26/2010, 12:31 PM

MarkWWW,

Thanks. I found a Demo Download of the Sonic Foundry Soft Encode and it does seem to give the info that I need. I don't know if it times out, but it says the Demo only verifies the first 20 frames of a file. But it does seem to give the header info.

Thanks for your help. I wonder if you can still register this program and get it out of demo mode?

Dave T2