Playing .ac3 files that you've just created

RickZ wrote on 8/26/2006, 6:42 AM
I've posted this question in DVDA forum, and that may not have been the best place. After rendering a 5.1 Dolby Digital .ac3 file, with the Dolby Digital EN-coder in Vegas, I would like to be able to play that file back, through the same audio connections that I listened to it in Vegas. My presumption is that a Dolby Digital DE-coder is required, but I can't seem to find one.

Has anyone else figured out how to check your .ac3's, short of creating a DVD, and playing it back ?

Rgds,
Rick Z

Comments

ibliss wrote on 8/26/2006, 9:54 AM
Might be able to play them in VLC media player. It's free by the way...

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

seems to be happy to try and play lots of file types. Haven't tested AC3 files myself.
newhope wrote on 8/27/2006, 9:12 PM
I have the DVD player software PowerDVD XP 5.0 Deluxe, with Dolby Digital decoder, from Cyberlink and I can open and play the .ac3 file directly off my hard drive through the same speakers/hardware that I used when mixing/encoding.

I'd imagine that any DVD player software, that allows you the option of opening files from your hard drive, and is capable of Dolby Digital decoding/replay from a DVD disk ,would do the same.

The latest version PowerDVD 7.0 Standard will play Doby Digital 5.1 files but you'd need the Deluxe version to decode and play Dolby Digital EX (7.1)

Regards
Stephen Hope
RickZ wrote on 8/28/2006, 1:36 PM
You're right, I'd gotten a suggestion about PowerDVD in the DVDA forum, and bought the program with the enhanced audio pack, but had not gone far enough to determine that it had different ideas about what audio channels were for what. By creating a new preset for my RME Mulitiface, to cross-over their channels to my settings, it sounded fine. Now that's got me thinking that I may want to consider re-arranging the layout on Vegas. I currently have Main 1,2 Surr 3,4 Cent/LFE 5,6. But PowerDVD uses 5,6 for surround, and 3,4 for Cent/LFE.

Is that a standard of sorts ?

Thanks again for you advice,
Rick Z

PS I still wish Sony would include a Dolby Digital Pro DE-Coder to match the En-Coder. Especially an informative one that would display your parameter settings. I've managed to get very exciting sound, but with a lot of experimentation, that could be shortened, by being able to see everything in one place. Dolby has lovely hardware to buy, that does all that, for many $k, but that's beyond my budget.