VS 2020 Ultimate - 5.1 supported?

[Allen-B]

I've been running VS 2020 Ultimate for some time now; however, I've only had to work with files that are stereo. I'm now trying to edit a file that has Dolby 5.1. When I try to set the Project Properties, AC3 2.0 is the ONLY choice. Does 'Ultimate' NOT have support for AC3 5.1?

[rwernyei]

Corel dropped DD5.1 support in all their offerings of VideoStudio from 2019 and newer. Hence, the reason why I still believe Ultimate 2018 was their best release and the last version I own.

[Allen-B]

Thank you for your timely response. Well, that certainly is discouraging. That certainly makes me rethink my options with regard to upgrading, or now, downgrading!

[Ken Berry]

If you are thinking of moving to another NLE, you will find that Cyberlink has also dropped support for Dolby 5.1 in Power Director. I don't know how many of the other major companies have followed suit...

[rwernyei]

Allen sent you a PM.

[Ken Berry]

Depending on what Allen is trying to produce, VS is still capable of producing 5.1 audio, though this is not available if he is wanting to produce an .mp4 clip. The 5.1 audio available, moreover, is PCM 5.1 and not Dolby 5.1. It is available if in Share you go into Custom and choose, for instance, either .m2t, H.264 or XAVC .mp4 (or indeed uncompressed AVI). You have to be aware that being PCM, the audio will not be compressed so will be larger than Dolby 5.1. It is thus regarded by some (many?) as being inferior to Dolby. But I guess if space is not a major concern, and if you really want 5.1 and nothing else, PCM 5.1 might be a valid option, and the end result in terms of audio quality should not be too different.

I'd have to add, however, that I am not at all sure how he would get video which already contains Dolby 5.1 audio into recent VS versions in the first place. Setting the Project Properties to include PCM 5.1 (in other words using .m2t, H.264 or XAVC mp4 as the base) might work. But I don't have any video with Dolby 5.1 on it to be able to try this out.

[Davidk]

Just a note to recall that windows included dolby support from version 8 onwards. So versions of video editors from 2018? onwards (a few years grace) have the dolby codecs removed from the application and are reliant on the OS for any dolby support. Example: using vs2018 on windows 7 - dolby audio will be mute because the codecs are simply not available - either in the app or the OS.