Best Audio for DVD

[bstansbury]

In VS9 the default audio for DVD is Dolby. Some DVD players won't play Dolby. It seems the newer version of DVD players should all support Dolby. My question is what's the right audio to use. It seems a lot of DVD's I get are in LPCM. It always works but it seems to take more space than Dolby.

[Ken Berry]

Not sure which part of the world you live in, but LPCM audio is common to the DVD standard of both NTSC and PAL. A lot of people in NTSC land use MPEG-Layer 2 audio, though it is not part of the NTSC standard. However, many NTSC players apparently will play it these days. MPEG Layer 2 is certainly part of the PAL standard. Dolby is not formally part of either standard AFAIK, but as you say, most modern players will play it -- either in dual channel form or full 5.1 form.

I was intrigued by your reference to the fact that Dolby was the default for DVD in VS9. It certainly was not in mine -- it was LPCM. In fact, I had to use Make Movie Manager to have a Custom template made which included Dolby.

Some people have difficulty with Dolby, possibly because of the audio data rate they set. I use 256 kbps and it seems to work fine -- but I am in PAL land, of course.

[bstansbury]

In looking into the DVD standards, it is as follows;

Audio:
48000 Hz
32 - 1536 kbps
Up to 8 audio tracks containing DD (Dolby Digital/AC3), DTS, PCM(uncompressed audio), MPEG-1 Layer2. One audio track must have DD or PCM Audio.

This tells me that all DVD players must play DD or Digital Dolby. I guress that answers my question.

This info comes from the VCDHelp web site.

[Ken Berry]

On looking more closely at the article to which you referred, I find that it does not refer to all these as being part of the standard, just the type of audio which may be found on DVDs. But wait, there's more -- and your conclusion nonetheless was correct.

And I live and learn. I have now discovered that my information has been outdated since around 1997-98, when Dolby became part of the international DVD standard. But at least I was otherwise correct.

A cross reference to the FAQ in videohelp.com, to which you referred, notes that "Discs containing 525/60 (NTSC) video must use PCM or Dolby Digital on at least one track. Discs containing 625/50 (PAL/SECAM) video must use PCM or MPEG audio or Dolby Digital on at least one track. Additional tracks may be in any format." (see http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.4 which is part of the FAQ of www.dvdhelp.com )

For those who are interested, this goes on: "Every DVD player in the world has an internal Dolby Digital decoder. The built-in 2-channel decoder turns Dolby Digital into stereo audio, which can be fed to almost any type of audio equipment (receiver, TV, boombox, etc.) as a standard analog stereo signal using a pair of stereo audio cables or as a digital PCM audio signal using a coax or optical cable." It also notes that the "original [DVD] standard" allowed mpeg audio for PAL, though this has largely disappeared since 1997. And it went on to say: "MPEG audio is not used much on DVDs, although some inexpensive DVD recording software programs use MPEG audio, even on NTSC discs, which goes against the DVD standard and is not supported by all NTSC players."

This is intriguing since MPEG is of course provided in Video Studio and used regularly by not a few people on this Forum in both PAL and, significantly, NTSC contexts. More by good luck than good management, I have never used it, using in the past only LPCM despite its larger size, and now Dolby nearly exclusively. I continue to wonder, though, whether its use by our NTSC owners of Video Studio, may be the source of many of their audio problems (and linked possibly to the infamous out of sync audio and video)...?

I should also note that the above FAQ also notes that the standard Dolby AC-3 audio bit rate for dual channel stereo (which we have in VS9), at least in commercial discs, is 192 kbps. I use 256 kbps which, as I say, seems to work fine. But I might experiment with lowering it now that I have read this most informative set of FAQs.

Thanks, bstansbury, for drawing my attention to them.

[lancecarr]

Thanks for checking it out so thoroughly as usual Ken. Two points stand out:
1 That the NTSC standard has DD as part of it. I was not aware of that change.
2. You actually used the word "boombox!"

[TubaDad]

I am very glad this was brought up. All of the time I thought I was using Dolby on my projects I was just using LPCM. Heck, I thought LPCM was Dolby. Now I have to go back and reburn some of my projects just to see the difference.

Very humbling.

[rguthrie]

Here's a good site: http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.6.3 for some information on this topic.

Personally I use Dolby Digital encoded at 192kbps. For me it sounds great and I get some more bits to put into video quality.
Ron G.

[2Dogs]

Now I have to go back and reburn some of my projects just to see the difference.

Hi Bruce, of course you won't "see" any difference at all unless you take advantage of the compressed audio format to enable you to up the video bitrate to the max. Unless you have young ears, you probably won't notice any drop in audio quality either.

Although I'm in NTSC land, I've had to use MPEG-2 audio on stuff I've done with either VS8 or the VS9 trial, since neither can encode DD. (I know there's a plug in for VS8 and DD comes with the full VS9) Thus far, however, I've yet to find a DVD player that has trouble playing my DVD's.

[TubaDad]

I had to burn one just to make sure and you are right, I don't have young ears. In fact, my DVD player doesn't see them any differently, so I amnot sure that I wasn't doing it right in the first place now. Oh well, live and learn. That's what I love about this forum.

[Ilene]

so is the conclusion that both dolby and lpcm sound the same. If there are no issues with file size. which should be the better choice. I import all my audio as wav files and typically use LPCM...I was debating whether I should try Dolby to improve sound quality.

By the way...I think Dolby is the default on VS9, since HQ Dolby is listed first in the dvd template, in the share/burn step. I always need to change it to HQ LPCM.

Ilene

[lancecarr]

Dolby will not "improve" the sound quality. If, however, you need to compress the PCM due to size problems then Dolby will "retain" the sound quality whilst giving you a much smaller sound portion of the overall video file.

[Ilene]

Ok...that's what I was thinking too...I guess the only way to improve the sound is to get the 5 channel surround sound that I think comes with Media Studio.

thanks.

[lancecarr]

Well actually no Ilene.
You say that you get your sound off CD's right?
So they are recorded as .cda files in a continuos sequence on the cd specifically so that CD players can play them. They are at a particular quality level. When you transfer those to the computer using ripping software or Video Studio all that is happening is that the .cda files are being losslessly converted to PCM files. No loss of quality, exact same data presented in a slightly different way for the use of software on a computer. There is nothing that is going to improve what you have at that point, it IS as good as it is going to get. As with video the way you attain quality is by having the source material at the highest quality it can be.

[Ilene]

thank you...that is excellent info. I get all my music from CD's....I do mostly sophisticated slide shows with pictures, and just a little video, which I usually mute, so that the video plays with my music track. You have therefore saved me a lot of time, because I now know that the sound I get from my cd's ( cda files converted by ulead) are the best they can be regardless of whether I choose LPCM or Dolby. My sound is good too, I just was wondering if it could be improved more by switching to the Dolby setting. I guess not. SO for now, I'm satisfied. thanks again!