Dolby Digital Plug-in Worth It?

[B-Riebe]

Hello. I have been thinking about purchasing the plug-in, but thought I'd ask those who have it if it's REALLY worth the $30. Is the resulting quality that much better, and with much smaller files, compared to MPEG audio??

I've seen here that some are having more technical difficulties with the plug-in too...which also causes me to drag me feet on this $30 upgrade.

Thanks!

[GeorgeW]

Are you creating NTSC or PAL discs? If PAL, then you should be fine with mpeg audio.

If creating NTSC discs, then are you creating for a broad audience, or for your personal use? If broad, then Dolby Digital audio will be better than mpeg audio (mpeg-audio is not an NTSC standard, so not all NTSC DVD PLayers will handle that audio format -- but DD is standard).

Regardsing size and quality -- the size shouldn't change if you use the same bitrate (mpeg vs. AC3). The quality might be a little better with Dolby Digital (you would need a great ear to hear the difference -- I use mpeg audio sometimes when space is a concern).

Regards,
George

[B-Riebe]

GeorgeW, Thanks for the great response. I am doing NTSC. My audience is small (friends & family). All the DVD players I've played my MPEG audio encoded DVDs in have played fine, so far (even Xbox & PS2 consoles)....I would probably guess the older/cheaper ones may not.

[kebrinton]

Am I misunderstanding something?

I thought using the Dolby Digital plugin made the audio part of a DVD much smaller in size. Not long ago somebody commented that THAT savings in space alone made it worth the $30 expense.

Keith

[2tired]

That post was me. From an LPCM audio size of roughly 950mb down to an AC3 of 160mb. That was why I said it was worth it. Using 256bit I couldn't tell the difference. And it is a good standard.


go for it.

[THoff]

The size of the audio portion will most definitely change, UVS doesn't let you select a AC3 bitrate anywhere near as high as what LPCM requires. Using the default 256kbps AC3 bitrate, the audio will be compressed down to 1/6th of the space required for LPCM audio.

The quality of the audio will also not go up when encoding using the AC3 plugin, since the AC3 is created from the LPCM audio that is used during editing. You can't start with good quality and wind up with excellent quality.

[rwindeyer]

THoff is right on - the quality of the audio doesn't go up (but compressing it doesn't make it any worse) and you can get 15% more video on a disc. I say go for it.

[GeorgeW]

You have to read carefully, the original post wanted to know if the size would go down compared to MPEG audio (not LPCM audio).

I didn't want them to think by going from mpeg audio to AC3 audio that the size would dramatically in/decrease.

Regards,
George

[kebrinton]

Quite right, George. Thanks for clarifying that.

[B-Riebe]

Well, my question was answered last night! YES, the plugin is worth it! I burned several DVDs and tested in them in as many DVD players I could get my hands on. I found that LPCM encoding truely was the only one that played on all players (including a Xbox & PCs). I found MPEG encoding did NOT work in all players...video but no audio. Of course MPEG was fine on PCs and also played fine in the Xbox (some games probaby require MPEG audio).

So I decided to spend the $30 for an audio encoding solution that provides MUCH better compression over LPCM and more universal player support over MPEG Audio. I then retested the players with a new AC3 encoded DVD and ALL worked great! Now, it would be cool to be able to encode multichannel AC3 with UVS!

Thanks for the feedback!

[mosanj]

Well, my question was answered last night! YES, the plugin is worth it! I burned several DVDs and tested in them in as many DVD players I could get my hands on. I found that LPCM encoding truely was the only one that played on all players (including a Xbox & PCs). I found MPEG encoding did NOT work in all players...video but no audio. Of course MPEG was fine on PCs and also played fine in the Xbox (some games probaby require MPEG audio).

So I decided to spend the $30 for an audio encoding solution that provides MUCH better compression over LPCM and more universal player support over MPEG Audio. I then retested the players with a new AC3 encoded DVD and ALL worked great! Now, it would be cool to be able to encode multichannel AC3 with UVS!

Thanks for the feedback!

Will you please try the following and let me know of your observations?
besweet, ifoedit

I tried on PAL system and they apprear to work. I wish to know if it works on NTSC.

Thanks.

[Steve__A]

GeorgeW, Thanks for the great response. I am doing NTSC. My audience is small (friends & family). All the DVD players I've played my MPEG audio encoded DVDs in have played fine, so far (even Xbox & PS2 consoles)....I would probably guess the older/cheaper ones may not.

Not just the older cheaper players... I'd heard of problems with high end systems using digital output for audio. Namely posts here and on other forums wondering why project disks would not have any sound when played on certain systems. I suspect that there may have even been problems with LPCM audio DVD's not sending a signal out through the digital jacks... maybe not. (I've only used "normal" outputs from DVD players I've hooked up- never any of the digital outputs.)

Steve A.

P.S. As to the issue of size I just checked a WAV file that was converted to AC3 for a menu and it was reduced to 16.7% of the WAV file. When converted to 224kbps MPEG the file size was reduced even more, to 14.6% of the WAV file. However, when converted to a 256kbps MPEG it came out essentially the same as the AC3 file (938kb vs 936kb from a 30 second WAV file that was 5626kb).

So in terms of file size AC3 is not a big improvement over MPEG audio... compatibility is the real issue here. Although I've been having problems processing AC3-encoded MPEG files with both UVS8 and DMF3, I agree with you about the $30 AC3 pack being a real bargain...

[rwindeyer]

For what it's worth - I have done a grand total of two DVDs now to send to friends in the US. Rendered in NTSC format and with AC-3 audio, they had no trouble viewing them.