[megatom]

Howdy, all.... hopefully one of you can help me with this little project I'm undertaking. Right now I'm trying to make a music DVD of several albums in 5.1 surround sound. I already mastered the art of creating a CD with Dolby surround sound and I have my audio files in 5.1 Wav/Dolby Digital format, so no additional encoding should be necessary for their part (I think!?). The problem I'm having is with putting these audio files onto a music DVD. For whatever reason, during playback of the DVD they are not recognized as being the Dolby Digital files they are and the only thing to be heard is disgusting bursts of white noise. Now I've been reading over a few posts regarding other bugs with the Music DVD function, so I'm wondering if someone can point me in a direction to completing this.

[tsantee]

As I recall you have to option-drag the tracks into the Toast Audio window to preserve the 5.1 audio. Try experimenting with that. Choosing Save as Disc Image rather than burning the DVD gives you the chance to preview the result without wasting a disc.

[megatom]

tsantee, on Jun 17 2006, 08:04 PM, said:

As I recall you have to option-drag the tracks into the Toast Audio window to preserve the 5.1 audio. Try experimenting with that. Choosing Save as Disc Image rather than burning the DVD gives you the chance to preview the result without wasting a disc.

Before I learned how to transcode my AC3 files to the necessary Dolby Digital/Wav files, I tried the option+drop technique to no avail. However, now that I came across BeSweet and am using it in Virtual PC to create the multichannel Wav files, keeping toast from squashing the 5.1 signal into Stereo is a non-issue. So now the problem is no longer preserving the 5.1 surround, but rather to find a way for it to be read from a burned music DVD instead of a CD.

As it stands right now: Surround sound CD = no problem, but surround sound music DVDs = non-decoded digital noise.

[tsantee]

megatom, on Jun 17 2006, 09:24 PM, said:

Before I learned how to transcode my AC3 files to the necessary Dolby Digital/Wav files, I tried the option+drop technique to no avail. However, now that I came across BeSweet and am using it in Virtual PC to create the multichannel Wav files, keeping toast from squashing the 5.1 signal into Stereo is a non-issue. So now the problem is no longer preserving the 5.1 surround, but rather to find a way for it to be read from a burned music DVD instead of a CD.

As it stands right now: Surround sound CD = no problem, but surround sound music DVDs = non-decoded digital noise.

So they aren't AC-3 files but are 5-channel WAV files? I don't think Toast handles more than 2-channel WAV files but you'll probably need to get this confirmed by Freshburn. As for the music DVD, you have a choice of AC-3 or 2-channel PCM. The AC-3 tracks will be 2-channel if Toast does the AC-3 encoding or can be 5-channel if pre-encoded. There is no 5-channel PCM and Toast has only a 2-channel AC-3 encoder.

I just did a test with some 2-channel AC-3 files I had on the hard drive and by setting the Toast Custom Encoding option to Never Re-encode I got a music DVD that only involved multiplexing the AC-3 files. I believe that also should work with 5-channel AC-3 files.

[megatom]

tsantee, on Jun 17 2006, 11:00 PM, said:

So they aren't AC-3 files but are 5-channel WAV files? I don't think Toast handles more than 2-channel WAV files but you'll probably need to get this confirmed by Freshburn. As for the music DVD, you have a choice of AC-3 or 2-channel PCM. The AC-3 tracks will be 2-channel if Toast does the AC-3 encoding or can be 5-channel if pre-encoded. There is no 5-channel PCM and Toast has only a 2-channel AC-3 encoder.

I just did a test with some 2-channel AC-3 files I had on the hard drive and by setting the Toast Custom Encoding option to Never Re-encode I got a music DVD that only involved multiplexing the AC-3 files. I believe that also should work with 5-channel AC-3 files.

I had no dice at all with the 5-channel AC3s, no matter whether I was burning them to CD or DVD they got squashed. The 5.1 WAVs do indeed work fine, and are the only way I was able to get toast to burn a 5.1 channel CD. In fact I am listening to a surround CD I've just burned and it sound great. But it just doesn't seem to work with the music DVD option, even though my files are pre-encoded with the 5 channels + LFE, in both WAV and AC3 formats.

This post has been edited by megatom: 18 June 2006 - 07:38 AM

[ryan_eads]

megatom, on Jun 18 2006, 03:36 PM, said:

I had no dice at all with the 5-channel AC3s, no matter whether I was burning them to CD or DVD they got squashed. The 5.1 WAVs do indeed work fine, and are the only way I was able to get toast to burn a 5.1 channel CD. In fact I am listening to a surround CD I've just burned and it sound great. But it just doesn't seem to work with the music DVD option, even though my files are pre-encoded with the 5 channels + LFE, in both WAV and AC3 formats.

How do you get a cd to get 5.1 audio?? It cant be done. Audio Cds are only 2.0 and can contan a matrix surround sound like dolby sorround (pro logic). But in no way is it a discrete 5.1 channels. I was able to burn a 5.1 muisc dvd using an ac3 file i ripped from a dvd with no problems. Just held down option right before i droped the ac3 fle into toast, just as tantsee said. Try it again see if it works

[davidelkinsrice]

ryan_eads, on Jun 24 2006, 07:23 PM, said:

How do you get a cd to get 5.1 audio?? It cant be done. Audio Cds are only 2.0 and can contan a matrix surround sound like dolby sorround (pro logic). But in no way is it a discrete 5.1 channels. I was able to burn a 5.1 muisc dvd using an ac3 file i ripped from a dvd with no problems. Just held down option right before i droped the ac3 fle into toast, just as tantsee said. Try it again see if it works

Hi MegaTom,

Did you ever have any luck creating/listening to a 5.1 DVD? I'm trying to create a 5.1 DVD and am having major problems. I've created the .aiff files (in Digital Performer), If I have to I can convert these easily to .Wav files. What was your process to get Toast to recognize the surround files (6 files .L/.R/.C/.LFE/.Ls/.Rs)? Thanks for any help.

David

p.s. How are you listening to your 5.1 CDs as you stated in your previous posts. Does your DVD player recognize the CD with 5.1?