Hi.

I searched the whole forum and did not find anything regarding my question.

I want to play around with my DVDs and want to backup 3 movies onto 1 DVD+R.

To be in the DVD specs (authoring prog is Sonic Scenarist 3.0), I wonder what would be the best solution to compress / reduce the size of the original 6ch AC3 (384/448 kBps) files, so I have more capacity on the DVD+R for the video quality?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
snowbeach

you might have to go 2 channel pro-logic II downmix and 192kbps ac-3

maybe 224kbps, because ac-3 doesn't transcode well at all.

dspguru's besweet will downmix it for you.

Thanks for the fast reply. But I read that the ac3enc in BeSweet is really bad. What progs would you suggest for AC3 encoding?

Is there a codec to compress the original AC3 file (I heard something about MPEG-2 AAC), but that it is still DVD compliant?

nero has an ac3 plugin (free) based on ffmpeg. i can't vouch for it's quality...

if you're willing to shell out there's also Soft Encode by sonic foundry. that's quite good.

transcoded sound is going to sound bad no matter what you do (this might be part of the reason for besweet + ac3enc's bad reputation), which is why i recommend downmixing.

having no DVD burner i've not really looked into an encoding solution for ac3.

try the ffmpeg nero plugin. http://neroplugins.cd-rw.org

ffmpeg do everything else very well, so i'd be surprised if ac3 sucks...

make sure to check everything in your player - standards are expensive to purchase, so most free solutions may or may not be standard compliant. usually it doesn't matter.

3 into 1? that will look... Not so good... Why not try data mode and mpeg4 (xvid/divx etc)?

Or maybe try Kvcd's custom matrices and settings... If you want to have something playable on dvd standalones.

As for audio... go for 2ch, use pro logic 2 if you want. You can pick ac3 or mp2.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I think I am going to try SVCDs...

Sonic Foundry is Sony at now days.

Firstly, where did you find Scenarist 3? It is currently at 2.7 according to Sonic, and to be quite honest you are not going to gain much extra video by reducing the 0.448 Mb/sec bitrate of 5.1 DD to say 0.192 stereo.
All you are going to lose is audio quality, and gain very little back for video.

For the trouble it is going to be, you will be much, much better off using an extra disc.

Scenarist is a professional DVD authoring program. I believe that it has an AC3 module. You should be able to get it from the same place you got Scenarist, for the same price.

For me, Scenarist is just too much money for me to be able to justify buying it.
Simply cannot afford the $30,000 price tag.

The AC3 module in Scenarist is also unknown to me, as I do all my encoding in Nuendo, with the Nuendo DDE.

The earlier point about re coding a 3/2 DD file to a 2/0 one is a good one. However, it should already carry the metadata for playback on a stereo system.
For the limited amount of space you will gain - probably under 200Mb - there really isn't any point changing it. There is also the psychological factor - if the audio is better, it makes the picture look better too. Try it - you'll see what I mean.

You will be better off splitting the disc across 2.