I think the DVD-Audio Format is dead, it would be nice to have an update to burn Blu-ray Audio or Pure Audio Bluray. Is there a wishlist or something anywhere.
Hi TWR.
I asked about this a while ago but I don’t know if they’re considering it.
I’ve done it by rendering 96/24 files from my original 96k 5.1 and Stereo DVD-A montages and then burning in Cirlinca. If you make a Cue Sheet file in Wavelab, you can also import that file to set the track marks in the Cirlinca program. It’s pretty easy actually.
But it definitely would be nice to be able to do this all within Wavelab.
I don’t know if there are wishlist or feature request areas in the new forum. Maybe someone else knows. I’m new to the new forum.
Blu-ray seems like the future. However I’ve used WaveLab 6 fairly extensively to author DVD-A:
http://www.jensign.com/dvda_WL6/
Does anyone know how DVD-A capability has changed in WL 7?
BluRay Pure Audio discs require BD-J authoring capabilities.
Currently there are 3 applications that can do this:
Scenarist BD with the BD-J addon.
Sony Blu Print
DoStudio NetBlender.
Additionally, there is mandatory AACS Copy Protection (very expensive, requires a site license as well as per disc setup fees and per disc royalties) as well as BD+ Copy Protection.
Scenarist including CineVision Pro will set you back around £50,000 upwards.
BluPrint is even more expensive.
Add to this the fact that BD-A requires BluRay players, and it all gets very very restrictive.
Properly authored DVD-A/V should contain a Video_TS, ensuring playback on every DVD player ever made.
The advanced DVD Authoring (menue generation etc.) has been dropped in WaveLab 7,
but it is still possible to create Multichannel, DVD-Audio compatible Audio Montages of course.
Ok thanks. I had spent some time troubleshooting 5.1 DVD-A format via WaveLab6. There was an error in the encoding but that has apparently been fixed in WL7.
For a 5.1 montage, in WL6 it was not possible to directly save to a 5.1 interleaved wav file (although it is possible to open a 5.1 with each 6 channels assigned to a different montage track).
Does WL7 support saving/rendering directly to 5.1 multichannel wave?
Does WL7 support saving/rendering directly to 5.1 multichannel wave?
No, that´s not possible.
Since I don’t have Nuendo which can do multichannel PCM output file generation from a multitrack and surround project, but I want to create a multichannel wave file, I have been using this approach:
- create a surround montage in WL, adjust the mix of each track to the 6 surround channels
- I then play back the montage via the properly set-up ASIO outputs and use Creative’s Audio Creation Console to record this to a 5.1 wav file. This is a tad awkward and the resolution is always set to 24 bit
Microsoft have a free muxing tool “Multichannel wave combiner” http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/creating71audio.aspx which takes either 2, 6 or 8 mono wav files which must all be exactly the same length and creates an “audio only” .avi file to hold the uncompressed audio. (This enables larger file sizes then the 4 Gb limit for wav format.)
I have written a utility which takes any number of mono input files (2 to 8) which must all be of the same sample-rate and bit size but which can be of different lengths. It outputs multichannel PCM wave files and can output any of:
stereo, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.1s, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0, 7.1
depending on the number of file arguments provided and an input specification.
The longest input wav mono file determines the length of the multichannel output wav file and shorter input waves are end-padded with zero byte sample data. This is very convenient and allows easy muxing/interleaving of mono files created from many sources.
Anyone interested in evaluating this app can contact me privately.
(The app is written in compiled C#.net … runs on any Win OS with .NET runtime … included by default with Vista and Win7)
There is a free set of command-line tools that I use for combining and splitting multi-channel wave files here. Although many functions are related to Ambisonics and B-format, you can easily ignore that aspect. Both Windows and Mac versions are available.
Paul
Thanks Paul. Looks like a good collection of useful stuff.
What about AudioMuxer?
Open source, and does all this sort of stuff with no trouble at all.
For basic authoring of simple audio only discs, Cirlinca make applications that cost a few tens of dollars.
I have evaluated Cirlinca periodically and it’s pretty good. Their top version does audio-only DVD-Video (as well as the main DVD-Audio functionality). Unfortunately they haven’t implemented menus yet (which is one thing I really like about WL6). Speaking of which the implementation of image resampling in WL6 (for menu images and picture tracks) is not implemented properly.
Cirlinca’s DVD-Video implementation is good if you want to easily put a bunch of 24bit/96 kHz PCM audio on a medium that will play in any DVD-Video player.
Actually, that’s not strictly true…24/96 stereo PCM is only optional on DVD-Video, and not mandatory.
PCM support in DVD-Video is from 16 to 24-bits at 48 or 96kHz according to specs.
Strict interpretation says that as long as the player does the bare minimum it’s okay - so that means 16/48 is mandatory, all higher is optional. I have here a Cambridge Audio machine that truncates all 24-bit audio down to 16-bits, on the fly, during playback. I have a Sony that uses SRC on the fly to 48kHz, and a Philips that truncates and sample rate converts with no options to stop it.
Sorry to nit pick, as I still think a well authored DVD-A/V title is better for clients & artists as it is much, much cheaper to produce and replicate and will play on an exponentially larger number of installed players worldwide.
I find that the commonest issue is sample rate conversion, so we rarely put 96kHz audio into the Video_TS unless part of a 5.1 DTS 9624 stream…
Sorry, yes you are right about the mandatory/min. spec for DVD-Video. My older Toshiba DVD player supports 96kHz sampling rate, but 24 bits is downsampled to 16bit.
As does a Cambridge Audio Azur player here.
Seems a very odd choice to me, given the obvious benefits of 24-bit over 16-bit compared to the more doubtful benefits of 96kHz.
Well that’s interesting! My OPPO BDP-83 DOES support 24bit/96 kHz via DVD-Video (I know this from a 24/96 test DVD-Video disc I created). It’s “interesting” because I had heard that the BDP-83 has similar sampling/converter chips to the Azur.
So does my BDP-83SE unit.
What the decoder chips support is not the whole story - it’s all down to what is actually implemented in player firmware. For example, My Azur 540 MkI CA player has DVD-A support, and full 24/96 decoding.
My Azur 540MkII player has no DVD-A, and truncates a 24-bit signal down to 16-bits on the fly.
How good things sound is also dependant not only on the decoder chip, but also the custom ancillary circuitry & filters added by the manufacturers too. Lots of players do support 24/96 out from Video_TS, but far from all of them…
So true. This reminds me a bit of my most used player, a 1988 Pioneer PD-7100 CD player … still in mint condition (23 years old). The main reason I got a BDP-83 was to support DVD-Audio (since I have a great deal of multi-CD compilations and other things on DVD-A) but the PD-7100 has a much better layout (and better disc-tray!).
The information on those older players really stressed the importance of post D/A converter filtering/shaping to get very good analog sound.
Sadly these days, the emphasis in digital receivers is less to do with great audio quality and much more on functionality (unless you spring for the real audiophile +$1500. units).
I’m creating a very easy to use focused utility (not a general tool) which will do the following:
- enter a folder name containing between 3 and 6 mono files (output by rendering to multi-mono files from WL6)
- the tool will automatically read the file names (as syntax’d by WL6) and create an output multi-channel wave file
The idea is simplicity and the tool is specifically designed for WL6 (not sure if WL7 uses the identical file-naming conventions).