Just so I stop wasting hours, days, weeks of my time searching for this answer… in Nuendo 13 you can do everything in the Dolby Atmos pipeline up until the moment you have to render the MP4 file with the Dolby Atmos audio track, that you cannot do with Nuendo, you need the $300 Dolby Atmos renderer from Dolby itself, correct?
Yes, Dolby Atmos renderer, available from AVID, often on special offer.
If you have a Pro Tools subscription it is $99.
Does it apply to all subscriptions including the “monthly” ones? Or only longer ones?
Im not sure but you will find it in your Avid account if it is.
1 Like
Sure. I’ll check at some point.
1 Like
Oh well. I think I’ll stick to AWS Media Services or whatever it’s called and pay a few cents per conversion.
If I ever need a much higher volume, then I’ll spend the 300 bucks.
Note that the external renderer and AWS ‘only’ encode an E-AC-3 JOC file (DD+ JOC). If you need TrueHD with Atmos, you need the Dolby Media Encoder (DME) or the Encoding Engine (DEE). The same applies if you need DD+ JOC (.eb3) for Blu-ray.
1 Like
Sorry, you mean because of some licensing issues, right? Because I put one of those AWS tracks on a Bluray along with some video just to test, and my receiver detected the Atmos track just fine, and the channel mapping was correct.
No, I meant technically. 
However, it depends on how you have created your Blu-ray. If you are using professional authoring tools such as Scenarist or Blu-print, which will ensure that your Blu-ray complies with the specifications, you will explicitly need an E-AC-3 track for use with a Blu-ray. DD+ for online media (.ea3) is technically very different from E-AC-3 for Blu-ray (.eb3). Both formats are not compatible. You cannot import an .ea3 file as an asset into Scenarist or Blu-print.
But this does not mean that you cannot use ImgBurn, for example, to create a BD with an E-AC-3 track for online media and then play it back. As long as your AV receiver and player can decode DD+, this will work. However, most stationary Blu-ray players, especially older ones, will remain mute. E-AC-3 tracks for online media (.ea3) are not part of the official Blu-ray specification.
Oh yeah, I see your point. I’ll have to check again to see if all my 4K Blu-ray players play the audio track, because I have an Oppo, a Sony and a Panasonic, and Panasonic is the worst when it comes to supporting codecs and wrappers, followed by Sony, and on the other end there’s Oppo which supports almost everything.
But I remember burning this BD-RE and it playing just fine. But I made it really barebones. Logic Pro comes with an Atmos starter project by Manzana, so I exported the AWF WAV, which then I converted to MP4 using AWS, I got the duration from it, and rendered a video to the same length.
Then I brought both into TS Muxer and set it to author a Blu-ray image, and then used the Finder to burn it to a BD-RE. So yeah, it works, but not exactly spec compliant probably.
At the end of the day, a Blu-ray is just another disc you can put anything onto. Even if it’s a collection of MP3s. Many Blu-ray players also have their own media players, which are much more flexible when it comes to playing a wide variety of formats. Once it becomes ‘official’, you won’t get far with a DD+ online media track. As already mentioned, you can’t even import this track into the authoring program.
But if you don’t need menus or BD-J (Java) then you can probably ignore this.
DD+ for Blu-ray is not very popular. This is also due to the fact that only the two most expensive authoring tools (Scenarist, Blu-print) can handle .eb3 files. And the Dolby Media Encoder (DME) is absolutely necessary for encoding. There are no other encoders available for this format.
It is best to use TrueHD for Atmos anyway. (For Blu-rays.) Even with TrueHD with Atmos, an Atmos mix is significantly ‘condensed’ already. With E-AC-3 JOC it is even worse. Much more information is lost. In the online market, however, there is usually no other choice than DD+.
For this reason alone I hope that the (UHD) BD will live on a little longer. And because I (also) earn my money with it. 
1 Like
Me too. I don’t make money from it, but when I spend money on a movie, I don’t want to have to depend on my internet not going down (and since I have Spectrum, that happens more often than not), or that 20 years from now, the companies that hold the file I play on my streaming device is still going strong, something that may or may not happen. I want to own something I pay for, and I want at least a file that I can burn onto a disc if I want to.
While with Apple TV you can download the movies in your library, the download is only 1080p and you can only play it on a Mac (and perhaps iTunes on PC, not sure).
That said, it doesn’t surprise me that most people don’t care about physical media when it’s much easier to browse your library on your streaming device and just play it. Let’s be honest, even HD Blu-ray is overkill for most people. The kind of people that think a home theater is a freaking sound bar.
1 Like
Especially as online titles are often only ‘long-term rentals’ when purchased. Even if it says ‘buy’. In theory, a purchased title can disappear from your library at any time. (Unless you were allowed to download it first. However, this is usually encrypted, so it does not help if the provider goes bankrupt, loses the rights, blocks the title via software, etc.).
As long as the soundbar can play Dolby Atmos.
Very true. At one point my online library only had redeemed titles on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray. Then I started seeing that Apple was selling some movies for $5, which seemed like a decent price to own a movie in a streaming format, so I bought a few. But still, probably 98% of my library are redeemed from physical.
I would bet that Apple is still going to be around in 20 years, but it’s not certain. And I don’t know what’s the liability for them if they go under. Maybe they just tell you next month we’re closing shop, so open the TV app and download all your movies. But the best quality you can get is HD and the bitrate is insanely low, in fact, Dune from 2021, a 2hr 36 min movie, has a file with the hilarious size of 3.24 GB. Not even 4! But the quality is surprisingly decent for a file that small. Obviously much softer than the movie on disc, because that’s how they can get it that small. But I watched a few parts here and there with lots going on like explosions and so on, and there’s no pixel chaos, it’s remarkable.
Of course I would never start to buy $20 “digital” movies (as if those on Blu-ray were not digital just the same) to get only a tiny downloadable file.
Yes, Dolby Atmos certified soundbars can definitely play Atmos with those imaginary speakers that float all around you. I totally believe that 
I think Dolby came up with a very cool technology, but screwed the pooch royally when it started to certify Dolby Atmos on devices and speakers that cannot reproduce Atmos faithfully even remotely. Sure, a 9.1.4 Atmos speaker setup with ceiling speakers that you might find at some rich guy’s home theater will always be better than my simple 5.1.2 setup with just two front height speakers. But I still get to enjoy the hell out of Atmos titles, one of them Hans Zimmer’s Live in Prague Blu-ray.
But my LG OLED TV set is Dolby Atmos certified, and that’s a joke. Same goes for any soundbar. Soundbars are nice additions for people that care little about enjoying movies and they want a step above the TV set speakers.
Isn’t part of that certification that it can take in an Atmos stream from an external source (web-streaming for example) and then pass that through to an HDMI out which could then go to a receiver though?
If that’s the case it’s an accurate statement and not really “a joke”.
While you make a good point, I’ll show you what the manual says about Dolby Atmos:
So unless the TV set comes with at least two dynamically floating speakers that travel around you emitting no sound from that action while emitting sound from the movie you’re watching, and they position themselves accordingly (for example if the movie has a helicopter flying over you from the top front to the top rear, the speakers would follow that path, then travel to wherever the next sound is coming from), then the statement that Dolby Atmos “creates moving audio that flows around you using TV speakers” is a load of crap.
Needless to say, when I tested my TV speakers with Dolby Atmos, the only place I could hear sound coming from was the actual TV speakers, just sounding weird.
When I do play a 4K Blu-ray or even a streaming service movie with Dolby Atmos with my Pioneer VSX-935 connected to a BIC America 12" subwoofer, and 7 JBL speakers, I do appreciate Dolby Atmos quite a lot. So much that I haven’t found a movie theater that sounds better than my setup, but I don’t live in one of the major cities where I’m sure there are many state of the art theaters. But there’s one thing that my setup has that no movie theater can offer me, and that’s the choice of adjusting the EQ for each of those channels to my liking. So every damn theater I go to has this muffled flat sound that I just hate.
Well, that and all the annoying people around me. No better place to watch movies than my bed with all my dogs around me.
1 Like
Unfortunately, Atmos over TV speakers is a real thing. 
As an object-based sound format, Atmos is (theoretically) not bound to a specific channel layout. (So you can produce Atmos in mono if you want.) Therefore, some 5.1 AV receivers advertise Dolby Atmos because they can decode it natively.
The next step is Dolby FlexConnect. The TV’s built-in speakers will be enhanced by (wireless) external speakers, which will then be calibrated using “Dolby Voodoo” to create a “perfect” sound.
And by 2027, the first tin can phones with Dolby Atmos will be available. The problem at the moment is that the taut cable can only be a maximum of 10 centimeters (3,93 inch) long, otherwise the transmission is disturbed. (Probably a data rate problem. 
)
An ADM master file with a Dolby Atmos mix for theaters can be over 100 gigabytes in size. This is then reduced to a few megabytes for consumers to hear through their built-in stereo TV speakers. The future is now.
Yes I’m aware of all of that. I’m just saying that the label “certified” isn’t a joke even if some of the Atmos implementation is unimpressive.
No, this is not a joke. Certified basically just means: This device understands Atmos. Although Atmos is often thought of as “extra speakers on the ceiling,” it is much more than that. (Even if it doesn’t come close to fulfilling its potential. MPEG-H does that better.) In that respect, it’s good if a device can handle Dolby Atmos. I wouldn’t buy a TV today if it didn’t.
And if some people think they have to listen to Atmos through their TV speakers, let them. Those people have already heard 5.1 through their built-in TV speakers. And I’m sure they’ve complained that it’s way too quiet and you can’t hear anything. 