Is there Dolby Digital encoding software for consumers? (1 Viewer)

[Kenneth Harden]

I am putting this post here because it is ultmatly for use in a home theater system. Mods, move it if you need.

Canon (and others) have cameras and mics that support 4-channel recording. Stereo front and rear.

From this, I would think it would be easy to merge like info from the L/R channels to get a center, obviously use the surrounds as the surrounds, and take all the bass info for the subwoofer.

Now the real question, is there home software for this that does not cost as much as a new Porsche?

I would LOVE to be able to do some car videos in DD and enjoy on my system

 

[Mark gas]

http://www.surcode.com/ does it automatically and there is a trial ver in adobe remier pro. Steinberg's Nuendo lets you place tracks in the left, right, center, rear channels. There are some more out there but thats a start.

 

[Ken Chan]

That would be wrong. The .1 LFE channel is for additional bass. For example, when a player does a 5.1 to 2.0 downmix, it discards the .1 channel. So if you divert all the bass into the .1, you would get no bass. Again, the receiver is responsible for diverting the bass to your sub, if the speaker for that channel is "small" instead of "large".

That being said, if you're actually looking for 5.1 mixing software, there's Vegas 5, which is also a good NLE. If you want to put this on a DVD, then you'll need an AC-3 encoder; there's Vegas+DVD. If you don't need to mix, and just need to AC-3 encode channels recorded as-is, there's BeSweet, which is free. If you don't already have DVD software, and you have a Mac, there's DVD Studio Pro, which is only $499 and includes a (up to) 5.1 AC-3 encoder among its pro-level features.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Lol, and costs $2000 if you're not a thief.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

How about a Dolby Headphone plug-in. Any out there? Price isn't necessarily an issue (it's not for me).

 

[Ralph B]

surcode is fun to play with.