How Do I make a DVD-A?

[wanners]

Because Cirlinca allowed disc creation to continue even though it is out of spec as some players will be able to stream the audio, but it is not guaranteed to work. Rather like the inclusion of a Dolby Digital 640 stream on Floyd's "Pulse" album. It's out of spec, but some players will play it.
The DVD-A specifications give a maximum bitrate of 9.6Mb/sec for Audio, and uncompressed 24/96 5.1 is around 13.8Mb/sec.
What this means is that if it works for you, great. However, commercially it cannot be done as the specifications state 9.6

A belated thanks for the reply, Neil. It's it's nice to have you experts to answer these question, and I appreciate it:sun

Although I agree with George that these limitations probably should not be forced upon us if they are not a natural limitation of the media.

 

[neil wilkes]

Although I agree with George that these limitations probably should not be forced upon us if they are not a natural limitation of the media.

That's the problem with anything designed & developed by committee.
It's always going to be a compromise.
For my mind, the daftest DVDA spec is the pitiful 2Mb buffer in players as a minimum requirement.

 

[neil wilkes]

Neil,

It does not. Try it, you'll see.

Its a simple thing. Load a 96/24 5.1 PCM file into Chrome and it will accept it as easily as a 96/24 5.1 MLP file. Burns well. I made a test disc. If you are unable to do this simple test, I could upload the test disc for you to see.

In fact, here is the upload: http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1970012/?rel=1245762531 for all you Doubting Thomas's out there.

George

Then this is a bug. It might be explainable by the lack of a stereo stream (also out of spec as players are incapable of performing a downmix on the fly, and if a surround mix with no stereo option is played in a stereo only player, all you get is Front Left/Front Right).
I'm not saying you cannot do it - just that you should not be able to do it and that it's out of spec - period.
It might well play on a lot of players, but it is not guaranteed to work, and should not be possible to do this for that very reason.
The specs state a maximum stream bitrate of 9.6Mb/sec.

 

[georgeshannon]

Neil,

Thanks for the concession.

"I'm not saying you cannot do it - just that you should not be able to do it and that it's out of spec - period." I agree with you here; it is only a spec.

"...should not be able to do it..." is a far cry from:

"...nor does it balk at 24/96 files.

For Quad, it won't.
For 4.1 it should and for 5.1 it will.
This is why we use MLP."

I've recently read three articles where the maximum bitrate for DVDA was shown as 9.6Mbs. None of the articles cited a source for this erroneous maximum bitrate. Do you happen to know who concocted the 9.6Mbs maximum DVDA bitrate myth? I'd like to have a little chat with him/her.

Thanks in advance.

 

[neil wilkes]

I've recently read three articles where the maximum bitrate for DVDA was shown as 9.6Mbs. None of the articles cited a source for this erroneous maximum bitrate. Do you happen to know who concocted the 9.6Mbs maximum DVDA bitrate myth? I'd like to have a little chat with him/her.

Thanks in advance.

It is in the DVD-Audio Book Specifications.
These cost around $10,000 to purchase (done by those who create applications and/or players), similar charges apply to DVD-Video book specs too.
The spec limitation is not a myth. What needs to be understood is what the specification means, and it does not mean "no players will do this", it means that "all players must be capable of at least this".
Given the way specs are interpreted, that will mean in the real world that as a bare minimum, all players have to be capable of decoding - glitch free - a stream of 9.6Mb/sec. Given that the best you can do with LPCM is 24/96 in Quad without exceeding this bitrate, the specs further state that all above 9.6 require the mandatory use of MLP Lossless to get the rate below this figure. No disc can have a 24/96 5.1 LPCM stream and still be called DVD-Audio, because it ain't. It's out of spec.
Any applications that allow this are treading on very thin ice indeed, because these titles could simply never be used for replicated content carrying the logos. It will fail at glass mastering, and the disc should be rejected by the plant as out of spec.
The reason for this is simple - the specs are the absolute minimum tolerances for players, so for most cheap players, read "exactly what they generally do, and no more".
The disc would fail at factory simply because it could not be successfully played in all players, as there are plenty out there that cut off sharply at 9.6Mb/sec, and will simply not be capable of demuxing the streams. What happens is debatable, as different players error in different ways. The disc might skip, it might glitch, it might not load the overlays, it may play & stop or it may do any other thing except play properly.
it is an unknown quantity once you drift out of spec.

You can certainly do this on some applications, and BTW my copy of Chrome certainly will *not* accept a 5.1 LPCM set under any circumstances (I tried) and will try Sonic to see what that does.
My guess is that even if it does import, it won't compile without a spec violation warning. You can always compile through a spec violation if you choose to do so (or in Sonic's case, set this as a preference before attempting to compile) but what you end up with cannot get replicated, and playback cannot be guaranteed.

 

[georgeshannon]

Neil, you are definately the Go-To guy for the DVDA specification. I know you're a busy fellow so I want to thank you for taking the time for such a thoughtful and informative reply.

I understand now that given the definition of the term "DVD-Audio" the max bit-rate is 9.6Mbs. Discs made with different bit-rates (e.g. - 13.8Mbs) are by definition not DVD-Audio. Guess we need to call them DVD-A+ or something along that line. @:

Thanks also for trying your version of Chrome and attempting to author a disc at 96/24 LPCM 5.1. Sorry it didn't work for you. My version is 2.0.6 and doesn't give any error message or spec violation warning. Must be a bug in this version.

The fellow from post #10 who asked how to burn his .wav files to DVD can use MLP and call them DVDA or can burn them without MLP and call them DVD-A+ (if his tools support it).

Thanks, also to Biff84 who was successful in authoring a disc in 96/24 LPCM 5.1.

Great discussion. Very entertaining. Most informative. :banana:

 

[georgeshannon]

Having a little problem here...

I have an AUDIO_TS, a VIDEO_TS and a BONUS (an Audiospectrum release) folder that are in another main folder. I have tried using ImgBurn to burn these several different ways. I tried just choosing the 3 folders using the "Write Folders To Disc". Then I tried just the VTS and ATS folders. Then I tried all three folders in another main folder. Each time I get errors when playing the disc. What format should I be using? ISO9660, ISO9660+UDF etc??? I know I have used this to burn discs using folders but nothing on this one seems to work properly.

Thanks y'all.

Bob, did you solve the ImgBurn issue? I encountered that last night when I attempted to "Write Folders To Disc." The result was a disc that didn't load in the player. When I made an image from the folder first and then burned to image to disc, the disc loaded and played OK.

 

[wanners]

I just learned from experience that what Neil said is correct (as if we were doubting it) . The discs I burned out of spec in cirlinca DVD audio solo will not play properly on the new oppo bdp-83 blu-ray player. It starts to play the first song on the disc and then skips through all the rest. They all play fine in the oppo 980H, though.

It's interesting that the new player is more to spec. For me that's not good, because I'm always doing radical things on the fringes of reality.:alienrob:

 

[wanners]

Neil,

It does not. Try it, you'll see.

Its a simple thing. Load a 96/24 5.1 PCM file into Chrome and it will accept it as easily as a 96/24 5.1 MLP file. Burns well. I made a test disc. If you are unable to do this simple test, I could upload the test disc for you to see.

Can I have the bug your program has?

 

[sennyg23]

does converting a .wav track to mlp cause the length of the file to shorten?
because whenever I use surcode with my music , the mlp output is seconds or minutes shorter than the original wav

 

[georgeshannon]

Shouldn't cause the length of time to change. Just the size of the file. The length of time is displayed at the bottom left of the encoder window next to the word "End" before encoding begins.

The only thing I know of that will prevent the encoder from producing that length of time is if there is a sampling error and ReBit is not turned on (under encoder options). In that case the encoding stops prematurely. Not sure if it produces a file or not, but it may produce a truncated file. Possibly what you're experiencing.

 

[sennyg23]

Shouldn't cause the length of time to change. Just the size of the file. The length of time is displayed at the bottom left of the encoder window next to the word "End" before encoding begins.

The only thing I know of that will prevent the encoder from producing that length of time is if there is a sampling error and ReBit is not turned on (under encoder options). In that case the encoding stops prematurely. Not sure if it produces a file or not, but it may produce a truncated file. Possibly what you're experiencing.

I have been noticing that the encoding and verify pop-up windows come up slightly before the timer reaches the original track length, but after I close those, it always shows an equal time in the two boxes.

Should I turn ReBit on?
I had it off because I was using stereo tracks at 24bit/96khz

 

[georgeshannon]

Just curious, is the equal time in both boxes the same as the original track length? Or is the equal time somewhat less than the original track length?

Do the encoding and verify pop-up windows indicate an encoding error?

I always run with Re-Bit on. I set it to reduce the LFE by 2bits if necessary. That has resulted in successful encoding for me so far.

Guess I'd recommend you turn it on and run a test to see if your files encode without the early ending and the time shortening. Encoding stereo, you'll need to set both channels to reduce bits if necessary, unless you can justify choosing one channel over the other.

 

[sennyg23]

Yes, the length in the boxes matches the original wav file and the only part of the pop-ups that seems like it may be an error is

Encoder IEC61937: not IEC61937-compliant (information only)

I tried it with ReBit on, but had same results.

Does the computer/soundcard being used with the program have any effect on just the encoding?
Because I'm encoding these on my laptop with a basic soundcard.

 

[georgeshannon]

The computer processor load makes a difference during encoding. That is what ReBit compensates for. I don't believe the soundcard is involved with encoding.

If you have ReBit set to automatically apply bit depth reduction, but you see no sign in the reports that ReBit is applied during encoding, yet your files are less than what you started with, I'm afraid that's beyond my experience and I can't help any further. Sorry.

There is a lot of expertise on QQ and maybe someone else can suggest a solution. Good luck.

 

[sennyg23]

Ok, thanks for your help. I'll keep looking for a solution.


Alright, the problem was my computer. It was displaying a different length for the mlp files than they were actually playing. For example it was showing that a track was 10:03, but played it for 10:30 which was the correct length of the original wav file. Thanks for the help George

 

[filper]

My head is still spinning after reading this (it's just me) but;

If I rip the 5.1 MLP tracks from a commercial DVD-A to 6 individual .wav files with DVD Audio Extractor, I can write them with DVD Audio Solo to a double layer DVD and play the disc on my Oppo 80 ???

 

[georgeshannon]

I don't believe DVD Audio Extractor will access the MLP files on a commercial DVD-A. DVD Audio Extractor is for accessing only video files from a DVD (such as DTS or Dolby Digital).

Now you could use DVDAExplorer (freeware) to access the MLP files of a commercial DVD-A and export them as multichannel .wav files. Then you could author a non-spec DVD-A which would play on an Oppo 980. Depending on the size of the disc you author, you might even be able to fit it on a regular, single layer DVD.

 

[Bill Sherbon]

A cool feature of DVDAExplorer is that you can even exctract the MLP files undecoded (resulting in .mlp files in the target folder) which could then be used for subsequent authoring as is.

However with a commercial disc, if the intended result is a backup disc for dvda playback on an Oppo (i.e., keeping the rare original for safekeeping), then another thought would be to use something like DVDFab to decrypt/rip and make an iso clone to the hard drive - then use imgburn to burn the iso file to a disc. The resulting disc copy won't work for players that observe 'watermark' protection (those dvda players will stop playing after 15 - 30 seconds if watermark fails), but you don't have to wory about that with Oppo players (and some others).

 

[neil wilkes]

My head is still spinning after reading this (it's just me) but;

If I rip the 5.1 MLP tracks from a commercial DVD-A to 6 individual .wav files with DVD Audio Extractor, I can write them with DVD Audio Solo to a double layer DVD and play the disc on my Oppo 80 ???

No - you cannot extract MLP files, much less decode them, with DVD Audio Extractor. This application is dreadfully named, as it extracts audio from DVD-Video - not from DVD-Audio.
You need DVDAExtractor for the job, set to decode in old manner, ignoring "errors" and splitting files out separately.
You can then put the decoded WAV files into DVD-Audio Solo & make a new disc that will play given the following conditions:
1 - Your files were not watermarked originally, or
2 - your player does not honour the watermark in the original.

I will drop Oppo support a line & ask them what players they make honour the watermark & post back in a new thread.....