DVDA insists on rerendering AC3

[John Rofrano]

[David Shirey] “I used to use the AC3 “Pro” setting but now it seems they’ve removed that option in the Batch Render script, so I figured AC3 is AC3, I’ll just use the studio setting instead.”

Sony did not remove Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro and you should find out why it’s not showing up in your batch render script. This is your problem.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[David Shirey]

Eek, that’s disconcerting to hear but good to know I guess. I’ll contact Sony about this one, thanks! Aside from the Pro not appearing (it still shows up in the Render As list) any ideas why the Dolby Digital Studio setting would need to be rerendered in DVDA? Is that normal or do you all use that and it works fine?

[Stephen Mann]

You should never let DVDA re-encode anything, but the audio is the least problem with re-encoding losses.

Do you see the AC3 Pro option on your “render as” menu?

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Mann] “Do you see the AC3 Pro option on your “render as” menu?”

Yea, that’s the stange part. David said it shows up in Render As… but not in Batch Render.

Do you have a modified Batch Render script? I know some people modify them to add new features but the one from Sony should show every render type that is in Render As.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[David Shirey]

I’ve never edited a script myself. The only things I have installed outside of vanilla vegas are Edward’s Excalibur, some NewBlueFX transitions, and a script that selects events from the cursor onward.

Regarding what Stephen said, this is a rather large project wherein about 350 videos from miniDV, VHS and Sony MiniDVD camcorder discs (which are 704×480 for some reason) all need to be turned into 4:3 standard def and put onto blu-ray discs. All of the MiniDV footage was digitized to AVI and converted to mpeg2/ac3 in Adobe media encoder and DVDA insisted on rerendering the audio. The MiniDVD and VHS were done by me in Vegas and batch rendered so far using mpeg2 and AC3 Pro, none of which needed rerendering. I’ve done two blurays so far with AC3 Studio that did require rerendering. I haven’t personally noticed any significant loss in quality or hiccups with the rerendered audio, just the time involved in rerendering, but you said you really don’t want DVDA to rerender audio. Are there any specific reasons for this that I should be looking out for when I check discs?

(Spell check really doesn’t like the word “rerender” but I sure use it a lot!)

[Stephen Mann]

“but you said you really don’t want DVDA to rerender audio. Are there any specific reasons for this that I should be looking out for when I check discs?”

Re-encoding almost always compromises quality, but audio quality suffers the least from re-encoding. I doubt that most listeners could tell the difference.

“(Spell check really doesn’t like the word “rerender” but I sure use it a lot!)”

I don’t like “rerender” either because most people use “rerender” incorrectly. You aren’t rendering anything, you are encoding it, notwithstanding that Sony puts the encode formats in the “Render As” menu.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Mike Yoneda]

I’m using Build 595 (64-bit) and just started using the Batch Render. I also noticed that I’m missing the option to render in AC3 Pro. Not sure why. Has anyone contacted to Sony to see if this is a bug?

Mike Yoneda
High Angle Video
Mililani, HI

[Guido Glaus]

It’s a bit late but I just got the same effect.

Looking at the render script I found that the script writer decided to mask out audio templates which have more channels than
my (your) project has.
So that’s why you can’t see the pro version here, even when the
template name states “stereo”, because in the pro version you can increase the number of audio channels.

If you want to fix that locally, open “Batch Render.cs” in the Script Menu directory and look for (~line 391):

// filter out templates that have more channels than the project
if (projectAudioChannelCount < template.AudioChannelCount) {
continue;
}

change that to:
// filter out templates that have more channels than the project
//if (projectAudioChannelCount < template.AudioChannelCount) {
// continue;
//}

Save the file with a meaningful name in the same directory.
Depending on how you open the file you may need to save it to somewhere
else first and then move it into the scripting directory.

You may also need to rescan the scripts if you’re still in SV.

Hope this still help’s 🙂

[Mike Yoneda]

Thank you. I made the change and it worked. I can now see the AC3 Pro using Batch Render.

Mike Yoneda
High Angle Video
Mililani, HI