Burn a DVD-AC3 Compatible CD-R

grant+harris writes "This interesting article shows how it is possible to burn AC-3 audio onto a normal CD-R. Will this technology usher a new type of online piracy when DVD-Audio and surround sound systems become more commonplace?" While this is only audio, it is a good step in the right direction.

Comments

DVD-Audio?

[nedron]

What does AC-3 have to do with DVD-Audio? DVD-Audio uses Meridian Lossless Packing, not Dolby Digital. The DVD-Audio disc may also have an AC-3 or (preferably) DTS track for backward compatibility, but the main mode is MLP.

Does it make a difference what the RIAA thinks?

[G0SP0DAR]

At this point, where everyone with a computer and a CD burner are considered potential thieves, I don't think it changes the light in which anti-piracy advocates view computer users. It couldn't possibly get any worse!

What? Slashdot Advocates Piracy?

[antis0c]

Will this technology usher a new type of online piracy when DVD-Audio and surround sound systems become more commonplace?

Then we have the comment from chrisd:

While this is only audio, it is a good step in the right direction.

Yeah, finding new ways to easily pirate software is a step in the right direction. Wrong. Getting the manufactures and owners of such technology to start believing that not all people are theives and they can allow open standards to exist to allow copying for backups, personal use such as having a copy of said music in my car player; while in my house; or at work is a step in the right direction. All this will do is piss off the RIAA/MPAA, they'll lobby for stricter laws, and we're back here again.

Re:What? Slashdot Advocates Piracy?

[SageLikeFool]

So all we have to do is be completely compliant to their whims and they will give us what we want?

Sure, this will probably be used for "piracy" as much as any other technology is in this day and age. That doesn't mean it should be buried, and that doesn't mean it won't be legitimately used either. If you want to get rid of every tool and technology that is developed just because it could be used maliciously by somebody, you won't even be left with sticks and stones.

Makes a Great Gag Gift

[Winnipenguin]

From the article:
Dolby has officially advised me that this CD-AC3 disc should not be used as a master for CD duplication or public distribution since there's no safeguards against someone playing it back in an audio CD player. But it's a great method for making one-off test mixes. I've considered added a standard audio disclaimer on track 1 that says something like "This disc contains Dolby Digital data. Do not play in a standard CD player or speaker damage can result".

Could you think of a better gift for those you don't love?

You can do more than that...

[ferrocene]

This has been out for over a year, maybe two. Oddly enough, I was just doing this last night. There's several programs that will do this, in fact there's a program that will do this in one easy step as opposed to SoftEncode...

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/besu re .html

"This program allows a direct conversion from VOB/AC3 to CD, using BeSweet (freeware) and SurCode DTS (for DTS-CDs : commercial-ware)!! Makes AC3-CDs, DTS-CDs and standard CDDA discs. "

This is way cool. I took my roomate's Dave Matthews DVD, popped it through this program, and out came a burned CD in either DTS-CD, DD5.1, or regular CD. Way cool, and perfectly legal as far as I'm concerned. I'm making a backup and/or transfering the media to a different format.

And the original article was published here:

http://www.modernrecording.com/articles/soundav/ li nk46.html

quite some time ago.

Better than that, you can burn mini-dvd's on to a CD. There are several programs that will burn the ISO DVD directory structure on to a regular CD. This comes in handy for say, when I took my roomate's NIN DVD in DTS, and extracted the DTS track, and burned that onto a dvd-cd. The DTS track is a perfect 550mb. How cool is that. Also good for burning DD5.1/THX trailers onto a CD to take to the home theater shops to test out their systems. You can get full blown .vob's here:

http://dvdgsm.free.fr/vob.html
http://www.digit al-digest.com/dvd/downloads/traile rs.html

I have my copy with 12 different trailers, including the simpsons THX one. It doesn't work in all players, you need to test them out. :)

Fun programs to have:
Surcode DTS encoder
Sonic Foundry Soft Encode
Gear Pro CD/DVD burner
Scenarist NT dvd authoring program (it's a $39,000 program which can be used to make menus like the Matrix DVD)
vobrator
DVDDecrypter

websites to visit:

doom9.org
apachez.has.it
http://tatooine.fortu necity.com/jabba/220/miniDVD. html
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/d vd_con vert_minidvd.html

and of course #pcdvd on efnet.

surround sound AUDIO?

[alienw]

High quality audio is not surround sound. Nobody listens to music on a surround sound rig and expects quality. Surround sound is good for movies, where you don't need good fidelity, but most surround sound systems suck if you're trying to listen to music. Audiophiles don't like subwoofer-satellite systems (because it's a cost-saving compromise that causes lots of problems), and a high-quality surround-sound system with 5 real high-end speakers and amplifiers would be prohibitively expensive ($20,000+). Anything cheaper, and it sounds like crap, because it's low-end.

Besides, when you're at a concert, you don't sit in the middle of the stage, so the only source of sound is from the front. That would mean that there is exactly no point in recording surround-sound audio CDs. It's a marketing measure, if anything.

And to the poor shmucks who listen to music on a satellite-subwoofer combo: I hope you don't ever come near a high-end audio system. If you do, you will probably realize that your system totally sucks, and will have to replace at least two of those speakers (and probably the amp). There is quite a bit of very tangible difference. Sort of like the difference between a 128k MP3 and the real uncompressed file.

More from http://www.doom9.org

[Codeala]

http://www.doom9.org contains lots of information and tools to work with AC3 plus DVD, MP3 etc. The tools are mainly for expert users as they are mostly commandline only. Althought some of them come with GUI wrappers, I am not sure if they are much help as they are perfect examples of GUI from hell (no offends!). They will get the job done if you are willing to commit quite a bit of time.

Of course if you don't have a good decoder/speakers don't waste your time on AC3.

Please don't use their new-speak...

[Sanity]

...unless you really believe that copying some bits is really the equivolent of boarding a ship, raping and killing those on-board, stealing what is left, then burning the ship and the bodies of those you have murdered.

If you want to refer to violation of copyright law, then please call it what it is.

WAV-padded AC-3 not reliable

[yroJJory]

I've done a considerable amount of testing 5.1 formats on CD-R and DVD-R (and variations). Yes, AC3 can be WAV-padded to look like a PCM audio file and subsequently put onto a red book CD-DA disc, but I've found that most older AC3 decoders don't understand the reverse bit-order format.

On the flip side, WAV-padded DTS does work on all DTS decoders, as it was included in the format from the beginning.

Additionally, DTS is a better format because it is fixed-rate 4:1 compression, as opposed to AC3's variable 12:1.

Works on many ordinary CD players too

[Namarrgon]

Not only can you burn surround AC-3 or DTS audio onto a standard CD-R, you may not even need a DVD player to play it back :-)

If you have a CD player with a digital output, and that is connected to a surround-decoding amplifier, chances are that'll play it back just fine. I burned a CD with various bitrate AC-3 tracks mixed with DTS tracks (CD-Text too), and stuck it in my 300-disc Sony CD jukebox. The signal was piped into my Yamaha surround receiver, and played it back perfectly - even scrolled the filenames by on the CD player's display. Very cool, listening to surround sound from a standard CD player.

That got me thinking - perhaps I could encode all my CDs down to 192 Kbps 2-channel AC-3 files, and squeeze much more music onto each CD. Load up the jukebox & get 7 weeks of uninterrupted audio...

'Cept it didn't work, of course - in order to play back on a standard CD player, the compressed AC-3 file has to be padded out to ordinary redbook audio rates - it takes the same amount of disc space. Still only ~80 minutes of audio, regardless of encoding.

Never mind - I'll encode my whole MP3 collection into AC-3 files, then burn a standard DVD (with still images & a lot of music) on my nifty DVD+RW drive. I can still fit many hundreds of hours on a single disc that way. Too bad I don't have a jukebox DVD player...

And, of course, I can still rip my Luc Besson - Atlantis DVD's soundtrack onto a DTS surround CD, and replace the humble 2-channel CD soundtrack I have in the jukebox with full 5.1 audio :-)