[MPlayer-users] Mencoder and AC3 surround sound encoding

[John Richard Smith]

Can mencoder handle AC3 surround sound properly ?

I'm having some problems ripping some dvd's with AC3 audio tracks.

It seems to muck up the indexing (-idx) no matter which options I 
choose.

I end up with either,

a) no sound at all,

or,

b) Mplayer has to do a index scan before it can play the mpeg4, .avi 
file.

c) Note no problem with the picture.

ManyDVD's have AC3 surround sound  audio files.
If I understand this correctly AC3 surround sound uses mp3.
However, the audio tracks are set up differently.

typically, I set the audio encoding up with something like,


-oac mp3lame -lameopts br=96:cbr
or,
-oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=0

However the result is not always a happy one.

Where the source mpeg2 DVD had AC3 surround sound audio, mencoder fails
to create a satisfactory index file but provided that you then play the
result in mplayer it will do an index scan of the disc before it plays
the disc, but other programmes will not, including most of the new 
bread
of stand alone   "DivX-DVD players" that are  able to play
mpeg2/mpeg4-5, jpeg, and, mp3,  discs.

I found this to be the case because another dvd ripper programme tells
me what is on the source mpeg2 dvd disc, and I am able to read what it
find on it ,namely AC3-DTS audio files, and so by comparing the results
, and reading the information it seems to imply surround sound, of
course this could be wrong, I'm no expert.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a mencoder limitation, in that
currently mencoder cannot encode AC3 surround sound mpeg2 dvd's.

I have searched the mplayer/mencoder help files, but cannot find
anything . There is nothing specific to cover this aspect of my problem.

thanks,


John