Thank you both .
I will look into this tonight and I'll tell you how it went .
Cheers

__________________
Rui

I see Phil, but in that case did you get a veeeery small file or did you get an error like behappy saying that it could not open the source file? Because that's what I got here.
Yes I did and ac3fix did not find any problem with my source ac3.
Not with that one and not with the other 5 ac3 files that I tested so far.
Thanks for the tip though .

Since I couldn't make BeLight work too (sigh this is getting repetitive) I then proceded this way:
- used dgindex to decode an audio stream to 6-channel wav
- played that wav file under foobar just to make sure and it worked perfectly.
- encoded directly with Aften in a dos shell.
Here is the CLI that I used:
Fantastic but there is a BUT.
I compared the 448 and 384 ac3 files with foobar ABX and I can tell the difference between the two.
And wanna know how?
The 384kbit sounds a lot lower than the 448kbit one
Did I do any mistakes?
I'm going crazy here .
Cheers

__________________
Rui

I didn't have anything, that's sure. But I don't remember if I had an error from bepipe or from aften, and if this error was that the source could not be opened, or the syntax was wrong.

An other type that I used once then .
Use besweet in "payload" mode. This won't do anything to the ac3 file, but will fix it if there is a problem.

Oh my, let's forget about BeSweet because I can't use it.
Why do I keep having trouble using audio tools?
Besweet, behappy, belight, aften, etc... I always fail using them.
Well behappy sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work.
Aften actually works but maybe has the low volume bug, at least in my test it did.
Nothing like good old headac3he.
That one never failed me.
And I thought that ffmpeg would never fail on me either but now this.
But it's settled: it's a bug and I already sent them a mail to escalate the bug.
As soon as they register the ticket I will post the link here so that you guys can check it out yourselves too.
Cheers

__________________
Rui

It definitely not. This is why once should use it. This bug is in ac3enc.dll that aften does not use. And just a question : ffmeg isn't using a3enc ? I think it is so...

As I said Phil, I just suspected that Aften might have the low volume bug because I ABXed my source with one Aften encode and the source sounded much louder than the Aften encode.
As for ffmpeg using ac3enc...maybe it uses ac3enc but I thought it just used libavcodec.
But perhaps libavcodec uses ac3enc or maybe ac3enc is a subset of libavcodec.
I really don't know at this point.
All I know is that soon I will let you know about the bug escalation.
Cheers

__________________
Rui

What settings did you use when you tested the stream? DRC off?

You can compare the details of the two ac3 streams by using Azid. Azid --no-output file.ac3 will show you the characteristics of the file. Are there any differences between the source and the Aften encode?

I didn't thought about that.
I already erased the aften encode and the 6-channel wav but I think I can do that again during the weekend.
Now I gotta finish 2 kdvd otherwise I will get will be left with no room for any tests or encodes on my drive.
Talk to you guys tonight or tomorrow .
Cheers

PS: Here is the ticket in the ffmpeg-devel mailing list about the possible bug in ffmpeg's ac3 transcoding.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp....eg.devel/41751

__________________
Rui

I did not try yet but Belight 0.22RC1 supports aften as AC3 encoder, and seems far easier to use than Bepipe.

http://coreforge.org/projects/belight/

Thanks for the tip Phil .
I will take a look at it when I find some time.
Cheers

__________________
Rui