A second way to do 16 bit stereo music on DVD

Rob Babcock · « **on:** 10 Dec 2003, 11:15 pm »

Okay, another way that actually works better than the slide show is to make a regular video DVD with stereo sound. You do have to use some utility (eg "Be Sweet") to resample the 44.1 khz CD tracks to 48 khz first, but this seems to be pretty transparent, and it doesn't seem like you really lose much if any SQ doing it.

Then you use some video footage, doesn't matter what. Set the vid quality as low as you can, then do it again. This reduces the amount of video information to just a fraction of the DVD capacity. This will allow at least two or three hours of very high quality 48 hz, 16 bit PCM. My initial experiments have yeilded better results than the highest rate VBR MP3 files; I will do more tests to see if the result is as good as the regular CD.

House de Kris · « **Reply #1 on:** 11 Dec 2003, 02:47 am »

Cool! Do you make each album a different title (movie), and then each track a chapter?

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #2 on:** 16 Dec 2003, 10:17 am »

Okay, sorry to take so long to reply, but a lot of technical hurdles popped up, all overcome now.

Yes, each song is it's own chapter, with a stationary frame of encoded black as the video. It is necessary to resample the 44.1 CD to 48 khz, but this is easily done with the free utility, "BE SWEET." The process may not be utterly transparent, but I can honestly say I haven't been able to detect any loss of quality whatsoever. (I do plan to make some copies of a DVD made this way to send to some AC'ers who may have more resolving system/more golden ears, etc.- any volunteers?).

The DVDRhelp forum was invaluable in this project- my brother scienced this out, for the most part, but it we'd have never got it to work without that forum. Very good stuff indeed. At any rate, we read there that you can get about 360 minutes of full quality 16 bit linear PCM, and by my trials that seems about right.

Uh, I think MP3 is dead!

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #3 on:** 16 Dec 2003, 10:23 am »

As for 24 bit/DVD-A, I don't have a clue, Larkston Zinaspic. It may be possible to do, but this project has fried my brain enough for the time being!

But, yeah, it does seem like you may be able to use this same technique with 24 bit LPCM. It's definately worth experimenting with, assuming you had 24 bit DACs/soundcard, etc.