DVD with LPCM or MP2 audio

By default, the audio when creating a DVD is always AC3. However you can switch to PCM (Pulse Code Modulator) or MP2 with just a few additional steps as outlined below. Note that Audio must be 48Khz or 96Khz, nothing else is supported, even by ffmpeg's dvd pcm encoder.

  1. Start CINELERRA-GG from a terminal window so you will be able to see what is happening. Only the final step when you actually want to write to a DVD media writer, requires privileges of either root or the system has granted the user this privilege.
  2. Make sure you have your video with audio loaded and edited to your satisfaction and you are positioned at the start of the video.
  3. Use the File pulldown and select the DVD Render option.
  4. In theCreate DVD window, accept the defaults or select different values and then click OK. Do not check "Use FFMPEG" as that may not work.
  5. When the Batch Render window pops up, in the big box towards the bottom will be 2 lines with the first line for Video already highlighted. Instead, click on the second line, which is for Audio, so that it is highlighted.
  6. On the top left, you will see the File Format set as AC3. Use the down arrow next to the box and change it to Raw PCM or MPEG Audio by clicking on it.
  7. When you switch to Raw PCM or MPEG Audio, you see the extension in the Output path above change to pcm or mp3 instead of ac3. Now just reset the extension from pcm to lpcm or mp2 as that is required. In most cases if you click on the Audio wrench to see the settings, you will find that the standard settings of 16 bit Linear / Signed / Hi Lo work for Raw PCM. For mp2, you will have to click on the Audio wrench and change the default Layer III to Layer II.
  8. Now click on the Start box in the bottom left hand corner and CINELERRA-GG will process what it can of the job and put you back at your terminal startup window.
  9. You will see a few lines of output, some of which are shown below, to include the ERROR:
    		running /dev/shm//dvd_20240116-182336/dvd.sh
    		INFO: [mplex] mplex version 2.1.0 (2.2.7 $Date: 2012/11/17 01:55:16 $)
    		**ERROR: [mplex] Unable to open file
    		/dev/shm/dvd_20240116-182336/dvd.ac3 for reading.
    
  10. Change directory to the location as shown on the terminal window of dvd.sh.
  11. Using an editor, modify the line in dvd.sh to change dvd.ac3 to dvd.lpcm or to dvd.mp2 for mp2. In addition ONLY for Raw PCM you have to change the mplex parameter to include:
    		-L  48000:2:16
    
    The full line will look like this:
    		mplex -f 8 -L 48000:2:16 -o $dir/dvd.mpg $dir/dvd.m2v $dir/dvd.lpcm
    
  12. Now the script is ready to run in the same manner it would have had it been ac3. That is just run via:
    		./dvd.sh
    
  13. Check to make sure there are no errors in the output shown on the window and proceed as usual.

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