.m2a compatibility for DVD's?

[Brandon Wood]

I wish I could find a forum dedicated to this kind of thing, but hopefully someone here will know the answer...

instead of rendering to a .WAV/.PCM file through Canopus, I rendered the audio to .m2a instead to get the file down to a more compressed format with the same basic quality. My video files bitrate is very high and if I use a .wav it will really make the video suffer when I shrink it down to single layer size.

Trouble is, even though the dvd authors and burns fine with the .m2a file, it only plays properly on my computer and won't play on ANY of my three dvd players. Does anyone know if there is a trick to using a lower bitrate audio file for dvd since DVD Shrink (or any other shrink to fit dvd utility) does not compress audio - just video.

thanks!

[Rob Neidig]

Brandon,

The DVD spec says that discs for NTSC must have either PCM or dolby digital audio. For PAL, MPEG audio (your .mpa file for instance), PCM or dolby digital must be used. So for a disc to work properly in players in NTSC countries (like the U.S.), you would need to convert your audio to PCM (.wav or .aif) or dolby digital (.ac3). Computers will usually play discs with any of those files, but desk top units will not.

There's lots of great info about DVDs available from the guru of all thuings DVD, Jim Taylor. His "DVD FAQ" is at the following URL:

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

Have fun!

Rob

[Brandon Wood]

Hey, thanks Rob!