Reducing ac3 size

1)to lower the bitrate of ac3-softencode 2)nandub

Thanks cult, It took me days to find this Soft Encode. I have tried loading the .ac3 file in all the ways in Soft Encode with no luck. I must be doing something wrong. Is there a way to load my high bitrate .ac3 file in Soft Encode and convert it to a lower bitrate? If so, do you care to explain how, step by step? Help, KeithXP

Use AC3machine for the reencoding. It's free and it's pretty easy to use. I think it's somewhere on Doom9's download site. It additionally needs the besweet executable to work (also on Doom9's site).

resampling 6-channel ac3 at lower bitrate 

I have a 6-channel ac3 file that is just a little too large to fit on a DVD-R with the main movie m2v file. The 2-ch ac3 file fits, but I'd rather have 6-ch. Is there a way to resample the 6-ch at a lower bitrate? I'm assuming that converting the 6-ch to wav throws away the 6 channels and reduces it to two, so that is one step to avoid. thanks for the help!

use Soft Encoder : or AC3Machine :

When I try to select the Input ac3 file with AC3Machine, none of my ac3 files show up in the Open window. wav files do (when wav is selected as the file type), but ac3 don't. So I typed the file path manually and did the rest of the settings. At the end of the transcoding, the log file reports "Actual Avg. Bitrate : 128kbps" -- I set the bitrate at 224. And when I try to import the new file into my authoring program, it gives an error saying it isn't an ac3 file. Any ideas?

search results on 'AC3Machine' 

Admitingly I was skeptical of AC3 Machine at first when I seen how fast it was and was worried about the quality. Now months later I have to say the speed is incredible and I use it for most drama type movies with little action. I have not did a quality test and compared it to SoftEncode but for most of the low action drama type movies, using AC3Machine/AC3Enc/BeSweet(not sure what to call the actual app) @ 224/256kbps is highly recommended from me:D DG is correct, transcoding a 2/0 AC3 to lower bitrate AC3 is a bad idea, I'd just use Vorbis for such a thing. I can't wait until MP4 finally becomes somewhat flexible so we can transcode an AC3 to a lower bitrate AAC inside of an MP4 container*sigh*

Again, here's a sample of the speed to expect. Dual XP 1600's and 2 7200RPM drives were used for this very very long movie(Stephen Kings Red Rose). Movie is (254mins) 4hours and 14mins long! BeSweet v1.4RC7 by DSPguru. -------------------------- Using azid.dll v1.8 (b825) by Midas (midas@egon.gyaloglo.hu). Using AC3enc.dll v0.2 by Gerard Lantau & Dg (). Logging start : 09/09/02 , 12:16:39. C:\Program Files\BeSweetv1.4RC7\BeSweet.exe -core( -input d:\DIvX RIPs\Red Rose\RR.FF AC3 T01 3_2ch 384Kbps DELAY 0ms.ac3 -output z:\DivX\ROSE_RED_DISC_1\rr_224kbps.ac3 -logfile C:\Program Files\BeSweetGUI0.6b59\BeSweet.log ) -ac3enc( -b 224 ) -profile( ~~~~~ Default Profile ~~~~~ ) [00:00:00:000] +------- BeSweet ----- [00:00:00:000]