Seems that is the question.Some people want only that on their rips...others feel it is a waste of space.Personally, I am on the fence about it but I am wondering if there is a standard that should be gone by.MP3 vbr is no more difficult to encode than AC3 so I am just wondering what you all think?

I like the movie released in MP3 audio, and then have an extra track that's ac3.=)

I'm being border line, but seriously, I like ac3 if the movie deserves it!

I'm with Satan on this, if the movie warrants it AC3 all the way

puh !

most dvd's I own only have stereo and sometimes even mono tracks..

I don't even give one second of attention to those AC3 whiners....

I'll be one of the last to incorporate it into my stuff

But, if a movie is mono or stereo, then AC3 is not needed, it's only movies with 5.1 soundtracks that warrant it.

Yeah, that much is true.I see AC3 2 channel all the time though. So I guess that anybody interested thread would come in handy for questions like this concerning certain rips.The last few moives I have done I have used AC3..some warrented it..others didn't.I just basically want to give the people what they want.I would gladly go mp3vbr and strengthen video bitrate if that is what most people here are concerened with.I know personally I would rather have a low bitrate audio than a low bitrate video..I am thinking that is what everone else is wanting too.Glad to see some hits on this topic cause I was at a sort of standstill with the whole thing.

an endless topic...
it just depends, generally AC3 is only to be used with 2cd rips where space is not an issue anyways, although the small and old movies i do most of the time don?t really have a need for it, but when having so much space (i?m talking bout <160min. movies) and the bitrate is ok, why not leave the sound uncompressed (i.e. not compressing it further). 1 cd rips with AC3 are out of the question generally, however there are exceptions, i did one rip of Tokyo Drifter, a movie which was only 70 min. long and highly compressable, so it would come out undersized even with the resolution put up, same goes for like Blue velvet e.g.
rule of thumb for me: video comes first and going from there i decide 1cd or 2cd. a difference of AC3 to MP3 is only apparent with 5.1 soundtracks anyways.

I think your going about it totally wrong. The problem is the question isn't "should i release AC3 movies?". That's completely the wrong idea. You should be thinking "does this movie warrant AC3?". The answer in most cases for low budget horror movies, is definitely not. Its a totally waste of bandwidth.

Take the excellent Night of the Living Dead release by avatar for example, someone (satan I think) said it would have been nicer with AC3 for that rip. I'd say that it completely defeats the point. The movie is so old, and low budget that the original mix is nothing special. The remastered mix is nice, but totally unnessacary to compromise the video quality of such a great film. It's an hour and a half, and with AC3, it would probably have had to go to 2cds to maintain the quality its at.



I'd extend that to *good* 5.1 mixes. Lackluster ones don't really need treated to 2cd releases.

If you can keep the bitrate high, 900+, then go for AC3, if not you are compromising the quality of your rip severely by bumping the size of the audio track up a lot. If its a long movie, don't bother with it unless your doing a 2cd rip.

I would say releasing as a seperate track shouldn't be done either, not if your expecting your rips to stay alive for more than a couple of months

I think emoboy summed it up fine, 1cd rips with AC3 are out of the question generally, not if you expect quality. You just got to think, does this movie need a 5.1 surround track? For stereo, I'd say don't bother, ditto for mono.

ps. moved to software discussions

If I was ripping a recent movie with an excellent 5.1 soundtrack I might consider doing it as 2CD AC3. Most other fairly recent movies with stereo mixes deserve MP3 at 128k VBR, anything in mono would get a 96k VBR. Anything really old like a low budget 70s movie would get a 64k VBR.

Maintaining a good video bitrate is always a good idea.

go for ac3 forgod sake this is not the 1980... just my 2 cents....