Dolby Technologies for DVD-Video and DVD-Audio
Dolby® Digital offers up to 5.1 channels of audio for the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio disc formats. Metadata, carried within the Dolby Digital signal, allows content producers to shape the DVD listening experience appropriately for each title. Metadata is used to optimize the audio decoding and reproduction at the listener's location (for example, in an A/V receiver) to ensure the best possible sound in any environment.
MLP Lossless™ technology for DVD-Audio offers high-resolution PCM audio for the most demanding content producers and their listeners. As the name suggests, MLP Lossless is a lossless coding technology that compacts PCM data with bit-for-bit accuracy, effectively doubling disc space without compromising audio quality. A DVD-Audio disc can store up to six channels of 24-bit/96 kHz audio, along with a stereo mix of the same audio tracks, or two channels of 24-bit/192 kHz audio for stereo recordings. Dolby Digital is specified for use in the DVD-Audio standard within the video zone, ensuring the playback compatibility of DVD-Audio discs on DVD-Video players. Fidelity from DVD-Audio can be dramatically better than from a standard CD.
Dolby offers both software and hardware solutions for mastering the audio files for DVD-Video and DVD-Audio formats. Both solutions are described below.
Dolby Software Solution for DVD-Video and DVD-Audio
Dolby Media Producer, our new suite of professional software DVD and HD creation tools, provides complete authoring support for all of today's DVD formats. It can be used to create Dolby Digital files for DVD-Video and DVD-Audio, plus MLP Lossless files for DVD-Audio. It also includes Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD technologies for use on HD disc media including Blu-ray Disc formats.
The Dolby Media Producer product line consists of four separate software programs designed to work together or separately: Dolby Media Encoder, Dolby Media Encoder SE (Stand-alone Edition), Dolby Media Decoder, and Dolby Media Tools.
All four Dolby Media Producer programs feature an intuitive graphical interface on the Mac OS® X platform (version 10.4.2 or higher) and can be run on both Power PC and Intel® Macs. The products are being updated to Universal applications that will roll out progressively during the summer of 2007. These will allow the programs to run natively on Intel and Power PC systems alike, and give all Mac users the best possible performance. Current Dolby Media Producer users can register their products at dolbysupport.com to obtain information on Universal applications updates.
There are two available versions of the Dolby Media Producer encoder programs. The Dolby Media Encoder package includes three Media Encoder Clients and one Media Encoder Server. Each Media Encoder Client allows an operator to set up and submit jobs via a network to a central facility server. The Media Encoder Server can also be installed on the same computer as a Media Encoder Client to allow for local encoding. Additional Media Encoder Clients can be purchased for the Dolby Media Encoder software version. Dolby Media Encoder SE (Stand-alone Edition) is the cost-effective encoder choice for use on a single computer. Both encoder versions support all Dolby technologies for mastering the audio files for DVD and HD media formats. Click here to view a larger comparison chart of the features supported in the Dolby Media Encoder and Dolby Media Encoder SE products.
Dolby Media Decoder provides decoding and monitoring for all the Dolby digital consumer audio formats, and it supports all Dolby consumer listening modes. Dolby Media Decoder supports the Sony® P2 9-pin protocol and Apple® QuickTime® for synchronous file playback of audio tracks with video, and the ASIO/Core Audio format for external I/O connection. It is optimized to run locally on a single computer.
Dolby Media Tools is an invaluable utility program that allows users to repair and update previously encoded files without having to reencode them. Dolby Media Tools is optimized to run on a single computer. Dolby Media Tools will initially support Dolby Digital files. Support for Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD for HD disc formats will be available via a free software upgrade in the future.
Learn more about the Dolby Media Producer.
Dolby Hardware Solutions for DVD-Video and DVD-Audio
Dolby manufactures professional real-time encoder and decoder products for mastering and monitoring audio files in preparation for DVD authoring. The DP569 is the multichannel Dolby Digital encoder, supporting encoded bit ranges from 56 to 640 kbps and channel configurations from mono to 5.1. The DP564 is the multichannel reference decoder, the ideal reference monitoring tool for all quality-control applications.
Learn more about Dolby Digital products.