I'm trying to backup my Aliens Collector's Edition to DivX w/5.1 audio, but I'm having a heck of a time figuring out where it's going wrong.
Basically, the disc has 2 versions of the movie on it, the original theatrical and the original director's version (which is a fair bit more in length). The problem is that it jumps around to different points in the disc when it's playing the extended version, thus trying to Demux the audio stream doesn't work as planned. Basically, after the first 'jump' to an 'extended version' scene, the audio becomes completely out of sync. What I mean is that it continues to play the audio for the original version, even though the video has jumped to the extended scene.
Now most people will say "Why bother demuxing the audio then, can't you just rip the whole thing at once to DivX, etc?" Yes, I very well could, however, I Demux the audio so that I can recombine the aud/vid streams with AVI-Mux at the end, mostly because I enjoy the 5.1 audio encoded into the resulting DivX file, and as far as I know (and excuse the ignorance if there is another way) the DivXcodec cannot encode AC3 into anything but 2-channel mp3 stereo when running it through the Converter application.
If anyone knows of a way to make the DivX software keep the 5.1 audio data when encoding, please let me know, however if it's a sound hardware trick, I'd be SOL since my SigmaTel 9200 audio is a 2-channel codec only. And I have tried changing my AC3encoder settings to 5/1 or SP/DIF, but DivX b0rks as soon as it goes to encode (both the old Dr DivX and the newer Converter do the same thing).
Any ideas or comments are greatly appreciated.
One small edit - for those wondering why I want AC3 5.1 in the file when the computer only supports 2-channel, the answer is -> The backed up files go on my XBox for use with the home theater setup :-)
