AC3 to Vorbis using BeSweet

You'll need the following software for this guide:

BeSweet
BeLight
libVorbis and libmmd.dll

In the DVD and TV backup world, there's one audio tool you should be familiar with, and that is BeSweet. No other tool is as suited for the tasks at hand. BeLight is one of the many GUIs available for BeSweet, and is the most up-to-date so I'm going to use it in this guide.

Step 0: First time setup

Copy both BeLight and BeSweet to the same folder. Then copy the libVorbis DLLs to the BeLight / BeSweet folder as well.

Step 1: Encoding

To add files to be encoded, simply drag and drop them from Windows Explorer to the input are in BeLight:

The easiest way to get on the way is to use one of the existing encoding presets:

Select one, then press the Start Processing button and you're under way.

If you prefer more control, you can of course configure BeSweet just the way you want it. First of all, you can configure all the codec agnostic settings. Once you have done that, select the VORBIS tab to configure the Vorbis encoder. The first choice you have to make is set the number of channels of the output:

If your source only has 2 channels, Stereo is the obvious choice here. If your source has 5.1 channels and you want to keep all the channels, you have to select 5.1.

In the Bitrate Management section, you configure which mode the encoder is going to use:

Selecting Bitrate allows you to use the bitrate based mode. In that mode, you can enforce a certain bitrate. In Quality mode, the encoder will try to reach the desired quality level and use whichever bitrate is necessary to reach the desired quality.

In the Quality section, you can then quality of your output:

Move the slider to reach your desired quality level. BeLight will automatically show you which setting will achieve roughly which bitrate. Keep in mind that the actual bitrate may vary.

In Bitrate mode, you can configure your desired bitrate in the Bitrate section:

Selecting Constant Bitrate Mode enables CBR encoding and limits the configuration to selecting the desired bitrate. In Average Bitrate Mode, the encoder can vary the bitrate, and you can set a maximum and minimum bitrate using the Max. Bitrate and Min. Bitrate fields respectively.

All the remains to be done now is press the Start Processing button. BeLight has a nice progress bar to keep you up-to-date with the progress of the encoding session:

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This page was last updated on January 15, 2006