Basically I've
wrapped an Audio Compression Manager interface around the free liba52
library by Aaron Holtzman and Michel Lespinasse, and the ac3enc code
by Fabrice Bellard from ffmpeg. This makes it possible to preview,
decode, and encode AC-3 audio in VirtualDub (or almost any ACM client).
AC3ACM is released under the GNU General Public License, and you should
have received a copy of this license as "GPL.txt" in the parent folder
of the distribution. I recommend you read it before using the software.
I make no guarantee that AC3ACM will work for you, and I won't be held
responsible if your computer explodes, and so on...
Note that this zip contains two builds of the codec. The files in the
"x86" folder are for Windows 32-bit operating systems, and the files
in the "x64" folder are for Windows 64-bit operating systems.
If you've never installed the codec before, simply double-click the
approriate .bat file for your platform (32-bit or 64-bit). If you get
a scary warning that the codec has not passed "Windows Logo testing"
(which is quite true by the way), choose to "Continue Anyway."
To uninstall the codec, start Control Panel's "Add/Remove Programs"
dialog, select "AC-3 ACM Codec 1.6", and press the "Add/Remove" button.
If you have installed a previous version of the codec, I recommend you
uninstall the old version as described above, and reboot Windows before
installing this version. (It's probably not necessary to do all that,
but again, it can't hurt.)
AC3ACM was compiled with Visual Studio 2005 Pro, and tested on
Windows 98 SE and 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP3. I haven't tested it
on 64-bit Windows platforms. You can download the full source code
at http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net. Future updates of the software
will also be available at that site.
If necessary I can be contacted at fcchandler at comcast dot net, but I
don't check my e-mail very often unless I'm expecting something. You'll
get a much quicker response by contacting me at the Unofficial VirtualDub
Support Forums. (As an administrator I visit there several times a day.)
The URL is http://forums.virtualdub.org.