How to check if mpeg encoded with 5.1 audio

Hi, I'm not sure this is the right place and I've searcehd the forum but can't find the answer to my question. I've been been trying to convert DVD to SVCD using DVD2SVCD (latest version) which supposedly allows for 5.1 multichannel encoding. I am having trouble figuring out whether it's working or not because my pc does not appear to be set up to play 5.1 channel audio. Is there a simple way to "verify" the exact encoding of the resulting DVD2SVCd generated .cif (or .bin) file? I've tried evey piece of s/w I can find and everything reports the files to be encoded in stereo. I've even tried to check the converted .mp2 files and they also seem to be encoded in stereo. I don't know whether it's just the software I'm using, my PC setup or it's not really encoding into multichannel. Please help point me in the right direction. Oh and I am using I-author in DVD2SVCD.

Fist of all, check the logfile your DVD2SVCD has written. If you find something like 'pub_enc.exe ...' then pretty sure the audio was encoded in 5.1 layer2. Another thing seems to be playback. Check the forum for that topic. As far as I know just some DVD standalones play that stuff with 6 channels, the rest presumably gives no audio at all. Playback on PC seems to give stereo in all cirumstances. At least WinDVD always plays back stereo, whatever you try to convince if from. I tried that myself and failed, sorry. tiki4

@Tiki4 Thanks for replying. I think pub-enc is used, but my point was about confirming whether it's really encoded or not. I can't find any tools that let me check whether the .mp2 file or later the .mpg file are still in multichannel. In fact all the basic methods seems to say these files are in stereo which makes me doubt the pub-enc is working. I'm trying to troubleshoot, but I may not have the right tools. I wish DVD2SVC would answer (I know he's busy and I won't bother him directly) and let me know how he confirmed that the resulting ecnoded file was multichannel (without actually playing it back on standalone). Logic says there must be a way to test the result on a PC. Playback is a separate issue as you say and it's hard to make it work on pc, let alone standalone, and I've read all the posts on this.

If you downloads the "philips tools" package, you will find in the "readme" file some information about an app called "infoaudio" that could help us identify if a file is correctly encoded... but the trouble is: that file is NOT included in the package...

Use Winamp to play! Right click context shows you the fileinfo you can trust. And you'll see the used bitrate. Winamp plays the MPEG-2 5.1 multichannel audio in MPEG-1 compliant stereo mode.

I am also trying to confirm the encoded file is indeed multichannel. I try WinAmp on the .AIF file and fileinfo shows a 6channel file but on the .MP2 file that eventually is muxed with the video, it shows 2 channel stereo. Is the encoded MP2 file the problem?

Any program I tried so far decodes the 5.1 MP2 file as plain stereo. I think the other channels are just ignored. Well, maybe you just need a DVD standalone that can play 6ch MP2 and you have to test your stream on a SVCD. I don't know why but there seems to be no single Windows program decoding multichannel MP2 files. tiki4

I have try several encode to determine if my DVD player (a Shinco 2100) can support multichannel SVCD and cannot be sure if my steps are correct. There doesn't seem to be any sample cue/bin files confirmed to work that one can just download and test it out. Some of the clips found here are only .mpa and required further muxing/authoring which I fear will only introduce more room for mistakes. Is there suche a sample out there, anyone?

5.1 MPEG sound IS possible 

Hi there, after reading a lot of posts here and over at vcdhelp I downloaded the DVD2SVCD package as instructed, loaded all the dll's and the CCE demoversion. I had no trouble making a bunch of MPEG Layer II multi channel audio SVCDs with that nice program package. My player is a Digatron Mini-2001. That is a DIN sized player for mobile applications with a slot in loader. () My decoder is a Sony TA-E9000ES preamplifier that has the necessary MPEG multi channel decoder. The results are awesome, the sound is indistinguishable from the original. I do use the highest possible audio bit rate, though. This eats away from the video bandwidth, obviously. The Digatron player will work with SVCDs with a total bitrate of up to 3500 kbps. It will pass Layer I, II, and III audio in native format. I tested one my discs on a Sony DVP900 player but they audio was two channel only, both from the internal decoder and an external decoder. I think this proves that MPEG multi channel is fully backwards compatible to stereo due to the use of Lt Rt. A lot of folks have doubted my results since they either never tried it themselves or they don't have players and decoders that pass/process multichannel MPEG audio. This seems to be a sad story. Philips players are saif to pass multi chanel audio, too. But there are not too many decoders around that explicitly process MPEG multi channel. One of them is the Sony EP-90ES and a bunch of Marantz/Philips receivers. Hope I could encourage you to more testing. Regards, Ralf