Two requests: Audio Channels and logs

[MaGaO]

I've been playing around with Mediacoder for about a month and I quite like how it works. Alas, I'm currently using Pinnacle products to create my DVDs and the like.

These products won't be happy with anything but a DV, MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video (with stereo sound, no less). Since my digital videocamera allows me to get DV through Firewire, that's no problem.

Whenever I try to use MPG files with mono audio, though, Pinnacle will choke. Yes, I know I probably should use something else, but by trying to tweak Mediacoder with FFMEG to get stereo audio, I have found there is no way to do so: if you give it mono audio, mono audio it does give back. FFMPEG has the -ac # option to specify the number of output audio channels. Having this available at Mediacoder would be probably useful (not only for me, that is:-) Currently, I'm sorting the problem out by using a BAT file to do the work right.

This brings me to my second request. I spent a lot of time trying to find out why Mediacoder wouldn't even try to reconvert .mp4 files to MPEG2V+MP2 files. Finally, running FFMPEG on a command line was required to get a meaningful error line. Wouldn't it be much better to have a program/codec log available at least in Expert mode? I know most people won't even know what to do with it, but, then again, they probably wouldn't be using Expert mode for anything meaningful, anyways.

So there they are: an option to specify the number of output channels (at least on FFMPEG) and program/codec logs available (perhaps through the Console).

Thanks for reading this far, and please tell me if any of this is already available. I haven't been able to find it.