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Converting DVD video and audio to Audio CD

PostPosted: Sun May 20, 2007 2:22 pm
by golferjl
I video taped a concert in our association and then made DVD's for the choir. One of our choir member's parents live in Ireland and does not have a DVD player and wants to hear the concert. I need help with a way to make a CD audio from the DVD. I did download Audicity but it did not work. I thought maybe I could take it to Compusa, but they closed all the stores in this area. Help!

PostPosted: Sun May 20, 2007 3:50 pm
by Ian
Moving...

PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2007 1:54 am
by Justin42
I know there are freeware ways of doing this but I have never been able to (easily) get good quality results from any of them (they tend to sound muffled for some reason although it may depend on the source audio). I'm sure it's user error and hopefully someone will post a good guide or something. :)

The few ways that pop out in my head (in order of quality/speed/ease):

1. The fastest results I've had are with Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 (and I would assume 9, the current version, works OK for this as well). There is a specific tool to extract DVD audio and make a CD out of it. In my experience this comes out sounding very good and doesn't take a lot of time. IMO the software is a bloated pig and is VERY buggy but this one specific tool works and if you need the functionality a lot more than makes the purchase worthwhile. I think Best Buy is selling this for $49 after rebate this week (CompUSA may as well if you want to order online). I seriously would not pay over $50 for it, there are PLENTY of deals if you can wait a couple of weeks if you can't find one. (keep an eye out)

2. You can use Total Recorder which (to me) is an indispensable tool. It costs like $13 but does have a trial. It basically installs a pass-through audio driver and can record pretty much any audio your computer can play. Just start up Total Recorder, tell it to record a WAV, and then play the DVD and it should produce a file that you can then burn to CD. (if you get choppy audio try another DVD playback program on your computer if possible, and if not, look for an option to turn accelerated audio/DirectSound off in your player's configuration). You can download the trial from highcriteria.com and see if it works for you (watch out, the trial is fully functional but it puts a short blast of loud static in every 60 seconds when it's in demo mode)

3. You could also record the DVD directly in your computer, if you have some sound editing software, and can configure your sound card correctly. Audacity would work for this. You need to set up your sound card's recording input to be "What you hear" (or similar option-- depending on the card/chipset it will be called something different). Basically, you need to pump the stereo mix of the sound back to the recording input. Pretty much any card can do that but the quality may vary. (free, though!)

4. You can always get the cables to hook up a (set top) DVD player's audio out to your computer's audio in and then just record in Audacity. I wouldn't recommend this unless you have a decent sound card since the audio inputs on most computers with built in sound are garbage... it will probably produce the lowest quality results but it's also probably the best fall back if nothing else works..

Good luck...

PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2007 3:13 pm
by MediumRare
I'm not really an expert on this- but you're looking at 2 or 3 steps:
  • a DVD contains (among other objects) VOBs with multiplexed video and audio tracks. You will have to demultiplex these files to extract elementary streams (ES) with audio (and video) information.
  • There can be more than one audio track on the DVD and there are several ways of coding the sound (Dolby AC3, MP2 = MPEG layer 2, LPCM). To produce a CD, you'lll need something that can read the source format and write a WAV file (LPCM), either on your hard drive or directly to the CD.
  • before or while you do this, you have to convert the sampling rate from 48 kHz (DVD) to 44.1 kHz (CD Audio).

There are any number of programs that shoud do this for you. I haven't done so, but I would try the following freeware tools first:
- demux with PGCdemux (which processes entire titles using information in the PGC)
- convert the audio if necessary with BeSweet (a command line tool), use the GUI BeLight to reduced the pain. It will also do resampling (rate conversion).
- if the audio is already in LPCM form, you may prefer to use Audacity to resample to the CD rate.

Check at doom9 or google for links to these programs.

G

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2007 4:19 pm
by Justin42
The above message is exactly why I thought the DVD Music Assistant option in EMC8 is an absolute lifesaver. :)

(not ragging on you, MediumRare, it's just that this "should be simple" task can be such a pain, I went nuts trying to figure out how to do it before I gave up and found EMC8)

PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2007 1:45 pm
by MediumRare
Frankly, I don't consider the procedure to be that painful. I suppose it looks more complicated than it really is because I tried to put some background information in the first part. It's really just extract, convert and burn- like what most of us do with DVD backups.

I guess it boils down to personal preferences- I like to keep control of what I'm doing. I don't mind a good automatic anything- but it has to do what I want, and has to be turn-offable (now that's a terrible word :roll:).

G

This works for me

PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:47 pm
by DougA
I've found that if I start with DVD Shrink, and then MPEG Mediator, i can extract the audio file.

DVD Shrink
-- Open Disk
-- Back Up
-- Select "To Disk" and give it a directory (a new one)

Then, MPEG Mediator
-- File - Open
-- Select all the VOB files created in the VIDEO_TS directory from DVD Shrink
-- Select Audio-Tracks if there were more than one available
-- Start - Extract Audio to Wav