Video DVD to MP3

[Unregistered]

Hello, i'd like to know how can i convert the audio of a video-DVD (a movie or a concert) into a mp3 file, so i can make a music CD later.
I have a concert on DVD and i would like to encode a mp3 with the sound.
Well, thanks.

[RossRoy]

Re: Video DVD to MP3

It all depends on how you want to do it. There's basically 2 approach: Loopback (long way) and Rip (faster way).

For the loopback, what you basically do is plug the audio output of your DVD player into the line-in of your computer soundcard and then use something like dMC Auxiliary Input to record the concert as it plays. The main advantage of that is that it's simple, but at the expense that it takes forever to record and there's going to be a little quality loss. Also, it's sort of a trial and error method especially when settings output vs. input volumes.

If you don't mind downloading 2 new applications, then you can go the ripping way. You will need a program called DVDDecrypter to extract the audio from the DVD, and HeadAC3he (scroll down to the Audio Tools section, you will see HeadAC3he there for download) to transcode the AC3 to WAV.

First, fire up DVDDecrypter. Make sure it is in IFO mode (press I or MODE/IFO). In the input windows, DVDDecrypter shoud have selected the longest VTS/PGC combination. You will want to make sure the PGC that is selected is the same length as the movie/concert. Then, go to the STREAM PROCESSING tab. Remove the checkmark from every item except the audio you want to extract, which will usually be stream number 0x80, but you can select any of the stream, just make sure it's an AC3 stream and is the right language. Then, highlight the stream you have selected, and just below, select DEMUX to get the extracted AC3 file. From there, set your destination to whatever you like and click the DVD to HD icon and let it work it's way through the disc.

You now have a nice AC3 file which contains the whole audio from the DVD-Video, but unfortunately, we are not done yet. Now, fire up HeadAC3he and follow this guide.

Now, if you want to split the audio into multiple tracks for easy navigation once you burn the audio CD, you might want to consider leaving the destination format to WAV, that way, you won't have audio quality degradation because of decoding the MP3 to WAV and then reencoding to MP3 once you've splitted the file, but that is up to you. You could also manually write a TOC file, like those from EAC, to have the audio still be one long file, but still have access point on a CD when burned, but I can't help you with that.

[RossRoy]

Re: Video DVD to MP3

Oh by the way, I know the guide says to not downsample to 44100 KHz, BUT, if you are planning on burning it to CD, you might want to do it now to avoid problems later on, trust me on this one :p