I've searched and found no answer so here it is. What is the best way to rip DVD audio for burning to a CD? I have some great DVD concerts that I would love to listen to in the car. I want to get the best audio format to burn and I'm not really worried about the file size. Thanks.
Okay - first question.
Are you talking about genuine DVD-Audio, or the Audio on a DVD-Video disc?
If the first, then it is not possible without actually recording the outputs.
If the second, you have several options open to you.
DVD-Audio ripper by ImToo comes immediately to mind.
I'm not really sure which they are. It's Roger Waters - In the flesh live, and Steve Vai - Live at the Astoria London. They are concert DVDs. I dont see any audio files on them.
Okay, now things become a bit clearer.
These are DVD-Video discs, not DVD-Audio.
When you look at them in explorer, you should see 2 folders:
Audio_TS & Video_TS, yes?
Audio_TS will be empty, if it exists, as it is dedicated to DVD-Audio only.
Video_TS will have a lot of VOB, IFO, BUP & VTS files in it. These contain all the video/audio files multiplexed together, as well as the necessary backup files & information files to point a DVD player in the right direction.
You have a couple of options.
Get a copy of DVDDecrypter, and have a look at the disc in detail. If you enable stream processing mode, you will be able to see what exactly is in the VTS files which is the bit we are interested in. The Audio could be in one or al of 3 formats:
AC3 (Dolby Digital), DTS or WAV/PCM. If there is already a PCM/WAV version then you don't need anything else yet. Just rip that sucker from the DVD. That will give you a 16 bit 48KHz file. You need to resample this to 44.1KHz to burn to a CD. The best resampler available IMO is a piece of freeware called R8Brain at www.voxengo.com/downloads
Very simple to use.
On the other hand, if all you have are DTS or AC3 files it is a little more complex with freeware. Your best & easiest bet would be to go buy the badly named DVD-Audio ripper. I say badly named as it actually rips the audio from DVD-Video. However, it will do this straight to a WAV file for you without any further conversion.
Yes, it is.
Are you talking about real DVD-Audio though? If you are, then it is of dubious benefit converting either Dolby Digital surround (not too difficult) or DTS Surround (A lot harder) into PCM for authoring. There is going to be a quality problem, and no matter how well you do it, I suspect that there will be artifacts.
Have you considered a surround CD instead?
Anyway, as long as you have DVD-A authoring software, you can simply rip the AC3(Dolby Digital) files using the wonderful DVDDecrypter, in Stream processing mode, to get just the Audio. Then you need to decode it from AC3 to WAV. Depending on how you do this, or what software you are using, this is either a pain or simple. If you have Nuendo/Nuendo Dolby Digital Encoder it is as easy as opening the AC3 file in Nuendo, setting your markers and exporting straight out as a WAV file, or set of WAV files.
You would then need to import these into your DVD-A authoring package (discWelder or WaveLab) and off you go.
It can be done with various freeware, but I do not know how to use these apps (BeSweet etc) as I have not got them. Never got around to learning as I'm lucky enough to own Nuendo.
