how do I extract audio from mov mpeg-4 video in Ubuntu Gutsy?

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Hi, all. I tried making a DVD from a couple *.mov (MPEG-4) files with Devede, and it worked great! Unfortunately, the audio from the original files is a little flaky, so I wanted to dynamically compress it. To accomplish this task in Windows, I'd extract the audio from the *.mov (MPEG-4) files, compress it, then recombine the original video with the new audio during the DVD (MPEG-2) encoding process. In Ubuntu, however, I have no idea how to do this.

So, let's recap:

1. How do I extract *.wav audio from a *.mov (MPEG-4) file in Ubuntu? <--this question is the most important
2. Is it possible to reincorporate a *.wav audio source into a *.mov (MPEG-4) file without re-encoding the video? If so, how?
3. If not, what's an alternative to Devede which allows me to author low-bitrate DVDs out of separate audio and video files?

Thanks in advance for any help!
--Ben
hurtstotalktoyou

[GMaq]

Hi Ben,

I'm sorry it hurts you to talk to me, I'll keep it brief :-b. Avidemux should theoretically do what you want, if it will open your .movs you can use it to convert to MPEG-2 and filter your Audio all at the same time. I actually use Virtualbox in Gutsy with a XP install for this kind of thing myself. Linux is phenomenal but IMHO it has a long way to go to handle the kinds of tasks you're talking about as well as Windows.

[disturbed1]

Besides AviDemux -
CAUTION
**I'm not afraid of the command line **

#2 -

mencoder movie.mov -ovc copy -oac pcm -o movie.pcm.mov

#1 -
To extract the audio file to wav format

mplayer yourmovie.mov -vo null -vc null -ao pcm:fast

This make mplayer play back the video file without outputting the video (-vo null) nor decoding the video (-vc null), and dump the audio file to a wav file titled audiodump.wav (-ao pcm:fast). This wav file will have the same sample rate as the original.

You can then take this wav file and edit it with SoX, Audacity, Gnome Wave Cleaner, Sweep, ReZound, or what ever you choose. Then encode to ac3 with ffmpeg or aften.

ffmpeg -i audio.wav -ab 224k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -acodec ac3 audio.ac3

This has ffmpeg take the input file audio.wav (-i audio.wav) and encode it to 2 channel (-ac 2) ac3 (-acodec ac3) at a bitrate of 224k (-ab 224K) with a sample rate of 48000 (-ar 48000).

aften -b 192 audio.wav audio.ac3

Aften will encode audio.wav to audio.ac3 at a bitrate of 192k, keeping the same input channel format and sample rate.

#3 - Most will only take m2v + ac3/wav/mp2 or mpg files, not many are all in one apps like DeVeDe
DVDStyler
QDVDAuthor
tovid (check ToDisc, neat fading motion menus)
and about 100 others.

MuxMan works just fine through Wine, as does TMPGenc, HCEnc, avisynth, and the DG* programs.