Strip audio track from AVI

[exekutive]

AVI file container. One MP4 video stream. Two MP3 audio streams: #1 Italian, #2 English
I want to remove the Italian audio to reduce file size. Can it be done without demux+remuxing?

[Case]

If you feel comfortable using command line ffmpeg:
Find out the stream numbers you want to keep:

ffmpeg -i foo.avi

E.g.
Stream #0.0: Video: details
Stream #0.1: Audio: (Ita) details
Stream #0.2: Audio: (Eng) details

Next, copy the streams that you want to keep to a new file:

ffmpeg -i foo.avi -map 0:0 -map 0:2 -vcodec copy -acodec copy foo-new.avi

[terryj]

Open the avi in Quicktime Pro. ( w/ Perian installed)
go to Show Movie Properties (Window -->Show Movie Properties)

Select the offending audio track, click delete.

Save As Quicktime Reference movie file in the same folder / destination as the original.

Now when you play the reference file, it will only have the audio you want.

[exekutive]

Case thank you for your unending patience.

However, I'm getting a bazillion errors:

error, non monotone timestamps 19 >= 19
error, non monotone timestamps 22 >= 22
error, non monotone timestamps 25 >= 25
...

terryj, your method does not reduce the file size.

[exekutive]

Interesting. I may have found out how to kill 2 birds with one stone.

I tried to use the "fix" tool in FFmpegX to repair the AVI index (which was causing the timestamp errors). The output file was 100MB less than the original. Sure enough, one of the audio tracks (#1) was gone. Unfortunately it was the English one I wanted. If I could just figure out how to make it keep the other one ...

[exekutive]

Tried using DivFix++ 0.34 to repair AVI.

Processing file : foo.avi
Four CC is : XVID
Info: Original index chunk found at 813794760
Error detected at byte: 820382704
File end reached.
Error: Bigger than 2 stream? Breaked.
DMLH found: 137256

New Stream Size 	: 813780416
Total Error Count 	: 1
Total Frame Count 	: 274501
Video Data Frames 	: 137256
Audio Data Frames 	: 137245

Then tried ffmpeg again to copy, but got same timestamp errors.

AVI's often seem to be plagued with problems.

[rumplestiltskin]

Use a variant of terryj's suggestion; instead of saving as a reference movie, save it as "self-contained". You may want to run it through ffmpegX next to fix the index.

[exekutive]

terryj's method saves it as a Quicktime MOV file doesn't it? I need to keep it AVI.

[rumplestiltskin]

The video track doesn't change; just the container is changed. Why does it have to be an AVI if the content is MP4?

[exekutive]

To play on an AVI-enabled DVD player, and because it's just a more widely used container.

[rumplestiltskin]

A-ha! Okay; I was thinking that, by now, most people would have migrated away from physical media (discs) to a media player like the WD TV Media Player or AppleTV (old style) or any one of a number of others. Those devices (most of them) handle MOV, MP4, AVI, and some others without a complaint. Guess I'm ahead of the curve.

[exekutive]

OK I got it to work with Avidemux. It practically did everything for me.
As soon as I opened the file, a dialog popped up asking if I wanted to rebuild frames so I clicked yes.
Then another dialog popped up that says "The file you just loaded contains several audio tracks. Go to Audio->MainTrack to select the active one." So I did, and then saved the movie.
Mission accomplished

[terryj]

A-ha! Okay; I was thinking that, by now, most people would have migrated away from physical media (discs) to a media player like the WD TV Media Player or AppleTV (old style) or any one of a number of others. Those devices (most of them) handle MOV, MP4, AVI, and some others without a complaint. Guess I'm ahead of the curve.

not from where I'm sitting rumple. If you are then we are both on that bus.