How-to concurrent audio ? (playing and ripping)

theomeier · Member Joined: 08 May 2008 Location: Germany

The problem:
- listen to 2 separate audio channels at the same time (concurrently)
• e.g. English an channel 1 and German on channel 2
• in such a way that a movie can be played so that 2 people can listen to the sound separately in 2 different languages (e.g. one over loudspeaker the other over headphones).

Unsuccessful trials:
- players (e.g. media player classic, BS-Player and others) do not concurrently (at the same time) play more than 1 audio stream from a DVD
- concurrently (not consecutively) ripping and separating the audio- and video streams
- scanning this and other forums for a working solution.

Solution sought:
- identification of player which features concurrent playback of multiple audio streams
- tips&tricks, practical advise for multiple playback
- identification of tools and advise on how to appropriately rip DVD so it can be played back with concurrent audio

Tx for your efforts !

filmboss80 · Member Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Location: United States

Wow, what a challenge! Back in the tape days, it could be done easier, but I can't think of any set-top DVD player or or DVD software that can play the two audio streams concurrently. However, there is a reauthoring option. In theory, you could : 1) rip the DVD, 2) demux video and all audio streams, 3) make mono versions of each audio stream, 4) use an audio editor to allocate each audio stream to the left and right channels, and 5) remux the new dual-language audio stream back in with the video stream. Thereafter, you can split the stereo channels, sending each language version to targeted audiences. This all seems very convoluted, but I'm not sure there are very many other options. Hopefully, some others in this forum offer better ideas. When you find a solution, please let us know.

olyteddy · Member Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Location: United States

You could run two instances of VLC player each showing the same movie. It wouldn't be simultaneous but you could probably get real close. This would also require a second audio card. You could also demux both audios to WAV -> open them both in Audacity => erase the left channel of one & the right channel of the other -> save as 2channel WAV -> (convert to AC3) -> remux.

bendixG15 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2004 Location: United States

I'd say you have to find this first ...

Solution sought:
- identification of player which features concurrent playback of multiple audio streams

And if you do, then you can tackle the software.

theomeier · Member Joined: 08 May 2008 Location: Germany

thx guys for replying

I have heard complaints about the windows media player erroneously playing to audio streams at the same time.
If this behaviour can be triggered by command this could be a working solution to my problem.

Any ideas ?

guns1inger · Posted: May 15, 2008 03:28

WMP does playback multiple streams simultaneously, however it mixes them into a single output. Also, it only does this from avi files with multiple streams, not DVDs.

I also do not know of any software that lets you redirect one stream to speakers, and the other to headphones. This would be a feature that would have to be supported by the hardware and drivers. Even having different languages in different channels doesn't solve the problem because you can't direct left to speakers and right to headphones, for example.

So you have two levels of problem

One is find the right software.

Two is finding hardware that supports what you want to do.

Good luck. I suspect you would have to be looking for specialty kit, not something in general circulation.
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jman98 · Member Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Location: Freedonia

Every now and then we get a post where some guy is the only person in the world who wants to do something and he doesn't understand why there is no software that can do what he wants. This is one of those posts.

filmboss80's post is your answer. You can either do what he suggests or you can waste your time looking for another solution.