What is the quickest way to extract AC3 audio from AVI?

[vcddude]

I am looking at two methods:

a) Extract WAV file from AVI using Virtualdub, then convert WAV file to AC3 via ffmpegGUI.
b) Extract AC3 directly from AVI using ffmpegGUI

I've seen that ffmpegGUI is pretty slow when extracting from AVI.

Which of these methods would you prefer to convert audio from a 2-hour AVI
to AC3? Speed and quality are my key criteria here.

Thanks,
Kevin

[steveryan]

Is the audio already ac3? If so use the excellent AVIdemux, if it's MP3 then go with option b.

[KBeee]

or use VirtualDubMod and extract the AC3

[vcddude]

Is the audio already ac3? If so use the excellent AVIdemux, if it's MP3 then go with option b.

No, the audio is PCM stereo 48K WAV.

To be clear, I am talking about DV AVI files "captured" from my Canopus ADVC-100.

Kevin

[dphirschler]

Have you tried DGindex?


Darryl

[vcddude]

I don't see how DGIndex (DGMPGDec) would work here. My source is DV AVI, not MPEG.

????

Kevin

[jman98]

The easiest way to extract audio from an MPEG or AVI source is to use VirtualDubMod. After opening the video, go to Streams, then Stream List, highlight your stream (if more than one) and select Demux. Then give it a name to save as and - VERY important - select Direct Stream Copy as the method to use. Direct Stream Copy will extract the audio in exactly the same format as in the original file without further processing.

[vcddude]

Cool -- thanks for the tips!

I was also looking for a way to normalize the audio in Virtualdub
and found a handy normalization app called Normalize with a GUI
at http://www.divx-digest.com/software/normalize.html

Simple to use. Too bad Virtualdub does not have a normalize function.

Kevin