Experiment: Extracting and converting Audio clip from DVR rec. Video

[Seeker47]

I'm trying to put some custom ringtones into a new cellphone. Most of the Midi stuff you can download for free sounds pretty lame to me. In fact, I'd have to say that it blows. The cellphone can also handle MP3s, and possibly some other format. (WMA ?) It has extra memory storage, from a micro SD card. I also got some software that xfers between the handset and my PC, through a Bluetooth USB dongle.

What I had in mind to try was to record a test music theme or two on my DVR, probably at the max LPCM quality. I can then take the video clips to the PC. What then ? Digital Audio Extractor ? Some other program ? I'd like to keep this as simple and straightforward as possible -- nothing really involved with a lot of steps. The goal would probably be something in MP3 format. Once I had that, the cellphone software suite apparently has something that can trim and tailor the MP3 to its final use as a ringtone. If you've done something like this, I'd like to hear your suggestions. And I'm sure there are other things that could be done with an MP3 from this process.

[guns1inger]

What is your source ?

Going via the DVR seems a convoluted way of getting the audio unless there is something specific about the source that makes is necessary.

[Seeker47]

What is your source ?

Going via the DVR seems a convoluted way of getting the audio unless there is something specific about the source that makes is necessary.

The source is music from films or tv. As I said, the free Midi versions I've found are really bad. (I think the Midi may be widely used because the file sizes are so small, which is going to be necessary for ringtones with most phones.) There may be MP3 versions of this same material available, but you'd have to find them and pay for them. If I roll my own, I can make sure it sounds good (no high freq. distortion, etc.), select the duration, start and end points of the clip, and so on.

As far as purely music sources might go, I used to use MusicMatch to rip CDs to MP3, so I could probably work that out on my own. But I'd like to option to extract music from video as well.

[guns1inger]

Once you have the audio on DVD, it would be like ripping audio from a commercial disc, but easier because the copy protection issues doesn't exist.

DVD audio Extractor seems to be used a bit, but if it is your DVR recording, you can just use rejig to demux the PCM audio, then audacity to edit and re-encode to mp3 (using LAME)

[Seeker47]

Once you have the audio on DVD, it would be like ripping audio from a commercial disc, but easier because the copy protection issues doesn't exist.

DVD audio Extractor seems to be used a bit, but if it is your DVR recording, you can just use rejig to demux the PCM audio, then audacity to edit and re-encode to mp3 (using LAME)

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

[Seeker47]

Once you have the audio on DVD, it would be like ripping audio from a commercial disc, but easier because the copy protection issues doesn't exist.

DVD audio Extractor seems to be used a bit, but if it is your DVR recording, you can just use rejig to demux the PCM audio, then audacity to edit and re-encode to mp3 (using LAME)

I tried it the way you suggested, and I see that it pretty much works. Results not bad for a first try, but they could definitely be improved. (From Baldrick's guide https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=224833
I see that the demux / extraction could also have been done with DVD Decryptor in IFO mode, as well as some other ways. I don't know how much better or worse a job the other tools might do, compared to Rejig.) Anyway, it is at the point of Audacity that I see room for improvement in what I'm doing. The Tools section lists no guides for Audacity, so I'm kinda improvising and hoping its use is semi-apparent. (I have messed around with versions of SOX before, but audio editors or mixers are not something I have any real experience with.)

I did two test clips. One came out of the demux at much too low a volume. I tried to up the volume in the course of exporting it to mp3, but did not succeed on the first go. The other test was at a proper volume, but was clipping at high frequencies, so I'll need to find where I can dial down the treble a bit. If anyone has a link for an Audacity guide, this would come in handy.