Dear Savvy audiophiles:

I would like to convert NICAM audio to stereo tracks as follows:

I have a Pioneer DVD-R which I use to record bilingual NICAM broadcasts. I then use the DVD-R burn them to a DVD in VR mode. Then I rip the DVD into vob files using dvd-vr 0.9.6 and my MAC.
There aren't many DVD players that can play VR mode disks so eventually, I want to burn the video back to a video mode DVD. I also want to convert the NICAM to two separate audio tracks - one for each language. I will then burn a new DVD which will have two stereo audio tracks.

The output from dvd-vr gives me a video file that is playable with VLC media player but it has one language on the left channel of the stereo track and another language on the right (or somethings like that). Then I strip the audio off of the video, use audacity to make two new separate audio tracks manually. One from the original left channel, and the other from the original right. Then I save the new audio tracks and reattach them to the video using a DVD authoring package.

My question is -

How do I automate the audio portion of this operation ie the splitting of the NICAM track into two mono tracks then converting the mono track into stereo? This could be in the form of an applescript routine, or a bash script file. It would be REALLY cool if there were automator actions for Audacity.

I'd like to use ffmpeg if possible.

Is NICAM as easy as left channel = language 1 and right channel = language 2.

Thanks for all your help.