How do I extract and use AC3/PCM audio from a DVD (.VOB)?

[davidjenkins]

My goal is to build a music library from DVDs due to the sound quality.

What tools/methods do I need to use to properly extract the audio streams (both AC3 & PCM) from a VOB file? I want to make perfect copies; exactly as they are found on the DVD.

I don't mind compiling software if I need to.

Also, how can I convert PCM to AIFF?

Finally, (and I apologize for asking so many things at once), what can I use to piece together the sound files? Is there software (free or cheap) that supports AC3?

Thanks!

[rumplestiltskin]

bbDemux will demux the VOBs into the audio and video streams. ffmpegX, Audacity, exporting through VLC are some of the conversion apps that comes to mind. There are others. More posters will chime in in the next few hours.

[Frobozz]

Cinematize is excellent for this because you can have it automatically save separate audio files for each chapter. MPEG Streamclip and Toast 7 also can extract justh the audio.

One item of note is that the audio on a video DVD is 48 khz whereas the audio on an audio CD is 44.1 khz. This means you'll need to resample the audio if you want to burn it to an audio CD. You don't need to worry about it if you are just going to play the music on a computer.

A couple applications that do resampling are Sound Studio and the Peak series of apps from Bias. Jam 6 may also do resampling in the background of burning an audio CD, but I'm not absolutely sure. It may just downsample which would change the speed and pitch of the music.

[rumplestiltskin]

Once you get it to a format that iTunes would understand, then it becomes easy to "convert to..." mp3 or AIFF depending on how you've set your iTunes prefs. This will take care of the sampling rate.

[davidjenkins]

I have found that bbdemux will seperate the streams, but the PCM stream will be unusable for some reason.

[Frobozz]

I've had problems with bbdemux creating separate video and audio streams of different lengths. So I stopped using it a long time ago. But I never had problems with the PCM tracks playing. What other applications do you have that read VOBs? There are so many that will extract the audio only or at least demux the video and audio.

[rumplestiltskin]

MPEG Streamclip works with VOBs and will automatically combine them into one exported file (of whatever format you choose). It will even do the resampling for you.

[davidjenkins]

So far I've found that MacTheRipper works, but doesn't give you complete control over which streams it extracts... but it's good enough. I haven't tried OSEx yet. I think I've tried everything else out there and only found problems.

[davidjenkins]

When I ran MPEG Streamclip I was worried that I wouldn't get an exact copy of what's on the DVD. I was worried that it might take the AC3 tracks and convert them to PCM instead of just extracting the PCM tracks.

[Frobozz]

I see. The DVD has both AC3 and PCM audio. This is when I use Cinematize because it lets me choose which audio tracks to extract. I'm not sure what other apps do this.

[jberry]

use pgcdemux

[davidjenkins]

pgcdemux is a windows app

[SERBIAN]

1. Insert Your DVD in drive...
2. Launch YadeX...Then select Track you want in YadeX win and choose "Save Streams.." from "File" menu......You will get .pcm, .ac3 and/or .mp2 audio track and .m2v video track in Your destiantion dir...
3. Now download and use the PCM2AIFF tool or AIFF from PCM to convert .PCM track to aiff...