Modifying audio track on DVD without losing quality

[gregbolshaw]

Dear all

I would like to do the following while preserving the original video/audio quality:

1) Extract the existing audio and video tracks from a DVD
2) Modify the audio track (probably using Audacity or similar, depending on the audio format)
3) Burn the DVD using the original video track and new audio track

Can anyone recommend software that can do the above? I am primarily on a Mac, but have access to a PC if need be.

Many thanks
Greg

[tinker]

You can try Muxman. I do not know if they have a Mac version.

[jman98]

I find your proposition that you can "modify" an audio track "while preserving the original quality" to be dubious and unlikely to be correct.

The following guide describes how to add a subtitle to a DVD and keep the menus, etc. While you don't have to do that, you can follow the same process just by substituting your new audio file for the original one.

[gregbolshaw]

tinker: Thanks, I will take a look at Muxman.

jman98: I should clarify this. I would like to extract the audio track without degrading the quality further. I then plan to modify parts of the audio track while leaving the remaining parts alone. The result that I am after is that the unmodified sections of the audio track should be of equal quality to the source DVD (i.e. I don't want to rip the DVD audio to MP3 or any other lossy format). Do you have a link to the guide?

Thank you both for your suggestions.

[jman98]

Sorry for not providing the link earlier. I thought I did that.
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic275603.html

Not sure what you mean by "modify parts of the audio track", but you need to be aware that if you delete/replace anything, the length will probably change and you'll have sync problems.

[gregbolshaw]

Thanks, I'll have a look at that article.

The length will be staying the same, I'll just be replacing sections of background music with different music, which will fade out at the point the old music finished.

[Midzuki]

gregbolshaw wrote:

I would like to extract the audio track without degrading the quality further. I then plan to modify parts of the audio track while leaving the remaining parts alone. The result that I am after is that the unmodified sections of the audio track should be of equal quality to the source DVD

IF the new/modified audio track is in the LPCM format, and if the filesize fits on the
remainder of the DVD's filesystem, THEN it will be possible to get what you're looking for.
The DVD-Forum specs also allow the use of .ac3, .mp2 and .dts for the audio part,
and none of these schemes for audio compression is lossless.

[backstar]

Hey, here's a tutorial that I think explains just what you're looking to accomplish:
http://backstar.com/blog/2009/09/01/edit-video-on-an-existing-dvd/

It outlines the process of demuxing, editing, remuxing, and replacing media files on an existing DVD.

The best part: This is a totally lossless method, so you will not lose any image or audio quality if you follow the steps outlined in the tutorial.

Hope this helps!