i own an Oppo DV 980H DVD player with SACD and DVD Audio playback capability. I have been searching forums but not finding the info I am looking for. Is it possible to extract tracks from a concert DVD containing DTS or DD 5.1 playback and burn a DVD Audio disc for playback in my Oppo? I have looked at two different DVD's on my PC, both contain 2 folders- Audio_TS (which contains no files) and Video_TS which contains .BUP, .IFO and .VOB files. This particular DVD has DTS and PCM stereo playback. I looked at another DVD with DTS and DD 5.1 playback and it contained the same two folders, again, nothing in the Audio_TS folder, but the same type of files in the Video_TS. If this can be done, what software do I need and what processes do I follow. Thanks in Advance. Kevin
DVD Video disks do not have anything in the AUDIO_TS folder - the audio is included with the video, in the files contained in the VIDEO_TS folder. A 'DVD-Audio' disk has an empty VIDEO_TS folder while the AUDIO_TS folder contains the files (see image). DVD Decrypter can demux single audio streams (DTS, AC3 etc) from regular DVD Disks. I don't know if the current software that is used to author 'DVD-Audio' will accept a .dts or .ac3 file - these files can however be converted to multi-channel wav files that may be acceptable. The only hands-on software I have used is the shareware, 'Audio SixPack' - however it only uses source files from CDs (stereo files) - and not the types of file that you are referring to. If you search for DVDA-GUI, it is freeware that is supposed to be able to create DVD-Audio disks from different sources - I cannot get it to work and since I don't have the audio equipment to appreciate the quality of DVD-Audio, I haven't pursued it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio
Hi Kevin. I'm not trying to be insulting here - but it seems to me that there is some confusion here over what DVD-Audio is. So, please forgive me if you already know all this but here goes with a quick "format basics" for you. DVD-Audio is a subset of the DVD specifications designed specifically for Audio dominant playback, whereas DVD-Video is a subset designed for Video dominant playback. Also, DVD-A uses lossless (IE "uncompressed") audio and DVD-Video uses either lossless (in stereo only) or compressed surround sound. The trouble usually starts when you get online retailers such as Amazon calling Music DVD-Video discs "DVD Audio" when they are no such thing. In DVD-Video, you will never find anything at all in the AUDIO_TS folder on the disc. If you have Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS audio, then the disc is a DVD-Video type and not DVD-Audio. (I will be more than happy to go into the details of either format if you want me to - just let me know???) Can I ask why you want to take a DT stream from a DVD Video disc & create a DVD-Audio disc from it? You won't get any increase in quality, as once an audio stream has been encoded to either Dolby Digital or DTS, then the data that was thrown away is gone forever & cannot be recovered. DTS is a far superior sounding format to Dolby Digital (I believe DD to be so ghastly as to be mot worth talking about. It's a sonic nightmare only slightly better than MP3 and completely unsuitable for music in any way) but good as DTS is, it is still a lossy form. DVD-Audio is the way to go if you have either A - High Resolution stereo (say, 24/96 or 24/192 - and I know that there will be someone post to tell me that you can put 24/96 stereo onto DVD-Video, but this is not a mandatory form, and is completely unsupported in a number of players that will either truncate the 24-bit word to 16-bit or - even worse - resample on the fly to 48KHz. Only 16/48 PCM is actually mandatory for DVD-Video. All other depths & rates are strictly optional). B - Surround Sound from a lossless (IE non AC3/DTS) source. Moving on to extraction of streams from a DVD-Video disc. This has been covered already by Attar (above) when he suggested the superb (and sadly banned) DVD Decrypter (banned or not, it can still be found easily enough). Stick it into Stream Processing mode (IFO) with stream processing enabled in the options settings. Find the correct VTS & stream, and under Stream Processing you should see the video file, and all audio files associated as well as subtitle streams. Untick everything except the stream you need to extract & then demux to a location on your HDD. This will give you either an AC3 file or a DTS file or both. To decode the DTS stream, google for a wonderful utility called "Tranzcode" and it's GUI extension, then just drag/drop and decode to 6 mono WAV files. To decode an AC3 stream, go grab a copy of AC3 Tool http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AC3Tool but remember that the quality loss is permanent, and it will still suck even after decoding. Authoring to DVD-A. You have options, and free as the Open Source project listed by Attar is, it ain't all that - plus it is reverse engineered, and as such cannot be guaranteed to produce a reliable disc. Your budget options are essentially Cirlinca's excellent DVD-Audio Solo (http://www.cirlinca.com) or else Minnetonka Audio's DiscWelder Bronze. You will also (even though you may not know it) have DVD-A capabiluity if you have Steinberg's WaveLab 5 or 6 & although it is extremely convoluted and very limited it will do a great job once you get the hang of it. Full-Spec authoring requires SOnic Solutions' DVD-Audio Creator and it is brutally expensive. Close to full-spec can be got with Minnetonka's DiscWelder Chrome. For surround sound at 24/96 (5.1) you will also need an MLP encoder. Please let me know what further information you require, and I will be happy to provide (I do this for a living) Good Luck
