Hi guys,

Can someone recommend some software to me for ripping the audio off a DVD to MP3's? What would be ideal would be a program that can do it all (decrypt, demultiplex, decode if necessary, encode) in one step.

Specifically, I want to rip the tracks from the Elevation 2001 / U2 live in Boston DVD. It has PCM stereo audio, so I don't have to decode it first and won't have to worry about quality loss...

/Pepijn

Well, you get into the same problems as with ripping video off DVD. In fact, it's the exact same thing, as the audio is encoded multiplexed in the VOB along with the video. So you'd have to get a DVD ripper and then something that could extract the audio from it. My suggestion would be SmartRipper and DVD2AVI. BTW, it isn't obvious in DVD2AVI as to how to save a WAV. You need to ``Save Project'' after selecting the right things. Also note the 48kHz->44.1kHz option.

Keep in mind that this is possibly illegal even if you're just doing it for backup or compatibility purposes, as you say. Gotta love the US legal system and it's international cronies.

I know those programs. I can already do it one step at a time, but I need a different program for each step which is a lot of work and takes up huge amounts of space. I'm hoping to find a program that can do all of it at once, or at least rip just the audio straight off a DVD.

Also note the 48kHz->44.1kHz option.

Doesn't the empeg support 48 KHz?

Keep in mind that this is possibly illegal even if you're just doing it for backup or compatibility purposes, as you say. Gotta love the US legal system and it's international cronies.

As far as I know it isn't illegal here in the Netherlands. We don't have a DMCA or similar. (Yet...)

/Pepijn

Sorry. Misunderstood your question. Don't know of a direct audio ripping utility. Sorry. DVDx might be able to do something....

I was thinking that MP3 didn't support 48kHz. It does. Sorry again. Make sure that your encoder does the right thing here.

And you've apparently got until March 6.

I already did this. I went through the whole "figure out how to extract the audio from the DECSS'd file" crap until I realized I was going about it the wrong way. Turns out the solution is dead-simple...

If you want the audio track off of a DVD, just use Total Recorder. All done. Game Over.

So it's just a shim between the program and the audio driver that splits the signal off to a file and passes it along to the real driver? Slick. Of course, this assumes that the program you'd be using to play your DVD does a good job of decoding the audio. Not a horrible assumption, really.

So it's just a shim between the program and the audio driver that splits the signal off to a file and passes it along to the real driver? Slick.

Yup. When I saw it, I had one of those smack-my-forehead, "why didn't I think of that" moments. Very VERY slick.

Of course, this assumes that the program you'd be using to play your DVD does a good job of decoding the audio.

If you think about it, the likelihood of a commercial DVD player app doing a good decoding job is greater than the likelihood of a hacker-written DECSS-type app doing a good decoding job. Right?

Something else neat about TotalRecoder: If the program you're grabbing audio from is doing spotty playback (for example, it's a streaming audio program and your download speed sucks), then TotalRecorder, by its very design, creates an end-result file without the spotty-ness. Because it just intercepts packets and streams them to the hard disk, even if the packets are coming in intermittently, they get put onto the hard disk correctly assembled so it all sounds right.

This was actually very useful in the situation where I used it. I was ripping the audio track of an entire DVD from beginning to end. But the casing of my computer did not properly cool the DVD drive, so it couldn't get through an entire movie without it heating up and having the playback start to stutter. (I have since fixed this problem by the way, but I digress.)

I was able to rip the entire audio track and have it come out perfect, without any stutters or skips, despite the fact that the playback did stutter during the recording procedure. As you said, SLICK.

I learned how to rip dvds using the programs on this site: http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/answerstips/story/0,24330,3014958,00.html
They offer fairly easy instructions, hopefully this will help.

Thanks for the link to TotalRecorder, Tony. I've been trying to extract audio with Smartripper and converting to mp3 with various tools. They all gave me errors about the VOB files being wrong.

With TotalRecorder, I used Pink Floyd The Wall for a test, saving as MP3 56k and as PCM 44100 format. The PCM came out to just over 1 Gb converted with Musicmatch to MP3 128k was about a 38Mb file. I have noise from what I believe is the fan switching on and off, I used my laptop to do this, not the best environment to eliminate external noise. And Tony is absolutely correct about the gaps disappearing in the recorded results.
Now to go extract Spinal Tap for the drive to Phoenix on Friday!!!

1012 miles, over 3000 tunes on the empeg, Rio remote in hand, 360 cu in of Dodge Magnum Power under the hood, let's hit it!

I have noise from what I believe is the fan switching on and off

If everything is configured correctly, it should be a complete digital transfer, without any connection to the outside world. It's not like recording with a microphone, there should be no noise coming in at all.

edit:

Now to go extract Spinal Tap for the drive to Phoenix on Friday!

Unless you turn it up to 11, of course.

If everything is configured correctly, it should be a complete digital transfer, without any connection to the outside world. It's not like recording with a microphone, there should be no noise coming in at all.

That's where I was having a problem. IIRC the only way I could detect a signal was using the soundboard setting using the TotalRecorder driver. I don't have the laptop here at work, so I'm not 100% sure on that. How was your setup on the one you mentioned earlier?

edit: Though I didn't investigate it much, is it possible to use the software setting and tell it to get it from the DVD player software? This seems it would be the optimal config, right?

Unless you turn it up to 11, of course.

That reminds me, when is someone going to hack the empeg to go to 11?

Though I didn't investigate it much, is it possible to use the software setting and tell it to get it from the DVD player software? This seems it would be the optimal config, right?

This is the whole point of Total Recorder. The idea is that it's a driver layer between the application and the sound card.

The application sends digital data bytes to the sound card. The Total Recorder driver pretends to be a sound card, intercepts those digital data bytes, and sends them to the hard disk before passing them on to the real sound card.

If you can't configure Total Recorder this way, then there's not really much point in using it. At that point, you might as well just plug a consumer DVD player into the line-in jack on the sound card because you won't get much benefit going the analog route.

So yeah, you should check its online help and make sure it's Doing The Right Thing.

Well that's a big slap on the forehead on my part. The first time I tried software setting, I didn't notice it was really recording, I guess I didn't test a part of the DVD with a higher level audio output. Final wav size for The Wall was around 961Mb, converted to mp3 size is around 87Mb. Thanks for the help!

TotalRecorder is an AWESOME product. If you were so inclined (legal disclaimer) you could use it to record streamed audio (something that I miss since I lost my DSL ). A feature that is omitted from streaming ware because of copyright issues.

Again, I'm saying you COULD, not that you SHOULD...