Demuxing audio out of dvd/vcd, NOT CONVERTING Options

[skexu]

So, I have some DVD concerts and I've tried in past a few programs to extract audio from them and convert to MP3, but recently I've started to more CARE about quality, and now I know transcoding isn't really good. IIRC Easy DVD Extractor has only option to extract mp3/wav/ac3.

Most DVDs have MP2 audio, and I can actually play MP2 on computer (portability not really interests me in this case). Can you recommend me a program to extract audio stream out of DVD without conversion (losing quality)?

A option for VCD (MP1) would be nice to see but I actually don't need it lol (just testing).

[DVDdoug]

Most DVDs have MP2 audio..

Actually, most commercial DVDs, have AC3 audio (multiplexed into the MPEG-2 stream). I don't think I've ever seen MP2 audio on a DVD.

PAL players (most of the world) are required to play MP-2 audio, but NTSC (American) DVD players are not. So, all NTSC DVDs are required to have an AC3 or LPCM track. MP-2 (and DTS, etc) are optional. I'd guess that 10% of my DVDs have LPCM audio (uncompressed).

If Eazy DVD Extractor can extract to WAV (and if WAV is acceptable for you) that should give you a "high quality" file that contais the same PCM data you get when you play the original file (and de-compresss on-the-fly).

A couple of other tools you can try:
VOB2MPG (FREE!!!) can combine the VOB files to one-big MPEG-2 A/V file. (It only works with un-encrypted DVDs.)

SUPER can be used extract the audio-only, and in the "stream mode", it won't transcode.

You can also look for a "demultiplexer" to separate the audio & video.

Transcoding is something we'd all like to avoid, but it's not always that bad. I usually transcode AC3 to (high-quality) MP3, and I've never noticed any degradation (except that I can't get 5.1 digital surround ). Whenever I thought I heard an MP3 artifact, the same defect has been present on the original.

And, I usually edit the individual concert-tracks to fade-in and fade-out the crowd noise. Editing requires decoding & re-coding anyway.

This post has been edited by DVDdoug: Feb 22 2011, 21:41

[skexu]

Thanks!.. I actually have only heard about the MP2 (I know it isn't related to mpeg-2 video) so it's my bad, I was just referring to others' words, I'd better further read about Ac3 format and if it's a big loss to convert to mp3.

If I somehow couldn't manage to get original audio stream then I'll post.

This post has been edited by skexu: Feb 24 2011, 15:33

[B7k]

VLC can extract both the origonal video and audio no converting.