Announcing Lplex - Wave/Flac to DVD-V and Back Again (Free/Open-Source Options

[aval57]

Folks, announcing the release of Lplex 0.2 Beta, a simple drag-and-drop open-source win32 console utility intended to provide a free, quick, and hopefully painless way to

• create a playable full-resolution "audio-only" dvd-video disc from
  wave or flac audio filesets, with md5 verification and archival
  content.

• extract unencrypted lpcm audio streams from dvd-video to wave or
  flac in an md5-verified process.

2006-08-08 : Version 0.2 beta released
Please take a moment to look at the changelog and updated readme.

Download
Home
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Mail: <audioplex-lpcm@lists.sourceforge.net>

This post has been edited by aval57: Aug 8 2006, 19:58

[neomoe]

why has noone posted a reply?

havn't tested yet but thank you! if it holds its promise definitely a nice app!

This post has been edited by neomoe: Jul 29 2006, 11:21

[kwanbis]

why has noone posted a reply?

I personally don't have an use for "DVD-V audio only" discs. But is always good to see people contribute.

[HotshotGG]

I personally don't have an use for "DVD-V audio only" discs. But is always good to see people contribute.

Yeah, why not just write an authoring tool for creating DVD-A discs? they support LPCM do they not? A developer named Dave Chapman was working on that and posted a link to it on this forum here sometime ago.

[Shifty]

Well, I must say, something that shows a lot of promise! I have been looking for something like this (I know there is a similar program for DVD-A, but I really don't have a compatible player at the moment). I have been experimenting, and the only things I have found that seem to need a bit of work are:

1) When using "seamless" and "indescrete" modes, there were pops between every track as it changed tracks

2) I tried the "discrete" setting, but it crashed twice (have not tried the "none" mode yet)

3) I completely understand that DVD music is recorded in 48 Khz, but this means it is not just a simple drag and drop of folders with music files onto the .exe for processing; you have to convert all .wav and .flac files from 44 to 48 Khz first. Any way to implement this being done automatically?

4) Never could get it to work in decode mode from a DVD with audio files (tried Depeche Mode Violator - DVD)

Still, the program is something that I am looking forward to watching develop! Keep up the good work!

Shifty

[aval57]

1) When using "seamless" and "indescrete" modes, there were pops between every track as it changed tracks

2) I tried the "discrete" setting, but it crashed twice (have not tried the "none" mode yet)

3) I completely understand that DVD music is recorded in 48 Khz, but this means it is not just a simple drag and drop of folders with music files onto the .exe for processing; you have to convert all .wav and .flac files from 44 to 48 Khz first. Any way to implement this being done automatically?

4) Never could get it to work in decode mode from a DVD with audio files (tried Depeche Mode Violator - DVD)

Shifty, a couple of follow-up questions:

1) Was the input audio continuous? Are these pops present when using a software player or after burning? Are they a silence or an actual noise? Would it be possible (using audacity or something) to record and attach snippets of both the original and the Lplex 'seamless' transitions?

To clarify: there's supposed to be a gap in both 'discrete' and 'indiscrete' modes, but no gap in 'seamless' mode.

1,2) Would you mind, immediately after recreating each failure, retrieving, zipping and attaching the file Lplex.log, which would be in your user home directory (type %USERPROFILE% in the Explorer address bar to go there). If there was no crash, you'll find Lplex.log in the 'XTRA' subfolder of the '_DVD' output folder. I can't help you much without more details.

3) Sorry, no upsampling support, but there are several free/easy resamplers you might want to look at: Shibatch, SRCdrop, and WaveFS44, all available at rarewares, and also r8brain. SRCdrop is a win32 frontend for SRC, which is incorporated into (and recommended by) Audacity. I wrote the program mainly to give people without dvd-audio players access to hi-res audio.

4) This would be an encrypted commercial dvd. Lplex only processes unencrypted audio. It may also be that the audio is not lpcm. The contents of Lplex.log would clarify this too.

This post has been edited by aval57: Aug 5 2006, 15:28

[Shifty]

aval57,

Thanks for the comments. In answer to some of them:

1) No, the audio was not continuous. I was just doing a test on 10 seperate wave tracks using all the formats (but trying seamless as two of the tracks faded into each other). The thing I noticed was that using "seamless" mode worked better when using "next track" on the DVD player (more like an audio CD). As for the "pop" bebtween tracks ... this occurred in both the "seamless" and "indescrete" mode. It's just a quick pop that happens when shifting from one track to the next.

2) I hope to have time to play with the program more in the mext few days and will send you the .log files.

3) No prob about the upsampling ... just being lazy myself I'll also try with some DVD-A/V discs with hi-res I have next time and see how the hi-res audio comes out (that's gonna be the fun stuff!)

4) Yeah, it is a commercial DVD (with an LPCM track), but ripped to hard drive with DVDDecrypter for easier and quicker testing purposes.

Anyway, I thank you again for the program.

Shifty

[aval57]

Shifty, thanks for the feedback. A few more things:

1&2) On hold pending your further investigations... I take it you've actually burned a dvd since you mention a dvd player. If so, did you burn using Lplex's .iso image, or did you load the dvd files into nero or something?

4) You're telling me the input was unencrypted, for testing purposes, so how exactly did it fail? If there was an lpcm track and you got a "No audio to process!" message then the audio was 20-bit, which Lplex doesn't support, but otherwise I'd have to see Lplex.log. Have you tried extracting lpcm from any other sources, e.g. your test Lplex-authored discs?

This post has been edited by aval57: Aug 5 2006, 19:12

[Shifty]

aval57,

Back again

1) I used the Lplex .iso image, but I'll try with some different audio today in seamless mode.

2) As for the error message, I get "No audio to process". I have checked the output of the LPCM track from the Depeche Mode and it is 48 Khz and 16 bit (it has the whole album and some extra tracks in LPCM format). Just to verify the encryption, I tried a different DVD-A/V (Yes - Fragile) that I know is encrypted and droppped it into Lplex straight off of the disc. Lplex gave me a warning that it does not support encryption (which I expected), but then crashed (no log file).

Hope all this is helping.

Thanks again,
Shifty

[jlt]

havn't tested yet but thank you! if it holds its promise definitely a nice app!

you're right.
from the "readme"

" Lplex presently
attempts to support the varieties marked '+'.

Rate Depth : Channels
(khz) (bits) : 1 2 5(+1) 8
-------------------------------------------
48 16 : Yes+ Yes+ Yes+ Yes+
20 : Yes Yes Yes -
24 : Yes+ Yes+ Yes+ -
96 16 : Yes+ Yes+ - -
20 : Yes Yes - -
24 : Yes+ Yes+ - -
"

thank you aval57,go ahead(i register in the forum after read this thread)

[Pio2001]

I have checked the output of the LPCM track from the Depeche Mode and it is 48 Khz and 16 bit

Stange, in Music for the Masses, the LPCM tracks are 24 bits. Use DVD Decrypter to rip just one track, demuxing the audio content to an extra file. There you can check if it is a 16 or a 24 bits wav. DVD players may not recognize properly the stream properties.

[Shifty]

aval57,

OK ... was using some different audio files (ripped from CD to hard disc and converted to 48 Khz). Both test images (using "seamless") still have a 'pop' as it shifts from one track to the next. Contact me and I can send you the log files from both test files.

Hope I can help,

Shifty

[aval57]

Hi Shifty,
Zip them together and attach them to a new topic (maybe "Lplex log files") in the upload forum and I'll retrieve them.

btw, are you getting the pops in both upsampled and non-upsampled files? Have there been any 'seamless' tests without pops? If anyone else is getting pops in 'seamless' mode, please report.

[aval57]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHANGELOG: Lplex v 0.2 beta win32
------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Default black screen size is now 352x240-NTSC/352x288-PAL, and
  can be user-set to any of the valid dvd-compatible dimensions.
  If overwriting a previous v 0.1 beta installation, you can delete
  'black_NTSC.jpg' and 'black_PAL.jpg', which are no longer required.

• Partial authoring to either of raw lpcm, m2v, mpeg, or dvd stages
  is now enabled. 'isoCreate' (-b) option is now deprecated in favor
  of new general 'create' (-c)* option.
  
  *note: 'cleanup' short switch is now changed to -C.

• A dvdStyler-compatible xml file can now be generated for authoring menus.

• Flac compression level can now be user-specified.

• Tightened input validation:
  1. Titleset audio consistency is now enforced.
  2. Dvd-compatibility of jpeg dimensions is now enforced.
  3. Non-canonical wave headers and non-lpcm wave data are now rejected.
  4. 32-byte iso volume id limit is now enforced.
  5. Dvd start/end sectors are now cross-checked for consistency with pts endpoints during extraction.

• bugfix: Terminal empty chapter no longer causes crash during extraction.

[Shifty]

aval57,

Have uploaded a log file (using beta2) into the uploads section under "Lplex log files". As for your questions, no, I have not tried a non upsampled file yet, and no, every test I have done still comes out with a pop between tracks. Keep me posted, and thanks for the help!

Shifty

[aval57]

Shifty, this looks like a completely normal run. A couple of things to try, just to eliminate other possible causes (no doubt you've already done some of these, and apologies beforehand for suggesting the obvious)

-try different upsamplers (I'll also do a few upsampled tests to see if I get any pops). What resampler did you use? I'm assuming that when you play the resampled source files in foobar or winamp there are no pops.

-try some non-resampled hi-res content.

-try different software players (VLC, Mplayer, MPC, Powerdvd, Windvd, etc.) to see if the pops are always present.

-if you've burned a disc, try it on different dvd players if available.

Also, extract your test dvds with Lplex and verify that you get a "md5 ok" message. (Btw, retry the extraction that was giving you problems before; I made two changes in the new version that might help with that).

I'll try and replicate your conditions based on the log file, and see what I get.

[aval57]

Shifty, it could be that the pops are upsampled cd-audio SBEs.

I tried to replicate your situtation by taking a 30-second 16/44 wav snippet and cutting it at random into three sample-aligned files (using the EAC sound editor), and verified the presence of SBE errors using shntool. Then I authored and extracted a cd-audio image to get a set of extracted wavs with SBE errors.

I upsampled both the original and the SBE set to 16/48 using SRCdrop and authored a 2 title PAL 'seamless backward' mode dvd.

In Audacity I captured the playback of both the original anf the SBE set, and then the corresponding playback from the dvd. The waveforms for the source, and the dvd are exactly the same . The original set has no pop. the SBE set has a faint pop which is present on the extracted wavs and naturally carries through to the dvd.

This was the only way I could get any sort of pop, so the question now is are you sure your cd-audio sources don't contain SBE errors, and do you get pops with non cd-audio sources?

This post has been edited by aval57: Aug 12 2006, 13:20

[kaoruAngel]

How many minutes of audio can be expected to fit on one 4.7 GB DVD+R disc? I just noticed the readme link and noticed it supports numerous bit-depths, sampling rates and channel configurations, but I am referring only to simple, CD-source stereo audio (I believe that would fall under the category of 48kHz-resampled, 16-bit, 2-channel audio). I have no high-definition audio and am only interested in whether this may allow more than 80 mins of audio per disc. Thanks.

[Patsoe]

How many minutes of audio can be expected to fit on one 4.7 GB DVD+R disc? I just noticed the readme link and noticed it supports numerous bit-depths, sampling rates and channel configurations, but I am referring only to simple, CD-source stereo audio (I believe that would fall under the category of 48kHz-resampled, 16-bit, 2-channel audio). I have no high-definition audio and am only interested in whether this may allow more than 80 mins of audio per disc. Thanks.

Quick and dirty calculation:
the sample rate is ~ 10% higher, and CD-audio is 1440kbps -> we get something like 1600kbps = 200kBps.
So 10s of audio is approx 2MB and one minute approx 12MB. This shows you can easily store 80 mins in 1GB, even when I'm grossly exaggerating the overhead. Approx six hours per dvd, then, and perhaps more towards seven...

By the way, I think this is a very cool project! Easy way to make some hi-res recordings I made available to friends. Thanks!

[aval57]

Thanks, Patsoe, and a good estimate too. Here's my rough calculation based on the actual overhead:

CODE

   MINUTES OF AUDIO (dvd+r/rw, black 352x240 NTSC)

   bits/khz    channels
   ------------[1]---[2]---[6]---[8]
   16/48       678   365   128   97
   24/48       475   250   86     -    
   16/96       365   190    -     -        
   24/96       250   128    -     -

PAL capacities are just a tiny bit less.

[kaoruAngel]

11.3 hours?
Oh my... I really don't know what I'd do with all that capacity.
Hmm, on second thought, maybe I do. That's the perfect duration for the storage of a sunset-to-sunrise dance mix! Here in Miami, that is almost precisely the length of time from dusk till dawn at this time of year (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=156). Coincidence? I think NOT.

Thanks, aval, for doing the math for me.

kaoruAngel
the nocturnal

[Patsoe]

11.3 hours?

That's for mono recordings

[webvan]

1) When using "seamless" and "indescrete" modes, there were pops between every track as it changed tracks

2) I tried the "discrete" setting, but it crashed twice (have not tried the "none" mode yet)

Been a while but I wonder if that got resolved because I was told about lplex today to burn the Hi-Res 24/96 Paul McCartney "Band on the Run" I recently purchased and have the exact same problem.

Config is a Quadcore PC with Vista x64.

Thanks !

[litobispo]

used and tested this software many times and it work wonders....highly recommended for audiophiles who want to back up their files unto DVD-R and would play on any stand alone DVD players...