How to grab DVD-Audio? Options

[Mono]

Thanks for your input. Hopefully Remark 2 can be fixed with some sort of software wizardry.

[Pusherman]

Is there way to decode mlp?

[johny5]

I'm sure that by now, someone has noticed the channels are out of order on playback.  This is because DVD-Audio's layout is LF, RF, LS, RS, C, LFE, and any PC media player uses LF, RF, C, LFE, LS, RS.  So to correctly play back DVD-Audio in Foobar2000, you will need to use a WAV editor such as Audition to swap LS and C, and RS and LFE.

(offtopic: Since i used this forum before to get some info i used for developing my program i feel obliged to atleast mention it here. So im mentioning it now: announcement)

ontopic:
Someone posted the following which might be interesting if you want to correct the channel order:

I thought there would be no way to fix the channel order of my ripped DVD-A files with free tools - until I found your program.

[jhoff80]

I'm trying to rip my Nine Inch Nails "With Teeth" DualDisc DVD-A disc. First of all, I didn't realize how much of a PITA this process is. I used DVDARipper to decrypt the files and put them on my hard drive. I then tried to run PPCMRipper, and realized I'd need a decrypted version on a disc for this to work, so I ripped the DVD portion as well, and made an iso using Nero, and then used Daemon Tools to mount the iso as a drive.

Here's where I start to get confused. I was able to get the multichannel wave files, and it says above that the channel alignment is all messed up. I downloaded the trial of Adobe Audition to attempt to figure this out, but am really confused. Could someone give a tutorial of the process to correct the channel alignment of these files using Adobe Audition (either from multichannel wave source files, or from 6 mono wave source files). I saw an option for a multichannel encoder in Audition, but thats as much as I was able to figure out on my own. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: this would be so much easier if there was just a Winamp (or Foobar, but for some reason I just don't like using that) plugin to play MLP files, but from what I understand MLP is a closed system so it would be impossible. Am I correct in saying this?

This post has been edited by jhoff80: Jul 25 2005, 20:09

[tgoose]

It's very very very closed for encoding, I'm not sure on the decoding front.

[hippo]

Is there way to decode mlp?

Solution: Import the MLP files into Discwelder Chrome and burn the tracks to DVD-audio.

Even the Surcode MLP encoder/decoder does not have a straightforward option to decode MLP files to WAV format from a given MLP file. The decoding feature in the program is normally a final validity check which can be automatically started after assembly of the 6 separate mono wav files into the encoded MLP file. The resultant decoded WAV files are written back into three pairs of stereo WAV files. However it is not possible with the software to directly output WAV files from a ready-made MLP stored on the HD. It is possible to play an independently created MLP file over three stereo output devices of the computer soundcard using the Surcode MLP program in high-resolution audio, but that's all.

Perhaps it is good to mention that the Windows drivers of WinDVD still truncates all digital audio to 16 bit and 48 kHz upon playback (at least for non-Audigy soundcards) even when your soundcard hardware is capable of higher sample rates and bit resolutions. Decryption of the DVD-A discs with unrestricted digital output does not change this. This stands in contrast to the full audio quality of the WAVs that come out of PPCMripper with up to 24/192 bit resolution.

Note that on a standard 2.8-3.0 GHz PentiumIV computer the whole MLP procedure may take some total 1 hour per single hour of 24/96 5.1 music for the encoding and check-up decoding together. Actually rather slowly and thus almost in real-time computer terms with the encoding step being the slowest part of the whole process. To be honest the speed of encoding and the compression efficiency are actually rather modest compared to e.g. Monkey Audio and FLAC.

You can guess that I cannot provide the Surcode MLP encoder software to the community. If you consider to buy the program here are the cheapest prices around. In fact, you can buy a lot of DVD-A's for the money given below.

Price of the Surcode MLP encoder: $2120 (with an optional 10% discount).
Price of Discwelder Chrome II: $2540 (with an optional 10% discount).
Bundle ChromeII/Surcode MLP: $4242 (with an optional 10% discount).

See: http://www.digitalproaudio.com/store/xcart...nufacturerid=22

[drmih]

Surely the only purpose of seperating out the channels or using the mlp is if you want to select your tracks, or if you need to use a dvd9 rather than a dvd5 - most dvd-audio seem to fit on a dvd5, and those that are larger can be accomodated if you loose the video_ts directory. It is possible to 'rip' the entire disc and make a clone using dvdaripper - this will of course not work on a standalone player because of the watermarking, but the same will happen if you have extracted the tracks and recompiled it. Is there a trick I'm missing?

[Pusherman]

It is possible to 'rip' the entire disc and make a clone using dvdaripper - this will of course not work on a standalone player because of the watermarking, but the same will happen if you have extracted the tracks and recompiled it.  Is there a trick I'm missing?

It should play in standalone player if i understood correctly.

[drmih]

I don't think so - the software doesn't touch the watermark, so it can't work. What you would need on top is a programme to clean out the watermark. Now if you know of one then you'd be in business.

[rasth]

It should play in standalone player if i understood correctly.

Not exactly. Without cleaning the watermark, it will play if converted to DVD-Video. DVD-V doesn't check for the watermark. The wav files re-authored to DVD-V can be 96KHz or 48Khz stereo lossless PCM or compressed multichannel.

[drmih]

The trouble is the only way to get something approaching the quality for multi-channel would be to encode the wav files as DTS 5.1 96 kHz. Unfortunately only one programme has that ability - DTS Encoder Pro which costs an arm and a leg.

[Savage79]

Has anyone figured out how to get rid of the gap between ripped dvd-a tracks? I have a few live discs and that gap is annoying! Even if DVD-A Explorer would let you grap more then one track in a chunk I think it would solve the problem.

[rasth]

Has anyone figured out how to get rid of the gap between ripped dvd-a tracks? I have a few live discs and that gap is annoying!  Even if DVD-A Explorer would let you grap more then one track in a chunk I think it would solve the problem.

Look for DVD-A authoring software that advertises "gapless". DiscWelder does but only for wav files and not individual MLP files. For MLP to be gapless, all songs must be compressed together in one big file.

[rjamorim]

For MLP to be gapless, all songs must be compressed together in one big file.

WTF!?

Well, with that requirement met, even VQF can be gapless!

Talk about well-engineered lossless codec... heh.

[tgoose]

I think maybe he means "For MLP to be gapless using DiscWelder, all songs must be compressed together in one big file." I may be wrong though.

[Savage79]

Cool well maybe that is my problem then as I am using discwelder... what are my other options and what would you recomend?

Thanks!

[dopey]

two questions about this process:
1) is the order of the seperate mono .wav files created by ppcmripper -s always the same? I read somewhere that different DVD-Audio discs might have different channel order.

I've ripped two discs and the order on both appear to be LF, RF, LS, RS, C, LFE.

2) I've tried to use ppcmripper to rip a 6-channel wav. The resulting wav files only playback in mono, at least according to winamp. If I look at the wav files with audacity (unfortunately, I don't have any other audio tools) it shows distinct LF and RF channels, but the LS, RS, C and LFE channels are all noted as just mono.

Is there something I need to do to get a real 5.1 channel wav with the proper channel separation? I have a couple of DVD-Audio discs and it's always bugged me that I can listen to them when I'm in linux (about 95% of my computing time), so if I can rip them, I'd be extremely happy.

[dopey]

Sorry for the double post.
I haven't found any good free tools to do this, but are there any free tools that will let me take 6 separate files wav filesand create a single multichannel extensible wav file?

[unfortunateson]

Adobe Audition can, you can download a free trial. I don't know what features the trial version restricts, though.

[rasth]

I think maybe he means "For MLP to be gapless using DiscWelder, all songs must be compressed together in one big file." I may be wrong though.

Yes, you are correct.

[rasth]

WTF!?

Well, with that requirement met, even VQF can be gapless!

Talk about well-engineered lossless codec... heh.

The problem is reading the disc data and decompressing it in real time in the buffer space available. The codec isn't totally to blame here.

The order of song placement on the disk is important too, that's why the docs for dvda_ripper say to not use Nero or some other non-DVDA-aware tool.

Also, I have heard inexpensive "universal" players that inserted gaps in between songs on all DVDA, even official store-bought titles. It's really annoying to hear a live concert pause for about 200 msec in between songs.

[Savage79]

Well the player I have doesn't have the gaps on the original disc but does on the ripped disc which is very frustrating! Is there anyway to use dvda explorer or such a program to grap more then 1 song to 1 mlp file or anyway to make ppcmripper to make one long wav file instead of splitting it at each song?

[Savage79]

Also I have been burning the dvd-a decrypted files with nero but don't seem to be having a problem.. I doubt it is causing the minor gaps in between the ripped songs but just in case it is what program should I use to burn the decrypted aob files?

[rasth]

Also I have been burning the dvd-a decrypted files with nero but don't seem to be having a problem.. I doubt it is causing the minor gaps in between the ripped songs but just in case it is what program should I use to burn the decrypted aob files?

Burning the image with Nero is OK as long as you created the image with discWelder.

I don't know of an inexpensive MLP encoder, so I have been using wav files in discWelder when I need gapless.

If the songs ares from the studio, already have gaps and no watermark, the individual MLP files work great.

[Savage79]

No i burn the decrypted aob files with nero, not what discwelder outputs. I just burn that from within discwelder. I have tried using the wav files for gapless but I get a pop inbetween each track when I do it that way.