How to grab DVD-Audio? Options

[Savage79]

No one has any suggestions?

[MarkChat]

Intervideo has released "version 3" of WinDVD 7 Platinum as of the end of July 2005 and disabled all DVD Audio support!! I foolishly installed this, thinking it was a bug-fix revision.

They (as usual) refused to respond to my technical support queries when I enquired as to whether the DVD audio support was removed in view of the breach of the DVDA encryption.

Thankfully the previous version was still available for download (after much searching on the web) - WinDVD.Platinum.7.0.Release.2.Build 27.071

Using a new activation key from the Intervideo website STILL didn't enable DVDA playback on this previous version however.

I was able to fudge this using the original purchase activation key by changing the PC system date to within 10 days of my initial activation key supply which I had stored in an email.

Hey presto - back to WinDVD DVDA support!

Intervideo are being very crafty.... they have updated the WinDVD website to remove all references to DVD Audio support and then were answering my technical support queries as if I wasn't configuring my PC correctly.

[ATWindsor]

Heh, how utterly moronic, begin to be a bit tired of RIAA & Co screwing everybody over to keep som feeble copy-protection-scheme alive.

AtW

[rjamorim]

Hohoho. Shame on me. Now WinDVD users won't be able to enjoy this awesome new audio distribution format

[legg]

Shame on RIAA and Intervideo

[SamK]

Hope I'm not talking too much nonsense, but does that frequency analysis actually show that a song from The Doors has greater frequency content between 40-45 kHz than between 10-15kHz? Or is it a problem with either Audacity, the DVD-A authoring or my lack of knowledge on how to correctly read a frequency plot?

No, that's what it's showing. I'm seeing it too. I would say it's some kind of noise shaping, but such a thing shouldn't be necessary at all with 24 bit audio.

This is merely a detail, in this thread, but though several different possibilities have been raised (aliasing..) this weirdness hasnt been really settled, has it ?

indeed noise-shaping a 24 bit audio (mastered from tapes one could argue had 24bit equivalent resolution in the first place) seems unprobable.

But then what could cause aliasing in there ?

that spectrum really rose my curiosity.

[Digga]

hmm, as a sidenote:
things get rapidly shared these days, most of the time in a breeze before you can even say 5414795.
but enough of poems for now.

[Loke]

I've just tried to rip a dvd-audio (The dvd-a that was included with the soundcard audigy 2 zs).
Anyway, when trying to rip the songs using WinDVD 6.0 DXVA & PPMCripper, the information-window in WinDVD says the DVD-A stream is 24bit@96kHz, but that the output is 16bit@48kHz!!!
What am I doing wrong?? Is it that I'm using the kx-drivers instead of the creative-drivers?

I want my 96kHz.

[Digga]

when trying to rip the songs using WinDVD 6.0 DXVA & PPMCripper, the information-window in WinDVD says the DVD-A stream  is 24bit@96kHz, but that the output is 16bit@48kHz!!!
What am I doing wrong?? Is it that I'm using the kx-drivers instead of the creative-drivers?
I want my 96kHz.

did you actually have the correct frequency enabled?
"PPCMRipper <frequency(Hz)> <destination_directory> [-s] [-w]"

[Loke]

when trying to rip the songs using WinDVD 6.0 DXVA & PPMCripper, the information-window in WinDVD says the DVD-A stream  is 24bit@96kHz, but that the output is 16bit@48kHz!!!
What am I doing wrong?? Is it that I'm using the kx-drivers instead of the creative-drivers?
I want my 96kHz.

did you actually have the correct frequency enabled?
"PPCMRipper <frequency(Hz)> <destination_directory> [-s] [-w]"

Yes, think so. The sampling frequency of the dvd-a is 96kHz, at least that's what windvd claims. But it also claims that my output is only 16bits@48kHz. Is this normal when I have the audigy-card?
There is no *.mkb file on the disc, so I figure I shoulden't have to use DVDAripper to decrypt the disc.
Here is my commanline:
PPCMRipper 96000 H:\temp
WinDVD starts up, and when I'm push the play button it starts ripping.
The output file is a 6channel wav at 24bits@96kHz.
But I don't know if this file is the true 96kHz file on the dvd-a, or just an upsample from 48kHz....
Many of the files show no frequencies above 24kHz when viewed in the frequency spectral display in cool edit. But some files do show something above 24kHz...and it doesn't look like aliasing, cause that would look like a mirror of the lower freqs.

So, eihter the music on the dvd carries music that for the most part comes from sources with Fs=48kHz. (Much use of 96kHz samplin then )
Or my ripping is bad.

What does WinDVD say in the "Output"-field for you guys who have tried ripping, with an audigy-card?

[skamp]

James Guthrie, the sound engineer who worked on several albums from Pink Floyd (including the SACD edition of Dark Side of the Moon), about DVD-Audio:

“If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?” James Guthrie added, although he declined to offer any specific examples.

A reply from Craig Anderson, DVD Development Engineer for WEA Studios:

Regarding the supposed filtering in DVD-A, it seems that Mr. Guthrie has been misinformed about the MLP process. Of the fifty-plus DVD-A titles bearing my name, none has been filtered in any way between the mastering stage and the MLP procedure.

It's funny he should say that, because the sample from Yes - Fragile that I uploaded and analysed earlier in this thread, clearly shows a brick wall filter around 24kHz. And what name did I find in the credits? Authoring: Craig Anderson and David Dieckmann. And as far as I can tell, that DVD-A was released in 2002 (december 2 according to amazon.co.uk).

Edit: for clarity, in case you haven't read the whole (lengthy) thread, the ripping process is unlikely to be the culprit here, since it doesn't yield the same result with other DVD-Audio discs, ripped on a single setup.

Those quotes come from the article entitled DVD-Audio Meridian Lossless Packing: The Great Filter Debate, published on the 4th of july, 2003. The whole debate was about filtering high frequencies for MLP to compress the audio more efficiently.

This post has been edited by skamp: Sep 27 2005, 06:19

[optimus]

Okay I have a copy of Dave Tippers Surrounded and I was wondering how I could copy and convert the DVD-Audio part (NOT THE ONE IN THE VIDEO_TS THE REAL DVD-AUDIO PART, I already know how to extract ac3 from vob and convert it!).
Also it seems to have some copy protection called MMCP or something like that, is there a way to get rid of that ?
note: if i asked something stupid, or asked something wrong please don't flame me, as I'm totaly new to DVD-Audio!

If your DVD can be played with MPlayer, then u could use my audio/video transcoding tool - MEnc to do the job. It can simply transcode DVD audio tracks to any audio compression formats on-the-fly.

This post has been edited by optimus: Sep 27 2005, 08:14

[ElevSkyMovie]

Can someone help me?

I've been trying to find a version of windvd with the dvd audio pack. I've tried two versions of 5 and one of 6. All said they didn't have the dvd audio pack and sent me to the intervideo website. That gets me to windvd7 which doesn't have dvd audio anymore. What do I do to get the dvd audio pack and get it installed with windvd6?

thanks!

[ElevSkyMovie]

Bump.

[narc0sys]

Can someone help me?

I've been trying to find a version of windvd with the dvd audio pack. I've tried two versions of 5 and one of 6. All said they didn't have the dvd audio pack and sent me to the intervideo website. That gets me to windvd7 which doesn't have dvd audio anymore. What do I do to get the dvd audio pack and get it installed with windvd6?

thanks!

Using a new activation key from the Intervideo website STILL didn't enable DVDA playback on this previous version however.

I was able to fudge this using the original purchase activation key by changing the PC system date to within 10 days of my initial activation key supply which I had stored in an email.

[ElevSkyMovie]

Can someone help me?

I've been trying to find a version of windvd with the dvd audio pack. I've tried two versions of 5 and one of 6. All said they didn't have the dvd audio pack and sent me to the intervideo website. That gets me to windvd7 which doesn't have dvd audio anymore. What do I do to get the dvd audio pack and get it installed with windvd6?

thanks!

Using a new activation key from the Intervideo website STILL didn't enable DVDA playback on this previous version however.

I was able to fudge this using the original purchase activation key by changing the PC system date to within 10 days of my initial activation key supply which I had stored in an email.

thanks narc0sys, I saw that. The problem is, I didn't know there was software out that could play dvd-audio and didn't purchase a windvd version that could. Version 7 of Windvd doesn't play it and they will only sell me the new version, so what do I do to get a version with dvd-audio playback?

[ElevSkyMovie]

Just wanted to let everyone know I finally got this working. It works well. I have 2 dvd audio discs and 1 dual-disc. I was very disappointed to learn that my two dvd audio discs did not have a high res stereo track. The "advanced resolution stereo" tracks were 16/48 in the dvd-video side. I tried my dual-disc, the new Wallflowers album. The label says both stereo and surround are 24/48. The label was correct for the surround, but the stereo is 24/96. I was dissappointed that the heavy compressesion on the cd is still present on the 24/96 tracks. While I've heard much worse compression, there are still some tracks that I think are too compressed. I tried grabbing a stereo version of the surround tracks to test. It worked, but I didn't like the way it sounded, seemed there was some weird phasing or something. Oh well, it was fun experiment.

[listen]

Oops.. Didn't bother checking this thread again after reading the OP~

Fantastic news~!

However I've recently lost interest in the format after discovering that an old CD from a second-hand shop can blow both the remaster and the DVD-A out of the water when played at a realistic volume.



This post has been edited by listen: Oct 9 2005, 02:43

[krabapple]

James Guthrie, the sound engineer who worked on several albums from Pink Floyd (including the SACD edition of Dark Side of the Moon), about DVD-Audio:

“If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?” James Guthrie added, although he declined to offer any specific examples.

A reply from Craig Anderson, DVD Development Engineer for WEA Studios:

Regarding the supposed filtering in DVD-A, it seems that Mr. Guthrie has been misinformed about the MLP process. Of the fifty-plus DVD-A titles bearing my name, none has been filtered in any way between the mastering stage and the MLP procedure.

It's funny he should say that, because the sample from Yes - Fragile that I uploaded and analysed earlier in this thread, clearly shows a brick wall filter around 24kHz. And what name did I find in the credits? Authoring: Craig Anderson and David Dieckmann. And as far as I can tell, that DVD-A was released in 2002 (december 2 according to amazon.co.uk).

[

IIRC Guthrie implied that ALL DVD-A had to be filtered. But IIRC from that thread, the 24 kHz filtering you saw applied only to the 5.1 mix -- someone else reported that the DVD-A 2.0 mix of Fragile has spectral content up to 96 kHz. False advertising on Rhino's part perhaps, but in any case I doubt anyone is going to hear the loss of content above 24 kHz. (or even 22, for that matter).

[listen]

Re: Filtering

I recall reading (on this board perhaps) that the MLP encoding guide/manual highly recommends the pre-filtering of supersonic content for increased encoding efficiency.

Seems to me very backwards for a lossless encoder.

[krabapple]

Re: Filtering

I recall reading (on this board perhaps) that the MLP encoding guide/manual highly recommends the pre-filtering of supersonic content for increased encoding efficiency.

Seems to me very backwards for a lossless encoder.

SACD involves filtering out supersonic content too. Really, how much supersonic content does anyone *need*?

Anyway,according to Meridian's Bob Stuart ''Meridian does not advocate the use of filtering in routine DVD-Audio production or in playback; rather we encourage producers to avoid errors in source files. We are also not aware of filtering being used as part of the authoring process by any of our customers.'

and on the same page:

"In our MLP training information, we point out as a matter of information that the size of a compressed file can be adjusted by using (gentle) low-pass filtering or selection of a word size to suit the project. This is useful background information to a certain type of producer, who may want to free up space on a disc for other assets or simply understand how the process works."

[skamp]

IIRC Guthrie implied that ALL DVD-A had to be filtered.

Read the quote again. He asks, "If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?" (emphasis added). Numerous is hardly ALL.

But IIRC from that thread, the 24 kHz filtering you saw applied only to the 5.1 mix -- someone else reported that the DVD-A 2.0 mix of Fragile has spectral content up to 96 kHz.

That was me.

False advertising on Rhino's part perhaps, but in any case I doubt anyone is going to hear the loss of content above 24 kHz. (or even 22, for that matter).

That's another story. The fact is that brickwall filtering HAS obviously been applied on a DVD-A bearing the name of Craig Anderson.

I recall reading (on this board perhaps) that the MLP encoding guide/manual highly recommends the pre-filtering of supersonic content for increased encoding efficiency.

You can check that fact for yourself, directly from the source:

If the audio data cannot be compressed within the specified peak data rate the MLP Encoder will signal an error. The producer can then use one or more options for reducing the data rate, or reducing the total space used by the recording. These include:
• Reducing the bit width of one or more channels, such as from 24-bit to 22-bit.
• Filtering one channel to LFE.
• Reducing the audio bandwidth; for example, by filtering information above some arbitrary frequency, such as 40kHz when sampling at 96kHz.
All of these options will increase the amount of compression that MLP can achieve, thus increasing the playing time or reducing the peak data rate.

(Emphasis added). I wouldn't say they highly recommend it though.

[krabapple]

IIRC Guthrie implied that ALL DVD-A had to be filtered.

Read the quote again. He asks, "If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?" (emphasis added). Numerous is hardly ALL.

Granted, but his implication was that the practice is widespread, and Kawakami implied it was *recommended* by Meridian. I think the whole thing's a red herring, since I don't believe it matters whether content above 24 kHz is included in the playback format.

False advertising on Rhino's part perhaps, but in any case I doubt anyone is going to hear the loss of content above 24 kHz. (or even 22, for that matter).

That's another story. The fact is that brickwall filtering HAS obviously been applied on a DVD-A bearing the name of Craig Anderson.

From a listener's perspective I think it's *much* more problematic that considerable dynamic range compression has been applied to that Yes DVD-A. (to the stereo mix at least -- I haven't analyzed the surround mix)

This post has been edited by krabapple: Oct 10 2005, 16:58

[ATWindsor]

IIRC Guthrie implied that ALL DVD-A had to be filtered.

Read the quote again. He asks, "If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?" (emphasis added). Numerous is hardly ALL.

Granted, but his implication was that the practice is widespread, and Kawakami implied it was *recommended* by Meridian. I think the whole thing's a red herring, since I don't believe it matters whether content above 24 kHz is included in the playback format.

Well, then one of the two improvements of DVD-A is useless then, (higher frequency-range), the other is better S/N (or dynaic range if you will). Which in my humble opinon also is of dubious real percetable value.

AtW

[krabapple]

IIRC Guthrie implied that ALL DVD-A had to be filtered.

Read the quote again. He asks, "If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?" (emphasis added). Numerous is hardly ALL.

Granted, but his implication was that the practice is widespread, and Kawakami implied it was *recommended* by Meridian. I think the whole thing's a red herring, since I don't believe it matters whether content above 24 kHz is included in the playback format.

Well, then one of the two improvements of DVD-A is useless then, (higher frequency-range), the other is better S/N (or dynaic range if you will). Which in my humble opinon also is of dubious real percetable value.

AtW

In my opinion they're *both* pointless for delivery formats (though higher sample rates make for possibly easier filtering at the D/A stage). So I don't disagree. DVD-A and SACD *are* more marketing hype than needed 'improvements' on CD, IMO. The practical value of higher sampling/bitrates seem to me to be more on the recording and production side, than the delivery side.