PCM and MPEG 2 audio soundtracks

While most DVDs contain ac3 soundtracks, there are nevertheless some that have either pcm or mp2 soundtracks. Music DVDs mostly have PCM soundtracks, and sometimes extras are encoded in mp2. I even have one of the rare MPEG-2 multichannel audio titles.

MPEG-2

Despite what the Divx-Digest says I've actually been able to do MPEG-2 2.0 and 5.1 channel tracks directly in FlaskMPEG. Therefore there should not be a problem If however it should not work out for you, then go to Global Project Options - Audio and set audio to Direct Stream Copy. Then do as described below (of course you can skip extracting the audio since Direct Stream Copy does exactly that).

There are several ways to get the audio out of the vob. There's bbMPEG for instance, then there's VobRator but I prefer to good old vstrip.

You can chose the different audio tracks in the rightmost section in the Audio dropdown list. Make sure that the you check the same options as shown in the image. Also select No AC3 in the left bottom. Then press Strip My VOB. Of course you can also do it in the command prompt: vstrip vts_YY_X.vob audio.mpa ! d 0xcZ, where Z represents the audio track number (starting with 0). If in doubt about which audio track to chose simply start up a DVD player (play the actual DVD not the ripped vobs), chose the right track, then bring up the pop-up menu during playback (usually that's a right click in the area where the movie plays), then select audio and you'll see all audio channels listed. Note the position of the currently selected audio channel.. they are numbered the way they are being shown in this menu.

Then rename the file to audio.mp2 and load it in Winamp (don't tell me you don't know that program..). Then press Control-P.

Here select Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in, press the configure button to chose where the file will be saved. Then press Close and play the mp2. You won't hear anything but Winamp will create a wav file in the place you selected. Don't forget to set the Output plugin to Nullsoft waveOut plug-in after you're done!

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JOINING AVI & WAV

PCM Audio

I've got ideas on how to handle these files but I'd like to test them first before I publish anything on the issue. My first call for help on the matter hasn't resulted in what I hoped for and so I ordered 2 music DVDs. I hope they contain a PCM soundtrack. As soon as they arrive here I'll start working on them immediately.

For the impatient among you: demux using VobRator or bbMPEG, load the file in a wav editor (it's Network order, not Host order so make sure you select the right order), save it as a standard wave that VirtualDub can read and you're essentially done.

An alternative way is to load all the VOBs in DVD2AVI, select PCM demux (on by default) and the right normalizing and sampling rate conversion and finally save the project. This will demux the audio.