Topic: Possible to extract audio from DVD-A?

[yousef]

This possibly shows up a shortcoming in my archiving process... but I made a 48kHz/24bit recording and after processing the audio to my liking made a DVD-audio version. I also used the processed file to make a 44.1kHz/16bit CD version.

On my hard drives I've got the hi-res version as videoTS/audioTS folders and the CD version as individual FLACS. I've also got intact copies of the original raw, unprocessed .wav files.

Unfortunately one of the FLACs seems to have become corrupted. Is there a way of getting clean audio from the DVD-A folders (where it seems to be saved as .AOB files) for resampling and dithering to make a new 44.1/16 version or am I resigned to reprocessing the raw files from scratch?

FWIW I now run the test function on my FLACs before deleting the wavs... Any pointers would be much appreciated.

[live2496]

I found this... http://www.ehow.com/how_6815481_convert-aob-wav.html

You might try the iTunes suggestion first to see what you can get from that. Otherwise try the online tools.

I hadn't ever had to do this but I looked into the file format. It is written as a series of packets. A conversion tool to read the packets and extract the pcm data should be fairly straightforward, but I did not come across any utilities specifically for this.

Gordon

[yousef]

Many thanks for that - I'll give it a try and let you know how I get on.

[H₂O]

There are programs that will do this though.  I have never used one

http://www.dvdae.com/

[yates7592]

Wavelab will do this effortlessly and I have used this many times to recover my 24/96 files from a DVD-A disc. I don't know about any other software.

[yousef]

This is good news - WaveLab is my preferred editor.

So is it just a matter of opening the file(s) in Wavelab and then saving as .wav? Sorry to ask, don't have access to the files at present.

EDIT: Found copies of the AOB files but can't get WaveLab to open them, even using the "import special audio file" function - the file is opened but just plays as white noise. I wonder if my version of WL (5.0) is too old to have this function. Or am I missing something?

[yates7592]

Under 'tools' menu there is an option 'import dvd-audio tracks' (at least in version 6 there is). If you go into that one you can select the correct dvd drive and press 'analyse'. A series of options then come up and you can save the tracks to a specific directory etc.

If no luck then try the freeware "dvd-a author" at http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net. I've used that program to encode flac tracks to dvd-a format many times . There is also a 'decode' button so presumably that is just the opposite of the encode option. You might need to copy the audio/video TS files to your hard drive first.

Hope this works.

[yousef]

Thanks for that.

In the end I used the DVD Audio Extractor program mentioned above - seems to have worked perfectly. Although I will always wonder if this is a bit-perfect rip or something akin to what EAC does. Thanks for all the input. DVD-A Author looks especially useful.

[H₂O]

DVD-a, sacd, and blu ray don't store audio in the same way a cd does.  On these newer media audio isstored in files so you aren't truely extracting the audio you are simply converting from format to another.  So it should be bit perfect.