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Create your own dvd-audio guide

elshagon

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Mods: Please let me know if this isn't appropriate for the forum and I will remove it. This guide shows how to make your own dvd-audio disc using songs from multiple dvd-audio discs one owns.

With this guide I will attempt a simple tutorial about how to make your own dvd-audio with songs ripped from multiple dvd-audio discs. Before I show the process involved, a short explanation of dvd-audio is in order. DVD’s contain two folders:
1. Audio_TS – contains the high resolution music
2. Video_TS – contains the standard dvd material
On standard dvd’s you can expect to see DTS or AC3 (Dolby Digital) sound. DTS and AC3 use lossy compression. DTS is 4 to 1, and AC3 is 12 to 1 compression. Both of these throw out a lot of information, but DTS retains more and usually sounds better than Dolby Digital. Dvd-Audio uses MLP which is “Lossless”. This means it should be identical to the original. This is similar to what is now used on Blu-ray discs.

Why would one want to rip music from a dvd-audio disc? Once you extract the original tracks you can burn a new dvd with music from multiple sources. I enjoy listening to mixed music sometimes, not each album in its entirety.

How to rip songs off a dvd-a disc: Just like dvd’s, dvd-audio uses copy protection. There are two types of protection used, watermark and encryption. The encryption has been broken, but the watermark still exists in the audio stream, and if the DVD-A player detects that the watermark doesn't match the DVD-A disc (eg you've made a "backup" of your DVD-A), then you only get about 15-30 seconds of audio before nothing but silence. Some players ignore the watermark and play the disc anyway. I don’t know whether the Genesis will do this or not.

To break the encryption there’s a program called DVDAExplorer. It will break the encryption and extract each song to a mlp file. You can download the program here.
Windows version, beta 3:
http://rapidshare.com/files/143230493/DVDAExplorer2008.07.21.zip
Mac version beta 3:
http://rapidshare.com/files/143238083/DVDAExplorerBeta3OSX.zip

Using DVDAExplorer:
1. Place a dvd-audio disc in your computers dvd drive
2. Open up DVDAExplorer and navigate to the dvd-audio and click on it.
Open up the Audio_TS folder and select "Audio_TS"
3. Select the song you'd like to extract and click on the save button. Use the settings as shown in the screenshot.
108082906.F9NCb6Pu.explorer2.jpg

108082953.JSwm8RCw.jpg


Now you should have the track saved as a .mlp file wherever you chose to save it. Now we need to use a program to create our own dvd-audio disc. The two I hear most about are Cirlinca's dvd-a solo and Discwelder Chrome.

Here's a link to a discusion on Solo, it runs about $40 (I have never used it). http://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5737
http://www.cirlinca.com/

Discwelder Chrome is very expensive, but can be found on the usual torrent sites if you're into that sort of thing. I use Chrome and it's very easy to use. Just navigate to where your mlp files are within the Chrome program and drag and drop them into your project. That's it. Press record and it burns to a blank dvd...note I use 4x burn speed to make sure it works best.

This is a quick quide, but I'm sure I left stuff out, and it may be confusing. Any questions let me know. The biggest hurdle is knowing which albums use the watermark. If the Hyundai won't play watermark copies you would need to use mlp's off of non-watermarked discs. There's really no rhyme or reason in telling which artists and discs may be watermarked. There's also programs which will copy your entire disc. Many people do this with movies so they don't get ruined in the car. If there's interest in making backups of the entire disc let me know and I will also do a thread on how to do that.
Examples of non-watermarked dvd-a discs:
The Beatles - Love
All Porcupine Tree discs
Elton John - GBYBR

Discs with watermark: The Doors, Talking Heads,
 
I do have one quick question:
Do you shop around for your DVD-A's, or do you have a specific place to purchase them? Well, one more:
Is there a site you can suggest that lists/details new release (assuming there are any)?
Thx in advance.
 
I do have one quick question:
Do you shop around for your DVD-A's, or do you have a specific place to purchase them? Well, one more:
Is there a site you can suggest that lists/details new release (assuming there are any)?
Thx in advance.

This site will list and have polls/votes on any new dvd-audio discs:
Quad Forum

I was lucky to purchase most of my dvd-audio discs when they came out. Now many are hard to find and are expensive as they go out of print. Many can still be found on Amazon or Circuit City's websites.
The next dvd-audio to be released that I know of is Steven Wilson's "Insurgentes". He is the lead singer of Porcupine Tree. All of his surround releases are excellent. It comes out next month. Steven Wilson is also re-mixing all of the old King Crimson albums to be released on dvd-audio sometime in the near future.
 
This site will list and have polls/votes on any new dvd-audio discs:
Quad Forum

I was lucky to purchase most of my dvd-audio discs when they came out. Now many are hard to find and are expensive as they go out of print. Many can still be found on Amazon or Circuit City's websites.
The next dvd-audio to be released that I know of is Steven Wilson's "Insurgentes". He is the lead singer of Porcupine Tree. All of his surround releases are excellent. It comes out next month. Steven Wilson is also re-mixing all of the old King Crimson albums to be released on dvd-audio sometime in the near future.


"King Crimson".....I had the good fortune to see them live a few years back....what a show from a band that I had never heard of, but had been told about by a friend of mine....great tunes!

Dan :>)
 
If I'm using a Mac, will Discwelder Bronze enable me to create DVD-A discs? It sells for only about $100, but it appears to be the only version of Discwelder available for Mac.

And is there any software to transcode SACDs to DVD-As?
 
If I'm using a Mac, will Discwelder Bronze enable me to create DVD-A discs? It sells for only about $100, but it appears to be the only version of Discwelder available for Mac.

And is there any software to transcode SACDs to DVD-As?

I've never used Bronze, but after a google search and some reading I wouldn't use it. It won't allow for mlp support and limits your bitrate and sample rate of your music. This would mean extracting the music from your dvd-audio and then having to convert it to something Bronze would accept.

Regarding sacd: There's no current players for the pc, and no way to make a copy like you can do with a dvd-audio disc. Conversions are appearing on download sites howerver. What people are doing is using higher end soundcards on their computers and connecting the analogs from their dvd players and capturing the music as .wav's. This isn't easy to do, and it doesn't produce an identical copy. There are some nice sacd captures out there, but none that sound identical (to my ears) to the original.

If any of you live in Northern California (I'm in Chico) let me know and I'll burn a test disc if you're interested. I'll be doing a test drive on the Genesis in the next month or so, then I have to decide on 2009 or wait to see what the 2010 has to offer. I'm excited about this car even though I haven't bought it yet.
 
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