After researching/googling most of the morning, I came up with my own system for grabbing audio from a DVD I own. It’s quite simple really and here’s my notes:
To grab audio tracks from DVDs, follow these instructions:
Using the OSEx application:
First, demux/extract only the audio with OSex, splitting the audio into one file per chapter (usually an individual song in music videos):
After starting OSex and inserting your music video DVD, make sure the correct title is selected by clicking on the ‘Ti’ button.
Click on the ‘Vid’ button an deselect the video stream(s).
Click on the ‘Aud’ button and select the appropriate audio stream (usually 2 channel AC3).
Click on the ‘Fmt’ button and select ‘Elem. streams’.
Click on the ‘Seg’ button and select ‘Chapter’ to split the audio by track in separate files.
Click ‘BEGIN’ to start audio extraction.
The resulting AC3 files can then be converted to AIFF, WAV, MP3 or other formats with a tool like mAC3dec. It’s pretty straightforward.
Take the AC3 files and open them in Quicktime Pro (only the Pro version will allow this). From QT Pro, export to AIFF, 44.1 kHz at a sample rate of 16bit. I compared 16bit with 8bit and 16 is the way to go.
This will give you a high-quality AIFF file that only needs converting to MP3 and ID3 info added. Use iTunes to convert AIFF file to MP3 using highest quality setting.
To add ID3 info: Using the id3 editor application, globally change artist and album name, add cover art grabbed from Amazon, then manually enter the song names. If they show up as the file names in iTunes, select the song then choose “get info” when right clicking on the song in the iTunes library. This will switch it back to the song title added via ID3.
And that’s pretty much it. Hope this saves others the time I burned over a black coffee (decaf, dammit) on a Sunday morning. The results were worth it and of high quality. Again, this is the very reason I switched from a PC to MAC. I daresay I accomplished this feat much quicker with my iMac!
THE THINGS I DO... 