Have you ever had a DVD that you wanted to get the audio from? Generally, getting audio from a disk I.E CD, or DVD, is known as ripping. As you will see, getting audio out of DVDs is easy, if you have the right software…

DVD Audio Extractor

In this guide, we will be using DVD Audio Extractor from the Computer Application Studio. For use with a screen reading application DVD Audio Extractor provides a nice clean, keyboard-friendly wizard stile interface in which audio from DVDs can be ripped. More info about the program is presented below from the software vendor.

“DVD Audio Extractor features on its
• easy-to-use interface

• Ultra-fast extracting speed
• Rich audio formats support
• Multi-channel capability
• Resample to arbitrary sample rate
• Audio preview and much more.

It's all what you needed to get audio out of DVD-Video discs, so that you can listen on MP3 Players, play on PC, record to CD or do anything else.”

Downloading and instillation

Installing this easy to use program is straightforward and should take less than three minutes. First, let’s download the program for your pc. Here’s where you download DVD audio Extractor. The program is a 30-day trial, so you will need to register the program for about $32 US for full functionality.
Be sure to download the software in a location that is easy to find. I will generally create a folder on my hard drive called Downloads. Once you download a file to the downloads folder, Internet Explorer will remember that location and always download future files to that location, unless you change it again.

Install DVD Audio Extractor

OK locate the file we downloaded. It should be called “dvdaudioextractor.exe”. Note that if you have file extensions hidden which is the default setting for Windows; you will not see the .exe extension. Press enter on the file. You will probably notice the following screen.

“Open File - Security Warning
The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?
Name: C:\downloads\dvdaudioextractor.exe
Publisher: Unknown Publisher
Type: Application
From: C:\downloads\dvdaudioextractor.exe
Run Cancel”

You will land on a cancel button by default, but just press the letter R to tell windows to run the software. You may get an editional security screen as shown below.

“User Account Control
An unidentified program wants access to your computer Don't run the program unless you know where it's from or you've used it before.
dvdaudioextractor.exe
Unidentified Publisher
Cancel
I don't know where this program is from or what it's for.
Allow
I trust this program. I know where it's from or I've used it before.
Details
User Account Control helps stop unauthorized changes to your computer.”

If you want to allow the software to run just press Alt+A. The next screen is shown below.

“Setup - DVD Audio Extractor
Welcome to the DVD Audio Extractor Setup Wizard
This will install DVD Audio Extractor 4.4.1 on your computer.
It is recommended that you close all other applications before continuing.
Click Next to continue, or Cancel to exit Setup.
Next > Cancel”

Generally, you don’t have to worry too much about shutting down other software programs. You probably would not want to have any CD/DVD software running during the install, but other than that don’t worry about that little disclaimer. Just activate the next button with the space bar key to go on to the next phase of the installer.

As it happens, the next phase asks you to agree to the standard license agreement. Do this by pressing Alt+A, then the enter key, and we will be at the next screen.

The next screen asks you to specify where you would like to place the files. Unless you have a good reason to change this, tap the enter key to move on.

Now the install routine asks you where you would like to put the program icons. You do not need to change this either unless you really like to organize your start menu into folders. You could change this to something like the following “\Audio Tools\DVD Audio Extractor”. If you press enter, the program will put icons in the “DVD Audio Extractor” folder in the all programs area of the start menu. When you get it the way you want, just tap enter to move on.

If you would like the installer to place an icon on the desktop, check the, “Create a desktop icon”, by pressing the space bar on it. This is not checked by default. You can tap the enter key to move on to the next screen.

The next screen shows a summary of what you selected. When you activate the install button, the installer will begin setting up the program for you. You can tap enter to move on. You may notice some progress bars as the program does its work. If you see the following screen, you are finished with the install.

“Completing the DVD Audio Extractor Setup Wizard
Setup has finished installing DVD Audio Extractor on your computer. The application may be launched by selecting the installed icons.
Click Finish to exit Setup.
Launch DVD Audio Extractor
Finish”

If you want to immediately launch DVD Audio Extractor when the install routine finishes, then check “Launch DVD Audio Extractor“then hit the finish button. That is it! Now that wasn’t too painful was it? Next, we’ll finally get to the point of this little tutorial and get audio from our favorite DVDs!

Getting Help

When you run DVD Audio Extractor, you will land on the help button. This is a great place to read all about the features of the program. You can access this help quickly by tapping the F1 key. The help feature is smart enough to put you in the appropriate area of the help, depending on what screen you are on. Note that you will need to use your screen reader’s mouse simulation commands to switch between the topics tree view, and the actual help text. Once you get to the help text though the process of reading the help is the same as what you would use on a web page.

Rip Your DVD to Audio

Before the ripping process can get underway, you do have to specify some options so that the program knows how to rip audio. Each of these options will be discussed as we get to them. The first thing we will cover is the first screen that you arrive at when you first launch the program. Read on, because you will be ripping your DVD to audio in no time, and the best part is most of these settings are saved which means that once you select them, you don’t have to change things again. This generally remains true even when upgrading the program to a newer version.

DVD Source and chapter selection

If you tab through this screen you will get to a “DVD Video Source” combo box. By default, you will have the type of DVD drive on your computer. For example you may see something like, “[E:] LITE-ON - BD B LH-2B1S (AL09)”. Most of the time, you will want to leave this setting as is, because this is the DVD disk’s location. The program will automatically scan the DVD for the needed information.

Tip, if you have some nice menu audio in your DVD and want to rip that, you will need to arrow down here and select, “File - Open single DVD VOB file...” Next tab to the brows button, or just press Alt+W. You will then have to select the appropriate .vob file that corresponds to the DVD’s menu system. This can be done by arrowing to a vob file, tapping enter, and pressing Alt+P to play the audio. Press alt+T to stop the playback. If you do not hear the audio for the menu, you will have to repeat the above steps, and select another vob file to play. Once you locate the audio you want, just follow the rest of the tutorial to rip the audio to your hard drive.

Assuming that you are ripping audio from the regular DVD without browsing through the vob file we will now need to select the DVD titles that you want to rip from. To do this, tab to the titles tree view. The first title is automatically checked. However, the first title may not be what we want. If you listen carefully, you will notice times for each title listing. For example, a typical DVD title listing looks like the following.

• Title1 [00:01:27]
• Title2 [00:04:23]
• Title3 [00:01:29]
• Title4 [00:01:30]
• Title5 [00:01:35]
• Title6 [00:02:46]
• Title7 [00:28:28]
• Title8 [01:39:48]
• Title9 [01:39:48] “”

Check out title 1. It is about a minute and a half long. In this example DVD listing, the movie is either on titles 8, or 9.

• Title8 [01:39:48]
• Title9 [01:39:48] "

So which title do you rip? Well at this point, you can either tab over to the play button, and press the space bar to listen a bit, or just press alt+P. to stop play back, tab to the stop button, or press alt+T. If you want to skip to the next chapter within this title, just press the greater than symbol on the keyboard, to tab to the button, you can press the less than symbol to move back to the previous chapter. Because DVD’s have so many titles in different languages, you may have one audio title with French, and the other track with English dialog. You can check as many titles as you want, in fact, you could rip every track on the DVD if you wanted. Most of the time, you probably will be only interested in the movie.

When you have checked all of the titles that you want to rip either press Alt+N, or tab to the next button. Be sure not to press the next chapter button by mistake.

Output Settings

The first option in this screen to configure is the output format. This can be one of the following options:

• OGG -- Xiph Ogg/Vorbis
• MP3 -- MPEG1 Layer III
• WAV -- PCM Uncompressed Wave
• FLAC -- Free Lossless Audio Codec
• Direct Stream Demux
• CD Image and Cuesheet

The first option is the .ogg vorbis option. This is a mid to high quality audio format. Generally, the quality is a bit better than .mp3 files, and the size of .ogg files is slightly smaller. DVD Audio Extractor recommends this first option as the default, and I have been happy with this format.

The .mp3 file format is your average audio file. Quality is good, and the great thing about .mp3 files is that they can be played on any device, without anything extra being installed first.

The .wav PCM format option is the standard .wav file. These have been around forever. Warning, if you use this format be forewarned that these files are huge! You generally would only want to do this if you were going to be doing some major audio editing on the audio later.

The FLAC file can compress audio to about 50% to 80% size of PCM uncompressed Wave and can be later decoded back to a Wave file bit-for-bit identical with the uncompressed one. Use this option only when you know your system supports FLAC format.

With the Direct Stream Demux option, audio streams will be copied out unchanged to the result file. This is the quickest way to get audios from DVD disks. But make sure your audio Player/editor software can handle the selected audio format, as it is likely that multiple codec’s may be needed for this option.

The CD Image and Cuesheet option is the most convenient way to create an Audio CD from the DVD. The selected audio will be converted into an Audio CD image file along with a cuesheet file, which can be imported directly into popular CD burning software like Nero, EAC, or CDRWin.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will go on with the .ogg file format. If you want the choose another format, the options will be similar, but do consult the programs help from more specifics as needed.

Ogg Vorbis format settings:

Sample Rate

Specifies the number of samples per second. Specify one of the 32000Hz, 44100Hz, 48000Hz, etc to re-sample it in the appropriate sampling frequency. MostDVD audio tracks are sampled in 48000Hz. As a result, I will generally always stick with 48 KBPS, unless I do not care about the quality.

Channels

Specify the number of distinct channels of the encoded file. You can select from Mono, Stereo, or 5.1 Surround (when the original audio contains 6 channels). I have found that 5.1 audio does not get decoded in .ogg for some reason. This works in FLAC, but the file size is much larger than either .ogg, or .mp3.

Constant Bitrate (CBR)

This is the most basic encoding mode. In this mode, the bitrate will be the same for the whole file. It means that each part of your ogg file will be using the same number of bits. In other words, the quality will be the same throughout the file, even if the file does not require high quality.

Average Bitrate (ABR)

This option will be of higher quality than CBR encoding, so this mode is highly recommended over CBR.

Variable Bitrate (VBR)

This is the most recommended mode to use. In this mode, you choose the desired quality from lowest to highest in a slider control. Then the encoder tries to maintain the given quality in the whole file by choosing the optimal number of bits to spend for each part of your music. I generally use 65% which is normally a good setting for DVD audio.

So as a quick recap, you only need to select the .ogg vorbis audio format, sample rate at 48 000 HZ, channels Stereo, and Variable bit rate, (VBR). Finally hit the next button for the next screen.

Output Location

You should land on the next box automatically when the next screen comes up. If not just tab to it. This box asks you to tell DVD Audio Extractor where to place the extracted audio files. I recommend you place these files in an easy location such as c:\DVDs.

Save each chapter into separate files

This check box will save each chapter in its own file such as chapter 1.ogg, chapter 2, ogg etc. Note that each title can be made up of several chapters, so this is not a good idea if you are saving audio tracks from a movie. However, if you are saving music, this can come in handy. I generally uncheck this box, because I like my audio in one big audio file.

Overwrite files with the same name

This option will overwrite files if they have the same name. So as an example DVD Audio extractor rips files in a title1.ogg, title2.ogg format and so on. If you have a file on your hard drive in the same location named title1.ogg, then the file will be overwritten. I will generally uncheck this box just to be safe.

Create M3U playlist

This check box is also handy for those of you who will be ripping a music DVD and want a playlist generated automatically. Because many media playback software can take advantage of these playlist files, it can save you the work of creating one yourself. If you not interested in this, just uncheck the box, with the space bar.

Enable normalization, change max level to

Sometimes the audio level on DVD discs is too low. This option allows you to adjust the volume of audio files to a standard level.

Note selecting this will cause slower ripping speed since additional volume scan/normalization operation will be performed.

The slighter next to this option is at 100%, and I have had good results with this option set.

Enable ID3 Tag

This check box allows you to specify tag information such as year created, company, copyright, artist etc.

Thread priority

This slider lets you tell the program how much computing resources should be devoted to the ripping process. I will generally punch this right up to the highest setting because I do not like to wait if I don’t have to.

After Encoding

When ripping is finished, you can have the program shut down, pop up a message telling you that it’s finished, log you off of the computer, shut down the computer, put the computer into standby mode, or do nothing at all. I generally set this to have the program shut itself down when the ripping process is finished.

Start!

Finally press that start button already! No, no, no! Not the start button in windows… The start button in DVD audio Extractor! Ah, yes! Now we’re finally ripping our DVD to audio. While the ripping is going on, you can review the screen with your screen reader’s mouse simulation keyboard commands to find out how the programs’ doing.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy ripping DVD’s to audio as much as I do. It is very nice not to have to load a visually orientated program, only to listen to a DVD. Now with this program you don’t have to. And you can also use this program to play DVD’s, and for the sighted folks among us, they can even see the video. I hope you have enjoyed the journey, and please don’t hesitate to Contact me with any comments, or suggestions you may have about this, or any other information on Web Friendly Helps.