justinionn
New member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2013
- Messages
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Just thought I'd share my walkthrough for creating a DTS-CD from a DVD-A.
This is more time-consuming than difficult. All but one of the programs required to do this, are freeware.
Firstly, you need to copy the whole DVD-A disc to your hard drive, as an ISO file. I’d recommend CD Burner XP.
http://cdburnerxp.se/en/home
Simply insert the DVD-A into your PC’s disc drive, start-up CD Burner XP, and choose “Copy or grab disc.” In the next menu, click the “Hard disc” button, and change the “File type” to ISO, by dropping down the arrow button.
Once the ISO has been created, you need to open it, using WinRar.
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
Simply open WinRar and drop the ISO file onto the WinRar window to view the contents. Create a new folder on your hard drive, and drag all the contents to it.
Next, you need to download a small program called DVD-A Audio Explorer 2008.
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-Audio-Explorer
Open the zip file containing the program, and extract all the contents of the zip file to another new folder.
Double-click the file named “DVDAExplorer.exe” within the folder named “bin” to start-up the program.
Click the “Open Folder” icon, browse to the AUDIO_TS folder you dragged from WinRar earlier, click the first IFO file in the list, and then click the “Open” button.
Clicking on each track number will highlight the individual track and display the type of audio stored. Most DVD-A discs have a 5.1 Surround Sound mix of an album, along with a stereo version. So, ensure that the track has the 5.1 audio (Lf-Rf-Ls-Rs-C-LFE).
With the track data highlighted, click the “Save” icon. You need to click the options “Convert to wave” and “Split groups” in the menu which will pop up. Create another new folder on your hard drive, to save the split tracks and press the “Extract” button.
I’d recommend doing this one song at a time, because you’re going to get muddled-up otherwise, and/or run-out of hard drive space!
Next, open the folder where your extracted separate channels are, and start-up Audacity.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
Process each file in Audacity, one at a time!!! Drop the file into the Audacity window to open it, Choose “File” & “Export”, then save the exported WAV into another new folder - yes, this is quite a bit of work.
Exporting the WAV from Audacity, converts it from being a 24 bit WAV into the necessary 16 bit WAV, which the DTS-CD requires. Once you’ve exported the 16 bit WAV, delete the original 24 bit WAV, so that you can keep track and save space!
Once you’ve done this for all six separate channels of the song, open the FLAC front-end program.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/flac/files/
This is actually a workaround… Some tracks will have junk embedded inside the actual WAV files’ headers which disable conversion. We’re going to convert the WAVs to FLAC files, and then convert the FLAC files back to WAV, because doing so removes the WAV’s header info.
Think of the headers as being like an ID-3 tag inside an MP3. This conversion doesn’t affect the actual audio quality of the WAVs at all, as FLAC is a lossless audio format.
Nearly there!
Download and install another free program called R8brain. We need to downsample the audio from 96,000 Hz to 44,100 Hz, and this program does this perfectly, with no time-stretching.
http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/
Yes, this decreases audio quality - but it’s only decreasing the quality from super-high, to CD quality! Open-up R8brain, browse to the first separate file in your folder, choose the same folder as the destination folder, and set the options as per this picture:
Once you’ve changed all the options, click the button marked “Batch.”
In the next menu, ensure that you choose to delete the original files. Again, if you don’t, you’ll get confused and waste space!
Now, for the final step, you need Surcode’s CD-DTS encoder - which costs $99.00…
http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=88
But, if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you have a copy of the program already. :-D
This is truly the most straightforward part: Click each button to load each of the six separate channels of your song; choose the destination & filename of your DTS-encoded WAV, and press “Encode.”
I’d close the program after every encode, if I were you, so as not to forget to reset the “Start” and “End” timers on the console. They frustratingly remember the duration of the previous song loaded, unless you remember to reset the counters before loading new tracks.
Burn your WAVs to an audio CD, pop into your DVD player and enjoy the CD-quality Surround Sound.
A word of warning… All CD players and some DVD/Blu-ray players will simply play ear-splitting static, as they won’t recognise the DTS encoding. Before playing in your DVD player, turn your A/V speakers down low (if you’re unsure your player can play DTS files).
If you have a 5.1 sound system connected to your PC, VLC Player will decode these WAVs with no problem.
This is more time-consuming than difficult. All but one of the programs required to do this, are freeware.
Firstly, you need to copy the whole DVD-A disc to your hard drive, as an ISO file. I’d recommend CD Burner XP.
http://cdburnerxp.se/en/home
Simply insert the DVD-A into your PC’s disc drive, start-up CD Burner XP, and choose “Copy or grab disc.” In the next menu, click the “Hard disc” button, and change the “File type” to ISO, by dropping down the arrow button.
Once the ISO has been created, you need to open it, using WinRar.
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
Simply open WinRar and drop the ISO file onto the WinRar window to view the contents. Create a new folder on your hard drive, and drag all the contents to it.
Next, you need to download a small program called DVD-A Audio Explorer 2008.
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-Audio-Explorer
Open the zip file containing the program, and extract all the contents of the zip file to another new folder.
Double-click the file named “DVDAExplorer.exe” within the folder named “bin” to start-up the program.
Click the “Open Folder” icon, browse to the AUDIO_TS folder you dragged from WinRar earlier, click the first IFO file in the list, and then click the “Open” button.
Clicking on each track number will highlight the individual track and display the type of audio stored. Most DVD-A discs have a 5.1 Surround Sound mix of an album, along with a stereo version. So, ensure that the track has the 5.1 audio (Lf-Rf-Ls-Rs-C-LFE).
With the track data highlighted, click the “Save” icon. You need to click the options “Convert to wave” and “Split groups” in the menu which will pop up. Create another new folder on your hard drive, to save the split tracks and press the “Extract” button.
I’d recommend doing this one song at a time, because you’re going to get muddled-up otherwise, and/or run-out of hard drive space!
Next, open the folder where your extracted separate channels are, and start-up Audacity.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
Process each file in Audacity, one at a time!!! Drop the file into the Audacity window to open it, Choose “File” & “Export”, then save the exported WAV into another new folder - yes, this is quite a bit of work.
Exporting the WAV from Audacity, converts it from being a 24 bit WAV into the necessary 16 bit WAV, which the DTS-CD requires. Once you’ve exported the 16 bit WAV, delete the original 24 bit WAV, so that you can keep track and save space!
Once you’ve done this for all six separate channels of the song, open the FLAC front-end program.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/flac/files/
This is actually a workaround… Some tracks will have junk embedded inside the actual WAV files’ headers which disable conversion. We’re going to convert the WAVs to FLAC files, and then convert the FLAC files back to WAV, because doing so removes the WAV’s header info.
Think of the headers as being like an ID-3 tag inside an MP3. This conversion doesn’t affect the actual audio quality of the WAVs at all, as FLAC is a lossless audio format.
Nearly there!
Download and install another free program called R8brain. We need to downsample the audio from 96,000 Hz to 44,100 Hz, and this program does this perfectly, with no time-stretching.
http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/
Yes, this decreases audio quality - but it’s only decreasing the quality from super-high, to CD quality! Open-up R8brain, browse to the first separate file in your folder, choose the same folder as the destination folder, and set the options as per this picture:
Once you’ve changed all the options, click the button marked “Batch.”
In the next menu, ensure that you choose to delete the original files. Again, if you don’t, you’ll get confused and waste space!
Now, for the final step, you need Surcode’s CD-DTS encoder - which costs $99.00…
http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=88
But, if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you have a copy of the program already. :-D
This is truly the most straightforward part: Click each button to load each of the six separate channels of your song; choose the destination & filename of your DTS-encoded WAV, and press “Encode.”
I’d close the program after every encode, if I were you, so as not to forget to reset the “Start” and “End” timers on the console. They frustratingly remember the duration of the previous song loaded, unless you remember to reset the counters before loading new tracks.
Burn your WAVs to an audio CD, pop into your DVD player and enjoy the CD-quality Surround Sound.
A word of warning… All CD players and some DVD/Blu-ray players will simply play ear-splitting static, as they won’t recognise the DTS encoding. Before playing in your DVD player, turn your A/V speakers down low (if you’re unsure your player can play DTS files).
If you have a 5.1 sound system connected to your PC, VLC Player will decode these WAVs with no problem.