Creating Multichannel DVD-A with a Mac?

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B&W Driver

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Jan 26, 2021
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This seems like such an involved topic that it's difficult to know where to begin...but I'll do my best.

This started out as an SACD (stereo & MC) ripping experiment. After some difficulties, Sonore SACD Extract GUI successfully rendered DSF/DSD files, which, by employing JRiver Media Center for Mac, were converted to FLAC/PCM and, eventually, to WAV (to accommodate the next step). Next, the freeware utility, FFmpeg, was used to successfully convert our multichannel (MC) WAV files to MLP.

Inspired by this post on the QQ forum, I began reading up on another freeware utility called DVD-A Author GUI and, eventually, I downloaded a version for Mac. It seems to have worked, up to a point, but it didn't "find" our DVD burner, so I was forced to try the only alternative for Mac that I knew of. To clarify, DVD-A Author GUI created an empty VIDEO_TS folder and an AUDIO_TS folder that seems to contain files of the correct type and size (see screenshot below). There's also a patch in this GUI that allows the freeware utility, mkisofs, to create an ISO image containing both the VIDEO_TS and the AUDIO_TS folders I just described...and, as the DVD-A Author GUI isn't communicating with our DVD recorder, I tried the Burn To Disc utility that comes with macOS. Although I've archived a few ISO images using this utility in the past, I've never tried burning an MC ISO to be used in a DVD-A player before.

As per the post link (above), ImgBurn for Windows was used to create a functioning DVD-A. Does anyone know of an equivalent DVD burning utility for Mac that can handle recording a multichannel audio ISO image? Perhaps there's a better way to go about this process? Either way, I'd appreciate your thoughts.

By the way, I've previously experimented with Burn for Mac and, similarly, it will not burn MC audio files. On the other hand, it will create a stereo ISO image and burn it to create a simple functioning DVD-A, so the good news is that we seem to have a way to create stereo DVD-As.

Thank you for your time...

Screenshot of the AUDIO_TS folder created by DVD-A Author GUI:

Screen Shot 2022-11-05 at 2.05.52 PM.png
 
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I wouldn't think that the content of the ISO would matter. It's just an image. The burning program should create a disc from that image, regardless of what it is.
 
Please see (below) a screenshot of what happens in macOS whenever an external "burn" drive is detected:

Screen Shot 2022-11-08 at 12.35.02 PM.png


For the purpose of this post, I right-clicked on an ISO that was taken from a stereo source, but the idea is still the same. Once macOS detects an external DVD drive, you right click on an ISO image file and you get the option to "Burn Disc Image 'XXXXXX.iso' to Disc..."

I agree with you, one would think that this utility would simply burn the ISO image to the external drive "as is," but it doesn't. Once you use this utility with a multichannel (MC) ISO file, it burns the ISO image as data only...and, needless to say, this is very frustrating. There seems to be something about MC audio files that these burn utilities (for Mac) doesn't like?
 
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Personally I don't know anything about MAC softwares o_O

With regard to DVD-A Author, I know that the Windows version is able to create .iso files and can even burn DVD-A content directly to DVD~R discs...
 
Personally I don't know anything about MAC softwares o_O

With regard to DVD-A Author, I know that the Windows version is able to create .iso files and can even burn DVD-A content directly to DVD~R discs...
I was under the impression that you used ImgBurn for Windows to create your own DVD-A. For clarification, did you actually use the DVD-A Author GUI for Windows -- and its associated (built-in) software patches -- to record your DVD-A?

DVD-A Author GUI for Mac will not "find" and connect to our external DVD burner drive; hence, the search for software that can handle recording MC ISO images...and, if Windows proves to be the only way, we will be back to setting up a PC.

Cheers for the post, mate!
 
I was under the impression that you used ImgBurn for Windows to create your own DVD-A. For clarification, did you actually use the DVD-A Author GUI for Windows -- and its associated (built-in) software patches -- to record your DVD-A?
I did indeed use ImgBurn to create the DVD-A disc from the 'dvd.iso' file.

I installed all the software that came with 'dvda-author-package-21-01-1.w10.x86_64.installer.exe', except the source code. There were no patches.
 
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