Ripping audio from DVDs

[jeffers]

I've noticed a few posts (probably mostly from @emk) mentioning ripping audio from DVDs, and editing it down to just the dialogue. I figured it would be better to ask the how questions in a separate thread so that it could be more easily found later on. So my questions are:
1. What tool(s) do you prefer for ripping DVD audio? And how do you do it?
2. What tool(s) do you use for trimming the audio? And how?

Thanks!

[emk]

1. What tool(s) do you prefer for ripping DVD audio? And how do you do it?

If you want to use media from DVDs, then you'll need to look at your local laws. Unfortunately, I can't advise you on legal stuff, because this is an international forum, and because the laws on making personal-use copies of DVDs vary considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some places it's perfectly legal. In some places, it's legal to make personal copies but it's illegal to publish tools to make copies. (CLARIFICATION) In yet other countries, it's illegal, or the rules have changed in recent years. Etc.

If your jurisdiction allows you to make personal copies of DVDs for self-study educational use, then one popular tool for this is Handbrake, from France. If you're importing DVDs from other continents, then you may also need to buy a dedicated USB DVD drive. DVD drives in the US (and some other countries) are "locked" to various regions of the globe, and many of them decide which region they should "lock" to by remembering the regions of the first 3-5 DVDs you use them to read. So you might wind up with a dedicated "European" DVD drive, and a dedicated "Japanese" drive. (Note that this is old knowledge; I built my French media library many years ago.)

2. What tool(s) do you use for trimming the audio? And how?

I personally use a tool I wrote, called substudy. This isn't quite yet ready for prime time, but if you're fairly familiar with the command-line, it's probably worth a shot. If you have a video file and subtitle file, you can just do:

Code: Select all

substudy export tracks my_video.mp4 my_video.srt

This will use the subs to chop up the video's dialog into a series of MP3 tracks that you can listen to on an MP3 player of your choice.

If you don't have subs in SRT format, or if you have subs but they're not synchronized, then you can sign up for an OpenAI developer account. This will allow you to generate subs automatically for the most popular languages:

Code: Select all

export OPENAI_API_KEY="..."
substudy transcribe my_video.mp4 --example-text=short-text-from-video.txt > my_video.srt

The "example text" should be a file that bears some relationship to the audio you want to transcribe. A few lines of dialog, for example. Failing that, at least a few sentences in the right language. This is used to give the transcriber AI model some idea what the context is.

So far for me, the automatic subs have been terrific for intermediate Spanish audio, like clearly enunciated TV and people with professional voice training.

You can probably also make custom dialog-only audio tracks using any sound editor of your choice.

[Cainntear]

If you want to use media from DVDs, then you'll need to look at your local laws. Unfortunately, I can't advise you on legal stuff, because this is an international forum, and because the laws on making personal-use copies of DVDs vary considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some places it's perfectly legal. In some places, it's legal to make personal copies but it's illegal to publish tools to make copies. Etc.

If your jurisdiction allows you to make personal copies of DVDs for self-study educational use, then one popular tool for this is Handbrake, from France.

In a great many places, it is not against copyright law to make copies for personal use -- copyright law is about distributing copies, and making your own copies doesn't fall under it.

The problem this posed with digital video was that people could in theory just rent films from Blockbuster, or even just borrow from a friend, and there would be nothing to prevent them getting a perfect copy of the film to watch forever (or until they ran out of space on their hard-disc, cos DVD movies are big enough that you'd be lucky to fit two of them on a really expensive computer's drive!!)

That's why the DVD consortium included proprietary encryption -- if you can't make it illegal and you can't tell when it's been done, you need to make it as hard as you can.

Unfortunately, DVD encryption wasn't very strong (if it had been, a DVD player would have needed a much more powerful and expensive processor!!) so it was cracked not long after it was released -- Handbrake was a very early DVD ripper, if not the very first.

US media companies pulled a nasty one: they lobbied for the DCMA which made it illegal to break any DRM, even if what you did with the data after cracking it was entirely legal. This instantly made it basically a crime to ever run Handbrake. In fact, I seem to recall the wording of the law was such that even if you wanted to copy a DVD you recorded in your own camcorder, if it had DRM, you were technically not allowed to copy it legally... YOUR OWN HOME VIDEO!!

The media companies were pushing other countries to follow the DMCA, but I don't know if anyone did. I'm pretty confident the EU said a very loud "no", and I'm not personally aware of any law going through in the UK to make breaking DRM illegal if you were only doing it to exercise your own rights with your own property.

So yeah, in the US, the act of breaking DRM is illegal, even if the DRM is useless. I mean... legally speaking, simply pushing a glass pane out of a locked door is breaking and entering. Your insurance company might refuse to pay out because the premises weren't secure, but the police will have to open a case....

EDIT: This absolute nonsense -- don't trust me on it. The UK was actually one of the first countries to ban copies even for personal use. VHS (and later DVD) video recorders were legal for "time shifting" (=recording TV to watch later) but not for "format shifting" (=making a copy that can be viewed with a different device from the original one, except where done purely for time shifting of broadcast TV).

I've struck out what I wrote so it hopefully won't be taken as valid information; just not wanting to delete the evidence of my own incorrect statements!!

[MorkTheFiddle]

1. What tool(s) do you prefer for ripping DVD audio? And how do you do it?

If you want to use media from DVDs, then you'll need to look at your local laws. Unfortunately, I can't advise you on legal stuff, because this is an international forum, and because the laws on making personal-use copies of DVDs vary considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some places it's perfectly legal. In some places, it's legal to make personal copies but it's illegal to publish tools to make copies. Etc.

If your jurisdiction allows you to make personal copies of DVDs for self-study educational use, then one popular tool for this is Handbrake, from France. If you're importing DVDs from other continents, then you may also need to buy a dedicated USB DVD drive. DVD drives in the US (and some other countries) are "locked" to various regions of the globe, and many of them decide which region they should "lock" to by remembering the regions of the first 3-5 DVDs you use them to read. So you might wind up with a dedicated "European" DVD drive, and a dedicated "Japanese" drive. (Note that this is old knowledge; I built my French media library many years ago.)

The VLC media player can play media from any region.
Instructions how are here: Instructions.
The VLC media player itself is completely free and available here: Download VLC.
Supposedly VLC can also record a DVD, but I have never got that part to work. And a caveat here. What emk said about legalities of recording with a dvd player apply to the VLC media player as well.
Finally, I endorse emk's substudy program, though you do need a dvd you like and reliable subtitles in both target and native languages.
Luis Buñuel's El río y la muerte, Pedro Almodóvar's Volver, and Allied with Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt were guinea pigs for my efforts with substudy, which turned out rather well, except that I did not like Allied as a movie very much. That was another era, unfortunately, so I have nothing left of those movies or the subtitles for them.

[Cainntear]

I've got to correct myself... with only a tiny bit of digging, I found that the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 make "format shifting" (ie moving a disk to a tape or a hard drive) illegal. And the term "format shifting" makes me realise that I used to know this, and this is why there wasn't a strict need for anything like the DCMA. I think it all goes back to the Walkman days and the slogan "home taping is killing music", so yeah... strictly speaking, any copying of purchased media is illegal.

[emk]

I would strongly discourage people from getting legal advice on language learning forums—the law in this area is complex (and disputed), and lots of details matter. There have been billion dollar businesses built around time shifting in some countries, and in other major western countries, the law has changed twice in the last decade. And details of where you got the media may also matter. And whether you're in the UK or France may make a dramatic difference, too.

So I would strongly prefer to end the legal discussions—as I originally suggested, please check your own national laws. This forum is not the appropriate place to get legal advice.

[Doitsujin]

@Jeffers: Provided that you're allowed to make backup copies for personal use in your country, the easiest solution is to use MakeMKV. This'll generate an .mkv file that you can play with VLC and many other media players. (VLC is available for all major operating systems, including iOS and Android.)
If disk space is an issue, you can use MKVToolNix and gMKVExtractGUI to extract audio streams from .mkv files. However, this will generate .ac3 files that not all media players support.
An even easier solution is to use Audacity. Simply drag & drop the .mkv file on the Audacity window, select the audio track and export it as an .mp3 file.

[Cainntear]

@Jeffers: Provided that you're allowed to make backup copies for personal use in your country, the easiest solution is to use MakeMKV.

His profile says he's in the UK, so unfortunately the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 says no to "format shifting".

Thinking back to it, I was astounded that CD recorders for broadcast TV were even a thing, because if VHS was only allowed as time shifting because it would be temporary, CDR was a write-once medium, so it was a permanent thing... unless people were going to bin the discs after watching them. Technically, they could easily have been banned from sale as they served no legal and legitimate purpose...

[rdearman]

@Jeffers: Provided that you're allowed to make backup copies for personal use in your country, the easiest solution is to use MakeMKV.

His profile says he's in the UK, so unfortunately the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 says no to "format shifting".

Thinking back to it, I was astounded that CD recorders for broadcast TV were even a thing, because if VHS was only allowed as time shifting because it would be temporary, CDR was a write-once medium, so it was a permanent thing... unless people were going to bin the discs after watching them. Technically, they could easily have been banned from sale as they served no legal and legitimate purpose...

Not true, they could be used to back up data from your computer.

[Cainntear]

@Jeffers: Provided that you're allowed to make backup copies for personal use in your country, the easiest solution is to use MakeMKV.

His profile says he's in the UK, so unfortunately the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 says no to "format shifting".

Thinking back to it, I was astounded that CD recorders for broadcast TV were even a thing, because if VHS was only allowed as time shifting because it would be temporary, CDR was a write-once medium, so it was a permanent thing... unless people were going to bin the discs after watching them. Technically, they could easily have been banned from sale as they served no legal and legitimate purpose...

Not true, they could be used to back up data from your computer.

Using a UHF transmission encoder is inefficient in both data transfer speeds and cost. Would be better just buying a CD burner for a 5.25" drive bay, really...