trenz1

The day I picked up my TL I stopped at Best Buy and picked up a few dvd-a discs. I was pretty impressed. When I started reading these forums I saw some great posts on ripping concert dvd's and became quite interested. I have seen a few recent posts about people wanting to create dvd-a discs so I threw together a step by step tutorial for newbies like myself on creating 6 channel DVD Audio discs from concert dvd's. I know a lot of this info was already posted here, mostly in this thread https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129253 I thought I might put all the info, plus my own thoughts, into a tutorial. If this can help even one person than I would be happy. Of course, you should only do this for discs you own. Thanks go to Actuary for helping to get me started. I will just list the steps I used. Some settings I didn't know anything about. You may want to change some settings or alter the steps I used to get the results you want but the few discs I did all sound great. I didn't put up any photos since it was all pretty easy.

You can get DVD Audio Extractor here, http://www.castudio.org/dvdaudioextractor/index.php and the trial is good for 30 days then $32.50 to purchase.

You can get DVD Audio Solo here. The trial is good for 7 uses ( within 60 days I think) then $34.95 to purchase. http://www.cirlinca.com/products.htm.
I do not believe you can save the image file in the Solo demo so you must burn directly to a dvd. I used -R dvd's.

Create a folder on your desktop ( or where ever you want to save the files ). I named mine the same as the dvd title.

Open Extractor to start at step one and make sure your source drive is the one with your dvd in it.
In the left pane click on each title. I only wanted the surround tracks and not the stereo tracks so if there are only 2ch files in a chapter I made sure to clear all check marks ( top left column in right pane )
Any title that has 6ch files I would click on the 6ch in bottom left pane then select all on the right, again making sure 2ch files were unselected.
I would then listen to each 6ch chapter for a few seconds using the audio controls on the bottom left. Deselect any chapter that wasn't a song. For example,
Pink Floyd the Wall is an MGM title and the lions roar at the beginning was 6ch so I deselected it.
After making sure everything you want is selected click next.

In step two I used the following settings:
output format: wav -- pcm uncompressed wave
sample rate: 48000 hz
Channels:all 6 channels
bits per sample: 16 bits
save each channel into separate files: make sure it is unchecked as using separate files is for more advanced editing from what I understand
click next

In step three under output location browse to the folder you created in the beginning. I left the other four boxes checked. Normalization was on high at 100%
ID3 tag was grayed out
click next

in step four I left thread priority on normal, and 'after encoding do this' was set to do nothing. click the green start arrow. When done I used Windows Media Player to quickly double check the wav's since I only had 7 uses with Solo and I wanted to make sure they were right.

Open Solo
browse to your folder in the left window and drag it to the next window. You can use the audio controls here to double check your files if you didn't before.
In the middle of the right side are four buttons. Solo opened with the settings available under the project button
under the import, record, and enhance tabs at the top right everything was left at default settings

click on the settings button. under preferences and personalize tabs again I left everything default

click on the online button. under activation, download, and support tabs again everything default

click on dvd button. under the write tab select your burner ( with a blank dvd inserted, I used -R ) and your write speed ( slower is better )
under dvd image I left it on direct to dvd.
Save to was grayed out ( I believe this is because it was the demo version ) I tried the save only option since I thought this was for saving the image to my
hard drive but it only created a file that had no extension and couldn't be opened so I didn't try that again
under the disc tab I left it default
back under the write tab click the write button and wait. when the disc is finished you should have a 6ch dvd-a disc to enjoy in your TL.

As I stated before a lot of the settings I didn't know anything about but what I did worked great for me. If you know of any changes that would make better recordings post here with what you did. I would be happy to hear about them.

Again, props to Actuary
good luck

Adobeman

Nice writeup. It's pretty cool what these discs can sound like in the car.

Yes that's what you want. Using 6 individual wave files just makes it harder to get them into DVD Audio Solo.

Really? I can't get WMP to play 6ch wav files. I must be missing a codec. But I do check them in Solo as you suggest later.

automag928

This is excellent write up...it would have made my job alot easier from the get go, but I was able to figure it all out