( This procedure was written with the intention to rip audio streams off of DVD-Video discs only. I have no idea if the same would work for DVD-Audio discs for I don’t have any DVD-Audio disc to try it out on. Please read all instructions that comes with the download of the applications carefully. As I have only worked them through blindly myself just a few hours ago, although the procedure works for me I can offer no further support. Good luck.)
A few days ago, I was asked how to extract the song tracks from DVD discs into iPod. It took me a couple of nights to find something free of charge.
What you’d need is MacTheRipper, mAC3DEC, and of course Apple’s own, iTune.
After downloading and installing the two applications, load the DVD disc into the drive and run MacTheRipper.
Within MacTheRipper, under the “File” menu tab, select “Save to…” and select the folder location that you want to save your extractions. Then Select “Title - Chapter Extraction”. Then select the “SChpt” number for the Start Chapter (song) and the “EChpt” number for the End Chapter (song). Unless you want one single track for all the songs, make sure you select individual Chapter, ie. the same SChpt and E Chpt one at a time. Press “D” to demux and then select “Streams”; deselect the video stream and select only the correct audio stream that you want to extract. Note that there could be several audio streams in a DVD disc including several AC3 2ch and DTS streams. It is one of the AC3 2ch that you’d want for regular stereo recordings.
Check the back of the DVD box for audio stream information to find out which audio stream you want.
After extracting all the chapters one by one, you can run mACDEC to convert the AC3 files into MP3, WAV, PCM, AiFF or MOV.
Within mAC3DEC, select the “Preference” menu and select the following:
I choose MP3 for compatibility as there is no AAC format. Select “Normalize” for proper volume and “Globally” to match volume for all the songs in the single run. In MP3 Options, select the following…
You may select lower bit rate to save space and press “OK” to close the window.
While still in mAC3DEC, press “Command-O” to add all the individual AC3 files from the same DVD to the list and then press “Start” to start converting all the songs from the same DVD in one go. All converted files should be stored in the respective folders where their respective AC3 files were stored.
Once the AC3 files have been converted to MP3, open iTune and add the MP3 files to the Library by selecting the “File” menu tab in iTune. Select “Add to Library…” and select the songs to be added one by one. Once the songs have been added to the Library, select the individual song, press “Command-I” for “Get Info” and then select the “Info” tab to view and add the song’s info.
When Info has been added to the songs, songs from the same DVD would all be
saved under the same folder in the Music iTune folder.
Plug the iPod to the computer to update the songs into the iPod.
And that’s all there is to it.
WhaUSay?!