How do I copy the Audio off a DVD?

Audio Hijack records the audio being played on your computer, so you'd have to watch the video and record the audio. Technically it is a less ideal method than directly converting the audio files, though for your purposes it would work -- if you find it easier than learning FFMPEGX. It might be a nuisance to have to split and rejoin the files. If you really want to go the audio recording way I would download Soundflower which is free and does the same thing.

FFMPEGX is shareware but none of the features you need are disabled in the trial version..

Quicktime pro won't convert the audio from a DVD. DVD's are muxed video files. Quicktime Pro can't edit muxed video files.

You can download MPEG-Streamclip. It free...

http://www.squared5.com/

One draw back with working with muxed files you need Quicktime Mpeg playback component. And it's not free, $20 from Apple.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

Sorry that's the way it is..........

Rip you video off of the DVD...Drop the video file from the ripped DVD into Mpeg-Streamclip window. Pick to just convert the audio file...bingo.

Sorry toast won't do this.......

I did a quick search and found this, but it's not free, except for the trial: http://www.dvd-ripper-copy.com/dvd-audio-ripper-mac.html
This one says it's shareware, but it doesn't exactly say for audio, however, it could work. http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19483
When you find something that works, post back with that info.

I'll assume these are home produced lectures and not commercial ones that will involve copyright and therefore likely to be DRM encoded. You can work directly with the VOB files on the DVD. Try a program such as FFMPEG to demux (unmix) the VOB fies into audio and video tracks, then convert the mpeg2 audio into a more friendly format such as aiff or mp3. iTunes will convert aiff to mp3 but you will probably have to do the audio conversion from mpeg2 using a program like ffmpeg. Ffmpeg isn't immediately the most simple program because there are a lot of options, but you're not trying to do the simplest thing either so you kind of have to go with what there is, especially since you said "free".

Since this is starting to get outside of the intentions of the Apple Discussions (providing assistance for third party applications) I'll cut it off there.

QuickTime nor any other FREE Apple software will do the job?

Quicktime comes in two flavors, Quicktime and Quicktime Pro. QT is what your computer uses to play things and is free. QTP (payware) unlocks features of QT that lets you do editing and conversion. However, I am not sure that even QTP goes to extent of working with DVD files since Apple has iDVD (more payware) for doing that. I can't answer that since I don't have new QTP and only have a very, very early version of it that dates from early OS8 years which was pretty much pre-DVD!

We can recommend third party software to the extent that is adds to the functionality and use of your computer, we just aren't supposed to provide specific detailed help on these forums on the non-Apple/Mac aspects of third party program usage; e.g., a long detailed description of how to use FFMEG. I'm pretty sure there are FFMEPG forums for that (looks on ffmpeg's website), and if you spend some time with the program you'll find the menu items that relate to my previous suggestions. The hardest thing I found was installing ffmpeg because you have to do it in several steps, but it is free and will do what you want. 'nuff said 😉

Did you try [http://ffmpegx.com> ? Works for me. I haven't had many problems with using the application other than a sometimes bewildering variety of options. I have done with it something similar to what you want to do.

Only having Toast 5 I can't speak for the new versions but it would surprise me if it did what you want to do. you need to find somethign to demux the VOB files. The audio will likely be stored as mpeg2 audio or as ac3 which are pretty DVD specific formats. I doubt iTunes will play those so you will really need a program that can handle video stuff.

Message was edited by: Limnos

You can use the fully functional demo version of Audio Hijack Pro to do exactly what you want.

NOTE: Demo version inserts background noise into all tracks that excede 10 minutes in length so split the speech into 9 minute tracks, import them into itunes, and burn.

http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/


Max-

The freeware MPEG-Streamclip as suggested above by David Brewer seems to work very well for unprotected DVDs, and is fast and easy - much faster than "playing" the DVD and re-digitizing the sound in real-time with a recording program.

Although you do need the $20 Apple Mpeg component for MPEG-Streamclip to be able to play and edit the DVD video or to export it to a QT movie format, I believe you don't need this additional component just to import the DVD files and then extract the entire audio track to an AIFF file. The AIFF file could then be imported into iTunes and converted to a much smaller MP3 file which could be played on an iPod.