Techtalk: music+vid tools

[fragger]

I'm just wondering if any of you sagacious oracles at OWG have an answer to this question (talk about buttering up for an ask):

Does anyone know of a way to rip the entire soundtrack from a music DVD, and transpose it onto a CD?

The reason I ask is because I have a DVD of a Rick Wakeman concert that I would dearly love to transcribe onto a CD, so I could listen to it, let's say hypothetically, in my car whilst driving to w@&k (I have a long commute and need decibelic stimulation. Dunno if "decibelic" is a real word, but hell, I'm inventing it - if Shakespeare can do it, so can I). I suspect that if this is doable, one amongst our enlightened community here will know how. If not, that makes at least two of us.

The DVD in question is one that was filmed here in Melbourne in 1975. It was recorded at the tail end of Wakeman's world-wide Journey to the Centre of the Earth tour, and it's a "tour"-de-force. It also has great sentimental value for yours truly, because one of the long-haired, moustachioed, and not inconceivably pot-ridden, reprobates in the audience is me!

Also I bring this up because if anyone here is into early prog-rock and wants to hear one of the progenitors of this genre at the top of his game, this film is highly recommended. Early synthesizers - man, those transistorized behemoths could really howl! At the time, the engineers had to borrow power from the local railway grid and suburban transformer stations to run everything, and household lighting in the area was noticeably dimmer while the concert was in progress. Now that's a show! If anyone's interested, here's some clips from it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw8swApEb9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0A90tNh0VI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy1XmzQBSUY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-kdxAYz9qg&feature=related

Some of the best stuff in the film's not here, unfortunately, and it's probably not to everyone's taste. Unless you were there, and you were a bit... ahem... zonked...

[Art Blade]

Sorry, can't help you there (ripping). But one simple solution might be to play the DVD while recording software is running (anything that can record sound and save the file to disk). Saving as mp3 would be easiest, while converting .wav into .mp3 is easy too, given you have encoding software.

[RedRaven]

if you type "Extract audio from DVD" into any search engine it will come up with various guides and programs that can do it, most of the software seems to be trial only, but that should do if its just the one DVD you want to extract it from. Failing that you can Rip & convert the DVD to a format usable by Windows Movie Maker and use that to get the audio tracks.
Hope that helps. :-X

[PZ]

One of my favorite places to get anything media related is free-codecs.com.  Available are hundreds of utilities and codecs to accomplish almost any task you want.  This link is to a DVD audio track ripper - shareware, and a full version is available, but it should get you started.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DVD_Audio_Extractor.htm

[mandru]

Here's an odd question.

With all these links over to Youtube and looking at some of the low quality postings that practically overrun the site, I've wanted to try to post some of my compositions there and would like more than a static view of my self produced album cover.

Is there a program that will capture a high quality mp4 (or any other video file) of an active window or my computer's desktop? What I'm thinking is I'd like to record the windows media player with a selected visualization since the visuals sync to the music.

I've seen FRAPPS mentioned often here in the forums but have the impression that there is some sync problems with the sound track and possibly a 30 second record time limitation if I were to choose that approach. I know that I could always set up a video camera and record directly off my monitor but not having a video camera I would prefer to avoid that expense if possible.

Sure posting a video using media player is cheesy but its a mild good smelling cheesiness like a Gouda, Edam or Cheddar and not a really rancid cheesiness like the soft rind washed body odors of Limburger, Stinking Bishop or Vieux Boulogne of those unimaginative videos with static CD cover shots that force the actual artist performance videos so deep in the search that you can never find them.

Some of you guys seem to be really up on this kind of tech question so I've got my fingers crossed one of you will know just what I need.

[Art Blade]

while I have no clue how to capture vids, I have a better thing than your media player. The visuals in mediamonkey are far far better and customisable on top. Check it out, I am very happy with it :)

[fragger]

Hey, thanks muchly for all the tips and suggestions, guys! :) I'm sure I'll find a way from these.

OWG members rule OK :-X

[mandru]

Thanks Art.

I'm hesitant to add media players or managers to my system because they tend to search the entire system and change every media icon in the system to their logo.

That would be fine but in my music production I depend on .wav files for my samples that I am looping to appear to be .wav files while my recorded projects are also .wav files but branded with the Psycle logo and I do a final mastering in Audacity so my masters have that logo. With this set up I can easily tell all of them apart at a glance out of the 2000 or so audio files in my system.

I made the mistake of downloading Apple's Quicktime on my last system which pulled the "All your Media are belong to US!" job on me and it took me literally days with a cutting torch and hammer to undo the damage.  :D

I'm sure MediaMonkey is a wonderful program, probably far better than the stodgy old WMP but I have some specific system needs and usage requirements that make me very nervous.

I'll never own an IPod or MP3 player because I've seen what they have done to other people's computers with systemic proprietary icon switching. (*shudders*)

[Art Blade]

I see. Well, you don't need to scan your entire system with it... and it does not if you don't want to. You could install it and use "drag and drop" with it so at least you'd get to see the visualization which is brilliant. :)

[mandru]

Thanks Art, I'll give it a DL and check it out.

I've also come across a program called CamStudio 2.0 that looks very promising when I did a Google search for "Record Tutorial". It appears well acclaimed and and it is shareware which is helpful. It can record full screen or from an indicated open window, so I think I'm going to give it a look see too.

[Art Blade]

that CamStudio 2.0 indeed sounds interesting... thanks for that.  :)

[mandru]

Way cool, Thanks Art Mediamonkey looks good and the visualizations are impressive!

There were three different times it tried to grab my file extensions. First during download it wanted to know what files were going to be managed, then while installing it made me go through and uncheck every extension type and once again when I started it up it tried to make a grab for my music folder. Between the threat of the trash bin and a stern hand it settled down and became a good monkey.

Art I've read else where that you have one of the GTX series graphics cards ( either GTX 260 or GTX 280 and both of our systems are X58's with i7 processors, I believe but you got me on screen size by 2 inches ) and going into the tweaks for MediaMonkey was the first time I got to give my GTX 295 a good enough w@&k out by kicking up the warping polygons and going to unlimited frames per sec to have my card working hard enough to hear it's cooling fan ramp up!

I did back it down to reasonable settings levels after playing around a bit because who needs a graphics card burning up electricity and throwing off the heat of a 500 watt light bulb.  :P

[Art Blade]

hehehe, nice review of MM :) Of course it tries to own media file extensions, but as you said, it asks first (unlike some mircrosoft products). I have a GTX260 indeed (so far I never found a game that was too much for it on max gfx setup) but you should risk a look at the nVidia driver and the performance settings. Basically I go for max quality with V-Sync enabled, yet I always disable AA or AF.

Did you notice you can hit F1 during milkdrop (the visualisation app)? Play around there, it is just great what it can do :)

[mandru]

For someone that has a collection of 15 to 20 thousand MP3 and other song files (does it also handle vids? I haven't looked that far yet) it is a very impressive management tool that from what I understand will even identify duplicates of files and help cross link albums and collections.

If my system wasn't primarily for music production, writing and gaming I would be a lot less hesitant to turn it loose on my audio files.

I just have weird priorities.  ;)  :-X

[Art Blade]

would be interesting to test, if you could copy your 20k sound files (might take some time, eh  ;D ) onto a seperate system (or disk, for that matter) and then turn it loose to see what it can do  :)

Oh, it can handle vids if you add some plugin (I haven't)

can't help it, who is your avatar?

[mandru]

 ;D

Me wrapped in a cheap fake tartan polyester fleece blanket with an even cheaper Pakistani cutlass.

[Art Blade]

<chuckle>  :-X ;D ;D ;D

[PZ]

I've been using Camtasia Studio since version 1 (up to version 6 now).  It is outstanding if you want to have rather sophisticated movie productions.  Lets you load audio and video tracks onto the time line and then do whatever you want with them.  You can add callouts, transition effects, titles, etc.  It is a comprehensive package.  You can capture the entire screen, individual windows, or even parts of windows.  I use Camtasia for professional reasons, and am quite happy with the outcome.  Techsmith (Camtasia publisher) also offers a freeware version called Jing that possesses a subset of features.

If however you wish merely to capture video from your PC, which could include video you're playing from a DVD movie, I'd recommend FRAPS.  It occupies an efficient memory footprint and performs perfect full motion capture - Camtasia productions can suffer if your machine is not up to par.  My favorite full motion video capture utility is definitely FRAPS.

[Art Blade]

I know you have similar specs as mandru and I, would you say your machine is not "up to par?" I mean, do you suffer lags with Camtasia (as opposed to FRAPS)?

[PZ]

I doubt it, but I don't do Camtasia on the gaming PC (which is at home) - my w@&k machine (a Fujitsu slate) is a duo, and it captures OK, but not at 30 fps whereas FRAPS does a better job - I use Camtasia only on my w@&k machine.

[mandru]

PZ?

Is there a 30 second limitation with FRAPS? I had heard third hand that was the case but had not heard that directly from a person using it.

[Art Blade]

I know (because I visited their site) that there is a 30 seconds limit and more restrictions for the trial version only. Full version has no such restrictions. Just google "FRAPS" :)

[mandru]

 :-X

Ok thanks Art and thanks PZ for the info on Camtasia Studio and their freeware Jing.

[PZ]

Both record in avi format so the quality is excellent - the Camtasia format is called camrec (proprietary avi format) and I think that the FRAPS might also be proprietary because I could not play a recorded movie without having FRAPS installed. 

[Art Blade]

if you purchased FRAPS for $38, you get the mp4 vid export option, "ready for youtube to upload".