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Why are most concerts released in DVD format and not CD?

post #1 of 13
2/1/10 at 6:15pm
Thread Starter 
Hi

I've finished upgrading my equipment and from now am concentrating a building a great music library. I love live recordings but am finding it hard to buy them in CD format. For instance, if i search "U2 Live" on Amazon, there are 5 DVDs which look great, but they're not for sale in CD format. I have all my library in FLAC format, is it possible for me to extract hi-fi audio from these DVDs?

I've searched the forum and someone said its possible to rip it, but in a lower bitrate?

I would be very grateful if someone could help me because it looks like DVD releases are going to be the norm from now on.

Thanks
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post #2 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:00pm
Most likely because people would like to see the concert as well as hear it.

You can most definitely rip the audio tracks out of a DVD into FLAC.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f15/ho...ac-mp3-378195/
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post #3 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 03029174 View Post
Hi

I've finished upgrading my equipment and from now am concentrating a building a great music library. I love live recordings but am finding it hard to buy them in CD format. For instance, if i search "U2 Live" on Amazon, there are 5 DVDs which look great, but they're not for sale in CD format. I have all my library in FLAC format, is it possible for me to extract hi-fi audio from these DVDs?

I've searched the forum and someone said its possible to rip it, but in a lower bitrate?

I would be very grateful if someone could help me because it looks like DVD releases are going to be the norm from now on.

Thanks
Just off the top of my head, I know that CDs are 2-channel, 44.1 kHz files, while DVDs are 5 to 7-channel, 48 kHz files (that's just the audio part, for surround sound), requiring much more physical room on the disc. DVDs are used for multi-track audio recordings, and usually feature video information as well; they hold much more data than CDs.

The future of high-resolution two-channel audio is probably on DVD as well, because of the installed base of DVD players, but this has to be sorted out as there are competing formats like SACD and Blu-ray audio.

You need to think about movie/DVD ripping, not music/CD ripping. This takes a more up-to-date computer, but is not hard and I believe that some programs let you extract just the audio information from a concert DVD.

Hope this helps
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post #4 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:15pm
Thread Starter 
Hey thanks agentgreen, yeah i saw that post. I was trying to find out what the quality of the rip would be like. For example do you think they will be anywhere near the quality of a CD release?
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post #5 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:17pm
Thread Starter 
Ah interesting grokit, that explains why they've started doing DVD only. I wonder if all the channels will get compressed during the ripping process?
Think im gonna have to buy one and see how it goes
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post #6 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by agentgreen View Post
Most likely because people would like to see the concert as well as hear it.

You can most definitely rip the audio tracks out of a DVD into FLAC.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f15/ho...ac-mp3-378195/
That looks like a great program. Do you have any experience with using it to find the hi-resolution (96 or 192 Mhz) two-channel tracks? Sometimes those are "hidden" (if they exist at all on a particular concert DVD), and it would seem that those would be the only high-bitrate files worth converting to FLAC, as normally the audio files on a DVD would only be at 44.1 or 48 Mhz.
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post #7 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:42pm
Thread Starter 
So if the audio files on the dvd are 44.1 or 48 mhz, that means its CD quality audio doesn't it?
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post #8 of 13
2/1/10 at 7:43pm
Thread Starter 
Do you know any dvds which have the "hidden" hi rez audio stream?
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post #9 of 13
2/1/10 at 9:40pm
on a DVD most of the time the audio is AC3 usually 5.1ch at 448Kbps

if a stereo mix is present (fairly common) it will generally be at 192 or 256Kbps

if you only intend to listen at home it might be a good idea to look into an AC3 decoder plugin for whatever player you use and rip the AC3 stream directly there are ways to do this and get separate files for each song (provided the chapters for the title are properly placed between songs) google will lead you in the right direction

if the audio is DTS you get a higher bitrate (but i've never seen a DTS track that wasn't 5.1ch) and you can still rip it the same way... i'm not sure though about player support for DTS

as far as converting to FLAC/mp3... well FLAC is kinda pointless i did a test of Gorgoroth's Black Mass Krakow 2004 DVD using the stereo track as the source... using monkey's audio (which compresses better than FLAC) the file was 350MB... the raw AC3 files are 75MB

mp3 only really makes sense for portable players just remember it's a lossy-lossy conversion and rockbox compatible players can play AC3 files through rockbox

so basically unless your concert DVD does have a PCM track you might as well look into ripping the audio as is off the disc and playing it in that format
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post #10 of 13
2/2/10 at 3:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 03029174 View Post
So if the audio files on the dvd are 44.1 or 48 mhz, that means its CD quality audio doesn't it?
Yes.
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post #11 of 13
2/2/10 at 5:19am
only if those are not AC3 or DTS tracks otherwise they are compromised by lossy compression
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post #12 of 13
2/2/10 at 8:25am
Thread Starter 
I really appreciate the input guys, can i just confirm i've got the following right. I should be able to get a AC3 decoder plugin and rip the audio at 448Kbps. I know alot of people cant tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC so that should be good enough for me.
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post #13 of 13
2/2/10 at 3:17pm
note that 448kbps will only be for the 5.1ch mix so you'll either need 5.1ch playback or downmixing i have yet to see a stereo AC3 track on a DVD at more than 256Kbps
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