[MPlayer-users] Ripping dvd with DTS audio

[D Richard Felker III]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 11:08:22PM +0300, Vladimir Mosgalin wrote:
> Has anyone succeeded in ripping dvd to avi while keeping dts audio
> track? I have several dvds with dts soundtracks which sound really
> better than ac3 ones (most likely due to the fact that ac3 ones use 384k
> bitrate and dts use 768k - I wonder why they can't make one 640k ac3
> track instead?).

Because it's all about marketing propaganda. Audiophile newbs think
DTS==god because it has dolby in the name. DVDs with DTS are actually
immensely lower quality because they've wasted almost a megabit/sec
that should have gone to the video.

> Fortunately, there is also enough free space to fit dts
> soundtrack instead of ac3 in resulting avi file, but I just can't find a
> way to do it.

It should work, I think, but..

> With the same command as I use to encode avi with ac3 track, but with
> -aid 138 (dts track) instead of -aid 129 (ac3 track) mencoder produces a
> huge amount of frame drops, the resulting video is very jerky and
> audio and video don't sync. When -mc 0 is used, there are much less
> framedrops, but mplayer goes crazy in the middle of encoding (constant
> "Too many audio packets" messages), and the resulting avi is still jerky
> and a-v sync goes off.
> The indirect method - encoding with ac3 track and then replacing it with
> dts track on additional mencoder pass with -audiofile doesn't work too,
> a-v sync goes off in resulting file.
> 
> Are there any other ways? Or better yet, a working advice from someone
> who did it.

MEncoder must be demuxing the DTS track incorrectly. Does mplayer play
it fine from the DVD?

Rich