On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 10:26:46AM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: > VLC is my current favourite to try anything to do with media, I find it more > robust than mplayer (mplayer being my previous favourite).
I use mplayer and vlc on both Windows and Linux. For playing TV shows, I find mplayer easier to use, because I can easily change settings "on the fly" using the keyboard. VLC has a similar interface, I never learned it. For playing media in my living room, I use XINE. Combining mythtv as a front end and a good remote control (thanks to someone on this list), it plays all sorts of media, including files from a file server over my network and can be used by my wife and kids. It does not play audio CD's easily. I don't use it to watch TV or as a PVR. However none of them play this "DVD-Audio". It seems that many DVD players don't play them anyway. Neither to do most Windows media players, but I found two commerical programs that do. > Other than that, I've just ripped children's songs from a DVD into a CD (to > play at a birthday party) simply using ffmpeg on the .VOB files. I can't > access my home machine right now to try to dig the exact incantation I used > from the shell history (I suspect my connection is being shaped because I > run aMule at home right now) but I just followed the usual instructions > found through Google and the ffmpeg manual page. Thanks, I've done that before, but it's not really what I want. DVD-Audio is not a video DVD. The files have similar names, but the data is different. The encryption is very different, which is not an issue as this particular disk is not encrypted. The encoding is also different. If the audio is compressed at all (which I don't think it is), the compression is lossless, not an MPEG type compression which deletes things the designers did not think you can hear. It's also a different bit rate than audio DVD's. When digital audio first became available for professional musicians, it used a bit rate different than CD's and DVD's. (I'm being vague on purpose, I've forgotten it). It was also used as the native bit rate for DAT (digital audio tapes). Since then most people don't use it, they use the CD (44.1kHz) or DVD's 48kHz) bit rates directly. However anything recorded on DAT (which is still done) and anything recorded before the switch, is at the old bit rate. To put it on a DVD, it has to me re-encoded which reduces quality. I beleive that this particular disk is newer but the sound recored on it is 48kHz but 24 bits per sample, not 16 as in CD's and regular DVDs. One of my computers has a high wuality sound card and can play 24 bit audio, and I have an appropriate sound system connected to it. If they did work using DVD ripping tools would be anoying but would be ok. Converting the ripped files to MP3's even high quality ones would be a real waste as the sample rate may ave to be converted and the bits per sample would have to be reduced. In the end it would not sound the same. :-( Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
