[Tfug] DVD-Audio in Linux

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 06:47:34PM -0700, Christopher Robbins wrote:
>
>VLC might be a good start, though MPlayer is worth a shot as well.
>
>http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=174&sid=67a1069b4f9601a2ed9215a1f58d9a3a
>
>This (while not particularly helpful) at least indicates that VLC can handle
>DVD-audio.
>
>Hopefully some more digging will turn something up.

Rich, Chris:

Unfortunately, DVD-Audio seems to be an entirely new beast.  Most
websites/tools which refer to DVD audio are actually talking about the audio
portion of a video DVD or a video DVD with just the audio tracks and no video
tracks.

Actual DVD-Audio, as the Wikipedia page describes, comes in a whole host of
channels/bitrates.  It's not explicitly stated, but I suppose it's still in
AC3 format.

The data is actually stored in the AUDIO_TS directory as opposed to the
VIDEO_TS directory for normal DVDs.  It also does not use CSS to encrypt the
data, but rather something new, though the Wikipedia page indicates that this
was broken in 2005.

The particular disc I have does include all the tracks as well as some other
video footage in the normal VIDEO_TS area.  But I was interested in trying to
get access to the AUDIO_TS (DVD-Audio) data.

I suppose there's just not nearly enough DVD-Audio discs out there for the
tools to have become widespread enough.  And even then, most people are
entirely content with CD quality.  Indeed, I am too, but I figured as long as
I've got this thing, I might as well try to make some use of it.


> PS - I noticed your Sam and Max sig...Have you touched the recent series?
>Just curious, as I
>        played the old Sam and Max and was interested in giving the new game
>a shot.

Yes, I have.  I've only finished the first two episodes (there are six) at
this point, but so far they have been very good.  Of course, it's not quite
the same, and I rather wish they could have gotten the voice actors from the
first game, but then that was about 15 years ago... I wonder if they could
still sound the same?  Despite that, the games have been very fun and I
definitely recommend them to any fan.

My main annoyance with them has actually been the stupid online authorizer.
You don't need to be online to play the games, but you do have to unlock them
the first time.  This is done with some little imbedded-IE launcher program,
which will probably stymie any attempts at running under Wine.  This program
only worked properly for episode one.  It has failed, for me anyway, with all
the others.  An email later I had an unlock code to type in which let me play
the game.  Now that the whole season is out I can get the whole set on a CD.
Hopefully these don't have any sort of online-protection wrapper.  With any
luck, since they're not super 3D intensive games, they'll run under Wine
without problems.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, UMass Amherst student
                        Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
Try Weasel Reader for PalmOS  --  http://gutenpalm.sf.net
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood
of my enemies!"
        --Sam of Sam & Max