Hi Vicki, Sorry about this, I just saw your message in my bulk folder.
I've thought you might be interested in a tutorial I wrote up a few months ago on using DVD Audio Extractor with Jaws. I've pasted it below. It can be found on the Jaws users page under the tips and tricks page, but it's pasted here for your reference. ***Begin Tutorial*** I am going to detail how I do things with this program, and not how things are supposed to be done, just in case someone decides that I'm doing something wrong. For one thing, the program is pretty much completely accessible, so there are no specialty keystrokes you need to know to rip a DVD using Audio Extractor. Having said that, the following is what I do when confronted with a DVD I wish to rip. I load the DVD in the CD tray of my drive, close it, and let it do it's thing. Depending on how you have your autoplay functions set, you will either get a pop up window asking you what you want to do with the DVD or you may get nothing. If you get the autoplay dialog box, just select do nothing, and tab to the ok button. At this point, I will open up Any DVD, and let it do it's thing by decoding the DVD. You should get a message that Any DVD is examining the disc, please wait, your disc will be available shortly. Once the tray stops spinning, you'll know the DVD has been decoded by Any DVD. At this point, you can go ahead and open up DVD Audio Extractor. Once the program opens up, you'll here the DVD spin in the drive again as DVD Audio Extractor looks for the DVD that is available in any of your drives. You should automatically land on the help button, at which point you will want to tab to the combo box to select the DVD drive you've placed the disc into. The program should have selected the drive already and be listed in the combo box, but if it hasn't, then arrow up or down to the drive to select it. Once selected, you tab once and you'll land on the refresh button. If I'm ripping a second DVD after ripping the first, I will press the spacebar on this button, just to make sure the track listing is updated to reflect the new DVD in the tray. You never can be sure with software. Once you do this, tab once and you'll land on the track listing of the DVD. >From my experience, I have never seen track listings like Lee has mentioned in his messages for ripping with this program. I have never been able to right arrow to the alternate language, and so find the tracks are listed by language, as opposed as in sections. What I mean by this is, when Jaws speaks out the track number, it will have the language somewhere in the track listing. It will list English, or Francais or Espanol, or some other language in the title of the track. I have never personally seen a DVD with audio description, so I really can't say what an audio description track would look like. Having said that, I would imagine that the title of the track would indicate something other than the language. As another example, I have had DVD movies, like the Fast and the Furious that have had multiple angles to a particular scene, and this, too, is indicated in the track title. It will be listed as Angle 1 or Angle 2 or something along those lines. Suffice it to say, if you look for these language names, you will be given some idea of what language you are selecting. Keep in mind that this is not always the case, as some DVD titles are not authored correctly. During the writing of this tutorial, I used a movie called March of the Penguins. The DVD case comes with two DVD's. Presumably one DVD is the English version, while the second DVD is the French version. One would expect that the English version would have the word English in the track titles, and the French version would have the word Francais, however, this is not the case. The first DVD has only five track listings, and three of them are listed as French titles, and two listed as English. When I slip in the second DVD, again, there are only five track titles, but each of them are listed as French. I have confirmed the one with all the tracks listed as French are indeed the French version of the movie, but the first one, even though it's listed as French, turned out to be the English version, with Morgan Freeman narrating the movie, as usual. Suffice it to say, I am hoping that this is not the case with all of the DVD's one buys. Either way, the program usually does a good job of checking which are the main movie titles, and which are not, and so, if you're just looking to rip the movie proper, you shouldn't have to mess around with the track listings. I'll explain in a bit how you can make sure that the tracks selected are the right ones. If you wish to rip more than just the movie, such as DVD extras and the like, you should arrow down the list of tracks, find out which are checked and which are not. Obviously, the ones that are not checked you would use the spacebar to check, and if you're really attentive, you can listen for the length of the track, and decipher which are the main title sequences and which are not. I should note that the main title sequences I'm referring to are the beginning menu audio, as it will rip that also, and those usually last only a few seconds or so, or the THX Dolby Surround Sound logo and sound. You know the one. It starts off low, then crescendos up to a loud base climax. This is what I'm talking about, as this is not part of the movie soundtrack the program rips, and only rips it if selected. To make it easy, so you don't have to listen to the large amount of information Jaws reads you for each track, the checked tracks are usually preceded by a graphic number 900 or 800 and something. The titles that are not checked will have a graphic numbered in the 400's or so. Arrow down the track list and press the spacebar when ever you encounter this graphic number beside each of the tracks that are not checked for ripping. Once all the tracks are selected, you can tab on through the program, and this is where you can check what you've selected for ripping. The next five tabs will land you on a group of buttons that will be essential if you don't trust what you've just selected. These buttons are Stop, Pause, Play, Last Chapter and Next Chapter. These buttons will stop the playback, pause the playback, play the playback, go back a chapter in the playback, and skip forward a chapter in the playback, respectively. You can use your spacebar to activate these buttons, however, you will not be able to use the keystrokes that Jaws reads out as being associated with these functions. I don't know why that is, so if anyone wants to develop scripts for this program, be my guest. I should warn you that some of the play back may be loud, and so you should be familiar with how many tabs and shift+tabs will take you to the buttons you will want to use, such as two tabs from the play button will take you to the next chapter button, and two shift+tabs from the play button will take you to the stop button. This is important as you may not be able to hear Jaws in the background once the movie starts playing. I should also note that many people use this program as a method of playing their DVD's, as opposed to using Power DVD, Windows Media Player, or some other program that isn't as accessible. Now, once you've confirmed that your tracks are the ones you want to rip, tab on down to the next button, and advance a screen to the next screen, where you'll be able to select which format you wish to rip the tracks into. Unfortunately, Jaws has a problem with focus within the program, so you'll mostly likely not hear Jaws move anywhere, and this is correct, as you have not moved anywhere, and stayed on the next button, do not press the spacebar, or you'll skip this step altogether. At this point, you'll want to tab to the combo box which allows you to choose the format to convert the audio to. There are 6 choices: OGG; MP3; WAV Uncompressed; FLAK Free Lossless; Direct Stream; CD Image and Queue Sheet. I don't know what the last two are for, but judging by the names, I would imagine that the Direct Stream will broadcast to the net via a stream, and the last one, CD Image will rip the audio track as a DVD /CD image that you can burn onto a CD or DVD. In any case, the first four options are self-explanatory. Myself, I always choose MP3, as this is what most players will play, although there are a great many players playing, both MP3 and OGG format. I should also point out that WAV and FLAK will produce the largest file sizes, so if you have a limited amount of disk space, do not use these two file types. Moving on... The next combo box in the tabbing order lands you on the Sample rate selection. The choices are: 11025 Hz; 22050 Hz; 32000 Hz; 44100 Hz; 4800 Hz; I use 44100 Hz and leave it at that. whenever you open the program, the default will be 48000 Hz, so check this setting properly before you continue. Another tab will take you to the next combo box that lets you specify the preset bit rate. The choices in this combo box are: Custom Settings; Medium; Medium Fast; Standard; Standard Fast; Extreme; Extreme Fast; Insane; Don't look at me, I didn't come up with these setting names. Smile. I don't know exactly what each bit rate is for each setting, but for me that doesn't really matter, as I select custom settings and select my own bit rate. We now come to the fourth combo box on this page, which is the channel selection. In this combo box, you have the choice of Mono, Stereo and Joint Stereo. You would select the desired one. I always leave mine set to stereo, no matter what the movie, as you can never be too sure which movies have had the audio tracks redone on them. Tabbing again will take you to the algorithm combo box, where you will select how fast or slow the program rips the DVD you want, and how much attention the program gives a certain sector it's examining. The settings here are: Q0: Slowest Best; Q2: Recommended; Q5: Good Speed, Reasonable Quality; Q7: Very Fast, Ok Quality; Q9: Poor Quality; I will always set mine to Q2, unless I have a problem with the disc being scratched or dirty, in which case, I'll arrow up to Q0, which will take the longest to rip, but well worth the efforts in that situation. If you tab from here, you'll land on three checkboxes. This is where you check if you want the program to rip the DVD at a constant, variable or average bit rate. If you are not knowledgeable or comfortable with this setting, then just leave the checkboxes unchecked, and rip it at the desired bit rate you specified above. Keep in mind that if you select one of the options listed above, it will change the bit rate you've selected above, so don't be surprised when you see that it's a lot heavier and bulkier than you thought. Now, tab on down to the next button, and press the spacebar to advance to the next screen, where you'll select where to rip the file to, and what the program should do in case of multiple chapters. On this next screen, there are some checkboxes you'll want to check or uncheck, depending on your preference. First, you will want to tab over to the first combo box, where you can select the location of where to rip the audio from the DVD. There are a few automatic selections, but if you wish to select somewhere else than where the program is specifying, tab once to the browse button, and press the spacebar. In the resulting dialog box, tab over to the tree view, and arrow up or down to the folder you wish to rip the audio into. If the folder you want doesn't appear, or is not created as of yet, tab over to the button titled, "Make New Folder Button", and press the spacebar. The folder will be created within the highlighted folder you have on the tree view, and, by default, the program calls it New Folder. Unfortunately, the program does not give you the opportunity to rename the folder, so that will have to be done once the audio has been ripped. Once you've selected or created the new folder, tab to the ok button, and press the spacebar, which will take you back to the browse button you just left. At this point, you will want to tab over to the checkboxes, and from here, these options will heavily depend on what you're ripping and how you want it to be ripped. The tab order is as follows, with a bit of an explanation of what each does, but keep in mind, I will not go into too much detail for the sake of space constraints. Save Each Chapter into Separate Files: This will rip the DVD into separate chapters, and, depending on the length of the DVD and it's authoring, the files may number in the single digits, or, as many as a couple of hundreds. I once ripped a DVD, and the total number of chapter files the program created went as high as 347. I was just lucky that I had GoldWave to merge the files together. I should also note that the chapters won't just be for the movie, it will include the various chapters for any extras that might be on the DVD, and I think that is why there are so many. In essence, if you want the movie ripped into separate chapters, make sure the checkbox is checked. If you want the entire movie in one file, then make sure the checkbox is unchecked. A quick note on ripping DVD's containing television shows, or more than one movie in them. Whether you check the box or uncheck it, the individual episodes or movies will be ripped separately, it will just depend on if you want to edit out some parts of the movie or television show or not, or, if you want more control on how much of the movie or television show is merged. Having said that, I should note that you may find, especially on some DVD's with seasons of a particular television show, that you will end up ripping all the television shows separately, in addition to one long one totalling over one and a half hours. This is not a mistake, or is it a fault with the program or DVD. On most DVD's containing seasons, you have the option, or, at least, sighted folks have the option of watching the shows individually, or, what they call, play all, where all the episodes are played back to back, without interruption. This is a separate track, and the program will recognize it as such, and rip it accordingly. You may choose to keep this track, or dump it altogether, if you've found that all the episodes have been ripped successfully. Moving on... Overwrite files with the same name: I think this is self explanatory, however, I will caution you here. Once you have successfully ripped a DVD, you should, either move it from the folder it was just ripped into, or rename it, it's up to you, but if you're planning on ripping another DVD title after the one you've just done, the program will want to name the various tracks it creates as Title 1, Title 2, Title 3, and so on. It does not change from one DVD to the next, so if you rip another title subsequent to the first, you will essentially be writing over the previous movie, unless you leave this box unchecked. I honestly don't know what the program does when confronted with the unchecked option here, as I have mine always set to write over the same files, as you never know when a rip will be unsuccessful, in which case, I'll want the program to overwrite the bad rip. If anyone would like to let me know what happens when this box is unchecked, write to me at: victor.gouv...@rogers.com and I will append this tutorial at this point. Create M3U Playlist: This will create a playlist you can use, should you want to listen to the audio tracks you've just ripped with a compatible player. This will also come in handy when placing the ripped tracks onto an MP3 player, as most MP3 players will create it's own playlist, or, you can include it in the other playlist that the player will create. I won't go into the various MP3 players and what they do, so you'll have to read the documentation that came with your player, or experiment and see what it does. Enable Normalization, Change Max Level to: This will make a constant decibel level file, which comes in handy when you have Variable bit rate checked in the previous screen. Some features have the sound going right out the roof when a large boom happens, or when music is played that dramatically enhances the scene. Some people will find this annoying, particularly when one has a descriptive track that gets drowned out by these highs in the feature. You can leave the checkbox unchecked, in which case, the program will use the variable, constant or average bit rate settings that you set in the previous screen to handle it, or, you can check it, and the program will keep the entire audio track the same volume throughout. If you are going to check the box, tab once to the slider just below it, and arrow up, down, left or right to the desired setting. You can also press the page up and page down keys to lower and raise the slider by 20 increments, respectively, or use the home and end keys to go to the upper most or lower most range in the slider. Enable ID3 Tag: This will allow you to place tags within the file it will create. The tags you'll be able to include in the file are: Artist; Album; Year; These edit boxes will appear once you check the box to enable them. if you do not check the box, the edit boxes will not appear. Please note, you may find a numbered graphic within the edit box of the particular tag edit box. Pay no attention to it, and just type what you want in the box, as the graphic will disappear once you do. This pretty much does it for this screen, so tab to the next button, and press the spacebar, where you'll be taken to the last screen in the process. In this last screen, there are only two items to be considered, how much computer resources the program should devote to the ripping of the DVD, and what the program should do after it's done the ripping. So you've just tabbed to the next button in the previous screen, and activated it. As the program has been doing from the beginning, you are still on the next button, so tab over to the slider that Jaws labels as thread priority, although it will not say that when you land on it, these words will be spoken by Jaws once you leave the last screen and enter this one. The thread priority is what the program terms for the resources the program will be using while ripping the DVD. Some programs, like Norton Anti-Virus or GoldWave, devote the most number of resources, like memory usage and processor usage to a particular task. Thankfully, in GoldWave, and this program, you have the ability to set how much resources the program should use. Norton does not allow you to do this. This feature comes in handy if you find that your computer is lagging quite a bit when ripping the DVD, and you wish to read mail, play a game of Solitaire, or just compose a letter with Microsoft Word. Raising the bar to 100% will let the program use all of the resources it has at it's disposal, and lowering the bar to 0% will allocate no resources to the task. Obviously, one would not want to select this percentage, so be careful. This feature is also a trial and error feature, where each individual person will want to check how well their computer runs when the program is ripping in the background. Again, if you find the computer to be lagging more than you would like it too, or you've got that long report to hand in on Monday Morning, then you can use the previous instructions on sliders I gave in the last screen to raise and lower the bar to your preferences, and again, your preferences will be individual, so do not go by what everyone else tells you. Myself, I have the bar at the very top as it does not take up a great deal of resources when I do rip a DVD, and this could be because I've got ample resources with which the program can use, or it could be that the program doesn't need a lot of resources to run, in any case, try out the 100% setting, and check your computer performance. If you're not planning on doing anything while the computer is ripping the DVD, leave it at 100%, as it won't hurt anything, and you'll get faster results for ripping. Tabbing on past the slider, you'll land on a combo box which lets you specify what the program should do once it's completed the ripping of the DVD. The selections are as follows: Do Nothing; Close DVD Audio Extractor; Log Me Off; Shut Down the Computer; Suspend the Computer; Again, these are up to your preferences, and so you will need to set it at your desired settings. I don't think I need to tell you that if you're planning on ripping multiple DVD's, you will want the program to do nothing, or, if you're only doing one DVD, you can set the program to shut off, or, indeed, shut down the computer completely. Once this setting is done, tab over to the Start button within the program, not the Windows start button, and press the spacebar to start the ripping. If you find that you've set something that you wish you could change, or you wish to go back and change the bit rate or file type you want the file ripped as, the back button is available at every screen, and it will allow you to go back to each screen and change the appropriate setting you want changed. So, now you've finished ripping the DVD, and the tracks are listed as Title 1, 2, 3, etcetera in the folder you asked the program to rip the tracks to. If you are going to rip another DVD, you should, as I mentioned above, change the file names, or move the files to another location if you're going to rip the second DVD to the same folder. DVD Audio Extractor will not automatically go out onto the internet to retrieve track listings or episode titles for you, although that may change with future releases of the program, so you will have to change and name the episodes yourself when the DVD ripping is complete. as an example, I often get large numbers of DVD titles that I rip all at once while I'm reading e-mail, and I have all my ripped DVD's to go into one folder I call ripped DVD's, so when the DVD is finished ripping, I will go to the ripped DVD's folder, highlight the newly created Title, and rename it to what it's supposed to be. Make sure you keep the file's extension, or what ever player you play the file in will get confused or something. Now I'm ready to rip another DVD, or close the program. If I'm ripping another DVD, I will tab to the restart button, and the program will take me to the first screen to begin the process anew. If I'm done ripping for the day, I will tab to the Exit button, and activate it to close the program, or have the program do it automatically for you by changing the appropriate item in the combo box above. This is the end of the tutorial, so if anyone has any further questions, feel free to ask, and I'll endeavour to help where necessary. I should also note that if I have made an error in my explanation of the program, or the explanation of the features and bit rates, file types or anything else, let me know, and I'll revise this writing. Hope This helps you better understand the program that is DVD Audio Extractor. Victor Co-moderator Blind Movie Buffs List Guidedogs List For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
