Is there any way to save the audio tracks from my DVDs?

[Deirdre]

Or are they protected against this kind of thing? I'm trying to see how much I can rely on solely audio entertainment; I suppose the same end can be accomplished by turning off my computer screen while playing a movie, but I figured I'd at least ask about this first.

Thanks, all.

[Daniel]

DVDs are encrypted, so you'd need to break the encryption first which (strictly speaking) is illegal. But yeah, it's possible. You'll need some sort of software though, i.e. it's not as simple as just dragging the audio files to your hard drive like you'd do with an audio CD. As for which software you'd need, I really don't know (I don't do this sort of thing very often).

An alternative method (which I've used before) is to get a double-male audio cord thing (sorry, no idea what it's called) and plug one end into your DVD player's headphone jack and the other into your computer's microphone jack. Then then hit play on the DVD player, and go into Audacity on your computer and make sure the input settings are good, and then start the movie. Then when the movie is over you can hit stop in Audacity and crop out what you want, and export it as an mp3 or a wav or whatever. The downside to doing it this way is it must be done in real time, i.e. it takes 2 hours to record audio from a 2-hour movie, etc. And the resulting sound quality is not perfect (though it is pretty good).

[Deirdre]

An alternative method (which I've used before) is to get a double-male audio cord thing (sorry, no idea what it's called) and plug one end into your DVD player's headphone jack and the other into your computer's microphone jack. Then then hit play on the DVD player, and go into Audacity on your computer and make sure the input settings are good, and then start the movie. Then when the movie is over you can hit stop in Audacity and crop out what you want, and export it as an mp3 or a wav or whatever. The downside to doing it this way is it must be done in real time, i.e. it takes 2 hours to record audio from a 2-hour movie, etc. And the resulting sound quality is not perfect (though it is pretty good).

Can I do this if I'm playing the movie via my computer's DVD drive? I don't use a dedicated DVD player anymore.

[tommy2h]

Can I ask what you want to listen to specifically? The whole movie or just songs from the movie?


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[Deirdre]

Can I ask what you want to listen to specifically? The whole movie or just songs from the movie?

The whole movie. I like to "go to the movies in my head," as I heard one lit professor phrase it. 

[Daniel]

An alternative method (which I've used before) is to get a double-male audio cord thing (sorry, no idea what it's called) and plug one end into your DVD player's headphone jack and the other into your computer's microphone jack. Then then hit play on the DVD player, and go into Audacity on your computer and make sure the input settings are good, and then start the movie. Then when the movie is over you can hit stop in Audacity and crop out what you want, and export it as an mp3 or a wav or whatever. The downside to doing it this way is it must be done in real time, i.e. it takes 2 hours to record audio from a 2-hour movie, etc. And the resulting sound quality is not perfect (though it is pretty good).

Can I do this if I'm playing the movie via my computer's DVD drive? I don't use a dedicated DVD player anymore.

Probably. (I just tried it through my computer's built-in DVD player and it works for me.) But you will want to make sure your computer doesn't play any other sounds while you're doing this (because what you're basically doing is making a recording of everything that would normally be coming out of your computer's speakers. Everything, including alert sounds, notifications, background music, etc.)

[Gardener]

You could do so, I think, if you went headphone out > audio in and hit play/record on the respective programs.

In this way you'd be using an output device to the input device; shouldn't matter that they are on the same machine so to speak.