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I'm interested in creating audio-only DVDs, in order to record longer programs than CDs can accommodate - not DVD-Audio (which my DVD player can't recognize) but just decent-quality audio in regular DVD-Video format. I've seen some apps that claim to convert WAV files to DVD-Video, but they're unreliable and designed for use with WinXP and older systems (I'm running WIN7). My Nero app doesn't do it, and MediaCoder only transcodes from audio to audio and video to video. Anybody have a way to store longer programs in a portable format? What do you do with a whole concert or opera without juggling 80-minute CDs? Thanks for your help!

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7 hours ago, fgranlund said:

That's the bottleneck. My gear is pre-HDMI (except for the TV), so it's all component video/audio on RCA connectors. Seems like it should be easier to make music DVDs than get new sound cards, amplifiers, etc.

Not to me. 😉 

Update the AVR to a relatively newer one once instead of the tedious and repetitive disc burning process.

Kal Rubinson

Senior Contributing Editor, Stereophile

 

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VLC Media Player (an excellent open source program you can download from that link) contains a very versatile convertor that will let you make video files from audio (and vice versa, which is how I use it).  To be sure it'll do what you want, I just converted a wav to an mp4 file and it plays perfectly as a video.  You hear your soundtrack but there's no visual image.  Burn your mp4s to a DVD and you'll have what you want, if I understand you correctly.

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Thanks, bluesman! Just what I've been hunting for. If only they had called it "VLC Media Player and Transcoder" it might have showed up in my searches. Now the problem is that Nero is claiming it's "unable to insert" any of the new MP4s to author the DVD.

 

Kal, you may be right about this being an endless hassle. But it keeps me busy while stuck at home. . .

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On 12/18/2020 at 1:35 PM, fgranlund said:

I'm interested in creating audio-only DVDs, in order to record longer programs than CDs can accommodate - not DVD-Audio (which my DVD player can't recognize) but just decent-quality audio in regular DVD-Video format. I've seen some apps that claim to convert WAV files to DVD-Video, but they're unreliable and designed for use with WinXP and older systems (I'm running WIN7). My Nero app doesn't do it, and MediaCoder only transcodes from audio to audio and video to video. Anybody have a way to store longer programs in a portable format? What do you do with a whole concert or opera without juggling 80-minute CDs? Thanks for your help!

Ashampoo Burning Studio Free - Free CD & DVD Burning Software You will need to register though.

I use their paid version 22 for this purpose which of course can do much more.

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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14 hours ago, sandyk said:

Ashampoo Burning Studio Free - Free CD & DVD Burning Software You will need to register though.

I use their paid version 22 for this purpose which of course can do much more.

Ashampoo is a great burner, as is DVDStyler (which only makes video DVDs, but that’s what’s needed here).  I haven’t used DVDFlick, but it has good reviews.
 

I do hate the unsolicited emails that come with registering for freeware using an email address.  But I get so much junk that blocking and deleting another few is a small price to pay.  
 

I’d rather pay a reasonable price for software like this and not have to deal with a storm of communications.  Sadly, the email just keeps coming whether you buy most paid versions or use the free ones.

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11 minutes ago, bluesman said:

Ashampoo is a great burner, as is DVDStyler (which only makes video DVDs, but that’s what’s needed here).  I haven’t used DVDFlick, but it has good reviews.
 

I do hate the unsolicited emails that come with registering for freeware using an email address.  But I get so much junk that blocking and deleting another few is a small price to pay.  
 

I’d rather pay a reasonable price for software like this and not have to deal with a storm of communications.  Sadly, the email just keeps coming whether you buy most paid versions or use the free ones.

Ashampoo will let you get off their mailing list after you register.

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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17 hours ago, fgranlund said:

If only they had called it "VLC Media Player and Transcoder" it might have showed up in my searches.

I’m always amazed at the “hidden” features in so much software.  Be sure to open and read every menu when you first use a program of any kind - you’ll be shocked (most often pleasantly) at what you didn’t know was there.  And right click every link, menu item, and icon to see if new options pop up.  

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1 minute ago, firedog said:

Ashampoo will let you get off their mailing list after you register.

I’d guess that 90+% of “unsubscribe” links and buttons accomplish nothing.  Most just don’t stop once they start, even if the reason you check for canceling is that you never asked for email or no longer want to receive it.
 

I’ve been trying to get off the New York Times’ Cooking app list since they started charging an extra fee on top of the digital subscription cost (which has to be a few years now).  I’ve clicked, updated, called and emailed many times to no avail.  And every time I get suckered into clicking a link to a recipe in the Times itself, I get a solicitation to buy the app.......but the recipe won’t appear unless I pay up.

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46 minutes ago, bluesman said:

I’d guess that 90+% of “unsubscribe” links and buttons accomplish nothing.  Most just don’t stop once they start, even if the reason you check for canceling is that you never asked for email or no longer want to receive it.
 

I’ve been trying to get off the New York Times’ Cooking app list since they started charging an extra fee on top of the digital subscription cost (which has to be a few years now).  I’ve clicked, updated, called and emailed many times to no avail.  And every time I get suckered into clicking a link to a recipe in the Times itself, I get a solicitation to buy the app.......but the recipe won’t appear unless I pay up.

That's not true today for reputable companies IME. I've gotten off lots of lists by unsubscribing. 

 

I also don't get NYT cooking mails anymore after I, like you, changed my subscription.  I suggest you call their subscription people and tell them you'll cancel you present subscription  unless they remove you from that list. That will probably do the trick. It works for me every time they try to raise the subscription price on me. 

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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Thanks, guys! This has been very helpful, and I now have more resources to use. HOWEVER. . .

 

I now have two roadblocks instead of one. The "Ashampoo Burning Studio FREE," once downloaded and installed, refuses to run, claiming that I'm offline. I've added the app to the Windows Firewall permissions list, and Avira and Malwarebytes aren't set to block any resident apps, so I can't tell what's holding things up. I'm willing to register, as SandyK suggests, but haven't been asked to and don't see anywhere on the website to do that. I've sent them a message, but haven't yet seen a response. Anyone else encountered this particular situation?

 

Meanwhile, after converting my WAV files to MP4 files with the amazing VLC Media Player (and transcoder), I find that neither Nero nor DVDStyler falls for the switch, still seeing them as audio files and requesting I add video files to the disc. Maybe the Ashampoo app will solve that problem once I get it running - but, again, any thoughts or suggestions will be very welcome. Thanks for all your help!

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3 hours ago, bluesman said:

Ashampoo is a great burner, as is DVDStyler (which only makes video DVDs, but that’s what’s needed here).  I haven’t used DVDFlick, but it has good reviews.
 

I do hate the unsolicited emails that come with registering for freeware using an email address.  But I get so much junk that blocking and deleting another few is a small price to pay.  
 

I’d rather pay a reasonable price for software like this and not have to deal with a storm of communications.  Sadly, the email just keeps coming whether you buy most paid versions or use the free ones.

 Unfortunately, that's all too true, with a current onslaught of S/W  promotion emails from Ashampoo, however, if I rejected them I wouldn't have known that their new burner version (22) can even use H265  video encoding  for even smaller size high quality videos. .

 Now, how to play them ?

I have been using their previous version to archive many of my favourite music albums on BR discs, which sound even better than the original CD in many cases , due to the precision needed with the BR writer's Optical Block, which is powered via a very low noise(<4uV) and highly stable +12V and +5V supply in my PC.

 

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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1 hour ago, fgranlund said:

after converting my WAV files to MP4 files with the amazing VLC Media Player (and transcoder), I find that neither Nero nor DVDStyler falls for the switch, still seeing them as audio files and requesting I add video files to the disc.

When you select your output format in the convertor window, you'll notice that the original file type suffix remains in the file name (see below).  You have to delete the original file type from the file name or the converted file will be named xxxx.wav.mp4 and will be seen as a wav in your computer.  Hopefully, this is what's causing your problem.  If it is, go into your folder and delete the original file type (.wav, .flac etc) from the filenames of the converted files (NOT the originals) and you should be able to burn them to DVD.

 

image.png.600e1f4bdca6d698c50488000d355a49.png

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1 hour ago, bluesman said:

When you select your output format in the convertor window, you'll notice that the original file type suffix remains in the file name (see below).  You have to delete the original file type from the file name or the converted file will be named xxxx.wav.mp4 and will be seen as a wav in your computer.  Hopefully, this is what's causing your problem.  If it is, go into your folder and delete the original file type (.wav, .flac etc) from the filenames of the converted files (NOT the originals) and you should be able to burn them to DVD.

 

image.png.600e1f4bdca6d698c50488000d355a49.png

There is (at least) one other possibility in addition to the above - check both and you'll probably find the key(s) to success.  When you click "convert" and the dialogue box opens to choose the format to which you're converting, select the video format you want.  But before you start the conversion process, click on the wrench icon to open the "encapsulation and codec" selection window.  Click the audio codec tab.  If the audio codec is still set to the original file format (or any other except what you want), change it to the audio codec you want to be used in your video's soundtrack.  Then when you click "convert", you'll get a video file that should burn to a DVD.

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It's all quite fascinating, with so many elements to keep in line. First of all, the spurious WAV extension doesn't appear in the output file names, which are simply designated MP4. But the encapsulation dialog shows defaults that don't seem to match. For example, if the "container" is "Video H.264 + MP3 (MP4)," the default audio codec is "MPEG Audio" with a bitrate of 128K/sec (I thought 96K was standard) and a sampling rate of 44.1KHz (CD) rather than 48KHz (DVD). I'm tempted (but not confident enough) to switch to AC-3 (Dolby digital), which sounds best on my commercial DVDs, and 48KHz sampling, but I don't want to confuse the system even more. What settings do you find most reliable?

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2 hours ago, fgranlund said:

It's all quite fascinating, with so many elements to keep in line. First of all, the spurious WAV extension doesn't appear in the output file names, which are simply designated MP4. But the encapsulation dialog shows defaults that don't seem to match. For example, if the "container" is "Video H.264 + MP3 (MP4)," the default audio codec is "MPEG Audio" with a bitrate of 128K/sec (I thought 96K was standard) and a sampling rate of 44.1KHz (CD) rather than 48KHz (DVD). I'm tempted (but not confident enough) to switch to AC-3 (Dolby digital), which sounds best on my commercial DVDs, and 48KHz sampling, but I don't want to confuse the system even more. What settings do you find most reliable?

I've never needed to make DVDs for audio, so I'm not a good one to ask.  In fact, I suspect no one on AS has done this.  The simple truth is that you can't hurt anything by trying them all and there's no cost.  I'd pick one file and start at the top of the audio codec list.  Work your way down it one at a time, attempting to burn each one until you find one or more that work for you.  You've nothing to lose but a little time.

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On 12/17/2020 at 9:35 PM, fgranlund said:

I'm interested in creating audio-only DVDs, in order to record longer programs than CDs can accommodate - not DVD-Audio (which my DVD player can't recognize) but just decent-quality audio in regular DVD-Video format. I've seen some apps that claim to convert WAV files to DVD-Video, but they're unreliable and designed for use with WinXP and older systems (I'm running WIN7). My Nero app doesn't do it, and MediaCoder only transcodes from audio to audio and video to video. Anybody have a way to store longer programs in a portable format? What do you do with a whole concert or opera without juggling 80-minute CDs? Thanks for your help!

I find your request very unclear. Is it correct  to assume that you want to rip the audio from DVD music videos to a compressed format so that size will

allow you to store on 1 DVD? I can do that with WIN DVD Ripper Platinum, a lossy MP3 rip was about 116 MB for 1 hours music. A DTS rip required me to choose

between surround vs stereo LPCM, I chose stereo and  for the same 1 hour program file size was 58 MB with AC3 extension

 

Believe either format should work for you stored on DVD, played back by computer/laptop. A standalone blue ray/DVD player is a question mark, you would have

to read its manual for what the firmware supports on DVD media.

Regards,

Dave

 

Audio system

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Actually, just the opposite is what I'm trying to do. I have an assortment of audio files (WAV, FLAC, some MP3s) that I would like to convert to DVD-Video, in order to accommodate longer programs than will fit on CDs (entire concerts, operas, etc.). Playing them back via computer is tedious for a number of reasons, and the idea is to get them into my surround-sound music system via my DVD player. There are a number of now-obsolete applications (for WIN-XP and earlier systems) that make that conversion, but not reliably (they don't segue consecutive tracks well, or insert extraneous noises between them, etc.). The trans-coding apps I've tried will turn WAVs into MP4s, but the DVD authoring apps (Nero, DVDStyler) still see them as audio files and demand a video track to go along with them. I've tried adding a slide show, but that takes up more room on the DVD and defeats the purpose (somewhat). So I'm still looking for ideas, or the magic app that can do the trick. Thanks for your suggestions!

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