Newby here, I am a church secretary that needs to convert services recorded onto dvd into mp3 or aiff format for podcasting. I need to be able to set start times to record just the sermon. Anyone care to give me a step-by-step that I can print off and follow? Any help is appreciated.
Is that a normal video DVD that someone has created on a computer from a camcorder recording?
Well, the service is recorded with a camcorder. I believe the dvd is burnt on a mixer,but we have all sorts of equipment in the booth, so I really don’t know how to answer your question. The file on the dvd is a .vob (?) file. It does not have the asterick before the dot. Did this answer your question?
That’s what I was after 
If you have not already installed LAME and FFMpeg, follow these instructions to do so:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#lame
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#ffdown
LAME is required for exporting MP3 files.
FFMpeg will hopefully allow you import the audio portion of the VOB file.
You should now be set up to do the job.
- Reading directly from a DVD can be temperamental, so copy the VOB file to your computer hard drive.
- Open Audacity and from the File menu select “Import”.
- Navigate to where you saved the VOB file, select it and click OK to import it.
If it was a long recording it may take a while to import, but hopefully you will end up with an audio track with a wiggly blue waveform. - Optional but often recommended for Podcasts: From the “Tracks” menu select “Stereo Track to Mono”. (this option will be grayed out if the track is already mono)
- From the Effect menu, select “Normalize” and enter the following settings:
- Remove DC offset [Selected/Enabled]
- Normalize maximum amplitude [-2.0] dB
- Normalize stereo channels independently [Not selected/disabled]
- You now need to find the sermon. With a bit of practice you may be able to do this quite accurately by eye. The spacebar can be used to start and stop playback. Click on the waveform at the point that you want to start playing.
- You can zoom in and out to locate positions more accurately. http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/zooming.html
- You now need to “Select” each part that you don’t want, and delete it. See here for how to make a selection: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audacity_selection.html
- When some audio is selected, delete it by pressing the DEL key.
- When you have finished editing the track and have just the sermon that you want, it is time to “Export” it (create a new audio file).
- If you want a backup for possible editing in the future, export as a WAV file. This will be a “best quality” backup copy.
- For your podcast, export as an MP3 file.
- See here for a detailed description of exporting: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/file_export_dialog.html
There are many other things that can be done to enhance the quality of the podcast, such as reducing background hum and hiss, optimise the MP3 compression settings, and so on, but hopefully this will get you started and you can become an expert later
This tutorial is a bit more “advanced” than you really need, but you may find parts of it interesting and useful: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_mixing_a_narration_with_background_music.html
Thanks so much! 
Steve, not trying to be a smartarse but am interested in the process here; can I ask why you make no mention of sample rate conversion from the DVD where the audio is presumably @ 48khz?
Thanks.
On a “home made” DVD the sample rate may be 48 kHz, but could be almost anything.
For a new user there is already a lot of new stuff to get to grips with in the steps that I posted. As I wrote at the end of the post, “There are many other things that can be done to enhance the quality of the podcast”. MP3s from 48 kHz sample rate audio should still work OK. If the chosen MP3 settings do not support 48 kHz then the user is prompted with an offer to convert to a lower supported rate.
For small file size, reasonable quality speech recordings, converting to 22050 Hz mono prior to MP3 encoding, and then selecting a low bit rate can produce good results. Resampling before encoding will use Audacity’s high quality resampling library to apply the necessary anti-aliasing rather than relying on LAME to do it - but I suspect that this is too much information in one go for someone that has never done any of this stuff before.
Thanks for the clarification.
I was simply wondering whether sample rate conversion was somehow embedded in one of the other processes you mentioned, say like dither within export.
No problem. It was a reasonable question. There is a lot of active debate on the Internet about the best MP3 format options to use for PodCasts and I didn’t want to get into that in a “getting started” topic. The “preferred” format options often come down to what formats are supported by the Internet host - but that opens up a whole new area that is barely related to Audacity.
As a brief follow-up:
The sample rate of the exported audio is set by the “Project Rate” http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/selection_toolbar.html#rate though if the project rate is too high for the MP3 settings Audacity will automatically provide an option to convert to a lower rate.
All other MP3 settings are made in the Export dialogue screen: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/file_export_dialog.html
Hi Steve. In your instructions you say that importing audio directly from a DVD can sometimes be problematic. I do this but whilst the first .vob file imports ok, any second, or third and so on, file imported ends up with a few minutes of silence at the beginning. Is there a reason why Audacity does this or is it a quirk of the program?
Ok, having just experimented with your method, it appears that whilst there is no silence at the beginning of the first file, there is silence at the beginning of subsequent files whether they were imported from a copy or directly from the DVD. Obviously, I’m able to delete these silences and then cut and paste the file onto the end of the previous file and so on.
In addition to the question in my previous post, I’d like to know if there is an easier way of making several files into one longer file - the method I currently use seems convoluted. For example, I know that using the “Find Silence” option in the “Analyze” menu will produce a “silences” label below the waveform but how do I remove them without resorting to editing?
Also, and I’m aware that you may not have an answer for this, why should it be that the first .vob file doesn’t have silence at the beginning but the subsequent files do? If the audio on the DVD plays continuously, why do the individual files not show this?
…file imported ends up with a few minutes of silence at the beginning.
… why should it be that the first .vob file doesn’t have silence at the beginning but the subsequent files do? If the audio on the DVD plays continuously, why do the individual files not show this?
A few minutes is surprising… But they are not complete “files”, they are 1GB (or less) file fragments, so there is no proper header at the beginning of each fragment. The DVD player seamlessly joins the files and bascally treats them as one big file.
I’d like to know if there is an easier way of making several files into one longer file -
There are tools & methods of joining the VOBs. [u]This page[/u] suggests a couple of tools and tells you how to do it with the Windows command line. You might simply try Googling “Join VOB”. I use Corel Video Studio ($100 USD) to open/import the audio/video (from non-encrypted DVDs), and from there I can optionally create an audio-only file. I usually make a WAV file for editing.
I know that using the “Find Silence” option in the “Analyze” menu will produce a “silences” label below the waveform but how do I remove them without resorting to editing?
I can’t help you with that, but if I did it manually I’d be done by now. Im usually working with concert videos, so if I’m making individual tracks, I want to edit and fade-in/out the applause/crowd noise at the beginning/end of each song.
There’s always an easier way of doing things, isn’t there?
Anyway, I already have DVD Decrypter installed on my PC and it does exactly what I want, ie:
so I can use Audacity to split the audio as I want and not as it was originally as that’s always wrong.
Thanks for the help Doug, much appreciated.