Audacity Forum

Is it possible to use Audacity to record the audio from a DVD being played on my computer's internal DVD drive? (I have a lecture on DVD, and would like to capture the audio so I can listen to it on my mp3 player.)

I see that audacity can record from a microphone or from a line-in jack -- so I assume I could buy an adapter and connect my home entertainment center's DVD player to my computer.... But since my computer already has an internal DVD drive, I'd rather record from that, if possible.

Any guidance would be appreciated!

bump

I don't have a DVD drive, so I can't test this. But have you tried setting Audacity to record from Wave Out Mix? I'm just speculating that this will be the audio from your DVD.

SAJ,

Thanks for your suggestion. Where is that setting located?

Under "Audacity Preferences" (in Audio I/O) I have options for Recording device: "MME Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input" or "MME SoundMax HD Audio" -- but not "Wave Out Mix".

Any further guidance would be appreciated.

Joshua

What options do you see in the drop-down box in the upper right (microphone, line in, etc.)?

In the upper-right corner, I see just those two drop-down options: (1) Microphone and (2) Line-in.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, I tried both of these options, and neither allowed me to record the sound coming in through my internal DVD player. In the past, however, I've used them to record through a microphone, so I know they work in general. But how do I capture sound from the internal DVD drive...?

You gotta dig further into the Windows control panels. Windows traditionally has given you the ability to record "Mix Output" or "What You Hear." In either case, it routes the speaker feed back into Audacity. That process may have been abbreviated in Vista because it can cause troubles for casual users.

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

Koz