Need help convert DTS audio sources to WAV for editing

[spicediver]

Can someone please take me through converting DTS and DTD HD sources to 5.1 channel wavs for editing? And split mono wavs too, but those can come later. For now, I just can't get any DTS conversions to work without errors.

Have tried the apps: Xmedia Recode, eacTo, and Foobar2000. Running on Windows 10.

All efforts produce incomplete WAV files that are cut off before the end of the movie. Xmedia Recode bizarrely produces audio track lengths of 2 hours and 4 minutes every time (and cuts off the rest). WTF?

Same results whether the source is compressed DTS or lossless DTS Master Audio.

Thanks.

PS: By the way, I'm attempting to convert large, complete DTS files - not small ones split by movie chapter, which I can convert to 5.1 wavs without problems.

 

[DigModiFicaTion]

Have you tried loading the file into audacity?

 

[spicediver]

Have you tried loading the file into audacity?

Thanks for the suggestion. Audacity is limited to mono /stereo mixdown exports. I want to export a 5.1 wav.

 

[Gieferg]

I still use ancient tool called BeLight for creating separate mono Wavs from AC3 5.1 audio and/or combining them back into it.
For converting DTS-HD/DTS to AC3 (which can be put into Belight) I usually put the whole movie into DVDFab set video output to be something very low bitrate/resolution to get output file fast and set audio output to AC3.

I've never done 5.1 Wavs though.

All efforts produce incomplete WAV files that are cut off before the end of the movie. Xmedia Recode bizarrely produces audio track lengths of 2 hours and 4 minutes every time (and cuts off the rest). WTF?

Wav files have 4GB file size limit, which may be problematic.

 

[spicediver]

Wav files have 4GB file size limit, which may be problematic.

Bingo! That's it.

Ah well, it's back to split files then. No big deal. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[DigModiFicaTion]

Wav files have 4GB file size limit, which may be problematic.

Ah well, it's back to split files then. No big deal. Thanks for clarifying.

I'm interpreting split to mean that you don't have a full length track. If that is the case then, I never have to split my files when they are multiple single outputs. They simply separate the 5.1 mix into separate channels so I can easily edit each channel.

Thanks for the suggestion. Audacity is limited to mono /stereo mixdown exports. I want to export a 5.1 wav.

You are only limited to mono/stereo if you are exporting the files as a single output. To get the surround files you have to create multiple single outputs. I'd recommend wav files. I never have a problem doing this. You then drop each channel into your NLE, group/link them together and you have your 5.1 mix. Here are the steps:

1. Drop your movie file into audacity (I drop my MKV from makemkv)
2. Select which audio mix you want to open (I select the dts 6 channel mix)
3. File>Export Multiple (ctl+shift+l)>Forma "WAV (Microsoft)"
4. Drop wav files into NLE and map each audio track to their corresponding surround area (track 1 = FL, track 2 = FR, track 3 = Center, track 4 = LFE, track 5 = RL, track 6 = RR)
5. Group/Link with video when synced correctly and begin editing

Dropping MKV into audacity and selecting dts

Exported multiple wav files (each channel separate)

Resulting files

 

[futon88]

"1. Drop your movie file into audacity (I drop my MKV from makemkv)"

Woah. I've been passing my .m2ts through ffmpeg command line to extract each channel. You're tellin' me I could have just opened the file direct with Audacity? I'll try this next time...

 

[korach1921]

I prefer using ffmpeg for this. If you have the space available for converting your video to DNxHR, I would recommend using this single command

ffmpeg -i "INPUT.mkv" -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_hq -pix_fmt yuv422p -c:a pcm_s24le -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a:0 "OUTPUT.mxf"

It will give you a file that'll be ~150-200gb for an average length film, and it will have a visually lossless video and a lossless PCM 5.1 file -- which your NLE will convert into 6 individual mono files -- that will be perfectly synced.

If you don't have the space for a DNxHR, then I would just do this command in ffmpeg to get you your six individual mono files

ffmpeg -i “INPUT.mkv” -acodec pcm_s24le -filter_complex "channelsplit=channel_layout=5.1[FL][FR][FC][LFE][BL][BR]" -acodec pcm_s24le -map "[FL]" front_left.wav -acodec pcm_s24le -map "[FR]" front_right.wav -acodec pcm_s24le -map "[FC]" front_center.wav -acodec pcm_s24le -map "[LFE]" lfe.wav -acodec pcm_s24le -map "[BL]" back_left.wav -acodec pcm_s24le -map "[BR]" back_right.wav

 

[hbenthow]

If you don't have the space for a DNxHR, then I would just do this command in ffmpeg to get you your six individual mono files

With the help of ChatGPT, I was able to make some variants of that code that can be used in .bat files.

In order to use such .bat files, all you have to do is 1: create a new folder, 2: place the .bat file, ffmpeg.exe, and the video file featuring the audio stream that you want to split into it together, and 3: double-click the .bat file and let ffmpeg do its job.

In order to create the .bat files, all you have to do is paste one of the following instances of code into a text editor like Notepad and save it as a file with the .bat file extension. You can make a file for each one and keep them all in the same folder together, and just double-click the one you need at any given time.

Here's the .bat code to split 5.1 audio from a .mkv file into 6 mono .wav tracks:

@echo off
for /r %%z in (*.mkv) do (
ffmpeg -i "%%z" -acodec pcm_s24le -filter_complex "channelsplit=channel_layout=5.1[FL][FR][FC][LFE][BL][BR]" -map "[FL]" "%%~nz_front_left.wav" -map "[FR]" "%%~nz_front_right.wav" -map "[FC]" "%%~nz_front_center.wav" -map "[LFE]" "%%~nz_lfe.wav" -map "[BL]" "%%~nz_back_left.wav" -map "[BR]" "%%~nz_back_right.wav"
)

If you are using a source file with a different file extension (such as .mp4 or .m2ts), just edit the code to remove ".mkv" and replace it with your file extension of choice.

Here's the code to split 7.1 tracks:

@echo off
for /r %%z in (*.mkv) do (
ffmpeg -i "%%z" -acodec pcm_s24le -filter_complex "channelsplit=channel_layout=7.1[FL][FR][FC][LFE][BL][BR][SL][SR]" -map "[FL]" "%%~nz_front_left.wav" -map "[FR]" "%%~nz_front_right.wav" -map "[FC]" "%%~nz_front_center.wav" -map "[LFE]" "%%~nz_lfe.wav" -map "[BL]" "%%~nz_back_left.wav" -map "[BR]" "%%~nz_back_right.wav" -map "[SL]" "%%~nz_side_left.wav" -map "[SR]" "%%~nz_side_right.wav"
)

And stereo:

@echo off
for /r %%z in (*.mkv) do (
ffmpeg -i "%%z" -acodec pcm_s24le -filter_complex "channelsplit=channel_layout=stereo[FL][FR]" -map "[FL]" "%%~nz_left.wav" -map "[FR]" "%%~nz_right.wav"
)

 

[hbenthow]

By the way, if you have a video file with multiple audio streams (multiple languages, commentaries, etc), you can use tsMuxeR to mux just the one audio stream you need and nothing else to a .m2ts file, then run one of the .bat files above on it (with ".mkv" changed to ".m2ts") in order to split it into however many mono tracks it is comprised of.

 

[krausfadr]

Just wait until ChatGPT is doing the fanedits.