Ripping audio from Cinema DTS discs

[Banderson]

Hello,

This is my first post and I found this forum by accident. Having worked as a Projectionist/Technician for the last 30 years and now working with DCPs, I remember the early days of DTS, starting with the 4 channel version in our theatre with Jurassic Park and then the following year being pushed to the 6 channel when True Lies was released. I'm glad I found this forum since what many of you have been doing with restoring tracks is exactly what I've been trying to do for awhile now (along with experimenting with film scanning). 

I recently have been trying to work with Cinema DTS discs and getting the soundtrack off of the disc to sync up with a bluray or UHD video file. I know over at Film-Tech they have an extractor program which was mostly designed for compiling trailer disc files and creating a custom trailer disc for your preshow. Even with the advent of the DTS 6D, having the 3rd CD Rom was a great help when they started to encode for trailers in the late 90s, but you still had those problems where all those trailer tracks may not have been available on one disc, so it was a good program to have. I didn't need it by that time since we were using Dolby Digital. I've never used that program before and being a Mac OS user, most of these custom programs aren't available for MAC. 

I've tried to get a DTS CD to mount even as a data disc but only have been successful in getting the B disc to load where the A disc just ejects. The B disc looks to have reel files starting with reel 2, so I'm assuming the A disc has reel 1 and the attached trailer files. I was experimenting with the track that I did pull off the disc and I ended up with an .AUD file. I know there is a program called Foobar2000 that can read them, but again, only for Windows. 

Some of the new bluray and UDH mixes are aweful and I remember theatrical DTS releases sounding incredible! Even the first year 4 track mixes sound better than some of the newer near field mixes. 

Any suggestions on where to start to extract and convert the file is greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I'll keep on looking through the archive. 

Thanks

Bernie

[Bigrob]

You have definitely come to the right place

Welcome

[stwd4nder2]

Ripping CDTS discs is easy, just copy the AUD files, convert to wav with foobar APTX-100 plugin, then make the proper volume adjustments.
Check this thread for more in-depth info:
https://fanrestore.com/thread-3767.html

[Banderson]

It certainly seems like I found the right place. There's a couple things I can get involved with by looking at some post already.

What's the best way to rip the disc to get the AUD files? That's where I'm stuck. I guess on a Windows computer, it won't eject the disc if it doesn't know what file structure it is?

[stwd4nder2]

I don't use Windows, but it's just a normal CDROM. You should just be able to mount it and copy the files

[MurraysWay]

Hey, what's the best program to be using to sync these tracks? I have a few DTS disc rips that I would like to sync to blu-rays.

I'm also wondering if there's an exact amount of time I have to remove for the reel switch gaps, or if I just have to eyeball it? It seems it repeats a small section of the end of the last reel at the start of the next, so I'm also not sure which part to keep and which to remove. Is there a way to link all reels automatically? Dropping them into Audacity forces me to combine each track to each reel manually. Thanks

[stwd4nder2]

Reel gaps tend to vary between 4 and 8 seconds. I usually try and blend the end of one reel with the beginning of the next to make it seamless. It would be nice if there was a way to automate things but there can be quite a bit of manual work depending on the title. Also, you can configure foobar to export everything from AUD into 1 long wav file to save you some work.
Out of curiosity, what DTS discs do you have? Some of them might of been done already.

[MurraysWay]

Reel gaps tend to vary between 4 and 8 seconds. I usually try and blend the end of one reel with the beginning of the next to make it seamless. It would be nice if there was a way to automate things but there can be quite a bit of manual work depending on the title. Also, you can configure foobar to export everything from AUD into 1 long wav file to save you some work.
Out of curiosity, what DTS discs do you have? Some of them might of been done already.

I've got Eyes Wide Shut and The Matrix. I don't physically own them, I just have the rips. Even if they have been done already I'd still like to do it for practice at least. My understanding is the Eyes Wide Shut 35mm scan has the censored blu audio synced to it, but it was a foreign print so the uncensored DTS isn't synced. Let me know if you have any other tips please!

[stwd4nder2]

Let me know if you have any other tips please!

Make sure to slow down the audio to 23.976 fps (speed multiplier of 0.999), don't always assume the blu-ray audio is in perfect sync, make sure all the tracks stay in perfect sync (use sync-lock in audacity), and have fun!