Is there an easy way to extract audio from a DVD?

I want to see what kinds of content a DVD has without having to play it.

• I'd like a Win7x64-compatible tool that can dump the structure of a DVD: like, a list of the disc's titles/chapters with their durations, each title's native resolution/display aspect radio, details on the audio tracks each title has, etc. If it can report on details like the menu/program hierarchy—what titles/other menus are accessible through each menu, which titles are set for mandatory playback—and where playback goes next when a specific title ends, so much the better, but that's not required. I would use this information when setting up the final encodes; I want to know going in which parts of the disc have commentary tracks, where the bonus features have different resolutions from the main program, and so forth. Handbrake isn't smart enough for me to be able to say, for example, "if there's a commentary track, always include it in the encode, otherwise just give me the program audio"—so I need to know that ahead of time. (I have a few TV season sets that are just awful about this, where only certain "special" episodes have commentary, and while it's almost always mentioned on the packaging it isn't always obvious which titles on the disc correspond to those episodes.) Right now I'm opening titles one by one in the Handbrake or VLC GUIs to check their format/contents by hand, which gets really tedious really quickly. I encode out of a pre-ripped VIDEO_TS hierarchy, but if the analysis tool wants ISO or something, I don't mind changing the workflow as long as Handbrake can encode directly from the same format. A friend suggested lsdvd but I haven't had any luck getting it built in cygwin. I've also tried MediaInfo and while it gives the kind of information I want, it reports on the individual VOB/IFO/BUP files from the DVD's filesystem. I need the info on a title-by-title basis. Related question: is there any way to extract/encode the DVD menus themselves in Handbrake? Thanks!

• Answer:

  Handbrake has a command line version, going to the directory where handbrake is installed and typing: HandbrakeCLI -t 0 -i D:\ or whatever your DVD drive is will give a large amount of text about the various titles/tracks, including number of audio tracks. The t in the command above stands for title, and selecting 0 tells it to scan all titles. [19:11:08] scan: scanning title 2 [19:11:08] scan: opening IFO for VTS 2 [19:11:08] scan: duration is 00:09:12 (552100 ms) [19:11:08] pgc_id: 1, pgn: 1: pgc: 0x101907d00 [19:11:08] scan: vts=2, ttn=1, cells=0->6, blocks=0->178628, 178629 blocks [19:11:08] scan: checking audio 1 [19:11:08] scan: id=0x80bd, lang=English (AC3), 3cc=eng ext=0 [19:11:08] scan: checking subtitle 1 [19:11:08] scan: id=0x20bd, lang=English, 3cc=eng ext=0 [19:11:08] scan: title 3 has 8 chapters [19:11:08] scan: chap 1 c=0->0, b=0->38540 (38541), 107469 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 2 c=1->1, b=38541->71816 (33276), 89400 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 3 c=2->2, b=71817->285143 (213327), 476135 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 4 c=3->3, b=285144->551954 (266811), 612310 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 5 c=4->4, b=551955->608654 (56700), 124436 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 6 c=5->5, b=608655->613272 (4618), 11165 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 7 c=6->6, b=613273->629610 (16338), 40080 ms [19:11:08] scan: chap 8 c=7->7, b=629611->629767 (157), 210 ms [19:11:08] scan: aspect = 1.77778 The above title has only one audio track. As far as menus, there is no video container format that both uses dvd menus, and has newer video encoding. You might be able to extract the images of the menu, but it wouldn't have any structure.