What is DVD-Audio?
DVD-Audio is a standard for storing uncompressed high quality stereo or multi-channel audio content on a standard DVD disk. Supported sampling frequencies range from 44.1KHz (the Red-Book CD Audio standard) up to 192KHz, with sampling depths of 16, 20 or 24 bits.
A single DVD can contain both DVD-Audio content (in the AUDIO_TS directory) and DVD-Video content (in the VIDEO_TS directory). Most DVD players only recognise and playback the VIDEO_TS content, but an increasing number of dual-format players can play the contents of the AUDIO_TS as well. Such players will display the DVD-Audio logo.
A single DVD-Audio disk is referred to as an Album. An Album can consist of up to 9 Groups, each containing up to 99 Tracks. In addition, the contents of the AUDIO_TS directory can contain references to objects in the VIDEO_TS directory (but not vice-versa).
About DVD audio Tools
This project aims to provide audio enthusiasts with a set of free software tools to enable the authoring of DVD-Audio disks compliant with hardware DVD-Audio players, plus a software player for such disks.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In addition to uncompressed audio, the DVD-Audio standard supports a proprietary lossless compression scheme called Meridian Lossless Packing and various methods of encrypting and watermarking the content. This project does not and will not deal with those parts of the standard and will therefore never be able to playback commercially produced DVD-Audio disks.
Project Status
This project is still in the early stages of development but a working DVD-Audio authoring application supporting 16-bit & 24-bit Mono and Stereo audio at all DVD-Audio samplerates (44.1KHz to 192KHz) is available in the Alpha-Releases directory. Instructions for use are in the Howto.
More information can be found on the Project Status page.
News
[25 Oct 2007] Added guide to Light GUI for DVD audio Tools.
[14 Oct 2007] New version of Hplex with group management and Light GUI for DVD audio Tools.
[23 Sep 2007] New version of AUDIO_TS.IFO table [F. Nicol]. Added new mkisofs diff patch.
[22 Sep 2007] New version of AUDIO_PP.IFO table [F. Nicol]. Added Some Notes on Hybrids (1) and (2)
[21 Sep 2007] Revised website pages. New Hplex test page
[20 Sep 2007] Added Hplex package for Hybrid DVD building
[27 Mar 2005] Added FLAC support to dvda-author
[26 Mar 2005] Added support for up to 24-bit audio
[19 Mar 2005] Added support for up to 9 groups of tracks (available in latest alpha release)
[14 Mar 2005] First working version of dvda-author committed to CVS (16-bit Stereo, one group only)
[01 Mar 2005] Website launched
[21 Feb 2005] Project registered at Sourceforge