The VideoLAN Forums

I just updated to the latest version of VLC. I'm running Windows 10. I want to extract audio from a DVD, producing just an MP3 file. I found the instructions to do this in a couple of places; both showed the same steps. So I opened the DVD, selected No Disc Menus, then selected Convert from the Play menu. In the Source field of the Convert dialog box, it shows “dvdsimple:\\\F:\”. I selected Audio – MP3 from the Profile menu. At that point, everything I’d done corresponded to the instructions I’d read (screenshots and video). But when I clickd Browse to specify the Destination File, Save as Type defaulted to “Containers (*.raw).” My only other choice was “(All *.*).” The instructions illustrations show file type as “Containers (*.mp3).” Can anyone suggest why I might not be getting an mp3 option for file type?

(I went ahead anyway, specifying *.* for file type and giving the file name a .mp3 extension. Windows Media Player was able to play the resultant file, but could not determine its length—among other things, I’m sure. My Goldwave audio editor could not open the file.)

Use RAW encapsulation and give your file an MP3 extension.

I just tried using RAW with an MP3 extension. VLC produced a file and added a .raw extension to the file name. I changed the extension to .mp3. I was able to open and play the file in both Windows Media Player and Goldwave, but only 22 minutes of the nearly 3 hours of programming on the video were output. I'm not really surprised, as I pointed out in my original post that the example instructions I followed showed .mp3 as a selectable file type in the output, not just *.* and Raw. That seems to be the crux of the problem.

Please open Tools -> Messages (set Verbosity to 2) before you start the conversion, and then paste the full resulting log here or on Pastebin.com if it's too long.

I set Verbosity to 2 and specified the location of the log file. But this time, when I ran the conversion, it worked. I ended up with a normal MP3 file. And the log file was empty. There were a lot of false starts, both this time and in my previous efforts. VLC's behavior seems very inconsistent. But I don't know any other way of extracting audio from a DVD (other than playing the DVD and recording the audio produced by the computer, which I figure is of lesser quality than a direct extract using VLC), so I don't see a good alternative (or a good free one, at least). Thanks for your help.