There are a number of ways to record audio directly from Any source (including a DVD in your computer).
1) My preferred method involves using a program called
Goldwave.
Say you want to record the song "Bestest Friends." First of all, insert the DVD into your computer, and fast-forward to a point, shortly before where you want to start recording. Pause the DVD.
Open Goldwave, go File > New, set the length to at Least 5 minutes (I like 10 minutes if I can't remember exactly where the part is that I'm recording. You can always it cut it down later) and set the sampling rate to at least 44.1 kHz and stereo if you want full quality. When you hit OK, you should see two lines on your screen, one red, one green. Make this window with the lines fullscreen inside Goldwave so it's easier to see.
Now, in the Tools menu (I think
I'm not at home on my program right now, so I'm writing this from memory) look for something called "device controls"
Click that, and a small window with a bunch of buttons will pop up. Find the Options button on that window (top-right with the box with the X in it, I think). Click that. Go through the tabs and select the tab that lets you see a number of different possible recording sources (WAV, MIDI, CD, What U Hear, Aux, etc etc). If you don't the same ones I do, don't panic, it just means we have different sound cards.
Select the one that most closely resembles "WAV" or "Wave" or something of that nature. Move the slider most of the way to the right. This slider is the record gain. Since the source DVD will be quiet enough, you can slide this all the way to the right full 100% volume. This will produce the most complete recording, as it will pick up even slight audio from the DVD, without distorting the loudest sounds.
Now, you can close the options menu and return to the device controls.
Hit the red "record button." If you get an error, then try holding CTRL while pressing the record button. That's just a safety feature that may be turned on by default. If that doesn't help the error, I'll get back to you, but I can't remember everything I've configured on my computer, off-hand.
If the recording is working, you will see a vertical bar moving across the horizontal lines on the fullscreen page. If you see this, quickly return to the DVD and hit play.
Let the program record the Entire section that you want.
Hit Stop on the device controls to stop recording. It will stop automatically when the time gets to the maximum that you specified when you first created the new wave file.
Now, you can cut the wave file down to Exactly where you want it. Left click to set a starting point, and right-click to set an ending point for any selection in the program. When you select an area, both the left and right channels (speakers) will automatically select.
Zoom in on the start, and locate where, EXACTLY, you want to start the wave file. Remove everything before that point. Be conservative with your cutting, because unless you have a fair amount of RAM, undoing errors is not a really fun thing to do. There are fade-in and fade-out controls as well, under "filters" I believe. You can select a section of the wave, select the fade-in or fade-out to smooth an opening or conclusion of a wave. I use this all the time
When you have the wave cut the way you want, go to file > save as. From there you can save it as a .wav, .MP3 in any quality you want, or a number of other audio formats. You will see them all listed in the "save as..." box that pops up.
I recommend saving a recording as an MP3
44100 Hz
at least 128 Kb/s for decent quality. if size isn't an issue, go with 256 kb/s or 320 kb/s. At 128 kb/s, the file will be approximately 1 MB per minute.
If you have any more questions, I'll be happy to answer them later, but I have to go to class in about 5 minutes (I"m at college right now
)
There are other programs like this as well, but I find goldwave the most user-friendly, and useful.
