Extract Blu-ray audio with FFmpeg

This article covers extracting Blu-Ray audio with FFmpeg.

Some music audio only titles are just becoming available on Blu-Ray, and music lovers may need to extract the audio to another portable medium. Since the Blu-Ray audio is usually one big file, the file chapters need to be found and split. Most portable media requires VFAT filesystem preventing larger files sizes, and further splitting is essential.

This article will only discuss unencrypted Blu-Ray Audio media, and merrily point users to MakeMKV (media-video/makemkv) for handling encrypted Blu-Ray media.

Important
Copying copyrighted material which you have purchased or material to which you do not hold a license is a crime. Some countries may be more strict, and consider simply tampering with encrypted material a crime. Funny things may also occur if when tinker with encrypted Blu-Rays, such as blacklisting. ;-)

Note
Audio ranges greater than 24 bits or 480000 Hz are frequently stated as being indistinguishable to the human ear. As for me, I notice little difference between 16 and 24 bit, or 44100 and 48000 Hz of noisy music.

Note
Encrypted (or commercial) Blu-ray media is extremely difficult to enjoy within Linux, as MPlayer's libaacs rarely works when playing encrypted Blu-ray media. Also anything higher than the common 16 bit 44100 Hz (CD Audio Quality), and you will require a Home Theater or 5.1/7.1 Dolby/DTS Audio Receiver with more than five quality speakers to decode and be able to notice a difference above CD audio quality. Receivers also have the ability to copy stereo two channel into five or more channel audio, sounding extremely similar to 5.1 PCM If you're an older person and dislike having to always buy additional equipment to be able to enjoy these newer proprietary formats, it has been quite common when considering Blu-ray media, to continue using only the tried and well tested CD and DVD media!

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for media-video/ffmpeg Complete solution to record/convert/stream audio and video

+bzip2	Enable bzip2 compression support
+dav1d	Enable AV1 decoding support via media-libs/dav1d
+drm	Enable use of x11-libs/libdrm for various hardware accelerated functions and Kernel Mode Setting screen capture
+encode	Add support for encoding of audio or video files
+fontconfig	Support for configuring and customizing font access via media-libs/fontconfig
+gnutls	Enable using net-libs/gnutls for TLS/HTTPS support and other minor functions (has no effect if USE=openssl is set)
+gpl	Enable use of GPL licensed code, should be kept enabled unless LGPL binaries are needed
+iconv	Enable support for the iconv character set conversion library
+libass	SRT/SSA/ASS (SubRip / SubStation Alpha) subtitle support
+network	Enables network streaming support
+pic	Force shared libraries to be built as PIC (this is safer)
+postproc	Enable libpostproc video post processing library support (should not disable this unless need to disable USE=gpl)
+threads	Add threads support for various packages. Usually pthreads
+truetype	Enable drawtext filter support via media-libs/freetype and media-libs/harfbuzz
+xml	Enable Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) stream support using dev-libs/libxml2
+zlib	Add support for zlib compression
X	Add support for X11
alsa	Add support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
amf	Enable AMD's Advanced Media Framework support via media-video/amdgpu-pro-amf
amr	Enable Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio support via media-libs/opencore-amr
amrenc	Enable Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio encoding support via media-libs/vo-amrwbenc
appkit	Enable Apple AppKit framework
bluray	Enable Blu-ray filesystems reading support via media-libs/libbluray
bs2b	Enable Bauer Stereo-to-Binaural filter support via media-libs/libbs2b
cdio	Enable audio CDs reading via dev-libs/libcdio-paranoia
chromaprint	Enable audio fingerprinting support via media-libs/chromaprint
chromium	Builds libffmpeg.so to enable media playback in Chromium-based browsers like Opera and Vivaldi.
codec2	Enable codec2 low bit rate speech codec support via media-libs/codec2
cpudetection	Enables runtime CPU detection (useful for bindist, compatibility on other CPUs)
cuda	Enable support for various GPU-accelerated filters using NVIDIA PTX compiled with llvm-core/clang
debug	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
doc	Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally
dvd	Add support for DVDs
fdk	Enable AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) encoding support via media-libs/fdk-aac in addition to FFmpeg's own implementation (warning: if USE=gpl is enabled, this produces a non-redistributable build)
flite	Enable text-to-speech filter support via app-accessibility/flite
frei0r	Enable use of filters through media-plugins/frei0r-plugins
fribidi	Enable Bidi support for the drawtext filter via dev-libs/fribidi
gcrypt	Enable using dev-libs/libgcrypt for rtmp(t)e support (not needed if using any of USE=gmp,librtmp,openssl), and for obtaining random bytes (not needed if USE=openssl)
glslang	Use dev-util/glslang to compile GLSL
gme	Enables various game music formats support via media-libs/game-music-emu
gmp	Add support for dev-libs/gmp (GNU MP library)
gsm	Add support for the gsm lossy speech compression codec
hardcoded-tables	Use pre-calculated tables rather than calculating them on the fly. It results in an increase of approximately 15% in the size of libavcodec, the main library impacted by this change. It enables savings in table generation time, done once at codec initialization, since by hardcoding the tables, they do not need to be computed at runtime. However, the savings are often negligible (~100k cycles is a typical number) especially when amortized over the entire encoding/decoding operation. Improvements are being made to the runtime initialization, and so over time, this option will have an impact on fewer and fewer codecs.
iec61883	Enable FireWire DV/HDV input device support via media-libs/libiec61883
ieee1394	Enable FireWire/iLink IEEE1394 support (dv, camera, ...)
jack	Add support for the JACK Audio Connection Kit
jpeg2k	Support for JPEG 2000, a wavelet-based image compression format
jpegxl	Add JPEG XL image support
kvazaar	Enable H.265/HEVC encoding support via media-libs/kvazaar
ladspa	Enable the ability to support ladspa plugins
lame	Prefer using LAME libraries for MP3 encoding support
lcms	Enable ICC profile support via media-libs/lcms
libaom	Enable AV1 de/encoding via media-libs/libaom (warning: this is the reference implementation and is slower than the alternatives)
libaribb24	Enable ARIB text and caption decoding via media-libs/aribb24
libcaca	Add support for colored ASCII-art graphics
libdrm	Enables x11-libs/libdrm support for better screen grabbing and hardware accelerated codecs.
libdvdnav	Uses media-libs/libdvdnav to enable DVD demuxing
libdvdread	Uses media-libs/libdvdread to enable DVD demuxing
libilbc	Enable internet Low Bitrate Codec de/encoding support via media-libs/libilbc
liblc3	Enable Low Complexity Communication Codec de/encoding support via media-sound/liblc3
libplacebo	Enable use of GPU-accelerated filters from media-libs/libplacebo
librtmp	Enable Real Time Messaging Protocol support via media-video/rtmpdump in addition to FFmpeg's own implementation
libsoxr	Enable use of the audio resampler from media-libs/soxr
libtesseract	Enable Optical Character Recognition (OCR) filter support via app-text/tesseract
libv4l	Uses media-libs/libv4l for video4linux instead of direct calls. Adds support for more devices via the userspace library.
libxml2	Uses dev-libs/libxml2 to enable dash demuxing support.
lv2	Enable use of filters through media-libs/lv2
lzma	Support for LZMA compression algorithm
mipsdspr1	Enables MIPS DSP ASE R1 optimizations.
mipsdspr2	Enables MIPS DSP ASE R2 optimizations.
mipsfpu	Enables floating point MIPS optimizations.
mmal	Enables Multi-Media Abstraction Layer (MMAL) decoding support: Available e.g. on the Raspberry Pi.
modplug	Add libmodplug support for playing SoundTracker-style music files
mp3	Add support for reading mp3 files
npp	Enable Nvidia Performance Primitives-based filters via dev-util/nvidia-cuda-toolkit (warning: if USE=gpl is enabled, this produces non-redistributable build)
nvenc	Add support for NVIDIA Encoder/Decoder (NVENC/NVDEC) API for hardware accelerated encoding and decoding on NVIDIA cards (requires x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers)
openal	Add support for the Open Audio Library
opencl	Enable OpenCL support (computation on GPU)
opengl	Add support for OpenGL (3D graphics)
openh264	Enable H.264 encoding support via media-libs/openh264
openmpt	Enable MPTM tracked music files decoding support via media-libs/libopenmpt
openssl	Enable using dev-libs/openssl for TLS/HTTPS support and other minor functions (USE=gnutls has no effect if set)
opus	Enable Opus audio codec support
oss	Add support for OSS (Open Sound System)
pulseaudio	Add sound server support via media-libs/libpulse (may be PulseAudio or PipeWire)
qrcode	Enable QR encode generation support via media-gfx/qrencode
qsv	Enable Intel Quick Sync Video support via media-libs/libvpl
quirc	Enable QR decoding support via media-libs/quirc
rabbitmq	Enable AMQP stream support via net-libs/rabbitmq-c
rav1e	Enable AV1 encoding support via media-video/rav1e
rubberband	Enable time-stretching and pitch-shifting audio filter support via media-libs/rubberband
samba	Add support for SAMBA (Windows File and Printer sharing)
sdl	Enable use of the Simple Direct Layer library (required for the ffplay command)
shaderc	Enable support for various GPU-accelerated filters using Vulkan compiled with media-libs/shaderc
snappy	Enable Snappy compression support via app-arch/snappy (required for Vidvox Hap encoder support)
sndio	Enable audio output support via media-sound/sndio
soc	Apply additional patches for efficient playback on some SoCs (e.g. ARM, RISC-V)
speex	Add support for the speex audio codec (used for speech)
srt	Enable Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) support via net-libs/srt
ssh	Enable SSH/SFTP support via net-libs/libssh
static-libs	Build static versions of dynamic libraries as well
svg	Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
svt-av1	Enable AV1 encoding support via media-libs/svt-av1
test	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
theora	Add support for the Theora Video Compression Codec
twolame	Enable MP2 encoding support via media-sound/twolame in addition to FFmpeg's own implementation
v4l	Enable support for video4linux (using linux-headers or userspace libv4l libraries)
vaapi	Enable Video Acceleration API for hardware decoding
vdpau	Enable the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix acceleration interface
verify-sig	Verify upstream signatures on distfiles
vidstab	Enable video stabilization filter support via media-libs/vidstab
vmaf	Enable Netflix's perceptual video quality assessment filter support via media-libs/libvmaf
vorbis	Add support for the OggVorbis audio codec
vpx	Enable VP8 and VP9 de/encoding support via media-libs/libvpx in addition to FFmpeg's own implementation (for decoding only)
vulkan	Add support for 3D graphics and computing via the Vulkan cross-platform API
webp	Add support for the WebP image format
x264	Enable h264 encoding using x264
x265	Enable H.265/HEVC encoding support via media-libs/x265
xvid	Add support for xvid.org's open-source mpeg-4 codec
zeromq	Enable ZMQ command receiver filter and streaming support via net-libs/zeromq
zimg	Enable zscale filter support using media-libs/zimg
zvbi	Enable teletext decoding support via media-libs/zvbi

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2025-03-11 23:24 More information about USE flags

Emerge

Although MPlayer can also be used, FFmpeg seems more refined when dumping or clipping specific audio chapters from DVD or Blu-Ray media.

root #emerge --ask media-video/ffmpeg

(If somebody successfully uses MPlayer/MPlayer2 to dump PCM specified chapters, feel free to add it to this Wiki page and retitle appropriately. I've only experienced MPlayer seeking to the beginning chapter and, not recognizing or stopping at the specified end chapter. ie.

user $mplayer -ao pcm:fast:file=audio.wav -chapter 2-2 -vo null -vc null input_file

Guide

Mount Blu-Ray disc

Blu-Rays use UDF filesystem format, and require to be mounted as such. Probably best to edit the following file to provide mount points as such. AutoFS can be incorporated as needed.

FILE /etc/fstab

/dev/sr0       /mnt/dvd        iso9660         noauto,user,ro  0 0
/dev/sr0       /mnt/dvd-udf    udf             noauto,user,rw  0 0

Or the following will automatically decide with little to no additional access time difference:

FILE /etc/fstab

/dev/sr0       /mnt/dvd        auto            noauto,user,ro  0 0

Create the mount folders defined previously in the /etc/fstab example file:

root #mkdir /mnt/dvd /mnt/dvd-udf

Mount the disc:

root #mount /mnt/dvd-udf

Find available stream types

The main large media stream file on the Blu-Ray disk, is typically something similar to ./BDMV/STREAM/0000.m2ts.

When using ffplay, something similar should be seen within stdout:

user $ffplay ...

Stream #0:0[0x1011]: Video: h264 (High) (HDMV / 0x564D4448), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
Stream #0:1[0x1100]: Audio: pcm_bluray (HDMV / 0x564D4448), 48000 Hz, stereo, s32, 2304 kb/s
Stream #0:2[0x1101]: Audio: pcm_bluray (HDMV / 0x564D4448), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), s32, 6912 kb/s
Stream #0:3[0x1102]: Audio: dts (DTS-HD MA) ([134][0][0][0] / 0x0086), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), s16, 1536 kb/s
...
Stream #0 on this audio only Blu-Ray is only a black screen with song titles.  We'll skip this stream since we want audio only PCM WAV
Stream #1 is the PCM two channel stereo mix.
Stream #2 is the PCM 5.1 high resolution mix.
Stream #2 is the DTS mix.

Keep an eye on the Hz, s16/s24/s32 and kb/s, as they're indicators of audio quality.

Extract audio streams

Extract full audio streams

To extract the three individual stream types into one large file, you can use FFmpeg. Although this is likely undesirable due to file size limitations on VFAT filesystems.

user $ffmpeg -i ./BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts -map 0:1 -acodec pcm_s24le music.wav

user $ffmpeg -i ./BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts -map 0:2 -acodec pcm_s24le music-pcm51.wav

user $ffmpeg -i ./BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts -map 0:3 -acodec copy music.dts

Verify the streams have been extracted using ffplay or mplayer. Monitor the stdout messages to ensure proper drivers and codecs are used for the stream types specified.

For DTS playback using MPlayer, it will be likely necessary to specify ac=hwdts to MPlayer for passing through DTS to the HDMI/SPDIF audio receiver. MPlayer uses the following for specifying streams:

user $mplayer -aid 1 -demuxer lavf ./BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts

Devices with only 16 Bit Microsoft PCM Audio Support

Some audio receivers and devices will only play 16 bit Microsoft PCM WAV files. If you have 24-bit audio files as indicated above and such hindered devices, you will need to unfortunately down mix in order for the files to be playable on those devices. The above aforementioned conversion provides 24 bit PCM Riff/Aiff files, while the below ffmpeg incantation will provide 16 bit Microsoft PCM WAV files.

user $ffmpeg -i ./BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts -map 0:1 -acodec pcm_s16le music.wav

Another work around, is to play the 24bit PCM WAV files using a software media player such as FFplay and MPlayer, and route the sound to your audio receiver using HDMI or S/PDIF. One other option, ensure you buy a receiver capable of playing the 24 bit PCM files via USB media!

Note
If this section applies to you, then you will need to augment the further FFmpeg incantations below with the -acodec pcm_s16le option.

Extract individual chapters

Find chapters

1) The package media-video/bluray_info will display chapters.

user $bluray_info -x /dev/sr0

2)

user $ffprobe

, provided by media-video/ffmpeg package, will display the chapters to stdout, if they are preserved within the media file.

user $ffprobe ./music.mkv

More elaborate or useful examples using ffprobe:

user $ffprobe -i 00.mkv -print_format default -show_chapters -loglevel error > 00.mkv.txt 2>&1

user $ffprobe -i 00.mkv -print_format flat -show_chapters -loglevel error > 00.mkv.txt 2>&1

Note
When using MakeMKV, make sure to extract to a format preserving Chapters with using makemkvcon mkv. Using makemkvcon backup does not preserve chapter information as of this writing!

For extracting streams including chapter info for use with ffprobe:

user $makemkvcon -r mkv disc:0 all ./foo_folder/

(MPlayer can also identify chapters using "mindentify", however the chapter times do not appear comptabile with FFmpeg.)

Extract a chapter

At this point, we'll assume we want Stream #1 for standard two stereo PCM WAV files (ie. map 0:1) and the second (#0.2) chapter.

FFprobe's snipped output:

user $ffprobe ...

...
Chapter #0.2: start 534.934400, end 888.087200

The incantation of FFmpeg we'll use for exacting this individual chapter, using seconds for start and duration indicators.

user $ffmpeg -ss [start] -i in.dts -t [duration] -c:v copy -c:a copy out.wav

With this example, the start time will be 534.934400 and duration will be 888.087200 minus 534.934400.

For example:

user $ffmpeg -ss 534.934400 -i ./BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts -t 353.152800 -c:v copy -c:a copy out.wav

Extract multiple chapters

I have only piped the message stdout of the CLI tools to a series of text files, utilizing grep and bc (CLI Calculator), along side VI/VIM for line duplication and clipping for creating one time scripts for extracting multiple files at once.

Someday, this will likely be automated and integrated into abcde.sh.

Tips

Cover art

Cover art is usually found within the /mnt/dvd/BDMV/META/DL folder. For example:

user $cp /mnt/dvd/BDMV/META/DL/discinfo_640x360.jpg ${HOME}/Music/My_Album/cover.jpg

MPlayer upmix when 24-bit decoding is not available

My receiver is apparently not capable of decoding 24 bit PCM WAV, but will decode 16 and 32 bit PCM WAV through HDMI.

The PCM 5.1 WAV files are encoded at 24 bit PCM 5.1 WAV 48000 Hz.

The work around here is to upmix to 32 bit using sb32le or floatle, since MPlayer by default down mixes to 16 bit or s16le. MPlayer also by default cuts channels to two channels.

user $mplayer -af format=s32le,channels=8 PCM51-24bit/01.my_music_track.dts

user $mplayer2 -af format=s32le,channels=8 PCM51-24bit/01.my_music_track.dts

No DTS-H Master?

My receiver shows it's decoding DTS-HD Master stream when bit perfect or high definition audio decoding is selected within my Window's player, but my receiver only says it's decoding the usual "DTS" decoding while playing streams within Linux. From reports on the web, bit perfect or high definition streaming to the receiver isn't possible within Linux. Other reports state it is possible using Intel's HDMI. (NVidia's video card HDMI using Linux binary drivers isn't performing DTS-HD Master here.)

Gapless playback

Split tracks of long streams, it's nice to have gapless playback for preventing interruptions between tracks.

FIXME: The following is from Snipplr, but doesn't work for me. :-/

user $mkfifo /tmp/aufifo

user $aplay -t raw -c 2 -f S16_LE -r 44100 /tmp/aufifo &> /tmp/aplayfifo.log &

user $mplayer -ao pcm:nowaveheader:file=/tmp/aufifo 01.track.wav 02.track.wav 03.track.wav &

Or use MPlayer2:

user $mplayer2 -ac hwdts -af channels=8 -ao alsa:device=hw=1.3 -gapless-audio DTS/*.dts

Additional tools

Additional tools which might be useful, but not utilized within this wiki:

• media-sound/shntool - A multi-purpose WAVE data processing and reporting utility, ie. splitting WAV files.
• MPlayer - Media Player for Linux, as an option to FFmpeg
• media-video/tsmuxer - Utility to create and demux TS and M2TS files

References

Properly configure ALSA for pass-through digital audio, including specifying default decoding codecs for hardware digital decoders when using MPlayer.