Skip to content

Extract Audio

The Extract Audio dialog allows you to extract an audio track from supported file types into a format suitable for consumption by BEQDesigner.

Dialog

Use Tools > Extract Audio or CTRL+E to open.

Info

Use the Batch Extract tool if you have a large number of files to process.

What formats are supported?

Anything supported by ffmpeg, full details available via the ffmpeg docs.

Commonly used formats (mkv, BD folder rips) are supported.

Selecting the Content

To get started, click the button on the top row to select a file. BEQDesigner uses ffprobe to determine what content is present in the file and makes this information available on screen.

Probed

Use these controls to select exactly what to extract from the file:

  • A/V Streams: 2 dropdowns showing the audio and video tracks, the i button at the end pops up another dialog with the raw information from ffprobe for further investigation
  • LFE Channel/Total: the LFE channel index and total number of channels in the audio track, these values should generally left unchanged
  • Format: choose between native (i.e. export to WAV) or FLAC, bear in mind that WAV files are limited to <4GB (so a full bandwidth multichannel audio track of the entire film should generally use flac to avoid breaching this limit)
  • Range: click the scissors button to set a time range, when set this will limit the output audio file to the specified time period
  • Mix to mono: applicable to multichannel audio files only, mixes the individual channels into a single mono file using per channel gain adjustments required to handle the LFE channel and to ensure the resulting signal does not clip during summation
  • Decimate Audio: resample to the sample rate set via Preferences, checking this option is generally a sensible choice when designing BEQ filters
  • Bass manage: application to multichannel audio files only, applies bass management to the individual channels to produce multichannel output
  • Target Directory: where to export the file to, default location is set via Preferences
  • Output Filename

Extracting

The ffmpeg command updates as the options change so you can see exactly what is about to happen.

Click extract to execute that command, the progress bar will update as the extraction completes. This may take a long time depending on where the file resides, how big it is and where you are writing to. For example, if the file resides on a network share, is many GB in size and you are writing back to another network share then the file has to be

  • pulled over the network to the local machine
  • processed
  • written back over the network to the file server

Alternatively if the file is on a local SSD and you write back to that SSD, processing should be pretty quick.

Creating Signal(s)

Complete

When complete, the ffmpeg output field will be filled with the output from ffmpeg and the Create Signals button will become enabled. Click the button to load the extracted audio as signal(s).