AUDIO_TS folder

[AHunter3]

Anyone who has examined a standard DVD on their computer has noticed that it generally has two folders, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Anyone who has investigated further has noticed that VIDEO_TS is where all the action is.

Contrary to my first assumption — that the soundtrack was saved as a separate fileset, which would make it convenient for movies where you get to pick what language you're gonna listen to or whether to listen to the voice-over commentary, etc — all the audio is right there in the files that are in VIDEO_TS.

What the heck is the AUDIO_TS folder for? It's always freaking empty. Is it a hanger-on from an earlier era when it was actually used for something?

Some movie DVDs don't even have an AUDIO_TS folder! Why do the rest?

[Washoe]

It only has one purpose—it’s where all the action goes in the (I believe now-defunct) audio DVD format. It was supposed to be a super hi-fidelity format for discriminating audiophiles. I was working for the third-largest record distributor in the United States when it was rolled out, and it went absolutely nowhere. As far as I know, it’s deader than the dodo bird now.

[Q.E.D.]

The AUDIO_TS folder is intended to be used for audio DVDs. The format never really took off, but the AUDIO_TS folder remains as a holdover.

[chorpler]

Thanks for asking this, AHunter. I've always wondered about this. Never even thought that it might be a remnant of good ol' audio DVDs, but that makes perfect sense.

So do we even need to create the AUDIO_TS folder when making a video DVD? Or is it always okay to make just a VIDEO_TS folder these days? (I have a lot of DVD images on my external hard drive, and sometimes those AUDIO_TS folders are a pain when moving around directories at the command prompt, since they come first alphabetically and that means an extra tab to get the VIDEO_TS directory to appear.)

[Q.E.D.]

So do we even need to create the AUDIO_TS folder when making a video DVD?
Nope. I never bother to create an AUDIO_TS folder when authoring DVDs. Some authoring software makes it automatically, so I just let it. But, it's not needed for a video DVD so you can certainly omit it.