Removing Swear Words From Movie

poordamocles · Member Joined: 10 Mar 2004

Hi. I am trying to cut or blank out the swear words in an educational dvd movie so I can show it in my classroom. I have been trying different ideas for many many hours, and have had no success. Any ideas? It would be okay to cut out the second-or-so of video with the audio, I don't care. ( VobBlanker was suggested by someone on another forum, but I don't seem to be smart enough to use it.)

guns1inger · So Very Tired Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Location: Miskatonic U

Demux the audio, convert it to stereo WAV, load it into audacity, highlight the swearing, blank the audio (don't cut it or you get sync problems), save the censored version, convert it to AC3, and re-author with the new audio.

Or show the students appropriate material. What kind of "educational film" has swearing in it ?
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redwudz · Mod Neophyte Joined: 07 Sep 2002 Location: AZ, USA

A couple of threads on the subject as it's been covered quite a few times:

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic335587.html#1743458

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic337385.html#1755340

Generally, you don't want to cut anything out or you could end up with sync problems. Better to add a bit of silence over the offending audio. Most times, you will need to extract the audio, run it through a audio editor and then mux it back with the video and re-author.

VOB2MPG is one way to convert the DVD to one large MPEG. Then you could use VirtualDub Mod to extract the audio to a WAV and open it in Audacity, do your edits, output as WAV. Convert the WAV back to AC3 stereo with a program like ffmpegGUI or Aften. Use a authoring program like DVDAuthorgui, or GUI for dvdauthor if you need more complex menus. All freeware, BTW.

You want to watch the DVD first and write down the time of each problem word so you have a reference when you edit.

Probably many other ways, but all a bit of work.

I assume your school authorities demand this. I should add that, technically, altering a DVD will probably violate copyright laws, but that's your problem to deal with.

EDIT: guns1inger was a bit faster.

But I think you get the general idea.

poordamocles · Member Joined: 10 Mar 2004

I tried basically that - I split the VOB into audio and video by changing it first into AVI and then converting the audio to MP2 in Videomach, editing it in Audacity using silences, then "mux"ing it back into an AVI. The results were lousy video quality with audio that wasn't synched at all to what was going on. This was my first try at something like this, so I guess my path was fraught with wrong decisions. I'll try your instructions, redwudz, and thanks also for the links. BTW, the video is about graffiti art, quite good, but the artists tend to use colourful language. The school board doesn't permit these sorts of references to mothers, in Grade 9 videos.

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

sambat · Member Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Location: Canada

redwudz · Mod Neophyte Joined: 07 Sep 2002 Location: AZ, USA

poordamocles, one sort of 'rule' with editing is always try to do it in the native format. You want to avoid format changes or re-encoding whenever possible.

If you have to use a AVI type format, use a lossless or near lossless type such as HuffyUV (Huge files) or DV-AVI (Easy to edit, but 13GB/hour) and WAV audio (Again, huge files) You need a lot of hard drive space for this.

Much easier to use a MPEG editor, even a freeware one if you also need to edit the video. I would still convert to WAV, then back to AC3. You want to choose the stereo audio track from your DVD to avoid having to deal with 5.1 audio's multiple tracks. As long as you don't need the original menus, etc., easy enough to reauthor. But if you don't need to edit the video, just demux or extract the audio, edit it, then let your authoring program join it all back together.

Alternately, if you didn't need a standard DVD, you could convert to a compact AVI type format such as Divx/Xvid, but after you edit. This works better for computer playback or a Divx set top player, or if you need a compact filesize. But the encoding takes time. If you try to use a Divx/Xvid format to edit, you just create more problems most times. Highly compressed formats, both video and audio are difficult to use for accurate editing.

Good luck with your project.

filmboss80 · Member Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Location: United States

If it is just the audio you are dealing with, then skip the step to convert to AVI. Here is one fairly easy method (although there are several steps), using freeware:

1. Rip the DVD to your harddrive using DVDFab HDDecrypter
2. Separate Video and Audio streams of the Main Movie VOB files using PgcDemux
3. Convert the .ac3 audio track to .wav (Several options--see Tools section. I use VirtualDub with the AC3 ACM plugin.)
4. Open the .wav file with Audacity. DO NOT CUT OUT ANY SECTIONS, AS THIS WILL CAUSE LOSS OF SYNC WITH THE VIDEO. Simply highlight the offending words in the soundtrack and mute them. Export the finished file as .wav.
5. Convert the finished .wav back to .ac3 using Aften / WAV to AC3 Encoder.
6. Remux the video (.m2v) back with the new audio (.ac3) using ImagoMPEG-Muxer
7. If remuxing to mpeg, you'll likely need to send the file to a DVD authoring program. If muxing to VOB, you can make it DVD compliant with IFOedit or Muxman or some similar tool.
8. Burn the final DVD disc with ImgBurn

All of this sounds very convoluted, but each software program does a lot automatically for you. All you have to do is go through the soundtrack and mute every offensive word.

This is not the only way to do it, and others will post varying suggestions. This is just something that works for me.