Remove Foreign Lang Overdubbing?

[whftherb]

Have a full length .AVI downloaded from the net. Comp = AMD 3000+ with XP Pro SP2 and all up-to-date. The AVI Video is good quality. Audio: I hear two distinct unique voice tracks when the movie is played with WMP 10 or with WinDVD 7. There is a clear English track. There is also what I'll call a Russian audio translation overdubbed on top of the English. (I don't know if this is actually called "overdubbing"). The Russian track is a tiny bit louder in volume than the English but the English is definitely there. I don't have much experience handling this "overdubbed" subtitling (again, if that's what it's called).

Is it possible to remove the Russian track leaving the English intact? GSpot reports in its "Comments/Metadata" section:

Code Name Comments
ISFT Software VirtualDubMod 1.5.4
IAS1 First Language Russian

Maybe this report will give someone a clue. I've searched through Help files and can't find any topic about removing overdubbing. Part of my problem is I've never encountered this "extra stream" before so I don't know what to call it and thus what to search on precisely. Anyone here care to elaborate or help?

[Baldrick]

open the avi in virtualdubmod, under streams->stream list do you see two audio tracks? if so delete one track and then save as a new avi, be sure to use video->direct stream copy.

[guns1inger]

It could also be english in one channel, and russian (or whatever) in the other. In which case you will have to use an audio editor to copy one over the other.

[whftherb]

Wow! That was pretty fast, guys! I'm familiar with VirtualDubMod somewhat - I'll give your suggestions a try and try to get back with some results. Thanks very much.

[laurenga]

Hello,
I have exactly the same problem, so I hope you don't mind me continuing this thread
I've tried virtualdubmod and it shows only one audio stream. And the two languages (the original and the "overdub") are mixed in the right and in the left channels
So it makes it much more difficult, I guess. Any ideas? Is there any program that might have some filter or something to distinguish two separate voices? My hopes are not very high, but if there is any possibility, I know it is in this forum I will find the answer
Thanks very much

[yoda313]

Yep you could extract the audio in virtualdub - file-save wav.

Then load that into audacity and extract the correct audio track and make it a new audio file. Then you could remix the correct solo track with your video.

[jman98]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Russian movies. This is called a "voice over". Unfortunately, it is a very common way to dub films into Russian. I have noticed on my travels to Ukraine that now most English language films have a real Russian language soundtrack, but the old way of doing it was that one (if you were unlucky) or several voice actors would speak the lines in Russian over the original soundtrack. There is no way to remove this. What you have is one soundtrack with Russian on top of the original English.

yoda313 does not understand what we are dealing with and his suggestion will be absolutely useless to you. You CAN'T extract the "correct" audio track because there isn't any "correct" audio track. You have one audio track that somebody is talking on top of and THAT is your only audio track. Russia never believed in subtitles for movies and it was very cheap to just have someone speak Russian over the original soundtrack rather than creating a new Russian only soundtrack for a film, so you can thank the old USSR for this terrible practice that seems to mostly be going away today.

Bottom line - there is NOTHING you can do about this and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or doesn't understand the situation. Sorry to be so blunt, but since you guys haven't traveled to the ex-USSR you don't really understand what the original poster is talking about. No offense intended to anyone, especially yoda313.

[KayAt]

Well, my problem is similar, polish voice over to a TV series.

Since the speaker is only one male, low pitch, is it possible to remove a certain "noise" so to speak in a sound track?

[jman98]

You could, in theory, set up a filter to TRY to do it, but I would bet you almost anything that in reality it won't work. I would expect it to remove more than you want or to not remove what you want at all.
My previous post on this is still relevant.

[guns1inger]

If it is dubbed over the original you won't get rid of it entirely, and you won't get rid of it without doing damage to the original.

Many asian VCDs do seperate the different languages into dofferent channels, rather than dub over the original, hence Yoda's advice. I think, Jman, that you could have been less blunt in explaining the situation.

[ridgerunrbunny]

It could be "Bleed through", and probably is. Dubbing over old mag or bad dummies would cause that, if they were using film and not computers. Nothing can be done unless there are separate tracks

Bunny.