Removing only one audio stream?

[Dunnyman]

I've got a VCD that I bought from overseas, and it plays kinda weird, for some reason, the film is subtitled, and I get those just fine, but I also get TWO audio tracks on it that play at the same time!!! NO control over it on the DVD player, but is there a way to remove it and rebuild the VCD without the extra track? Come to think of it, is there a way to remove the Cantonese subtitles on a VCD? It's kinda weird watching a Godzilla flick with both Japanese and Mandarin languages playing at the same time...

[galactica]

extract the .mpeg out of it, demux and see what you get...
if you only get 1 audio file that plays both at the same time i cant really think of what to do....

per the subtitles, not that im aware of. they are "burned" into the video component itself so they actually are playing as a result of the video playing, not a subtitle option, unless your is a strange one...


toast the disk to your HD
rename to .bin
open VCDTOOLSX and use the extrat mpeg from .bin option.

get the mpeg, then demux with any of the demux tools
bbdemux for example

see what you get....

[ZeroSix]

This is easy to achieve.

When VCDs use multiple audio tracks, the left channel is one language and the right is another. Older VCD players, namely the CD-i had the option to utilize this.. You would just select language track 1 or 2 and it would adjust the sound output accordingly. The downside to this is that the language you are wanting is in MONO only and there is no hope of changing that.

to fix the problem, do this...

First rip the VCD to a MPEG file. demux the MPEG. Open the .mp2 audio file in iTunes and convert it to a .wav, keeping the same sampling rate of 44.1kHz, but be SURE to convert it in STEREO.

Then, open the resulting .wav in either Sound Studio, Peak, or any other audio editing app and remove the channel containing the language you no longer want. Then convert the file to MONO. then export it as either a .wav or .aif as STEREO keeping the same sampling rate as the source.

This will give you a "stereo" file that is mon, but should comply to the VCD spec.

Then open the .wav in ffmpegX or any other mp2 encoder to encode it BACK to MP2.

My favorte is just the terminal... Open it up and type the following:

mp2enc -V -o /path/to/desired/audio.mp2 < [drag .wav file to the terminal window]

The remux it with your original .m1v/mpv file and viola... you got it.

This is a very lengthy process, and i recommend checking the settings on your DVD/VCD player BEFORE going through all this. It is usually an option that is hardware based and not on the disc itself... try messing with the AUDIO button on your remote or whatever and see if there is a way to change the output channel for VCDs.

[ZeroSix]

furthermore to remove the subtitles would be nearly impossible as they are encoded into the MPEG. You could always convert the mpeg to something else, open it in final cut pro and crop the video and then scale your movie, but that would be just plain stupid. The subtitles are the best part of Godzilla movies anyway! (Except for the stings you can see attached to some of the monsters... GODZIRRRA!]

[Dunnyman]

Aha!
I converted to bin files, then proceeded to take it apart, and just as you said, I had two audio tracks!!! Not really sure which is which, so I remuxed two files with a different stream in each one. I contacted the vendor about it, and was told that a LOT of Hong Kong VCD's seem to have the same problem in physical players, but just fine on computers, lo and behold, popped it in and got my options for audio channel that never showed up on my TV......wierd man, just weird...
I dunno tho, subtitles are nice, but the badly synced dubbing is always my favorite part of a Godzilla flick...