Hosed by an overdub (?)

[Seeker47]

Not the first time I've run into this: a downloaded video has a language I don't want to be hearing laid over top of the English dialog. It pretty much drowns out the latter. (According to VLC and a couple other programs, there is just the one audio track.) If they had put in separate language tracks, I would not have any problem. But in cases like this, I suppose there is not really any remedy that can be applied ?

[edDV]

Not unless the voices are separated in frequency and or harmonics.

The technology is spectral analysis via fast Fourier transform which sophomore EE students must master.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform

The resulting spectral differences comparing one or the other voices when in solo could be used to design a digital filter to reduce or eliminate the overdub voice.

Some examples...
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3417
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/calvin_hsia/archive/2005/09/19/471633.aspx
http://www.worlditc.org/k_03_rodiehr_filtering_0_of_voices.htm
http://billhung.net/ee145m/lab22/lab22_report.pdf
http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/idl_html_help/Removing_Noise.html

[redwudz]

That was common with some Russian releases. The original audio is generally dropped down in volume and all but impossible to recover.
I would just toss it.

[Seeker47]

That was common with some Russian releases. The original audio is generally dropped down in volume and all but impossible to recover.
I would just toss it.

BINGO ! The dominant overdub is Russian, and it seems like the original audio was dropped down considerably.

What edDV is describing sounds like an advanced science project. Well beyond my modest resources.

[edDV]

I was responding to

I suppose there is not really any remedy that can be applied ?

If you amp those skills you are a prime applicant for {name security agency}.