.avi playback: audio, 2 languages at same time problem

[CrVMo]

Hello.
When viewing an .avi file on SMPlayer, two languages are heard at the same time, English and Russian.
How can I just listen to the English audio?
Thanks,
Tim

MediaInfo:

Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 1.05 GiB
Duration : 1h 26mn
Overall bit rate : 1 741 Kbps
Writing application : Lavf50.6.0

Video
ID : 0
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Codec ID : DIV3
Codec ID/Hint : DivX 3 Low
Duration : 1h 26mn
Bit rate : 1 500 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.195
Stream size : 924 MiB (86%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Mode : Joint stereo
Mode extension : MS Stereo
Codec ID : 55
Codec ID/Hint : MP3
Duration : 1h 26mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 224 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 138 MiB (13%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 24 ms (0.60 video frame)
Writing library : LAME3.98 (alpha)

[El Heggunte]

Two possibilities:

a) left channel = one language, right channel = the other language

b) that's a typical horrible Russian dub

[jman98]

The USSR had a history of doing voice over dubbing rather than subtitles. This often involved a single person doing ALL the dialog. As someone who has seen an unusually large number of Russian films from the USSR days (I used it to help my Russian language studies), I can tell you that sometimes it sounds like the person doing the talking is trying to translate on the fly by listening to the English and then quickly trying to say it back in Russian. What a mess that is. Sometimes they seem to have prepared the Russian dialog in advance and while the "two languages at the same time" thing is insanely distracting, that's how it was done in the old days. Many people still fondly remember that and there are actually people in Russia who make a living by providing MP3 voice over files for new Hollywood movies for fans to use instead of the current Hollywood practice of producing a true Russian soundtrack with no voice over. There's no way to get rid of the Russian dialog in such cases as yours, so you are stuck with it.

[AllisOne]

jman98 is faster (and knows more about "the horrible Russian dub") but anyway:

Third possibility

If there's no separate audio stream for each language, you've encountered so called "voice-over" (in Russian "закадровый перевод", in Polish "lektor") and that's not a typical horrible Russian dub . It means you hear 2 languages at the same time - the original one is quieter. It's used very often in Poland and quite a few other countries), apart from some kids movies like Shrek or Harry Potter being fully dubbed. Personally I really like it, 'cos thanks to that I know original voices of actors what broadens the perception of film characters ... and I don't have to read subtitles . The opposite pole to it is a Spanish dubbing. It's so annoying, I hate it.

So next time double check the description of the movie you want to ... watch .

[El Heggunte]

4th possibility:

AllisOne actually is a sock-puppet of some forum troll.

[jman98]

I guess I somehow wasn't specific enough, but yes, I am talking about people deliberately talking on top of the original English soundtrack where you can hear it in the background. If this is a Russian video source then this is what the OP has. Sometimes they do it professionally and sometimes the speaker sounds like he's doing it on the fly and rushing to finish the sentence before the next one starts, but you always here the original soundtrack in the background as a constant distraction where it's not distinct enough to understand. Again the main point to take away from this is that it CANNOT be fixed to remove the Russian voice over.

[CrVMo]

Thanks for all the feedback.
As I'm new to this subject, why can't the Russian dialogue be removed?
Is it "hardcoded" into the visual image?

[davexnet]

Thanks for all the feedback.
As I'm new to this subject, why can't the Russian dialogue be removed?
Is it "hardcoded" into the visual image?

No, it's "hard coded" into the audio track.