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Alternate Audio Tracks for Movies 163

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-fun-to-do dept.
Patrick Stein writes "DVD Tracks is a forum for the distribution of home-brew, alternate audio tracks for movies. Inspired by Roger Ebert's column in Yahoo!Internet Life entitled You, Too, Can Be a DVD Movie Critic, DVD Tracks puts you behind the microphone to talk about your favorite flicks." Cool idea, but there's only one track. (Groundhogs day?)
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Alternate Audio Tracks for Movies More

Alternate Audio Tracks for Movies

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  • Alternatives... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everything2.com
    Juro5hin.com

  • Calling Joel Hodgson (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bandix ( 184495 ) <brandon@bPOLLOCK ... om minus painter> on Monday March 25, 2002 @05:57PM (#3224857) Homepage
    This sounds like the killer app for DVD. The original and the MST3K audio track on the same disc.
  • groundhog day is the only track.

    but it is also the most aclaimed one... and most active! :)
  • It seems to me that the movie critic industry is all cynical - or all senial. I've learned not to pay attention to reviews and criticism's just because movies that get crappy ratings always turn out ok or good, and movies with GREAT reviews most often turn out to be boring. Movie reviews from movie buffs rather than people getting paid to say what they think about how good the "acting, filming, angles" are, will be a welcome change.

    • Critics should not have a unquestioning audience (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:44PM (#3225177) Homepage Journal
      This is the simple practice I have for seeking critical advice on films:

      Read a few reviews

      Note who wrote them and what they had to say

      See the movies, and then reconcile which critic(s) you most often agree with

      Look for their review when you're planning how to spend your disposable income

      Update list as necessary

      I've noticed some reviewers are excellent for films targeted at 18-30 year old, who are completely out of it when reviewing something like A Bugs Life. Keep tabs on where their opinions are off base and on target. Disappointingly many have forgotten what it was like to be young.

      • I've found that I can predict which movies I will like by doing the *opposite* of Roger Ebert. If he is revolted by a movie (e.g. Blue Velvet or Fight Club) I know I will really like it. If he totally doesn't understand a movie (e.g. Velvet Goldmine which was a complex meditation on the impact of Glam Rock) the I know the movie is pretty intelligent...
    • Check out the Internet Movie Database [imdb.com] if you haven't already. You can find opinions/ratings from a wide variety of individuals, and submit your own opinions on movies. A good general source on movie information. It would be cool if they started linking to alternate audio tracks as well..
      • Is it me or do even the impossibly crappy movies (even based on user opinion) seem to get glowing featured reviews? Does imdb simply have a policy of putting the highest-rated review on the front page? Maybe I should start writing bad reviews of crappy movies, and give them ratings of 10...

    • movies that get crappy ratings always turn out ok or good

      I've had a different experience. When there is really nothing in it worth seeing, I'm generally aware of this just from reading two or three reviews. Occasionally I disagree with them. But I'm still better off overall.
    • It seems to me that the movie critic industry is all cynical.

      In some ways it can be a good thing if reviewers of anything are somewhat cynical.

      I've learned not to pay attention to reviews and criticism's just because movies that get crappy ratings always turn out ok or good, and movies with GREAT reviews most often turn out to be boring.

      Sounds more like the professional reviwers being too much of a homogeneous group...
  • Any DVD player app that can play such a custom audio track instead of the DVD audio? Playing it with a separate app seems cheezy.

    • Re:Any software to support this? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mplayer for *nix does this.

      It lets you sink anything from an mp3, ac3, or raw wav file i think.You can even adjust the delay timing to get it right. It also pauses like normal.
  • now you could put your own amusing soundtracks to films! Any funny suggestions anyone?
  • I think it would be cool to make a version of the wizard of oz with the "Dark side of the moon" cd as background music (remember how that cd is supposed to go allong with the movie).
    • About a year ago I saw The Wizard of Oz on DirecTv (I think it was AMC) with the Dark Side of the Moon as the alternate audio broadcast. It was a great idea and shows that, if this becomes popular, you might see it on something like HBO in the future.

      Anyone else ever hear of a cool alternate audio broadcast?

  • Interesting idea, but, unlike a sync'ed DVD track, it seems it would be hard to skip ahead if you get bored with an alternative track that's in a single big MP3.

    Are there ways to bookmark sections in Mp3's to allow jumping to fixed locations in the track? Then you could jump to specific chapters.

    • I think the idea would be to create new DVD's and release the image file on the underground or for the smart people give us mp3 files.

      This way you burn a legal copy - keep your original safe - and watch your new commentary either in your Component DVD player [given it can read your discs] or your PC.

      If making DVD discs you could make another track - but if you like VCD as I do [runs almost everywhere] you could just make a 60 cent two disc set. I know of many free programs that will put an mp3 to an mpeg - hell you could even make a MPEG-2 with some.

      Seems pretty easy, I've had a great idea about The Matrix but I won't say it here.....

    • the mp3cue plugin [guerillasoft.com] does just that. you can make a .cue file when ripping a cd to create 1 continuous mp3 (so no glitches arise between tracks when listening), but with the plugin it lists the separate tracks and you can skip ahead to them if you'd like..i'd imagine you could do something similar with this movie track idea..

      iluvpr0n.

  • Groundhog Day (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:01PM (#3224892) Homepage Journal
    ...I got you babe...

    I swear, if I got up every morning to that tune on the radio, I'd drop a toaster into my bathtub, too.

    I can't quite figure out how or why I'd want to do my own soundtrack for a movie. Seems there's plenty I like the sound to just fine, and those that I don't, eh... I'm not sure I'm cut out for the MST3K line of work.

    "Together I shall rule the world!" -- Tom Servo

    Now I do have a lot of experience with running the play-by-play from the radio instead of from the TV during sports broadcasts. :-)

    • ...I got you babe...

      The site's featured track is for the movie Groundhog Day, which repeatedly plays a song by Sonny and Cher (stage name of Salvatore Bono and Cherilyn LaPierre), both of whom have voiced support for perpetual [wikipedia.com] copyright [everything2.com].

      If you want to watch the movies dubbed on the site without the revenue from your DVD purchases supporting the political agenda of Hollywood, then for every dollar you spend on entertainment, make a matching contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org]. (I'm a card-carrying member myself.)

  • Bandwidth issues (Score:3, Insightful)

    by e1en0r ( 529063 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:03PM (#3224905) Homepage
    I thought about starting a similar site a few months ago, but I think in the end there will be too many bandwidth issues. I would guess the same will go for this site too. The "Groundhog Day" track is 17MB and I'm sure everything else will be pretty big too. Unless they get some kind of revenue source I think they'll have a hard time. And although this sounds like it would be a great thing for the movie industry to get behind, I'm sure they think it'll hurt their profits or infringe on their copyrights (they'll try to find a way) in some way and won't support it. A better idea might be something like Audiogalaxy (minus the spyware).

    • Re: Bandwidth issues (Score:2, Informative)

      by e1en0r ( 529063 )
      Hmmm. After further investigation it appears that the tracks are hosted elsewhere and you upload them to your server and just link to them. Better for the dude that runs the site, but unfortunately that type of setup usually ends up in a high percentage of broken links. I'll cross my fingers and hope it works though. It's a promising idea.
    • I don't suppose that his site getting linked from the front page of slashdot will do anything to help his bandwidth problems...

    • The best way to make the files small is to use Variable Bit Rate encoding of the mp3 files so only when someone is talking is there any sound. Any person making their own track should listen to the movie through headphones, volume low. This way the mike won't pick up the sound. The wave file should then be altered so only sound above a number of decibels is audible, everything else is nullified. That way the mp3 wont even have background hiss. The result, ultra small mp3 files that sound excellent.

  • I've always thought that watching movies would be a great way to learn foreign languages. But of course not those cheesy ones that they make you watch in school. I mean real movies that you'd probably watch anyways.

    Picture this:
    The audio of the movie you're watching is in the foriegn language that you'd like to learn. This would help you get a feel for the pronounciation of words. The subtitles of the movie would display not only the text for the audio (the foreign language), but also your native language so that you know what's going on. This would help you also learn the spelling of words being used.

    Although the technology described wouldn't exactly enable this, it's a step towards it and I think it'd be a very cool thing to have. It wouldn't be that hard for DVD companies to implement it.
    • Just watch a film made in the language you're learning. Duh.


      Re subtitles: They are probably already available in both languages, so all you need to do if you really want both simultaneously is to modify a DVD player to show two sets of subtitles. Not a big problem, if the source code is available.

    • Just what we need...people trying to learn English from what? Star Trek: TNG? Star Wars? The Matrix?!

      There is no substitute for structured classes and learning the formal parts of any language. Watching movies and reading newpapers can help suplement language learning but one should never base learning around "pop culture". There are too many slangs and reagonal things to be really useful for general communication.
      • I grew up in the UK and also went to school there till I was 13, after that I went to school in Germany.

        I know quite a few people that learnt English from Star Trek: TNG. Star Trek is actually good for learning English because the sentences are spoken slowly and clearly unlike in some other films or series.

        The problem was that it is quite difficult in Germany to watch a series like Star Trek in English. Until this weekend it was legal to hack a satellite tv broadcasting station if that station did not sell subscribtions to your country.

        So when I was still in school (9 years ago) we and a couple of my friends had a hacked smart card to receive the UK satellite TV stations. I know quite a few people that bought a decoder + hacked smart card just to watch ST:TNG and learn English.

        Unfortuneately since Sky introduced their 0x0A smartcards Sky was never hacked again. This must be 7 or 8 years ago now.

        Now DVDs have solved the problem of watching stuff in English. Every DVD (that was filmed in an ENglish speaking country) you can buy contains an English soundtrack. Some of these DVDs though force you to have German subtitles when watching the DVD with the ENglish soundtrack and you can't imagine how annoying it is seeing the film in one language and having subtitles in another. Luckily hacks exist for DVD players to remove user prohibitions.

        The ENglish soundtrack is one of the major reasons why I buy so many DVDs because I am sick and tired of listening to the film in German. Sometimes you watch a movie and gain $$$ in the process: You order a DVD from DVD box office with free shipping, watch the movie and sell it again. SOmetimes movies can be sold for higher prices (used) than it cost to get the DVD new from DVD box office. I'll never understand why. This was especially true when ebay.de still allowed you to sell Region 1 DVDs.

        Region codes are not a problem. Most DVD players are hackable or are already sold already hacked.

        Cinemawise all films are in German, but some cinemas have one single screening of one film a week in the original language. Seldom though.

        Having a film dubbed is better though than what some other countries do: Poland - here the film with the english track is audible - but very silent, but on top of this someone (a single person) is constantly translating what the people are saying. The difference in volume is so great that you cannot hear the background English when the translator is speaking. I don't understand Polish, but I think this is a very stupid way of doing things.

        The Dutch, Danes and Swedish (probably over Scandinavien countries too) just show the movies in the original language and have subtitles. This is the reason why in the Netherlands everyone understands English and I mean everyone. In Germany, most people will understand you if you speak slowly because everybody learnt it at school sometime, but the older the people you are talking to and the less paid the profession, the less likely it is they understand you (and the lesser they get paid the less likely it is that they even speak German nowerdays). Depends on the job though, a programmer always understands English, so will any manager and the like.

        Off topic: Since I'll maybe be moving to the US to work there at the end of the year, is it easy to get a DVD player that plays region 2 PAL DVDs on an NTSC TV? Region free of course? I don't want to throw away all my R2 DVDs.

        • I can't comment on stand-alone dvd players, but most PC dvd drives have uploadable firmware that will make then region-free. IIRC though, you still have to use a software program like decss to decrypt them.
  • It was pretty good.

    This doesn't seem like that cool of a thing as far as technology goes. I mean- you certainly don't need a dvd to do this.

    Just record your thoughts watching a movie and have someone kick off the audio when the video tape gets to the start of the film. I know that dvd makes it a little easier to sync up audio and video- but it certainly isn't necessary.

    In fact- if you want to go w/all tape, record your commentary on a couple audio cassettes (remember to warn the viewer to pause the VCR before they have to switch tapes.) Now even the most technologically underpriveleged can enjoy custom commentary.

    Maybe I'll have friends over an we will do a live 'improv' movie commentary party!

    Oh yeah, we've been doing that for years already. But it will be cooler now that it is official.

    .

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:05PM (#3224922)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Who's going to listen to a stranger commentate in the background of a movie? I'd rather just see the movie, not hear commentary (especially not 'off-the-cuff').
    • I'd rather just see the movie, not hear commentary (especially not 'off-the-cuff').

      Yeah, if I wanted to hear complete strangers mouthing off as if their every thought was special I'd just go see the film in a movie theater.

      Hell, you can get 3 or 4 secondary audio tracks at the same time like that.

  • Average track (Score:5, Funny)

    by NiftyNews ( 537829 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:08PM (#3224947) Homepage
    "Hey and welcome to the movie. Man, this is cool. Oh hey, anyway, this is Brian Chamberlake III and we're going to watch Tank Girl together. [40 second gap]. Here come the credits. [50 second gap]. Alright...Hey Jim, get me some popcorn! [2 hour gap, end]."

    Total Downloads of this clip: 3
    • I started working on this track, but the phone rang at the beginning of chapter 23. I was expecting a call, so I shouldn't have started. I'll finish the movie soon.

      You weren't that far off!

  • Mystery Science-Fiction Theatre 3000 amateur edition anyone?
  • You should be able to rip the DVD to MPEG and open it in the OLD QuickTime Player 2.5. It came with editing plugins (on the cd) that let you edit tracks. The trick is that the old version lets you play with tracks and save to different formats for free -- it came out before the whole QuickTime Pro joke started. Sure the files are a few gigs, but hey, it's worth it just to have a homebrew MST3K version of "The Net"

  • Poor, poor Patrick.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by NOT-2-QUICK ( 114909 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:12PM (#3224977) Homepage
    I don't personally know whom the site proprietor, Patrick [dvdtracks.com], is or anything, but for his little site's sake I really hope that this article is either regarded as disinteresting by the masses of /. or that his ISP is in for one hell of a shock...

    While this IS certainly an interesting idea and possibly even worth an article on Slashdot, his content is a bit thin and I have his usual site traffic is basicly not existant....until NOW that is!!!

    So anyways...Pat, if you are reading this...good luck and I hope you are being charged for bandwidth by the Mb!!! Of course, you could always take a page from this guy [slashdot.org] and ask that the Slashdot community reimburse you...
  • So now you can get pr0n movies with gunfire sounds? Or the other way around... (who wants that anyways)
  • This is news? a web site with one MP3 on it? It's not even a alternate audio track about the movie, it's more like a directors commentary. I guess I can kiss my Karma goodbye, but has anyone else noticed Slashdot is _really_ stretching for stories lately?
  • I registered fancommentaries.org after I read the artical (a long time ago). I was going to setup scoop on it, but I didn't have enough time. Oh well.
    • Gee...I don't think you'd need much content ... I mean, look at this guy with ONE (!!!) track? Hope he's paying by the Mb to show how much the /. community cares...I really wish the admins would take a better look at these sites before they post them, I mean, a site posted to /. must either not care about the increased traffic (Cnet or nytimes, for example), or be really interesting, like the World programming championship results. They really shouldn't be fledgling sites looking to desperately hook a readership. I mean, link to the article if you want and ask a question about it, but don't post a site that has virtually NO content.

      The idea doesn't really sound too good, either. I don't play CS with the voice feature enabled for the same reason I will never listen to one of these DVDs...I don't wanna hear some loser talking about whatever, when I could hear and see quality audio and video. I mean, after a while you'll either get people with well-reasoned opinions (small percentage of community), and the great deal of the community that bashes everything and yells expletives into their microphones. Actually, that kinda sounds like /.


  • I swear I've read this story before, but I can't figure out where...
    /humour

  • Will copyright lawyers squish this? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:25PM (#3225064) Homepage

    I hope not. It just occurs to me that this might be a "derivative work" according to the MPAA...

    I think most of us rational people realize that "alternate soundtracks" are perfectly harmless if not actually helpful to the bottom line of companies whose DVDs are getting alternate tracks made for them, but I think most of us recognize just how rational the MPAA is...

    If they do attack this, at least the the "squashing of free speech" aspect of their current campaigns will be more blatant (if such a thing is possible), and if they DON'T, then we'll have another legitimate reason for 'fair-use' space-shifted copies of DVD movies (to make SVCD's with the alternate soundtracks for personal use on our standalone players, of course.)

    • Aren't talking about things you like/dislike, scenes, and giving your insight into movies you watch the very thing the Fair Use clause in copyright law supposed to protect? Isn't this then the very essense of this idea?

      After all the alternate audio commentaries are somewhat meaningless unless you have the video to go along with it.
      • Another possibility is that parodies are explicitly provided for in copyright law. All someone has to do to make their track legit is style it like a parody (laugh every few seconds, distort things comically in the commentary, etc).

  • This sounds cool but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jhaberman ( 246905 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:36PM (#3225134)
    I have to think... Why would I want to do this? I mean, the reason I listen to the comentary tracks on my DVD's is because they usually are done by someone who had a hand in making the movie (Actors, directors, editors, etc.) See, I want interesting behind the scenes info about that day's shot, how bad the situation was, what they were going for... things they tried to do but didn't work... etc. etc. etc.

    I definitely don't want a review of the movie while I'm watching it by some schlub who has no more insight than I do. I can take care of that for myself, thank you very much.

    Maybe that's just me, tho...

    Jason

    • This is ridicoulus. I'm listening to that guy and he's just talking about his cuff for ten minutes now...

      *GAAAA*

      This would make sense if maybe more people actually got together and prepared a script that would be worth listening to rather than a guy who constantly talks about his cuff and some town he isn't even sure of whether it's on this planet...

      I could see how that would make sense if some fans got few heads together to produce a track for their favorite movie. Like a track for Star Wars movie where they would talk about all the cameos and other interesting stuff.

      d.

    • Re:This sounds cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @07:16PM (#3225342) Homepage
      Well, perhaps the best commentary track I've heard is Roger Ebert's "Dark City" commentary. It is far more interesting than the director's commentary track (also on the DVD). Commentaries can be genuine film scholarship -- they don't just have to be random trivia about making a movie. After listening to the commentary, I felt as if I've attended a film school lecture.

      On the other hand, Joe Blow is not going to have the knowledge of both film and literature that Roger Ebert has, so maybe amateur commentaries aren't a great idea.
    • On the whole I would agree, the film makers themselves are in the
      best position to comment on the film. However, this idea would
      really come to life when people submit "background information"
      commentries, ie. something a film maker wouldn't necessarily know
      anything about.

      For example, and someone has already mentioned this, a commentry
      by a psychologist discussing the lead characters in Memento or Pi
      would be fascinating -- at least to me.

      Another example might be a compare and contrast discussion of a
      piece of literature and it's celluloid adaptation. I would
      suggest Lord of the Rings would be a great candidate for this
      (Crikey, I've wasted countless hours in the pub critiquing this
      film already, perhaps I should do it :-)

  • Groundhog Day commentary (Score:4, Funny)

    by svferris ( 519966 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @06:40PM (#3225160)
    I imagine the Groundhog Day commentary would go something like this:

    "Hi this is Pat and welcome to my commentary on Groundhog Day. The movie stars Bill Murray..."

    *five minutes later*

    "Hi this is Pat and welcome to my commentary on Groundhog Day. The movie stars Bill Murray..."
  • You, Too, Can Be Slashdotted!

    Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a000d'
    Type mismatch: 'CInt'
    E:\INETPUB\WEBSITES\YIL\COLUMNS\../ssi/ssi ASP.asp, line 83

    I think the only alternate movie soundtrack I'd care to listen is would be Filthy's [bigempire.com] take on it.
  • One of my favorite TV shows waaay waaay back was Fractured Flickers. It took old silent movies and added a humorous sound track. Same principle as Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lily?" I'd like to see this DVD track stuff applied that way. Properly done, it's hilarious.

  • Pink Floyd @ Wizard of Oz (Score:3, Interesting)

    by felipeal ( 177452 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @07:00PM (#3225258) Homepage
    This schema would allow The Dark Side of the Moon as an alternative soundtrack for [ingsoc.com]
    The Wizard of Oz.

  • Everything Old is New Again. (Score:3, Funny)

    by vitaflo ( 20507 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @07:02PM (#3225274) Homepage
    My friends and I used to do this when we were kids. I had a friend bring over an extra VCR and a copy of Star Wars. We'd put the video feed out from the VHS my friend had to the BETA my parents had (yes we had BETA back then), and for the audio we'd use a microphone my parent owned and would rig it up to the sound in to the BETA.

    Then we'd just play the movie on the VHS, and record it on the BETA, and adlib voices over the top of it. Sometimes it was lame, but a lot of times it was absolutely hilarious, especially when we had a really good exchange that just came off the top of our head, and synced w/ the actors well.

    Darth Vadar saying "Once you go black, you never go back" when he points and Leia and calls her a traitor has never been so funny. ;)

  • Roll your own- (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mu*puppy ( 464254 )
    MST3K commentary! Also, fandubbing my own anime comes to mind more and more...

    This -does- make me wonder, though, if/when our friends in the MPAA would do something about this, trying to blur what defines a 'derivative work'. Look up 'The Wind Done Gone' sometime, a parody of 'Gone With the Wind' that re-tells the story from a different viewpoint. The Margaret Mitchell estate tried to sue the author, but fortunately was unsuccessful with the attempt. Still though, were truly big media to flex political muscle/money, who knows what they can do. After all, look at the DMCA and CBDTPA...

    -Mudpuppy
    "Carpe vitam globis!"

  • This could be absolutely awesome (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) on Monday March 25, 2002 @07:36PM (#3225440)
    Ordinary fan commentaries would probably be alot of "OH, THIS SCENE IS AWESOME, WATCH FOR TRINITY'S NIPPLE!"

    However, I like E-bert's idea. What if you were involved in the movie, and had a particular viewpoint. I had a friend that works for Paramount, and is involved behind the scenes with Star Trek, especially the movies. And he's got stories and behind the scenes insights that would blow your mind. Watched The Wrath of Khan with him and it completely changed my impression of that movie.

    Having an expert commentary about a movie based on particular subject matter would be also very worth it. My grandfather was in the first wave at Utah Beach and definitely has alot to say about Saving Pvt Ryan.

    Now, if you can have a program to sync the commentary to the PC DVD player, then it'll be the killer app for PC DVD.

  • There is a big conspiracy out there. Go into any DVD store or rental and see how many have soundtracks or even *subtitles* in French. I went into a few to find a film for my French girlfriend and I to watch and came out with ZERO. Plenty of less widespread language such as Finnish, but nothing for the 10th most spoken [soyouwanna.com] language in the world. Now I know all these films are dubbed for French cinema. It would be great if the dubbed tracks could be released so that we can watch films in many different languages.

    Phillip.
  • I'm gonna be launching a server where you can upload videos of your self acting out your favorite radio events, or replacement streams to go over your favorite music videos.

    Do you think your interpretation of Vince Carter's dunk over T-Mac that you heard last Tuesday rivals that of the man himself? Let us all see!

    Are your dance moves, like, wayyyy better than Brittney's in her new video? Let our members decide!

    Drop by our website www.retarded-ideas-getting-posted-at-slash.com and check it out. Currently, we are only hosting one video clip. It's Jerrod McCurtry of Stephensville, Ohio giving us an alternate video clip to Jay-Z's video 'Jigga My Nigga.' We look to keep expanding!

  • There seems to be a lot of talk about getting DVD apps to synch external audio sources with DVDs. While this seems like a quick fix, I prefer to watch DVDs on my home theatre system.

    Is there some way to use a DVD authoring package to duplicate a DVD and add an extra soundtrack stream to it? DVDs already have multiple soundtracks for commentaries, other languages and different compression formats so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to add one of your own.
  • I guess I must be old school for not being into something like this. The guy basically talks about the city and says umm 4 million times. You would think that if you're releasing something on the internet that is all spoken word, that you would have at least been to a ToastMasters session at least once or twice.

  • DMCA (Score:1)

    by mmusn ( 567069 )
    I'm not sure how, but I am sure somehow the MPAA will construe this as a violation of artists' rights and a violation of copyright and the American way.
  • "Hi. You obviously haven't been a long-time subscriber to Showtime since you bought this DVD. Or someone decided to play a nasty little joke on you. Since Showtime decided to show Groundhog's Day 2-3 times a day, every day, throughout 1996 and 1997, I find it hard to believe that anyone would shell out the money for the DVD. Since you don't know what you are getting, I'll shut up now."
  • Interesting idea. I thought about recording a commentary track for some of the movies I like and have researched and watched enough times to have something to say about. Then I heard a recording of my less than perfectly modulated voice and decided to forget about it!

    However, there's apparently only one track on this site - I listened to the Groundhog Day track and it's certainly not bad. The guy admits he doesn't have filler commentary for every scene on the screen and the microphone rattle in the beginning reveals a limited amount of preparation, so for what it's worth it's certainly a nice first try. I been to Punxsutawney couple times [kobotica.com], and love Groundhog Day the Movie, so it was rather interesting to listen to the guy's comments.

    I think perhaps though it was premature to feature this site on slashdot - don't you think you should have waited until there was a few more tracks on there? As it is, it looks like a thousand people are gonna download the same track - it would have made a better impression if you had let it mature a bit. All the same, it would be nice to see more things like this. It's a good and creative way to 'share' stuff without pirating. :)

  • Would they pay us?

  • "(Groundhogs day?)"

    Oh please tell me you have not NOT seen Groundhog Day? It's a classic. Rent it now.

    "Now put your little hand in mine..."

    Aaron

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