Alternate Audio Tracks for Movies

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?)

Alternatives...

Everything2.com
Juro5hin.com

Calling Joel Hodgson

This sounds like the killer app for DVD. The original and the MST3K audio track on the same disc.

Re:Calling Joel Hodgson

The latest batch of MST3K DVDs to have been released have this feature. Or rather, they're double-sided DVD's with the original cut of the movie on one side and the MiSTed cut on the other.

but which one is most aclaimed?

groundhog day is the only track.

but it is also the most aclaimed one... and most active! :)

Good for REAL movie critics

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

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.

Any software to support this?

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.

Just imagine...

now you could put your own amusing soundtracks to films! Any funny suggestions anyone?

Wizard of oz

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).

One big, whompin' track?

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.

Groundhog Day

...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. :-)

Bandwidth issues

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).

Use Movies to Learn a Foreign Language

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.

I Really Liked Groundhog Day

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.

.

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back

Obviously Ebert hasn't seen the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back DVD. The DVD-ROM has a feature that lets you make your own commentary. It only allows you to make commentary on 1 scene, not the whole DVD. But when you're done it uploads it to the miramax servers and I guess anyone can listen to it. I was going to do it but Miramax says they own the commentary you submit and can use it for anything they want, so maybe this DVD Tracks site is a better idea.

Market?

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').

Average track

"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 see a different use for this.

Mystery Science-Fiction Theatre 3000 amateur edition anyone?

Do it with quicktime

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....

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...

gunfire...

So now you can get pr0n movies with gunfire sounds? Or the other way around... (who wants that anyways)

News?

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?

Hrm.

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.

Deja vous?

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

Will copyright lawyers squish this?

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.)

This sounds cool but...

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

Re:This sounds cool but...

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.

Groundhog Day commentary

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..."

Groundhog Day commentary

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..." .

Great.

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.

Fractured Flickers

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

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.

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-

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

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.

Would be nice to see used for localisation

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.

In related news

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!

DVD authors: adding soundtracks?

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.

Am I missing Something?

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

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.

Groundhog's Day Commentary

"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."

Okay site, shoulda waited for it to mature a bit.

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. :)

Hmmm ...

Would they pay us?

this could be interesting

on pr0n flicks

DMCA?

I'm afraid the act of replacing said copyrighted music with your own is a circumvention of the way the DVD was meant to be decoded.

What a world we live in today.

Something bad is going to happen now...

How do you know? She's just going out to pick up her newspaper.

I can hear it on the background music, have you never seen a movie before?

Oh, that - didn't I tell you that this is the alternative soundtrack, when the bad guy appears it's in harmony with violins.

Wow, cool!

Not really.

Does anyone NOT know Groundhog Day?

"(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

I want to do the whole soundtrack

Rip the video..record music,foley,dialog....mix burn/upload...yeah baby.

Additional Feature

I think a great value adding feature would be a "Relevance Score" which would allow the end user to discern between say, the Production Designer's or Director of Photography's commentary and Joe Schmoe's commentary for a particular movie. Someone on set of the movie during production would rate a between a 5 (Production Assistant) and 10 (Producer, Director), while those not related to the production would score less.

Re:No one will take the time...

I'm listening to it right now.

Re:Grow up and stop "Warezing"

noooo...
you see it the wrong way

its like copying the book and walking away with it... thats the whole difference with copying.
Secondly, not everyone who copies DVD's or software would have bought it, if they had the option between 'buying' or 'leaving'.

Re:Spoofs

Woody Allen took a japanese spy movie and redid the audio so that the dialogue actually looked like what the peoples lips were saying. The movie is called "What's Up Pussycat" and revolves around a spy faction trying to come up with the best recipie for chicken salad.

I know...chicken salad, but that's what it looked like they were saying. I really loved it and can't wait for it to come out on DVD...

Re:DSOTM

except, you would need to package the hash with the DVD in order to experience the effect properly

Re:Grow up and stop "Warezing"

No one is suggesting modifying DVDs or distributing DVDs or distributing copyrighted material. This site is simply for a way to distribute home-brew audio tracks which can
be used in conjunction with DVDs or other movies.

It may have sounded like flamebait...

but the AC has a point.

(For those who read at 1 or higher, the parent to this post said "No one will take the time to listen to this sort of thing. Except for the poster, maybe his girlfriend." Hopefully it will get bumped up soon, but AC's seldom seem to get their props under the current mod system.)

I strongly disagree with what Roger Ebert says about homebrew comentary. I like some director commentary tracks. I like it even better when a DVD comes with comentary by a very well-informed person who writes about movies for a living (such as the comentary on Criterion's edition of Seven Samurai, or the track Mr. Ebert himself did for Dark City). Listening to some of those tracks is like taking a film school seminar, with one of the nation's leading critics as your professor for the day.

That said, there is no way I'm going to spend two hours of my life listening to what the typical talk-backer from Aint-It-Cool-News has to say about his favorite flick. Why would I ever take the time to download a play-by-play breakdown of... oh, say "12 Monkeys"... when, for all I know, it was done by somebody who never saw "La Jette" (which it was based on), nor any of Gilliam's previous body of work, and spends most of the running time of the film talking about Brad Pitt's recent marriage to Jenifer Aniston and how he thought that the Bruce Willis movie "Hudson Hawk" was really underrated.

In Proverbs* it says that there is no man on Earth who you can't learn something from, but that doesn't mean that everybody's nuggets of wisdom are worth the time to mine them.

* Footnote: "Proverbs" is a popular religious text expounding on the virtues of wisdom, for those of you who drive around with those lame "Darwin fish" on the backs of your cars, in spite of having never attended a high school biology class.

Re:Grow up and stop "Warezing"

They feed upon an artificial value created by the monopolies IP gives them. The value of copies exist only because copyright holders can use their monopolies to create a lack of copies in the market.

What about the resources ($$$) that it takes to actually make movies/music/books/etc? Don't the creators deserve to reimbursed for their time and effort? Isn't it morally wrong to deny them their profit even from something they spent resources creating? IP doesn't magically grow on trees, it usually takes actual work and resources to create. When you buy a CD or movie, sure there's distribution cost (very low), but you're also paying the creation cost. That's why making a copy of something you didn't buy is stealing -- sure it's just a copy, but the use of that work creates the moral obligation to pay your share of the creation costs as well. So please don't try to play the "it's illegal, but not morally wrong" card; you don't have a leg to stand on.