How to swap audio for a dvd movie?

[manthing]

i have a PAL movie dvd.
it has german audio.

i have found another source of the movie with english audio.

i have, 2 issues (at least):

1) how to replace the german audio with the english one? i want to keep the rest of the dvd, eg main menu, chapters etc, as is.

2) the english audio is from a NTSC video. so will i have to "speed up" the audio to match PAL speed? and if so, how would i do this?

please let me know whcih apps to use.
if available, point me in the direction of guides.

thanks.

[admin]

You're making this too complicated (menus + chapter marks).

DVD menus...

I've always considered it a silly notion to try and retain DVD menus, when you consider what a DVD menu is really for -- navigating the actual content. People seem to go to great lengths of time and research, hours and hours, simply to maintain something they'll look at for maybe a minute or two at most.

I see people asking this question a lot online, and the advice is always "just re-author it". And that's coming from professionals and programmers most of the time. It's a hassle and doesn't always work right anyway.

I'm a skilled author, so I can just make a new menu.

Chapter marks...

I'm of the opinion that exact chapter marks aren't really important either. Same for thumbnail menus that do "scene selection". Pretty much anybody older than 10 years old is from the "VHS generation" when you had to wait on tapes to FF, often guessing when to stop. If you try to seek content by FF'ing the tape while it played, you were basically screwing up the tape and degrading it's signal/tape integrity. It could be random 5-minute chapter marks, and still provide the basic function that a chapter mark serves to do -- provide "skippable" locations that allow for quick access.

If you really want to compare your old DVD to the new DVD, then watch it in a player by the computer, and then match it by observation. If framerates match, you could extract a chapter like with PgcEdit, but there's not any way that I know of to import the chapters. (And if there is, I doubt it's easy or compatible with most software.)

Most authoring programs have auto-increment chaptering tools.


Sync audio on videos with SAME frame rates...

Syncing the audio to the video is the hard part. The first challenge is making sure the editing is identical on both. Many times, different versions are cut different, which would cause audio drift by simply dropping new audio into the timeline.

I generally convert both movies to lossless HuffYUV AVI, and then drop both movies onto a Premiere timeline. Then I 50% transparency one of the movies, so I can see both films in the preview window at the same time. You'll need a fast computer for this to work well. Then scrub the timeline, looking for places where there is change or discontinuity.


Sync audio on videos with DIFFERENT frame rates...

Then there is PAL vs NTSC (proper and improper) speed conversion issues. Does the length of the new audio match the old one to the frame? (That's about 1/24th-1/30th of a second.) A proper conversion is about 4% different, adjusted for pitch. An improper conversion could be anything.

If the films are different formats, you've got a mess on your hands. You'll have to isolate matching segments from both movies, then crop both out and measure lengths. Adjust one of them as needed until both videos play at the same speed. Match the changed video speed to the audio, using Goldwave for frame-accurate audio timing adjustments.

Then drop both into Premiere and do as described earlier, as the framerates now match.


Software suggested and/or required...

DVD Decrypter or VOB2MPG Pro to rip video via IFO Mode. DVD Decrypter is available for download in the forum. Use the "search" function to find that thread.

If copy protection is present, and next-gen:
- Easy pay method. Use AnyDVD.
- For longer free method, use DVDFab free decrypter, then rip files to hard drive, use ImgBurn to create new ISO file, mount new ISO with Gizmo Drive or Daemon Tools Lite, and then rip that in DVD Decrypter.

Gspot to measure the length of the videos. Gspot is available for download in the forum. Use the "search" function to find that thread.

VirtualDub and/or Avisynth, for correcting the lengths of the video footage to the proper format. Read the PAL/NTSC guide available on this site.

Also VirtualDubMod (or MPEG edition) for converting MPEG to AVI. Do not use regular VirtualDub with the MPEG input plugin, as there are some odd chrominance interlacing issues that exist on it. This means converting MPEG to AVI before changing framerates, unless you're using Avisynth.

Goldwave for any audio length corrections needed. Also discussed on PAL/NTSC guide.

Adobe Premiere 6.5 or higher, for syncing the audio to video. I wholly suggest Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 or higher. Adobe.com has free trials, although I don't know for how long, or if aything is crippled in the trials.

An authoring program. For menu-less discs, I like TMPGEnc Authoring Works (formerly TMPGEnc DVD Author). For nice menus, then I highly suggest Ulead DVD Workshop 2.

Other tools may be needed if this is complicated by complex VOB source files, complex streams, 5.1 audio, DTS audio, etc. Decompiling, editing and rebuilding a new DVD isn't the easiest video task around.


Note: My carpal tunnel is acting up, so I'm not able to link to things like I usually would right now. Using the mouse hurts. I'll have to come back in a day or so to give links. Just search the site and forums with our search engine if you read this before I get back, and you'll find it easy.

Good luck on this project!

[manthing]

ouch, all that does seem painful to do. might just cough up the dough and buy the movie 2nd hand!

then again, i might tackle this project just so i can learn a few tricks. might be useful in future (different) projects.

i do agree with your thoughts about the menu & chapters. i'm not so hung up about this that i must have it at all costs. i'll try it this one time to get a feel for how difficult this is going to be.

the big one is correcting the audio to match the video. i'll see about getting all the other software i need and let you know later.

probably much later as this will be a back-burner project.

thanks for your input.
helpful as always.

[manthing]

ok i did it.
and it was only slightly painful.

1) i demuxed the video from pal version of the film. i used tmpgenc mpeg editor for this.

2) i transcoded the audio, from NTSC to PAL. i used BeSweet for this.

3) i checked that the video and audio parts closely matched each other in terms of run time. they were only about 10 seconds different in this case. close enough for me to continue with this project.

4) now the laborious part. i used tmpgenc mped editor to see if the video & audio were in sync. of course they weren't! not completely anyway.

so i simply went through the movie, cutting it into chunks that were in sync and re-built the movie that way.

right, hard part over.

5) next i authored a new movie using the re-built resources from above. i made sure i did not have a main menu for this as it'll be easier this way for the next step.

6) next, i used VobBlanker to replace the original movie with my newly created one.

ta-da.
all done.

finally i played back the dvd to check everything worked.

so, overall it was not that difficult.
laborious - yes. but only a little bit.

couple of other minor points:

7) there was a small cut to the movie i had compared with the other source i found. it was easy enough to cut this out of the audio.

8) i used the chapters from the original movie for the new one. the chapters didn't quite match the original. it would have been easy enough to adjust the chapter points in dvd lab pro, but i couldn't be bothered as it wasn't important to me.

so in summary i extracted the video, converted the audio, authored a new dvd and then used vobblanker to replace the movie.

ok, so now i know how to do it.
will i do it again?
hmm, perhaps, but only in extreme situations.

hope some of you find this mini guide helpful.

[admin]

Very good!