Substituting languages

[DAWG98]

Ok, this may be a little strange, but I am German and I want my kid to speak German. So I figure I use my purchased copy of Lilo & Stitch, rip the whole DVD. My sister (in Germany) did the same with the German audio tracks of her German version of Lilo & Stitch. So now I have a backp of my Region 1, NTSC DVD and the German audio for the same movie. I want to snap my fingers, make the two combine and VOILA a perfect region 1 backup with German instead of French/Spanish alternate audio streams.

Any idea how to go about this?

[roach76]

There are alot of guides on this site for that.....

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvdbackup-guides.htm

[2COOL]

@roach76

Though I don't have an answer for DAWG98, what he is trying to say is he want to mux his PAL German audio track into his NTSC Lilo and Stitch movie. This is an unique case and I've never seen a guide for this yet.

[DAWG98]

Thanks 2Cool. You hear my pain there is no real guide and I did a lot of forum searching and reading. I am not a Newbie either having pulled shows of my TIVO and burnt those on standard DVDs and/or back-up'ed DVD's. Anyway, so far I have done this:

1. demuxed the appropriate NTSC VOB and the German language PAL VOB. I think I just may plan to substitute the two German audio tracks for the Frenc/Spanish track on the NTSC disk and reintegrate the VOB (I won't even change menu's etc...all I care about it that the language is German)

2. Using ifoedit i "author" a new VOB (which i hope I can just put into the complete rip of the dvd and then pair it down ala instantcopy etc to burn on a new DVD.

3. Here is the problem. The audio track does not sync. After some more reading and thinking that makes sense. PAL DVD = 25 fps vs NTSC 29.97. So my PAL sound is losing ground from the beginning as it is too slow (there also seems to be a small delay issue of 1359 ms but I can easily compensate for that). I will try using Prosoniq's Timefactory (if i can find it) to "stretch" the audio track. BeSweet craps out when trying to do this for some reason (using 1.4 and GUI) Once I get the stretched PAL audio and the NTSC video to sync...I will proceed with the integration process.

Any pointers, anyone?

[DAWG98]

Ok, quick update (this is becoming a little off-topic, but I guess I am using Ifo-Edit to author...so I am still ok ;)

I have two audio German PAL audio tracks. One DTS one AC3. I guess I am SOL with respect to the DTS track. So I am just going to use the AC3 (or DD track). I am currently converting the AC3 track to a wav file so that timefactory can S T R E T C H to 29.97 FPS.

Will keep you posted (if anybosy cares ;)

[DAWG98]

Ok...latest news: I wanted to preserve the 5.1 in the German track, so I demuxed the ac3 file into 6 waves using azid....

somthing like azid -g10db -d3/2 -ol lilo.ac3 lilo_left.wav (repeated process for each channel)

Now I am running the suckers through prosoniq timefactory which stretches the waves to the appropriate 29.97 fps (I hope this works...I simply streached to 119.88% which is 29.97fps/25fps)

Then I will put all six stretched channels back together using acid pro 4.0 w/ surround pack. We'll see if it works.

So far one thing is for sure YOU REALLY MUST WANT TO DO THIS :)

Tks to DJ Bobo for his help.

[roach76]

It sounds like you're doing the right thing. BeSweet on this site also allows you to change from PAL to NTSC and back.

[DAWG98]

My besweet keep crashing about 10% into the conversion. I am alos afraid that I may lose the 5.1 in the process. I'll give besweet another shot if and when I get this to work this way.

[htc10825]

for the time streching the "besweet" made me also probelms...
I always use the "Time adjustment" function in "WaveLab 4.0", where you can give a precise time factor, i.e. 104.271%, than choise the "high quality" and "preserve the tone high". This gives you the best possible quality.
@DAWG98
You have a PM from me. Please read it.

[DAWG98]

Ok, while I am typing this my other machine is burning my new Lilo & Stitch with substituted audio track. To briefly recapture what I have done (or set out to do):

In order for my child to have more German exposure (I am German living in the States and I only speak German to my kid...but that only is not enough) I wanted to "manufacture a Region 1 DVD of Lilo and Stitch that includes the German audio track. Unbeknownst to me this would be one of the most time consuming endeavours I have EVER undertaken. It took lots of time (I have little of that), 80gigs of HD space, two XP 2100 computers, and a LOT of patience. In the end, I am proud to report that I succeeded. I was able to demux the French audio/subtitle streams, substitute the German streams and remux into news VOBs, which I then proceeded to convert and burn using Instantcopy.

Below a summary of the steps:

1. I ripped my US (region 1) Lilo and Stitch. Then made a copy of the rip as backup (just in case)

2. My sister in Germany ripped the the German PAL audio track of her Lilo and Stitch.
3. Using Ifoedit I was able to determine which VOBs of my U.S. rip contain the movie/audio. I proceeded to demux the VOBs into video/audio/subtitle streams using Vobedit 0.6 (in download section). Simply load the .ifo or .vob file, as appropriate, select "demux" then "demux multiple streams at once" and ensure NOT to select the split on new VOB ID selection. Let the program run its course and you should have one video stream, 1-3 audio streams and as many subtitle streams.

4. Repeat this process under 3. for the PAL audio and subtitles (my sister ripped the PAL audio into VOBs). Only demux the audio of course. You should get 1-3 audio/subtitle tracks.

5. At this point I had 3 PAL audio tracks. An English PAL track, and two German PAL tracks, one DTS and one DD5.1. Since DTS appears to be tougher to decode/encode (I am not getting into quality differences between the two) I chose to concentrate my efforts on the PAL DD5.1 track in AC3 format.

6. I used azid to extract six wave files (one for each 5.1 track) from the PAL ac3 track. Use the following command line:

azid -d3/2 -oX filename.ac3 X.wav

the -oX switch represents the channel you are decoding; i.e., l for left, r for right, sl for surround left, sr for surround right, c for center and lfe for lfe (the bass not sure what LFE stands for low filter...?) Some people recommed applying gain to the waves. You can first run each wave using the -N switch (no output). The screen will show some negative gain number for each wave. Use the lowest gain number; i.e., one file get -10 the other -5 use -5) by adding the -g5db switch to the above command line befor the -d3/2 switch.

After you completed this step you should have six PAL waves.

7. Now you have to adjust the frame rate to account for the difference in frames per second (FPS) between PAL and NTSC. Most NTSC DVD's are telecined that is they use an internal frame rate of 23.976 which is accelarate to 29.97 when played (this may be a somewhat inaccurate statement but it'll do for my purposes). PAL runs at 25 fps. Accordingly, we must change the from 25 fps to 23.976. After much discussion people have recommended various tools, including besweet, cooledit and most importantly Prosoniq's Timefactory. Besweet did not yield satisfactory results and neither did Cooledit. However, Timefactory (TF) performed flawlessly. I used version 1.2 r1.

Open TF, open the wave (my program kept crapping out after 45 mins of audio, so I actually split each wave into two using cooledit converted using TF and put the converted output back together using cooledit...simply cut and paste..do not use split and merge). Select monophonic as the appropriate algorithm and check preserve formants. Now the important part...how much do we stretch the audio? Well, when converting PAL to NTSC grab a calculator and enter as follows: 25000 / 23976 * 100 = 104.27093760427093760427093760427 (do the reverse when converting from NTSC to PAL; i.e., 23976 / 25000 * 100 = 95.904%).

The resulting percentage should be entered in the appropriate box in TF. Make sure its a true percent number and not .xxx. Press the DSP button and voila it's converting. After you repeat this process for each of your waves, you should have a perfectly converted files, without distortion, chipmunk effect etc. I was VERY impressed with the results and no other tool that I tried could touch this.
8. Now I used DVD Maestro with Cinemaster 2000 installed (very tough to obtain since discontinued. I can provide link if you PM me, which I am not sure if its illegal since you can no longer purchase this software) to determine whether the audio and Video are in sync. Fortunately they were; however, if you require negative delay smaller than -30ms (ifoedit does not like that); i.e, -1000ms, download and use ac3delay from the download section and use as appropriate. Alternatively, posite delay is easy since you can simply add that number in Ifoedit. Negative delay may also be fixed by adding blank frames to the video so it starts later.

Anyway, back to sync'ing in Maestro, I added the video track and the center channel to DVD Maestro (DM). Then used the preview feature to look and listen. To my dismay, the German version had cut out 14 sequences in the movie, thus I had to manually determine the length of each cut out and add the appropriate amount of silence to my audio track(s). I used cooledit to add silence to each wave file based on a trial and error method (look at DM...guess gap..add silence to wave in cooledit...try again in DM). If you have to do this make sure you exactly write down where the gap occurs and the length of silence you are adding. Once you did this for the center channel it is fairly easy to these silence gaps to your other 5 audio tracks. I am not sure if there is a method that allows me to add silence to all audi o tracks at once. Any imput would be appreciated here.

I also toyed with the idea of filling the gaps in the PAL track with sound from the original NTSC stream. However, at this point I was unwilling to decode the NTSC audio into six waves. Cut 14 pieces of sound from each of the six waves (there were 14 sections that were removed in the German audio) and insert this cuts into the German audio. I am wondering whether there is a way to simply cut a portion from an AC3 file and insert that into another AC3 file. Again, any input would be appreciated.

9. At this point, I had six wave files converted from PAL to NTSC using TF with 14 added silence segments to account for scenes missing from the German version of Lilo and Stitch (FYI, the German verion cut out most of the violence; i.e., shooting of lasers, hence the gaps). Now I added each wave to Sonic Foundry's Soft Encode. When adding the waves a little diagram next to each file represents the location of a wave fur purposes of determining the appropriate 5.1 channel; i.e., you must specify the left channel as left, the right channel as right etc. When encoding you should be able to use the default settings. The only thing I would point out is that you ensure that you use the Motorola byte order, since the Intel byte order did not appear to work (silent track). Click on encode settings and you'll see what I am talking about. After you press encode and wait you should have an DD5.1 ac3 file.

10. Open Ifoedit and select Author DVD. Add the one video track, the original English audio, your newly-created audio and the other third language track, if appropriate. Do the same for the subtitles. Add any delay if appropriate and then let Ifoedit creat the VOBs, IFOs and BUP files. Take your VOBs only and compare to ensure that the newly-created VOBs names match those that you determined contain the movie and audio of your US rip. Make changes if necessary. Simply copy your new (and renamed if necessary) VOBs into the directory contain your U.S. rip (you still have a backup of this, right) and overwrite the old VOBs. Do NOT copy the IFO and BUP files that Ifoedit created. Try the result using PowerDVD or another Software DVD player. If you select the second audio language in my case French you should hear your perfectly sync'ed German audio track (or whatever language you used).

11. I used Pinnacle's Instantcopy to pair down the U.S. rip (containing my substituted audio track) and burned onto DVD-R.

That's it. Please give me feedback on things that I can do to streamline this process. Thanks to DJ Bobo for all of his help (hehe...I think he put me on the ignore list since I sent too many PMs ;).

DAWG98

dawg98@dawg98.com

[2COOL]

Your German speaking child will be proud that you went through all this for him/her.:D

[DAWG98]

Well, it was really a "test baloon" since I want to do this for my entire video collection. I think I had selfish motives...I want to ensure that I have someone to talk German to ;)

[htc10825]

but you could in some cases do it in another(or easier?) way:
1. with wavelab you dont have to spilit the wave files. The factor I've given above is precise enough(104.271%).

2. to solve the problem with deleted scenes in german verion, you can

2a. cut out all the extra scenes in english version by using a MPEG2-Editor such as "M2-Edit Pro" on the demuxed .mpv streams, then mux them directly with ac3 streams converted from PAL without further editng. This is the easier way. More details if wanted...

2b. keep all the extra scenes in english version and add the sound effects from english version to the german version, and in all the six wave channels. More details if wanted...

Thus your kids may more enjoy it in compare to see the 14 "silence" hot shot scenes...

3. to verify the A/V-synchron, you can load the .mpv via dvd2avi/avisynth-script in VDub, and the wave file of th center channel(for speech!), and seek, and play as you like...

4. Use a AC3-Editor like HeadAc3he to cut the negative delay of the ac3 stream, and a MPEG2 editor to cut begining scenes at the value of the possitive delay of ac3 stream.

Anywany, you are not only a great father for your family, but also did a nearly perfect work in DVD "Trans"-Authoring, also for the video specialists!