Cutting or muting profanity from dvd

[ruskie]

Hello Gentlemen, this is a really great forum very informative.
I want to cut out, mute or dub out some vulgar dialog in otherwise very good movies so that the younger kids in my family can watch. Is there a way of doing this. Thanks in advance.

Ruskie

[Mac Sidewinder]

The simpliest way I know is to buy a device called "The Guardian". It is a box that goes between the tv and your other video devices. It supposedly filters out 90 to 95% of foul language. You can even set the filter for different settings. It works on any video input. Here is the link:

http://www.familychristian.com/shop/product.asp?ProdID=3959

The good thing about doing it this way is that you don't have to manually edit all your movies. Hope this helps.

Mac

[Atamido]

I ran into a family a few years ago that owned what I think to be that exact device. The father described it to me as a little irritating. The way that it worked was to scan the Closed Captions for vulgar words. If one was found, the audio was muted while those closed captions were supposed to be displayed. The result was that whole lines of dialog are removed instead of just a word. Apparently the family usually just left it off.

If you want to take the time, you might try ripping the DVD as described in the guides. But when you have the audio extracted, try editing it with Audacity, CoolEdit, or SoundForge. The effect would be nicer, but it would actually take effort.

[bilu]

It normally filters out 95% to 100% of foul language from TV shows, videos and DVD's by muting phrases and displaying profanity-free phrases. You seem to be right, it mutes entire phrases. It probably mutes sound during that closed caption duration, since it has no clue about voice recognition to do something else.

EDIT: Hmmmm... wait: Easily connecting between TV and VCR, cable box, satellite receiver or DVD, Guardian automatically filters profanity from TV, movies or rentals, with option for strict or moderate settings. Not every device quoted here supports closed captions, so it has to have some sort of voice recognition :confused:

Bilu

[Atamido]

No, pretty much all of those devices support passing closed captions to the TV (through the gaurdia).

However, you did remind me of something. I'm pretty sure that when it mutes the audio, it will display the Closed Caption, minus the profanity.

[Doobie]

How it works - TVGuardian(tm) uses TVG(r) technology licensed from Principle Solutions, Inc. to decode and monitor the hidden closed-caption text which is made available for the hearing impaired. Each word is checked against a dictionary of offensive words and
phrases. When an offensive word is detected, the TVG technology automatically mutes the sound, and turns the sound back on when the phrase is completed.

It looks like to me that the audio is muted during a the whole time a caption is displayed with a foul word. That could be very irritating as important phrases could be muted because of a foul word. And, breaks in the audio itself is irritating. Imagine a big scene with intense music playing and then three seconds of audio gets cut out -- it might even miss the moment where the foul word is actually used.

I watched the Casper movie some years ago and the only faul word I caught is a very memorable exclamation "B*tch." I wondered why they wanted to soil an otherwise descent children's movie. TV Gurdian would have worked well here without significant irritation. And, if you really don't want your children hearing foul language, then irritation may be an acceptable price.

Anyway, if someone wants to go to the effort to manually edit foul words, it's a bit of work but it can be done. Movies have six channels of audio and the foul language is usually limited to the center channel. So, the single word can be muted without muting the whole phrase and without muting the audio in the other channels so there is no irritating break in the audio or loss of important phrases.

Convert the 5.1 AC3 into 6 WAVs. Run the center channel through any audio editing software. Jump to where the foul word is. Mute it. Then encode the 6 WAVs into whatever final audio format you're using. I think Doom9 guides have most of the info you need to this, other than using an audio editor (such software is easy to find, if it didn't come with your computer or sound card).

[techz]

i wanted to do the same thing but i think its time that the dvd's came with a choice in the menu to play the movie in different modes.

e.g. there would be R Rated : totally uncensored
PG Rated : for the family, with the censoring

i dont know but i doubt its so hard to incorporate that into the dvd, if it becomes accepted practice.

[ultimatebilly]

Does any of you know if there is a device which is able turn the TV black when Arwen or Jar Jar Binks appear? ;)
(Ok, not very funny, and stolen from the MPlayer documentation, but I couldn't resist... Sorry!):devil:

[K(c)offee]

ultimatebilly is your avatar the baby zombie from Dead Alive?

And on subject why would you want to cut out swears? Its part of the artwork that is a movie. Though I would love a option on the DVD version of the Matrix that digitaly replaced Keanu Reeves with a better actor... or a magic box that cut him out of any media coming though it. But I guess we all have our feelings on what should not be heard or in my case viewed by children or anyone else for that matter. :)

[ultimatebilly]

Yep, that's me :)
By the way, in germany it's been allowed for a few months to take children as young as six years in movies which are rated 12...
Something like the parental guidance thing in america.
Something I always hoped for when I was working in the cinema myself and had to struggle and discuss with the stupid parents who wanted to take their little kids in movies that were absolutely not suited for them (the most-heard argument was "I allow them to see what they want at home anyway").
But when I saw LOTR-ROTK, there was a family with it's young son, not much older than 7, who went in to see it...
I bet the poor kid has had some nice dreams that night...

In my opinion, parents should take much much more care about what movies their children are seeing, and should see them together with their kids whenever possible - but I don't think that a little profanity or swearing in an otherwise good movie will harm anybody.
Look at me, I started watching action movies when I was 12, and it didn't do me any f***ing harm ;)
To be earnest, I don't think it is possible to prevent your kids from hearing words that aren't nice, because they will for sure have heard every word that might be said in a movie a hundred times or more in school.

I watched the Casper movie some years ago and the only faul word I caught is a very memorable exclamation "B*tch."

I don't think it's that shocking for a kid to see someone being called a female dog? ;)

[ruskie]

Originally posted by Pamel
I ran into a family a few years ago that owned what I think to be that exact device. The father described it to me as a little irritating. The way that it worked was to scan the Closed Captions for vulgar words. If one was found, the audio was muted while those closed captions were supposed to be displayed. The result was that whole lines of dialog are removed instead of just a word. Apparently the family usually just left it off.

If you want to take the time, you might try ripping the DVD as described in the guides. But when you have the audio extracted, try editing it with Audacity, CoolEdit, or SoundForge. The effect would be nicer, but it would actually take effort.

OK, after the audio is extracted and I do some editing, whats the procedure to return the edited audio back into the dvd?
Ruskie

[SeeMoreDigital]

It makes you wonder why this feature is not incorporated on the DVD at the time of manufacture.

It would have thought the DVD manufacturers could have made use of the parental control to make say an 15 certificate DVD into a U certificate DVD by using the parental control to edit/cut out swear words, sex violence etc!

There wouldn't be much to watch with a DVD like Reservoir Dogs but it would make a good test disc!

Cheers

[thop]

Well Reservoir Dogs isn't meant as a movie for kids, swearing cut out or not. I think ruskie is more concerned about "family movies" who will have the occasional f*ck or b*tch despite that family label. It should be a minor effort to put an alternative audio stream on the DVD.

If the industry is so deperetaly looking to increase their sales ... here is a good start gentleman!

[Atamido]

Originally posted by ruskie
OK, after the audio is extracted and I do some editing, whats the procedure to return the edited audio back into the dvd?
Ruskie I would imagine that most DVD editing softwares would let you import your own audio track for the video.

[ruskie]

Originally posted by Pamel
I would imagine that most DVD editing softwares would let you import your own audio track for the video.

Well I've been looking and seems that the more I look the more I get lost. Many seem to like VirtualDub, but so far I can't capture any video into VDub, just a blue screen. I have a TV ATI Wonder VE, a fairly cheap board, maybe thats my problem. I can capture using the program that can with it, but nothing in VirtualDub.

Ruski

[Mac Sidewinder]

If you can get to the blue screen then vdub recognizes the drivers you have installed. Try going to the video menu and selecting video source and make sure you have the right input selected, s-video, composite, etc. Then select from the video menu again either video preview or overlay. You should then see a preview of your source video.

Mac

[Scoobydeux]

I have done this a number of times for my parents, who refuse to watch movies with swearing. I OCR the subs, then search for the swear words. Note the times, then open the 2-channel track in Cooledit, and use the "remove voice" function, which leaves the background sound. Save it back as AC3, remux, and write the video. One note, you'll obviously have to text edit the subtitles and recreate them, or use a graphic editor and edit the raw images to clean those up as well. Took about 1 hour per movie with about 45 swear words in it.

Scoobydeux

[tickey]

Originally posted by ruskie
Well I've been looking and seems that the more I look the more I get lost. Many seem to like VirtualDub, but so far I can't capture any video into VDub, just a blue screen. I have a TV ATI Wonder VE, a fairly cheap board, maybe thats my problem. I can capture using the program that can with it, but nothing in VirtualDub.

Ruski
Don't cap it, just rip it from the DVD with Vstrip, choose demux.
Then you can load the ac3 audio into sony soundforge/edit/save.
Then you can reauthor and burn with sony DVD architect.

[tickey]

Originally posted by ruskie
Well I've been looking and seems that the more I look the more I get lost. Many seem to like VirtualDub, but so far I can't capture any video into VDub, just a blue screen. I have a TV ATI Wonder VE, a fairly cheap board, maybe thats my problem. I can capture using the program that can with it, but nothing in VirtualDub.

Ruski
Hey try this proggy out.
http://www.shareit.com/product.html?productid=196928&sessionid=90546254&random=f31ad619840a54850ecf614dd65b1dd1

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/tools?tool=469
scroll down

[Mug Funky]

hmm... it does seem like it would be a good DVD feature to have. definitely better than straight out censorship imposed from above - after all, it's the parent's decision what their kids should see, not the government's or some other organization.

it would not be much work at all for DVD authors - have a separate audio track with the colourful words cut out (if they exist).

i've had an embarassing experience with some anime and my very young cousins (in the prescence of their mother...). i was watching "excel saga" with them, which the australian office of flim and literature classification had rated "G" (ie. family). it's all nice until near the end of an episode where, completely out of the blue, excel says "hey hat-chan, where the f*** are we?"

i don't think the office of film and literature classification like to watch anime... i suspect they look at the cover, see a cartoon and think "G". interestingly, the distributors often give them a higher rating in spite of it. for example, "FLCL" was originally rated G, but Madman decided to print "PG" on the cover.

as far as doing this yourself goes, i'd be worried about transcoding audio - ac-3 falls apart when you re-encode it at the same bitrate. it would be good if there were some kind of lossless frame-based editor for ac3 where you could insert a 1khz bleep or blank into the stream without reencoding the whole stream.