"Soundtrack Reinterpretation"

[DeinReich]

Not sure if this belongs in the AMV, Anime, or Audio forums, because it involves a little bit of each. Cheesy, and flat out bad at times, music in anime has always been one of my pet peeves when watching anime, so I decided to do something about it. What I am doing basically is taking away the original music (keep the voices) of an anime, with the exception of a few tracks perhaps, and add it better fitting and mood inforcing music. I am currently working on a Soundtrack Reinterpretation "beta" for the Cowboy Bebop movie, and so far it's comming along quite well. Obviously it wont be hosted here, but once the final version is finished, I will let you guys know. I just thought I'd inform you guys of this project because I dont know of anyone else that is attempting something similar to this kind of project.

P.S. mods, feel free to move this topic to wherever you feel it fits.

[Scintilla]

If you actually figure out how to extract only the voices from an anime DVD audio track, do let us know.

[Kalium]

If you actually figure out how to extract only the voices from an anime DVD audio track, do let us know.

Yeah, it's only a minor technical challenge, separating the voices and FX from the background music when they're in a single audio stream.

Heck, let us know if you develop even a theoretical method to do this.

[Otohiko]

Bah, silent movies > all, anyway.

That's a valid approach to consider though.....

[Kai Stromler]

Bah, silent movies > all, anyway.

Because they allow, and really, enjoin you to do this for yourself.

Before the movies became talkies, it was customary to have a piano player or, occasionally, a full enesemble, performing in the orchestra pit in front of the stage. Sometimes the music had something to do with the picture, sometimes it was totally random. The idea that silent films should be watched in silence is an artifact of their rediscovery during the golden age of campus cinema in the '60s and '70s, by people who had for the most part never seen a silent film in a commercial theater. The combination of initially unassociated music and visual goes back a long ways.....

Offtopic, but if Enslaved's Mardraum disc had one more track at the end, it would be absolutely perfect for the original 1924 Nosferatu. Everything else lines up and flows well, but the music cuts out right about 5 minutes before the end of the picture, and the whole climax is silent.

--K

[DeinReich]

If you actually figure out how to extract only the voices from an anime DVD audio track, do let us know.

OK, heres my idea on how to do this:

1. Rip the audio to MP3
2. Put it into a fairly advanced audio editing program (in my case, Mixcraft)
3. At the points where you only want the voices of the characters played, have it run a pass only over the middle band (where most voices are heard, and the majority of the other sound is taken out). The plugin for Winamp, Vocal Extractor, works in the oppisite way to take out vocals from songs

I already tried this method on a couple other small clips in testing, and it does work. The music that I add into the soundtrack to replace it should drown out whatever remains of the initial music. Unfortunatly, some sound effects will be removed in this process, too. Luckily, my school has an account to Sounddogs.com that they used for the morning shows at my school, when school is in session, and I know the account for it. With it, I can get back whatever sounds I need.

[bum]

That sounds like it could work, but why convert the ac3 to mp3? All that would do is reduce quality. A better option would be a loossless audio codec such as FLAC or just a standard uncompressed wav.

[DeinReich]

The only reason I said MP3 is because that is what most audio rippers rip to, but I supposed .wav could still work.

[Scintilla]

3. At the points where you only want the voices of the characters played, have it run a pass only over the middle band (where most voices are heard, and the majority of the other sound is taken out). The plugin for Winamp, Vocal Extractor, works in the oppisite way to take out vocals from songs

But in songs, the recording people are usually careful to put the main vocals dead center or very close to it, so the center cut method works fairly often (though it's nowhere near optimal). In the audio track for a show, you're going to have voices coming from all over the soundstage.

[Catatonik]

I think the silent film/subtitled thingy to a new Soundtrack would be brilliant.

And funky.