As a result, I have no need to manually reproduce the entire Opening music to LBT 11. I can show you how it turned out if you want. Just PM or MSN me.
Okay, I now have a very easy way to share any of my sound clips! After some hunting for software, I finally have a combination that lets me send out this music as nice, easy to play, MP3 files (or wavs if you desire) B)
This is interesting! Would this work on any mixture of music and dialogue, so that, once you have more time again, the method could be used to get hold of the parts of the original movie's music which weren't included in the official soundtrack?
Unfortunately, this is really only beneficial for me because there are some severe limitations. In the case of LBT 11's opening, I was able to remove absolutely all of the spoken words and most of the sound effects. The results in most cases would not be especially good. If all of the LBT films used surround sound, it would be easier but unfortunately they don't all. This is because of the technique I used to do this:
Some DVDs contain 6 or more sound "channels", one for each speaker. In stereo systems, two speakers (left and right) are used. In an average surround sound system, 6 speakers are used: Front left, Center, front right, rear left, rear right and a subwoofer for bass effects. The center channel is normally used for dialog while the other speakers play back music, effects, etc.
See where I'm going with this?
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In the case of the LBT 11 opening, nearly all the non-musical elements were played on the center speaker. I simply used VLC media player to take a rip of All 6 channels of LBT 11's opening (thanks again for pointing this player out to me, Petrie. It has been a life saver!). To do this, I just set VLC to save all incoming sound data into a 6-channel WAV file and then I hit Play on the DVD and recorded the opening section of the film. I then went into a multi-channel wave editor, whcih lets me see each of the 6 channels graphically. From here, I can actually mute or remove channels. I simply disabled the Center channel, leaving behind nothing but music. B) I then converted this new file into a 2-channel (stereo) MP3, for easy distribution and play-back, free of the voices and center-focused sound effects. The file size? About 3 MB for 2 minutes at 192 kb/s, 48kHz (DVD quality) Stereo.
I have a completed MP3 using this procedure: Beyond the Mysterious Beyond from LBT 7. Some light vocals are left behind becase the audio mixer who put the audio to the film itself left some "echoy" effects on the left and right channels to fill out the sound of the vocals during the song. I have no way of removing this. The vocals are very transparent and quite pleasant, however. This MP3 will be extremely useful when working on a MIDI of "Beyond the Mysterious Beyond" though!
It can be downloaded here:
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...72CD0CA2AAC9538[EDIT] The link appears to be expired. I will send this file to anyone who is interested. [/EDIT]
Sorry the music is so quiet. I forgot to bump up the volume before I uploaded it!
The LBT 11 opening came out even better than this but it's not ready to be released yet. I'll post it up tomorrow. B)
This little trick works very well for things like introductions because the voices never come from off-screen, meaning they're all played over the centre speaker. In many other situations, it will be impossible to remove all noise from the music.
Another serious problem is that this technique Only works on DVDs that contain surround sound data. The LBT films 1, 7, 9 (I think), 10, and 11 are the only ones that do. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 are only stereo sources, which means my technique of muting a speaker simply won't work because the speaker doesn't exist in the source audio to begin with. This trick doesn't work at all on CDs or VHS tapes either.
This technique is mainly beneficial to me because it will let me mute or lower the volume of the singing and speaking in the songs, making it much easier to hear the music when replicating the songs and music. LBT 11 is one of the few cases where the result sounds good enough that others may benefit from it. I suspect LBT 7, 9 (if it has surround sound) and 10's openings will sound fine as well.
In short, this technique is a quick fix to make a decent-sounding piece of music but it doesn't solve all the problems. The only way to truly remove all of the unwanted sounds is to rewrite the music out of the context of the film. That is my plan, eventually! I know I keep saying that and I Do plan to get around to it someday! It is a lot of work, and I am having a hard time finding time for such a huge project.
I'll post a link to the LBT 11 Opening with no voices, shortly. I need to go to bed so I can't finalize that tonight. Oh, and the guy who mixed the music in LBT 11 didn't do a very good job!
He left some annoying elements in order to "correct" volume balancing and whatnot. The most obvious issues are the sudden instant changes in volume on the music tracks. It's very clear that he is trying to make room for voices but it sounds horribly unnatural on its own.
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