paszczak said:
In addition it's a genuine release bought in a shop, not a casette recorded by a fan.
...
Sorry for my stupid typo, didn't notice it.
The Internet is not known for forgiving so easily. You will have to atone for your transgression, but don't let that stop you from posting here. At the end of the day we're all pretty friendly people. As long as you're perfect or not a filthy foreigner. We don't take kindly to those 'round these parts.
Anyway, back to the actual topic. Is this the guy doing the voiceover?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA8UUca3k0k
Or is it someone else?
paszczak said:
I hope my trilogy is salvageable as it comes without additional editions but if Polish audio can't be removed, it's not worth it.
Quite the contrary: it's worth it because of the wear, tear, low quality and all that. If it's Knapik that audio's already been ripped, but like I said: a full rip would've been very, very cool to have for the historical value and for the nostalgia factor. I watched those tapes as a kid.
RU.08 said:
Danfun128 said:
As far as I know, VHS tapes have only one audio option.
VHS does have two audio tracks, however players will only read one. When the VHS specs were first released, along one edge of the tape was the audio track, the other edge was the control track, and in-between was the video tracks in helical scan (the tracks which represent odd and even fields are pressed against each other with no space between them). Later, Hi-Fi audio was added to the VHS specification, but as I've just described every area of the tape is already used by video, the mono audio track, and the helical-scan video tracks. So in order to add the stereo audio, the hi-fi tracks were added physically underneath the helical-scan video tracks; thus they are non-continuous helical-scan tracks also. Unfortunately there is no way to select the audio, and any Hi-Fi VCR will read the Hi-Fi track (if present) instead of the mono track, however you can play the same tape in a mono VCR that does not have Hi-Fi heads and it should play the mono track and not the Hi-Fi track.
With all that said, there's no guarantee that the OP's VHS tape has Hi-Fi audio if it's a really old release, in which case it will only have one audio track. If her tape does have HJi-Fi then it is possible to capture both tracks separately using two different VCR's.
Holy carp, I did not know that. Thanks!
Darth Id said:
"Voiceover" as opposed to dubbed is a bona fide horror of home video phenomena that I've been perfectly content not knowing about until just now, thank you very much! Are foreigners so incredibly averse to reading that they'd rather suffer that kind of cacophonous aural abuse?
And by "reading," I guess I mean either subtitles or just reading a book instead of watching a movie because this whole voiceover thing sounds entirely prohibitive!
There are fairly good reasons for it being there. Yes, it's much more convenient for the average Joe and it lowers the bar of entry (so, for one thing, kids who aren't great readers can actually enjoy watching a movie instead of struggling to keep up with it. And you want kids on board, because of that parent dough). It also means you don't have to squint at a tiny TV set from all across the room which wasn't an uncommon situation back in the day, believe me. Plus, it's MUCH cheaper and faster to produce than a full dub.
Not to mention there is an art to voiceover. For one thing, it can't just be any shmuck doing it: it needs to be a certain timbre that'll allow you to screen the voiceover out. Yes, it's possible, largely due to the fact that if you're listening to a voiceover in your native tongue laid on top of an audio track in a language you don't understand well or even at all it's only natural you focus on the former, and not the latter. It helps that people are conditioned after decades of being exposed to it.
Personally, I'm not a proponent of voiceover, but there are certain types of movies that it really works for. If anything, there's a lot of nostalgia to watching a low budget action flick read by Knapik. At the same time, I wouldn't want, say, Bergman brutalised like that.
And since I'm on a bit of a tanget, here's an interesting read about voiceover that I found:
http://www.academia.edu/1882232/Voice-over_or_Voice-in-between_Some_Considerations_about_the_Voice-over_Translation_of_Feature_Films_on_Polish_Television
@paszczak: check your inbox.