DVD audio commentary tracks

[ToxicJr]

Hello all - this is my first post on the forums, and I'm hoping there is a Video Studio Pro X10 resource out there that understands multi-audio track DVD source media better than I do. Here's my personal use project:

I've got the cabinet from the mid 1950's vintage TV I grew up with. Somewhere along the line it was gutted - chassis and internal components are long gone with the exception of the original speaker and glass in the front. I thought, wouldn't it be a cool piece of retro art to somehow use that that old cabinet to display TV like it was back in the late 50's - early 60s, commercials and all? I've got a pretty extensive collection of old TV series and vintage cartoons on DVD, and I've collected and formatted a treasure trove of vintage commercials from youtube. I've ripped some of the TV series episodes from DVD to MP4 640x480 4:3, and then used Video Studio to break apart the episodes to individual clips at the appropriate commercial breaks. I've stored the individual clips from each show/episode in a large database, and I've written a powershell program that randomly selects a series of shows, and then randomly selects an episode for each show, and then assembles a Windows Media Player playlist with the pieces from each episode with 2 vintage random commercials inserted where the commercial breaks should be. Media Player goes through the entire playlist one clip after another without interruption. VOILA! 1950s television recreated. I found a more recent 4:3 CRT color TV, stripped it down and put it inside the old cabinet, and you can't tell it's not the original TV tube. Worked perfectly. Using a laptop to run the powershell program and sending the Media Player full screen image to the TV via a HDMI to RCA converter. And, split out the audio out to a receiver and then back to the original TV speaker. I'm pushing 60, and watching the old TV with the vintage shows (I Love Lucy, Honeymooners, Combat, McHale's Navy, etc..) complete with the old commercials nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Then...... I thought since I'm basically my own TV producer now, that I would create a vintage cartoon show to add into the mix. I have an extremely large collection of those on DVD as well, and this is where I ran into trouble. Some of the collections have a "director's commentary" audio track on various cartoons. The ripping software lets me choose which audio track to use so I select the main audio and deselect the commentary track. The ripped MP4 plays correctly, no commentary audio and just the original audio for the cartoon. BUT, when I run the ripped MP4 through Video Studio to add a monochrome filter (TV was black and white so that's how I want them to display), the commentary is there. There was another post where this was discussed back in 2014, but my situation is a little different. I HAVE a MP4 color file that has NO commentary audio when played. Running that same MP4 file through Video Studio somehow causes the commentary to be added back into the mix and I can't for the life of me figure out how. The first time I ripped the DVDs, I missed that there were multiple audio tracks and the commentary was left in place in the color MP4 when I ran it through Video Studio. That has since been corrected, but I was thinking Video Studio might have some cached versions of the files somewhere. I deleted the projects folder and every other place the files with the commentary resided. No help. I uninstalled Video Studio and reinstalled. No help. I've tested every scenario I can think of and the result is the same every time. Color MP4 w/NO commentary audio -> Video Studio -> MP4 with commentary. This is driving me nuts. I there anyone who can help me sort this out? Thank you!

[tletter]

Running that same MP4 file through Video Studio somehow causes the commentary to be added back into the mix

As a test, I'd suggest creating a new project, adding one of the problem videos and then use the option to split the audio from video track. Finally listen to the split audio track and if it's OK then the share the project and see if the problem persists.

[ToxicJr]

Running that same MP4 file through Video Studio somehow causes the commentary to be added back into the mix

As a test, I'd suggest creating a new project, adding one of the problem videos and then use the option to split the audio from video track. Finally listen to the split audio track and if it's OK then the share the project and see if the problem persists.

Thanks tletter, I had tried that thinking that maybe multiple tracks might be present after splitting the audio. There's only one audio track that shows up, and it has the commentary included.

I've gotten around the problem by ripping the full DVD track rather than the individual cartoon tracks since I noticed in the ripper that there was no commentary audio associated with the full DVD track. But, it's still a mystery as to how commentary audio gets picked up from an MP4 that doesn't play with commentary. The only thing I can think of is perhaps the ripper produces an MP4 with multiple audio tracks embedded and flips a bit somewhere to specify which audio track should be played, but then VS picks up all the audio tracks when it processes the file and combines them into one audio track. Strictly a guess since I'm not savvy as to how MP4s are formatted. Anyway, ripping the full DVD track is a bit more of a hassle since I have to go through the file in VS and split out all the individual cartoons, but it works. No commentary audio that way.