Narration Soundtrack Won't Show up on Certain DVD Players

[Tristan Howard]

Hi everyone:

I recently finished a wildlife documentary that I'm planning on selling online. After giving out a few copies of my project, so far one person has noticed that narration does not show up when all the other sounds seem to. I was wondering why this is the case. I think this mainly only happens with really old DVD players or TVs. My project was edited and rendered in Vegas 6.0 and was burned from an image file writen in Adobe Encore DVD 1.5 and it was burned on Taiyo Yuden WaterShield DVD-R 4.7GB, Glossy White Inkjet DVD-R discs that can support a write speed of up to 16x. I was thinking the write speed might have something to do with the problem. Also, my project's audio was transcoded as Dolby digital. I think I'm just stuck with the fact that unless I have really fancy burning stuff, my DVD-Rs won't always be compatible with certain really old players. Anyhow, if anybody has any experience with this sort of a problem or knows of a potential solution, any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Tristan

[Martin Pauly]

Tristan,

I can assure you that your problem has nothing to do with the write speed or general quality of the DVD media used for your project. If there were any problems in that area, all the sound and/or picture would suffer, not just the narration while other audio is not impacted. That simply cannot happen due to bad media.

You mentioned dolby digital, so I assume your audio track is a dolby digital 2.0 with just two channels. Is that correct? What you describe happens most often if a stereo track is played on mono equipment, where portions of the left channel and right channel audio cancel each other out. Or maybe the narration is on only one channel (either left or right), and that channel happens to not be played.

I hope this points you in the right direction to investigate your problem further! Good luck!

- Martin

[Tristan Howard]

Martin,

Thanks for the information. I'm assuming I have just two channels with my Dolby Digital encoding. Looking at preferenes for encoding, all I could find was that it was Dolby digital. I also had the choices of PCM or MPEG-1 layer II. My narration was recorded on a stereo microphone, so it should come out of both channels. Anyhow, your explanation makes sense. I guess I could try re-rendering the narration in mono. I also know it wouldn't hurt to do more test runs on different TVs.

Regards,
Tristan

[Martin Pauly]

Tristan,

narration (or most dialog, actually) is typically recorded and edited in mono and then added to both stereo channels (if your final mix is stereo) in the audio mix. Even if the mic you use is a stereo mic, I would probably use just one of the two recorded channels and discard the other one.

I am not familiar with the exact software that you use; however, in your audio software you may want to look for a "mono" feature - something that gives you a preview of what your stereo track will sound like when played on a mono device. If you have such a feature, use it on the portions of the audio that experience the problem you described.

- Martin