Audio Tracks: Who the Hell picks these?

[KSC2-303]

Thanks to regional distribution of DVDs, each country gets their own DVD.

The good thing about that is we don't have universal DVDs that have 6 gigs of French, Spanish, English, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc language tracks.

But I have to ask the question, why include unnecessary foreign language tracks?

I'm of the belief that DVDs should only contain the original language they were filmed in and a localized dub (maybe at most 2 for multi-linguage countries, like a Spanish track also in America, but that's still stretching it). If foreign language support is so important, why not just follow Europe and include assloads of foreign language subtitle tracks, which save you God knows how much space?

I say this because we have DVDs being sold in the US that have language dubs that MAYBE if they're lucky 1% of the buyers will ever listen to. That space (A DD 5.1 track at 300+ kb/s) could be so much better used on better a/v quality, or more extras.

I just...don't see why the Hell companies would add language tracks for DVDs being sold where no one will listen to them.

Who agrees with me? Who has a good reason to counter my argument? Who wants to bomb the foreign language dubbing studios?!?!?!

P.S - I know some people could argue French tracks for our Canuckian buddies, but Canadians, even though they share the same region, typically don't get the same DVDs as us.

[Sword of Whedon]

I've never seen dub tracks outside of French and Spanish on an R1 disc, typically because they plan to sell the disc in the US and Canada, where people are too lazy to watch subtitles. Frequently I'll see a TON of subtitle tracks because they plan to use the same disc for region 1 and 3 (most common with Columbia).

Canadians will get different DVDs typically with New Line and Miramax titles, as they have different CA distributors, but otherwise they tend to be the same, unless there's a space issue. Fox likes to seperate a lot of their movie product that way, having a lower 48 version with spanish and a canuck version with french.

What bugs me far more are the "watch a movie in french" days in Quebec I've heard about, where they actually encourage people to go watch movies in their *sic* superior french form.

[Oscar Antonio M]

Maybe because people from foreign countries live in America and some of them might not like to read subtitles?

WB and Fox release some of their DVD's with two separate versions one with the original language track and extras but with a spanish dub and another one with the original language track and extras but in french.

Disney releases some of their DVD's in a separate spanish dubbed version but sadly they are in Pan & Scan and some of them lack the extras I'm not sure if they are still doing this but I have seen some of those DVD's in stores.

[Larry Larry]

I have all the 3 Stooges DVDs produced by Columbia. They are up to over 12 or more volumes at this point.

There is not one special feature, behind the scenes video, blooper or rare film on any of these discs. There is not one documentary or any kind of tribute either. There are not even bio pages or filmographies on Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp. The volumes are not presented in chronological order. There is not even a "Play All" button for the shorts (usually 6 on each disc).

But guess what Columbia has managed to do? Put Portuguese on every single one of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah!!! Thanks Columbia. You idiots.

[superwombat]

My Austin Powers (can't remember which one) advertises a commentary, but it seems to have been replaced by a french track.

Tabernac.

[NotaNumber]

Thanks to regional distribution of DVDs, each country gets their own DVD.

Not exactly. Region 2, 3 & 5 each covers a huge segment of population with dozens of languages (hundreds if you count dialects):

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China


BTW There is a rather large Spanish speaking population in the US...

My guess is that the studios having going through the expense of dubbing these films for the overseas market sees it as a way of either recuperating some of the costs or getting some more mileage out of their efforts. Who knows, maybe those responsible for the dubs get royalties?

And they can always tout it as a "special" feature on the box cover.

I find it kind of useful to bone up on my Spanish or maybe try to pick up some French or German by playing the foreign language track with the English subtitles. And sometimes it's fun to pick out the differences of translations between the dubs and subtitles

[optimalautobot]

my one pet peev in relation to multi-language tracks, is when the content is changed in order to fit them in.

one example of this that i own is monsters, inc - the canadian version got chose to get rid of the option to choose pan and scan as well as the effects only track over a french (5.1, i believe) track. what the heck? well, i would never watch the pan and scan version, or probably never even listen to the effects only track, but still... content should never be changed!

actually, i do wish they would put more subtitle languages on dvds ('rudy' and 'the one' are good examples of dvds w/ many subtitles)... it would help my mom a lot since her english aint that good...

actually, another peev for subtitles and audio options: i hate it when studios dont allow on the fly switching for these. i hate having to have to go back to the menu and switch it there when i want to listen to commentary in certain scenes, or i want to use subtitles for clarity.

end rant. heh heh

[NotaNumber]

Well there can be licensing issue too, besides space issues as to why content will vary from Region to Region.

And to be tecnichal the "P&S" version of Monsters, Inc. is not really Panned and Scanned as the scenes were recomposited and re-rendered by the Pixar animators to fill the 4:3 frame format and not lose any of the important visual elements that would be lost if it were truly P&Sed.

Yeah, it's a bummer if you have to go to the menus to change the language track. I wouldn't blame the studio for that, though, but rather the person(s) or the software that was used to author the DVD. It could have just been a limitation of the software version, lack of experience or sheer laziness. It could also be an intereaction between the authoring software version and the firmware of your DVD player too.