Audio Commentary

[Enhasa]

Audio Commentary is great, we can all agree. Help me make this a useful thread. Respond with any corrections or additions to the list of runs with AC.


For watchers:

These runs have additional commentary (usually audio, but perhaps subtitles).
Striked means the run is obsoleted. Big parental advisory warning for strong language is specified:

Alien vs. Predator (Alien SS) by Alucard (guest): external mp3
Aliens vs. Predator 2 (Alien) by Kibumbi: MQ, HQ, IQ, XQ mp4
Area 51 by Kibumbi: MQ, HQ, IQ mp4
Castlevania: Bloodlines by stanski: external mp3
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood by Sir VG: subtitles in all versions
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night by Satoryu: MQ, HQ mp4
Chrono Cross by Molotov: all versions
Devil May Cry 1 (two runs) by sternn: mkv
Enclave by Kahless_GOA (light): external mp3
Enclave by Kahless_GOA (dark): external ogg
GTA: San Andreas by CannibalK9: MQ, HQ mp4
GTA: Vice City (any%) by CannibalK9: MQ, HQ mp4
Half-Life 1 (with scripts) by Spider-Waffle and RandomEngy (guest): external mp3; German subtitles by djcj
Mega Man 9 by Satoryu: all versions
Metroid Prime 2 by DJGrenola: mkv
Rayman 2 by Manocheese: all versions
Rygar by Emptyeye: external mp3
Shinobi by Alucard: MQ, HQ mp4
Sonic 2 by stanski: external mp3
Zelda: Ocarina of Time by Satoryu (guest): external mp3


The easiest way to play these files is using SMPlayer. Assuming that the commentary is on track 2 (a very good assumption), you just open the file like normal and that's it! If you need to change tracks, use audio/track. External commentary is really easy too: audio/load external file and select it. (You can do this at any time and the starts of both files will be synchronized anyway.) You can use audio/delay to sync up the a/v if necessary.

In other programs that support it, such as VLC, the steps are mostly the same. You will need to load the file and then manually select track 2. I'm not sure if external files are supported but they ought to be somewhere.


For runners:

No, audio commentary will not be required for future runs. If you want to include them though, send them to Nate in any format and he will mux them into the mp4 so they will be included with the SDA videos as a separate track.

If you want to make audio commentary for a run already on the site, you are more than welcome to do so! Get a microphone for your computer and record away. A good and free program is Audacity. Use a compressed format such as mp3 or ogg (although if you really want to send a wav, you can, I'll turn it into an mp3). The exact settings you use are up to you. I will expand on this if anyone wants me to. The last step is to upload this commentary somewhere (such as filefront) and give me a link so I can edit the game page and this thread.

[MatrixTN]

Emptyeye's Rygar run (optionally) has one.  Downloadable here.  You'll have to bring both up separately, play the track first so you can hit play on the video on his cue.

[TheVoid]

Kahless_GOA's Enclave Light Campaign run has Audio Commentary (And his Dark Campaign run which is still on Archive.org has it too).

[Ewil]

Half-Life Half-Hour has a commentary, too.

[Lag.Com]

Is there an easy way to play all audio streams at once, or even change each stream's individual volume? Most of the time I want to listen to the game as well as the commentary. I know I could rip out both streams, combine them, then use external audio, but that seems like a hack.

[rchandra]

Is there an easy way to play all audio streams at once, or even change each stream's individual volume? Most of the time I want to listen to the game as well as the commentary. I know I could rip out both streams, combine them, then use external audio, but that seems like a hack.

I second this request.

And the GTA:SA commentary was great, I never expected to watch such a long run but the commentary made it fun.

[Enhasa]

As you guessed, you're going to have to hack it, because it's nonstandard behavior in the first place. Playing multiple streams simultaneously is against the mp4 specification (you wouldn't normally want to listen to say, English and Japanese tracks at the same time), so it's not supported. In fact, ffmpeg/mplayer/vlc and the whole a/v open source community tend to prevent users from doing "stupid" things, even if occasionally some people might have uses for it like this. Another example is how dshow players seek by exact times (which is a hack and slow and dumb, but what people want), and mplayer seeks by i-frames.

I never really considered this since I will always already know or don't care what the game sounds like, and any additional sound is just getting in the way of the commentary, which is all I want to listen to in the first place. But luckily there are workarounds.


Anyway this is what you can do, from easiest to hardest. I would just stick with one of the first three, although the first one is often unfeasible.

- Nothing. Most people record their commentary by playing back the run on their computer and recording with their mic. So depending on how loud the run was being played back, you can hear some of the game audio without doing anything.
- Open with a crappy player (WMP, QuickTime, iTunes, etc). I think these still have this problem, it's a famous one, but maybe in the future it will be fixed (meaning: don't upgrade if you want to take advantage of this bug). Basically, these players support multiple streams incorrectly, and you can't choose a particular stream. Instead they just play them all, which ironically is exactly what you want here. DJ was actually complaining about this exact problem these players have, in the news update once.
- Open the video twice and select track 1 for one, track 2 for the other. You can even disable the video decoding for one of them if you want, or just minimize or move to the side.
- Extract the audio from one of the streams, and then load it as external audio while playing the video with the other track.
- As you said, extract both streams, combine them, play it as external audio while muting the video.

[nate]

#2 won't work because of us using grenola's nerfing program (hides the commentary track from quacktime entirely).

[Enhasa]

Ok, if you want to listen to both tracks, just ignore all that text I wrote and open the vid twice, lol. (#3)

This is probably what everyone would do if I hadn't said anything anyway.

[Shephard]

I really love audio commentary, first run I watched with it was some Metroid Prime run and it is really a great addition to the run, especially that it's now re-done for some older runs.

Edit : Oh, I should open my eyes a bit more next time, found it.

[Enhasa]

Do you have a link to this Metroid Prime audio commentary?

Also guys, please specify if the language is explicit or clean. I've watched at least parts of every run listed in this thread so far, besides Enclave, but I have trouble remembering if any of them are clean (since language doesn't bother me in the least). I know Kibumbi, stanski, Satoryu, Alucard aren't.

[Shephard]

Do you have a link to this Metroid Prime audio commentary?

Hey there. My apologies, it was not Prime, but Echoes, and it is the one you already have in your list.
Really a great run and really interesting commentary.

But I really thought that there were many many more, I mean this is what this thread is for, to find new ones, but I thought more should be in knowledge.

Best regards.

[MatrixTN]

DJ's Echoes (which is also low% with secret worlds, should probably be noted) is clean.

[CMiller]

With quicktime yes. I think that if you do it in .mp4 file though, only quicktime player would play them back correctly (obviously only QT would play a .mov)

[Emptyeye]

Hey, I just have to say, awesome idea for a topic, and even cooler that external commentary tracks are now officially endorsed (As it were) by SDA.

Off the top of my head, I think my commentary for Rygar is clean, but I honestly don't totally remember.