The Proofreader's Day Off

Among the many excellent presents I got for Christmas (thanks everyone) I got a copy of the brilliant 1986 film Space Camp. The DVD release has been available since 2008 yet it has a glaring error on the front. Can anyone spot it?

Yep, they have managed to mis-align the names and faces of the cast. The actress on the far right is actually Kate Capshaw, while Kelly Preston is the actress labelled as Kate Capshaw second from the left. I can't believe this was missed when the cover was originally produced in 2008, but what I don't understand is why it hasn't been corrected in all that time?

Missing DVD Subtitles

I like watching films and as such over the years I've built up quite a large VHS based film collection. VHS tapes don't last forever and buying a new video recorder is becoming increasingly difficult. So whenever I see a sale on DVDs I tend to see if I can pick up replacement copies of films I enjoy. The problem with buying older films on DVD is that often the disc is badly put together as the studios know that they are never going to make lots of money on them.

While I like watching extras on some of the DVDs I own, I'm quite happy with buying DVDs which just contain the film. What I'm not happy about is when the disc is so badly put together as to make the film unwatchable. I've found that a common problem is missing subtitles.

While my eye sight has deteriorated over the last few years I don't seem to be going deaf and so don't usually need subtitles. What I do need though are the forced subtitles which give English translations.

One film I picked up recently was Death Train. Whilst slightly predictable I still find it a highly enjoyable film, especially when I want a simple action film that doesn't require much in the way of concentration. The film includes a crazed Russian general, who funnily enough often speaks Russian! Now I don't speak Russian and so subtitles would be useful, unfortunately they seem to be missing from the DVD, and believe me I've looked for them. Fortunately I found the subtitles were missing from the DVD before I got rid of the old VHS copy I had, so after a long evening I managed to transcribe the subtitles. Now for the tricky part -- adding them to the DVD.

Firstly I used Subtitle Workshop to transcribe the subtitles and save them into the correct format. I then used a combination of these two tutorials to add the subtitles to the DVD, and this tutorial to force the subtitles to always be on so that I don't have to manually turn them on each time I watch the film.

Whilst the instructions may look complicated the procedure is actually relatively straightforward although a little time consuming. The most complex bit is actually transcribing and syncing the subtitles to the film. Fortunately for many films you can find the subtitles somewhere on the web. Unfortunately for me I couldn't find any subtitles for Death Train so I had to transcribe them myself -- although now no one else will have to as they can use mine.

Audio Described

When I was away last week I took some DVDs with to make sure I wouldn't be bored in my hotel room in an evening. Turns out I was bored anyway at which point I started to play around with the extra features on the DVDs I had with me.

Over the last few years my eyesight has unfortunately deteriorated to the stage where I now need glasses to watch TV (in fact to do most things but that's a different story). I'm not so blind though that I need to use the "Audio Described" soundtracks available on some DVDs. But as I was bored I thought I'd see what an "Audio Described" soundtrack actually sounds like.

The easiest way to describe the soundtrack, is to suggest that you could closes your eyes and have the entire film described to you. It's a bit difficult to explain so as examples here are the descriptions from the "Audio Described" soundtrack on the Music and Lyrics DVD for two of the studio logos:

"Rows of old film studio buildings reflected in a shiny gold surface. As the surface turns it is reveled to be the edge of a shield with the letters W B in it's centre against a blue sky."

"The beam of a lighthouse scans a rocky coast line and a calm stretch of water. The sun rises behind the lighthouse and spreads a golden glow across the sky"