Blade VCD or VCD in general question
 

Hey Guys,

I just got my first VCD. It was the Tsui Hark flick The Blade. When I popped it in it worked fine but I noticed the audio was really screwy. It almost seemed like there were cantonese and mandarin soundtracks at the same time.

Is the movie supposed to sound like this or is it the VCD ?? If it is indeed both soundtracks at once, is there a way to correct this ?? I also got the knockabout vcd....same thing. Daam, why don't they release those movies on dvd ??

I found it extremely annoying. I liked the movie, but man I am not a fan of VCD. Even my old VHS dubs of these older flicks are better.

Jas

It is indeed both Cantonese and Mandarin tracks. You need to select one, L or R, via your Audio button on your remote and your problem is solved. Right now your player is defaulting to stereo so you are hearing both tracks.

cool...thanks for the tip...never thought of changeing the speaker set-up...makes sense...all in all though sound like a fairly stupid way to make a VCD.....youonly get sound from one speaker !!

You can set it up so you get mono sound from both speakers... how depends on the type of setup you have. There is a Tai Seng VHS of this film which is of a little better quality. I think Amazon has it and it's in stereo cantonese with english subs and it's letterboxed.

trigger, how can it set it up for mono sound on both speakers. I have standard set-up. Dvd player feed into a receiver (DD and DTS). Is it setting on my stereo or on the dvd player ??

Also, I noticed a few R0 DVD of this popping up on ebay. It has the same cover as the HKL version. I am guessing this is a bootleg. I noticed the same thing with the MUSA dvd...there is a R0 version which looks exactly like the official R3 version. A buddy of mine bid on it on ebay....

Some receivers will work like this... You take your RCA cables - the red and the white/right and left and you figure out which speaker contains the Cantonese track... whichever wire has the cantonese track coming from the player - you plug that wire into the receiver's left input. If you leave the right input empty, it will automatically make it stereo. Some receivers work this way, some don't. You can always go pick up a splitter from Radio shack for a buck... that'll work the same way, but instead of just plugging the cantonese wire to the receiver's left channel, you'll connect that to the splitter and then connect the splitter wires to the left and right channel on the receiver. That's the easiest way to do it.

Other than that - there might be a setting in your receiver that allows you to split a mono signal to other speakers...

Cool...thanks for tip Trigger. Don't think I'll be able to do it though as the receiver is in a huge ass entertainment centre and there are wires and stuff everywhere. God knows what I'll pry loose when I pull the receiver out. Guess I'll watch it on computer and wait until my buddies boot comes and mooch that.

Hmm, I've never really thought about it, but when you select L/R aren't you're selecting that track to output to BOTH channels? i.e., no need to diddle with your cables. That's how it works on both of my systems, I _thought_. On a PC, you may encounter the one speaker audio, but it depends on the s/w you use to play the vcd.

Yeah you don't have to go through all that. Just hit your audio button on your dvd remote. Select the left for the Cantonese audio. It will output the cantonese to both speakers. Very simple.

Clint