Quality Entertainment

My dad and I used to call movies "Quality Entertainment." It was just kind of a joke we had for whatever reason. I don't remember how it started or even when. When it comes to movies, "quality" is a word that doesn't apply in some cases.

I am a big movie lover. I own a bunch and we rent some and guys at work trade movies to view. Some are good, entertaining... Some are not so much. Some are violent, profane... ah, there's issue. Langauge.

My wife and I have always been very picky about what we let our kids watch. We get the usual comments and looks when people hear that Brother Bear has never been watched at our house. Neither have many other titles, Disney or not. We also pre-watch anything the kids are going to watch. In some cases, the movies are excellent movies with great stories but the only real problem is the language. I am not exactly sure why they feel the need to put so much profanity into movies these days. Maybe that's how they talk, but I don't and most of the people I know don't, either. But my kids have missed out on some fun movies due to language issues with them.

Well... here enters the geek in me. I knew there were companies out there that edited movies for content and sold "clean" copies of them. I kind of checked into it and they do exist and seem to have a limited selection of things. There is also the "ClearPlay" DVD player that edits movies as you watch. It's relatively cheap and the monthly subscription fee is only about $7 I think. It looks to be a very cool deal. BUT, being on the short end of the cash machine right now and being a total geek that loves a good challenge, I decided to try and edit them myself.

This whole thing started with my wife and I saying that our 13 year old son, Ben, would probably enjoy Jurassic Park without being too scared of it now that he is a "big boy." So, I watched it again to make sure it was alright for him and was surprised at the langauge used in it. It's funny how you see things differently when looking through the eyes of your children. There were about 15 places in the movie that had language I considered offensive, minor or otherwise. A few were what I would consider pretty harsh. Well, my kids aren't going to watch that.

At that point I got to wondering if I could edit a movie and how I would go about it. I took Jurassic Park, which I own on DVD, and ripped the video and audio of the movie into files and imported those files into a video editing software. That one sentence does not exactly express the trouble I went through to get this done. I tried several different software packages for video ripping and audio ripping and finally found the ones I liked and tried many ways to get the quality I wanted and finally got the settings for all parts. The actual editing is just a matter of watching through the movie in the editor and marking each place I want to edit in the timeline of the editor. Then I go back to each marked place and take the audio volume down on the center channel for the offensive words. (Note: while editing Apollo 13, I had to edit the front surround channels for some of the words as the voices came through on those channels, too).

After editing it all, I just use a DVD authoring software to put it back onto a DVD. It really sounds like it could be a total pain to do, and I won't say it's easy, but it's not that bad, really. And I enjoy doing it. My wife calls it my new hobby. Maybe, but the kids got to watch Jurassic Park, which scared my 8 and 10 year olds to death. Neither of them made it through. The 13 year old loved it.

After Jurassic Park, I did the next two Jurrasic Park movies, The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. Right now I am working on Apollo 13 and The Incredibles. What's that you say? What could I be editing out of The Incredibles? Ya, I know this is super picky, but that scene where Mr. Incredible and Mirage sit at a table and chit chat with a little harmless flirting. I know, it's a ticky-tack thing to have a problem with but we felt uncomfortable enough when we saw it that it kept us from showing the kids the movie. But I cut it out and now it's watchable.

I am not sure what will hit the editor next, but we'll see when we get there. As a note for anyone wondering about copyright and piracy... I own the actual, real DVDs of all the movies I have edited. And I don't sell the clean copies of the movies to anyone else.