Question: how to extract voices only from episodes of DBZ

Hey guys! I started watching DBZ about a year ago and I have really enjoyed it. I am wanting to do some AMVs with my own music and also use the voices from the episodes.
I have all the remastered episodes already on my computer in the .mkv format. Now I would like to know if there are any freeware programs out there that will allow me to pull just the voices from the audio?

I have done some searching already and I’ve found that a couple people have been able to use Sony Vegas to get the voices out of their rips, but I don’t have that.

Also, the audio in my episodes are in the AAC format, not AC3 which seems to be what most other people are using, so will this cause a problem?

It would depend on how mixed in with the music the voices are. I’m assuming you’re talking about the "orange brick" release which features the American soundtrack? Your best shot for voices would be the 5.1 mix, obviously. I haven’t used it to extract multi-channel audio like that, but Pazera extracts audio from videos and can output it as Wav, MP3, etc.

If it won’t accept the Mkv, try converting it with Freemake video converter.

Thanks for the quick reply Despair! Yes, I am talking about the orange brick release. Now I am still fairly new to this, so would you happen to be able to point me to a step-by-step guide for how I could do this?

See if this works, download Pazera Audio Extractor. Just load in the Mkv, and change the output format to Flac (I don’t know what format’s will handle 5.1 channels, and at this stage, you don’t want any quality loss since you’re going to edit the voices later anyway). You may need to change the "Audio track to convert/extract" option to the 1st audio, which is the default position for the 5.1 mix on most of those (I recall a few of the later episodes starting on the english broadcast audio, the Final Flash episode specifically, but that may be because of my preferences in VLC).

Anyway, if you found the 5.1 mix, it’ll export the whole deal into a Flac file in the same directory as the video, with the same filename. Just open it in some editor like Audacity, and you’ll see the 6 channels. From there, just listen through them till you find what you’re looking for. You’ll probably have to pull the little menu for each of the channels down a bit so you can see the Mute and Solo buttons. Just Solo each channel, or the ones that look like they have voices (the waveform should be larger and/or "spikier"). Then just select that portion of audio, copy and paste it (in a new audacity project window), and then convert it to whatever format you’re looking for. Audacity has a list of plugins near the program download that will give you extra format choices (you’ll need this for Mp3, ogg, flac, etc.) Or you could just export as a Wav file and then convert it in Winamp, Foobar, or any other music player.

Thank you very much for the help! I was able to follow your instructions very easily and it helped me a lot. Unfortunately, I found out that the mkv’s that I have are only in stereo since only two channels are showing up in audacity. I suppose I’ll have to rip the dvds and make sure I’m getting the 5.1 versions. But thanks again, I’m pretty confident that I can do this now 🙂

Thank you very much for the help! I was able to follow your instructions very easily and it helped me a lot. Unfortunately, I found out that the mkv’s that I have are only in stereo since only two channels are showing up in audacity. I suppose I’ll have to rip the dvds and make sure I’m getting the 5.1 versions. But thanks again, I’m pretty confident that I can do this now 🙂

Try changing the "Audio track to convert/extract" option. You’re supposed to have 5.1 English cast with Jap music, Jap cast & music in 1.0 mono, and english broadcast audio in 2.0

Dude, thank you so much again! It would have taken me forever to figure that out on my own. Sadly, I noticed when I was extracting the FLAC from the mkv that in the encoder output window it was telling me that all of my sources are in 2 channel, even the japanese/japanese one, so I’m guessing that this rip is different from the original orange brick set. I got the rips from dbz remastered dot com and I thought that they used the brick set too, but I guess not :/

Huh. Looks like my own copy is the same way. I guess they didn’t bother ripping the DVD’s into 5.1. I have no idea how to go about it, but I’m sure there’s a way to rip the 5.1 audio if you own the discs. Or, you could just cut the voice clips from these stereo tracks, it probably won’t be as clear as a 5.1 mix, but it should do. Especially if you use the one with the Jap music, shit’s old and tinny, and quiet. Always was a fan of Faulconer.

Yeah, I really love Faulconer’s music, it was half of the show. Maybe i’ll try using the voices with the Jap music, but first I’ll see if I can request the 5.1 FLAC in the forum request section.
Thanks for your time man, you’ve been a big help!