Comments on: Chinese Project Notes 4: How I Watch Movies, Or How To Make Your Own Radio Play That You’ll Actually Understand

By: progress report #2 – immersion « thousand mile journey

progress report #2 – immersion « thousand mile journey — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:01:09 +0000

[…] also been ripping the audio from these[3] and putting them on my iPod as part of immersion (not my idea by the way). This especially helpful, because it’s an extra chance to practice stuff I […]

By: burtholomew

burtholomew — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:33:22 +0000

Oh, good. Yea, I ‘ve actually been looping the same episode of tiger & dragon at work for about 3 weeks now. It’s the one where jump tei jump(?) steals the masters story, i think o.O. I put some music, yomiuri podcasts and morimoeo podcasts on the ipod as well. Thanks for the quick reply 🙂

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:14:53 +0000

>Do they have grammatically correct sentences or would they just sound “wrong” to a native speaker?
They’re perfectly fine. In some cases, you may find a *little* more pronoun use and a *little* less polite language than is usual in Japanese, but by and large it’s very natural. Japan may have made shady products in the past, but now it’s perhaps the wealthiest country in the world — no trade deficit — and along with, like, Germany, has perhaps the highest industrial quality standards in the world (someone correct me if this wrong). Also, the proud tradition of anime voice acting has made its way to dubbing, such that you have people who know what they’re doing, doing the work. Not to mention that Hollywood movies make a ton of cash in Japan, so the movie-makers tend to make a point of (spending enough money to?) get quality dubbing done.

In short, Japanese dubs are made by Japanese people, for (very picky) Japanese consumers. So feel at ease.

BTW feel free to watch movies even while doing kanji…simply getting used to the sound of the language matters,too.

And congratulations on being at 1400 kanji 😀

By: burtholomew

burtholomew — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:42:21 +0000

I just got back from the two japanese video stores around here, to see what kind of selection they had, and I’m wondering if the dubbed american movies are going to sound as terrible as english dubbed ninja movies. Do they have grammatically correct sentances or would they just sound “wrong” to a native speaker? I’m still only at around 1400 kanji so I won’t be watching them for another couple weeks but I’m just curious wether i should buy them or not.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:33:58 +0000

I’d be careful about those cool “free” apps made by companies with questionable motives…

Virtualdub does a good job as well… and it’s safe ! Though the option is called “Save WAV”, it does in fact save as mp3 (with a .WAV extension, you can just change it later), provided that your divx file’s audio was originally encoded as mp3. And then split it with mp3-splitter !

By: Arashi no Yoru ni: DVD Audio as Listening Material | Sinosplice: Life in China

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:58:28 +0000

[…] in the language you’re studying, getting familiar with the movie in that language, and then ripping the DVD audio. The idea is that you start out familiar, and with enough repetition, all those lines in the movie […]

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:27:21 +0000

I have the Xilisoft utility for converting between video and audio formats.

It does a great job of converting video, and of ripping the audio from a DVD. But I haven’t had much luck using it to rip the audio from a video file (such as avi or mp4).

But this does a very good job of ripping audio from video files:

www.erightsoft.com/S6Kg1.html

I haven’t used it for anything else, but it’s definitely good for audio. And it’s free!

Mark

By: mark

mark — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:21:20 +0000

Oh, and I should add this too:

forum.videohelp.com/topic330866.html

By: mark

mark — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:10:02 +0000

Hi Khatz,

Nice summary on dissecting a movie.

I am probably the very last person in the world to ‘discover’ this, but if there is anyone out there struggling to create an MPEG4 of an American/European movie for their iPod *with* only the Japanese dubbed dialogue and **Japanese subtitles**, here’s how to do it:

forum.videohelp.com/topic339718.html

Mark

By: Charles

Charles — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 05:47:17 +0000

Khatz,
I’m enjoying looping movies. I’ve noticed that words “pop out” the more I listen. I consider that a good thing. However, my issue is the accuracy of sentences to put into my SRS. The subtitles don’t always match and I don’t always have someone to ask. BTW thanks for the list of TV with the exact subs, that has helped.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:56:23 +0000

@shaydwyrm
Yeah, I can watch a movie I like over and over again. But the moment it bores me, I switch that mother out. When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep. When bored, change the movie.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:04:35 +0000

Yeah, I generally only watch a movie all the way through ONCE. Thereafter, I loop it in the background while I’m working on other things, or just loop a favorite section.

By: shaydwyrm

shaydwyrm — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:02:26 +0000

Where do you find time to loop a movie several times? Do you watch it over and over for several days? I know lucky to find 3 hours free in a row for my Japanese studies, and from your other posts you sound pretty busy as well. Do you loop sections of a movie?

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to Learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency » Chinese Project Notes 6: Extinguishing the Despair of the Serial Beginner + Audio Splicing

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:08:33 +0000

[…] a previous project notes post, I mentioned that I would rip the audio from DVDs in order to make a radio play-like experience. […]

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:53:00 +0000

>Also, do you think that Remembering the Kanji would be useful for learning Hanzi as well or is there something better?
RTK combined with www.zhongwen.com is how I went.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:51:30 +0000

> So what do you do if you can’t understand exactly what is being said in the part you want to remember?
Go with the subs. Or pick out the words you think you heard in that part, and find sentences in the dictionary that use them. Whatever you do, don’t go assuming. No matter what you think you heard, GET WRITTEN CONFIRMATION. Failing that, get NATIVE SPEAKER confirmation.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 04:52:50 +0000

Thanks for all of the posts on your Chinese Project. I’m learning Chinese as well and while I have found what you have written about learning Japanese useful, I especially appreciate Chinese-specific posts. Could you share with us some of the other Chinese material you use (music, podcasts, TV shows, etc.)? Also, do you think that Remembering the Kanji would be useful for learning Hanzi as well or is there something better?

By: Yorkii

Yorkii — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 02:38:54 +0000

The subtitles don’t provide the exact transcript of what is being spoken I have found. So
what do you do if you can’t understand exactly what is being said in the part you want to remember? Listen to it again and again?

By: Alec

Alec — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:43:28 +0000

Great, thanks! One of my favourite posts of yours in recent memory. I’ve saved it and shall use it! I love the movie Mean Girls but I’d be worried about the possibly ギャルっぽい Japanese I’d pick up from it, so I’ll try and find something else.

I have a Japanese phone now which plays mp3s so I’ll rip the audio from a DVD and I shall loop as you say!