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Ko-Fi Liberapay
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Hi there, do you know if there is a way to disable laugh tracks from sitcoms? I really would like to rewatch some shows like King of Queens but I can't bear the constant laughing in the background. Cheers

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[–] 0x6E68 81 points 1 year ago (7 children)
[–] Rescuer6394@feddit.nl 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the power of an annoyed programmer

[–] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 19 points 1 year ago

I think this (mild/moderate annoyance) is probably the most common reason for inventing things. From cars to remote controls.

[–] S13Ni@lemmy.studio 16 points 1 year ago

I don't like sitcoms in general but the fact someone made this is funnier to me than any sitcom I have ever seen and I have my own laughing track going on in here right now.

[–] xspurnx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago

Woha. WOHA!

[–] ensignrick@startrek.website 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Teknikal@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember trying to filter out the vuvuzelas during the African world cup I mainly failed and just gave up on that whole tournament.

Seeing this makes me think if it happens again I might have better lick.

[–] ensignrick@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems possible. I dabbled in audio engineering, you can train a filter to remove specific noise, specifically background noise of a location.

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

If I remember correctly, they did that on TV after some time. But the improved audio still wasn't good.

[–] SirGaston@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

Thanks man, I do not understand completely how to do this but will read into it!

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

this video is 5 years old already, impressive https://youtu.be/DeTQBiKzmYc

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago

Wow. Super impressive. Guess with today's technology you could do it pretty much 100%. I saw that model that lets you separate music into separate tracks for guitar, vocals, drums, ... Guess something like that could even separate the laughs from the next actor resuming to speak.

Kind of also reminds me of those videos where they stabilize / de-shake Star Trek. There are some scenes where the ship gets shot at for example. And the actors act that out and the camera is shaking too and a bit at an angle. Looks funny once that camera shake is removed.

[–] Sharpiemarker@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

That's wild

[–] exododo@leminal.space 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But how would you know when something is funny then? (canned laughter)

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You just have to use your judgement and laugh at what you find funny on your own, if you need peer pressure (opinions of others) to find something funny then it's not really funny to you and maybe isn't even funny for many people to begin with.

This might be controversial but maybe many Sitcoms that do this were never funny in the first place and used laugh tracks because try as they might they had to force people to find it funny via artificial peer pressure, that either constitutes of a crowd being told to laugh on cue, or a recording of them doing so, which is what a laugh track is.

Here's the key point and why we stopped using them, things aren't funny, people think certain things are funny, and they also think plenty of things are not funny, and like it or not people are not always going to find the same things funny.

[–] jameskirk@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] Steve@communick.news 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After a little while, you're going to prefer it to the strange pauses in the dialogue.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is going to sound weird I prefer it to the laughing, makes it feel like they're actually finishing their sentences rather than being cut off by people laughing at random words and seemingly cutting them off. I don't know about most people but I find seemingly random laughter at benign things to be unpleasant and annoying.

Though maybe in the future as media manipulation with Machine learning gets better maybe we'll have a way to chop out the gaps seamlessly as if it never happened for the people that find the gaps more bothersome.

By far the most unpleasant thing I find with current implementations is the fact that most aren't seamless and they leave a lot behind when they can't mute the whole scene such as when it's mixed with dialogue or background audio.

[–] Gailthesnail@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i need this to mute certain people in shows like debbie in shameless

[–] jameskirk@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

She's a pain but she's also part of the family. I think it makes s very good point to make her like that and to have us bear her.

[–] Gailthesnail@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

her voice is too fucking gross and nasty. i dont care about anything else about her she just needs to shut up

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think the best way would be to re-record the audio. Laugh track usually overlaps the dialog a bit so it's impossible to get rid of it. You just have to find some actors and have them read the script. The casts of most sitcons are not that big. You will need like what? 10 people? You can probably do it with your friends. Then just add some basic sound effects like door closing and cars starting. A bit of work but doable.

[–] SirGaston@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Extraordinary problems need extraordinary solutions! Thanks :D