Where to find the individual episode commentary?

POSTED BY: Tohoya
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 12:48
VIEWED: 5098
PAGE 1 of 2

1 2 NEXT PAGE

TOHOYA

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 3:50 PM

I notice people referencing the episode commentary, but I can't find them at all in my DVDs. There's no selection for commentary within the episode, and no selection for commentary that I can see in the special features on disk 4. So where is it?

GUNRUNNER

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:22 PM

Look in the Audio Options on the screen before the episode starts.

EV Nova Firefly mod Message Board:
http://s4.invisionfree.com/GunRunner/index.php?act=idx

RIVERGIRL

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:26 PM

when you select the episode ~ look under languages
you can play regular English, subtitles, commentaries even FRENCH

Also, I can kill you with my brain.

SHINY

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:36 PM

Look on the language setup/selection screen.

Jayne, your mouth is talkin. Might want to look into that.

RABIT

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 5:28 PM

Yes, I have to admit that this was - in my opinion - the worst way to allow access to the commentaries. I'm big on usability in user-machine interfaces, and this one is... not.

Rabit

YT

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 12:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Rabit:
this was - in my opinion - the worst way to allow access to the commentaries

If you mean that language selection should be @disc level, that sounds good to me but, perhaps not having a commentary for every ep made that problematical. However, if you feel that commentary should not be in the language stack, I disagree.

This may not be intuitively obvious (I've forgotten), but it is common. By stacking the commentaries with languages, one can switch in & out of commentary using the Audio button, @any time during an episode (eg @the beginning). Just click the Audio button, & stop when the screen shows 4: English. If it goes straight from 3: French to 1: English, there is no commentary for the ep you're watching.

I do not wish to imply that I think the controls for these DVDs are good. The absence of Play All means that, to play four eps on one disc in disc order, I have to take five unnecessary steps, three times (fifty unnecessary steps to watch the whole series):
1. Change selection from Play to Home
2. Click
(On my DVD player, I can also switch the controller from Jukebox to DVD, & push Menu -- still two steps)
3. Change selection to next ep
4. Click
5. Click on Play
That's roughly as dumb as a box of FOX.

But I prefer commentaries to be in the language stack. I also like being able to chapter forward through both warnings, the 20th Century Fox screen, & the Firefly DVD common screen, to quickly get to the disc menu. Winsome, etc. YMMV

Keep the Shiny Side Up . . . (wutzon) Sound Tribe Sector 9, "Good for Everyday", from "Seasons 01"

SHINYSEVEN

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 2:28 AM

Yeah, well, as a general rule DVD disks should list the name of the [bleep] episodes on that [bleep] disc (I've been watching "Deadwood," can you tell?) and indicate--a high-tech asterisk would do fine--which ones have commentary.

However, gotta say that the Buffy and Angel disks are even WORSE than the Firefly. At least the Firefly disks say on the back of the sleeve which ones have commentary. It's still beyond me which episodes of my BtVS 3&6 and AtS 5 have commentary and which don't.

AUROTER

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 5:33 AM

Maybe the DVD's were designed by FOX :b

______________________________
you can't take the sky from me

LIZANNE

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 8:39 AM

Is there a place to find transcripts of the commentaries?

I cannot stand watching an episode with talking over it, be it my friends in the room or BDH from the tv. I generally miss out on commentaries but I am interested in what they have to say. Anywhere I can find them in written form?

Liz
Nathan sat next to me?

RABIT

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 11:28 AM

There is a difference between having the commentaries as one of the audio tracks (this is always the case, as far as I know), and having a good user interface to access turning on the commentaries from the menus. The user interface does not have to emulate the internal design - in fact, it shouldn't. If it does, then the developer has imposed his restrictions on the user, which is - in my opinion - wrong.

But that's just me - to much time as a system analyst arguing with developers as to why their killing my users, and too much time as a developer arguing with other developers as to why their making us look bad...

Rabit

1 2 NEXT PAGE