Customer Reviews

Only Hope

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Only Hope" by Mandy Moore is a wonderful and sweet song. However it is ruined by people talking over the music. In the movie "A Walk to Remember" from whence this song came, there are words spoken right *before* she begins her song. Alas the producers of the music moved these words *into and after* the start of the song. Likewise, they reach way back at the end of the movie, lift some words spoken there, and dump them down into the end of this sweet song. It is distracting, unwanted, and not even the way the song aired in the actual movie itself. What a waste of a great song. it would be five stars without those two disruptions, but alas they really ruin this version of the song.

Update & partial solution (for Mac users): I imported the original audio from this album into Garageband. (Note: Amazon MP3 audios work better for this ironically than Apple iTunes AAC files; I've had Garageband refuse to import and edit iTunes audios. Over-application of copyright fears? I own a purchased legal copy, after all.) Anyway I trimmed off the last portion containing the worst of the two voice-overs. I then found a YouTube version of that song from the movie in HQ and downloaded the video in MP4 format. Garageband will import movie clips and automatically separate the video & audio tracks. I deleted the video track, and trimmed almost all of the movie audio as well, leaving only the last few seconds ruined by the original voice over. After a bit of timing alignment and volume adjustments between the two tracks, a quick export created a pretty good audio file. I can tell the difference where they were spliced together but I bet most wouldn't if they weren't told what I did.

Too bad I had to do this. Why the producers couldn't have just left this song alone is beyond me. If I want to watch the movie, I'll watch the movie. If I want to listen to the song, then let me hear just the song. But what they sell contains a mix-up of song, plus movie commentary which as stated above doesn't even appear in the song to begin with! Frustrating, but at least now it's "better".