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Star Wars 1977 70mm sound mix recreation [stereo and 5.1 versions now available] (Released) — Page 21

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Darth Mallwalker said:

I wouldn't need to ask those tough questions--
if you would post an NFO file! :D

I did see bilditup1's Post_495 but didn't pay much heed.
Since he mentioned Fox fanfare specifically, I just assumed it was the comparative lower fidelity of the 1954 Alfred E. Newman recording to blame.

Reading Harmy's thread, it sounds like hairy_hen got the problem sorted already.
Bravo!

I thought that also, but I've listened to that thing in fairly compressed format in the past, and it never sounded this bad. The rest of it it was hard to pick up anything, but then I never listened to this track before and don't really know how it 'should' sound.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

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 (Edited)

hairy_hen said in this post:

Okay, I think I figured out what the problem was.  My AC3 encoder has adjustable settings for dealing with the high frequency cutoff point, and I seem to have inadvertently done this wrongly.  The AC3 format's lossy compression throws away the most detail in the highs, I believe, and the range is dependent on the bitrate used, so that's probably why it was so noticeable in the 448 but the 640 came through mostly unscathed.

Which encoder are you using - Aften, or professional Dolby-certified software?

IIRC, the pro encoders I've used in the past (Surcode and Sonic Foundry/Sony) have just a low pass filter that can be turned on or off, the purpose being to roll off high-frequency content that could cause artefacts in the encode. It is recommended by Dolby to turn this filter on.

I think that the audio bandwidth is adjusted automatically by the encoder; at low bitrates the bandwidth is decreased in order to maintain high audio quality. However, I wouldn't have thought that 448kbps (for a 5.1 mix) would be problematic, and certainly not 640kbps.

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I've downloaded what appears to be a version of the DVD5 of Harmy v2 that claims to have the fixed h_h audio off usenet. Listening, it is difficult  for me to find the differences between the two. Is it legit? Can h_h shed light on what we should listen for?

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

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Darth Mallwalker said:

 

bilditup1 said:

Is it legit?
Chewtobacca would never roll his own!

 

LOL, I wasn't accusing chewie of doing something like that. I was thinking that maybe someone pretending to be chewie released some fraudulent thing, as there was no announcement here.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

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 (Edited)

Yes, it's for real. I sent the fixed 448 kbps track to Chewie and Harmy first, so they could integrate it into the DE and get it out there as soon as possible.  I'm going to post the links here once I'm done uploading a new 640 kbps version also.

The other had a lot of distortion on the high frequencies, and sounded like a bad mp3 in those parts.

@ Moth3r: I use a GUI for the Aften encoder since I can't afford one of the professional ones.  It has a lot of user-adjustable settings for things that should perhaps not be open to manipulation, and I seem to have inadvertently picked the wrong one for high frequency cutoff, so it came out screwed up even despite using the low pass filter.  This time I forced it to accept full bandwidth, with only the filter providing any cutoff, and it's much better than before.

When listening on hifi, the quality reduction at 448 kbps is somewhat noticeable, although it still sounds quite good.  640 is difficult to distinguish from the lossless source, and would be my recommendation for watching on a format that isn't restricted by DVD's 448 limitation.

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hairy_hen said:

Yes, it's for real. I sent the fixed 448 kbps track to Chewie and Harmy first, so they could integrate it into the DE and get it out there as soon as possible.  I'm going to post the links here once I'm done uploading a new 640 kbps version also.

The other had a lot of distortion on the high frequencies, and sounded like a bad mp3 in those parts.

@ Moth3r: I use a GUI for the Aften encoder since I can't afford one of the professional ones.  It has a lot of user-adjustable settings for things that should perhaps not be open to manipulation, and I seem to have inadvertently picked the wrong one for high frequency cutoff, so it came out screwed up even despite using the low pass filter.  This time I forced it to accept full bandwidth, with only the filter providing any cutoff, and it's much better than before.

When listening on hifi, the quality reduction at 448 kbps is somewhat noticeable, although it still sounds quite good.  640 is difficult to distinguish from the lossless source, and would be my recommendation for watching on a format that isn't restricted by DVD's 448 limitation.

Thank you very much for laying it all out for us, hairy. I'll be burning Chewie's DVD en masse and giving it out to my friends tomorrow (Raiders night)

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

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hairy_hen said:

Yes, it's for real. I sent the fixed 448 kbps track to Chewie and Harmy first, so they could integrate it into the DE and get it out there as soon as possible.  I'm going to post the links here once I'm done uploading a new 640 kbps version also.

The other had a lot of distortion on the high frequencies, and sounded like a bad mp3 in those parts.

@ Moth3r: I use a GUI for the Aften encoder since I can't afford one of the professional ones.  It has a lot of user-adjustable settings for things that should perhaps not be open to manipulation, and I seem to have inadvertently picked the wrong one for high frequency cutoff, so it came out screwed up even despite using the low pass filter.  This time I forced it to accept full bandwidth, with only the filter providing any cutoff, and it's much better than before.

When listening on hifi, the quality reduction at 448 kbps is somewhat noticeable, although it still sounds quite good.  640 is difficult to distinguish from the lossless source, and would be my recommendation for watching on a format that isn't restricted by DVD's 448 limitation.

 

harmy mentioned that you provided him with some of the other soundtracks, were any others affected?

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 (Edited)

So, AVCHD doesn't need to be 448Kbps, that's just for SD DVD, right? If so, I'll probably use the 640Kbps version for the AVCHD and get rid of one of the other soundtracks.

@rnranimal: they probably weren't affected but just in case, h_h sent me replacements for those too.

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Any download links to fixed audio?

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Thanks a ton for posting the fixed audio!

 

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I got a CRC error on part 3 of the 640 kbps.

Download twice but no luck.

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atomic66 said:

I got a CRC error on part 3 of the 640 kbps.

Download twice but no luck.

I received the same error, my computer decided to get stuck in the middle of the download, so I attributed it to that, but since you're having the same issue, must not be me.

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atomic66 said:

I got a CRC error on part 3 of the 640 kbps.

Download twice but no luck.

I was able to extract the 640kbps audio without any problems.  Maybe a transient error with the file hoster, or try restarting (and updating) JDownloader if you are using that.

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I'd have to concur.  Both the 640 and 448 audio extracted fine for me, no errors.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I did download it a third time and it worked... Probably a temporary file hoster issue.

Thanks.

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thanks for the fixed audio. was the '93 track on the mkv ok? just wanna make sure before i remux.

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HH, this is a phenomenal piece of work. Unbelievable. I think I enjoyed listening to your mix (through headphones) more than watching the film. So present that it was almost too much at times. Thanks for all your hard work.

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I'm glad to hear that people are enjoying the mix.  At some point I may make a list of all the work that was done on it, so I can show that I did actually improve it compared to the previous version and wasn't just  harping on about insignificant details.  ;)

 

I just posted this in Harmy's thread, but I'll put it here too since it's relevant:

hairy_hen said:

. . . since the 5.1 mix was created by upmixing a stereo track and is not truly discrete, downmixing it back to stereo again is inadvisable.  There is a distinct possibility that doing so could cause phase problems, most likely heard as distortion in the high frequencies, which obviously is a less than optimal listening experience.  The most obvious cause of such phase problems would be the fact that the surround channels (which contain a certain amount of unavoidable crosstalk from the front) are delayed by 10 milliseconds, and definitely won't align properly in a downmix.  Add this to the fact that Dolby Digital decoders may drop the LFE channel when downmixing, in which case the main benefit of the 5.1namely, the added bass content—would go unheard.

So if, for example, you will be listening to the movie on headphones, or any system without a subwoofer installed, then the two channel version of the 70mm track could make for a more optimal listening experience.

. . . The links for it are in this post if anyone doesn't have it yet.

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I'm getting this warning when I mux in your 70mm 2.0 and 5.1, and the belbecus lossless mono and 35mm dolby stereo. All files are either .wav(pcm) and AC3.

Any ideas?

 

Warning: DTS_Header problem: invalid number of blocks in frame
Warning: DTS_Header problem: invalid core sampling frequency