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ndiamone

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15-Dec-2017
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27-Aug-2018
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#1142402
Topic
Fantasia - 35mm preservation opportunity (* unfinished project / WIP? *)
Time

Not a newbie here exactly - been around the vintage recording and media restoration world since forever and a half ago (see my posts on lots of the other tech forums) - came here once to tell one person one thing on one thread - and then - since I rarely care about the content of the media I’m restoring - didn’t see the need to stay around.

Apparently after X number of years of inactivity - you get deleted. (shrug) But I been follwing this Fantasia thread (and a few other threads of famous musicals that have been butchered on DVD/Blu-Ray) for awhile now and decided I could possibly shed a little light.

RE: Problems with the three commercially-available reel to reels and the original 3 LP set of the Fantasia soundtrack and why you might want to think twice about using them for restoration.

We’ll start with the Capitol-pressed stereo LP WDX 101 which a FEW Capitol masters have listed in the runoff as SWDX 101 while their mono versions have just WDX for the MOST part - although there ARE exceptions. That WOULD have been the one to look for BUT…

  1. The master tape from which they were taken has a once-around swish and

  2. The takes don’t sync to picture as ALL the surviving takes were transferred in Burbank over Class A phone lines to make the surviving 35MM mag in 1955 just ahead of the 1956 re-release.

The outtakes were used to make the LP and all subsequent releases EXCEPT the 50th Anniversary LaserDisc and VHS BUT NOT THE CD SOUNDTRACK TO THE VHS according to Disney restorationists Terry Porter and Leon Briggs.

This is the same for the RCA Victor pressed LP edition from the same 1957-59 period which you can tell by its’ decidedly slightly blue tinge to the vinyl - and the fact that it looks and feels like any other late 50’s RCA Victor pressing.

That one you wouldn’t want to use even if the takes were the same and the once around swish wasn’t there from the master tape because it has so much additional echo that wasn’t there to begin with.

If you find one - they play GREAT on a QS or Regular Matrix (Dolby 4.0) surround system AS A RECORD - nothing more.

Onto the reels.

The original Bel Canto stereophonic inline or staggered release from 1957 WOULD have been your best bet because

  1. it’s duplicated 1:1 real time
  2. it’s 7-1/2 IPS
  3. it’s 2-track inline or staggered
  4. there’s no extraneous echo
  5. there’s no once-around swish from supposedly the same master that made the 3 LP set

BUT -

A) it’s still not the takes that lock to picture and
B) it’s not complete even spanning two reels and a book.

So - some sections would still sound crappy from having to be taken from LP or 3-3/4 IPS 4 track reel.

There’s one little tidbit of information though that may allow you to use the Capitol pressings if you can find mint/sealed copies of the original 135 gram pressings.

This being the fact that recording audio on nitrate film in 1939 would NOT have sounded that much different even in stereo in 1940 than you would be able to get off of your LP in 1957-59. So you might be able to get away with that even tho you’d still spend your life re-synching and doing layback to picture.

Going on to the 4-track stereo versions - all of which

  1. are 3-3/4 IPS instead of 7-1/2
  2. duplicated onto crap tape
  3. at high speed
  4. and also don’t lock to picture.

So the only way you’d get anything even C L O S E to something you would want to START with - and then still have to spend the rest of your life re-synching to picture (once you found an intact 1939, or 1946 IB Tech print to use for the video - you can tell because it will have a grey/black-and-white looking soundtrack) - would be to have an inside connection at the Capitol vaults in e.g. Kansas or Pennsylvania etc to see if either the copy of the 2-track 15 IPS stereo tape they made in 1955 or the original mothers or stampers made therefrom are still extant.

But even using that - the extended version of the Deems Taylor dialogue is still either missing or too degraded to use depending on source other than from an alternate take on a very worn 16-inch transcription safety acetate at LOC Culpeper that they don’t even let out of the cold storage anymore for preservationists to examine since they deemed it too damaged to use in the restoration attempt the last time.

And you wouldn’t want to try dropping it in from 8MM or 16MM sources due to the stark reduction in picture quality even if you WEREN’T using the sounf (if any was there) on the smaller-gauge print.

Good Luck.