logo Sign In

Idea: Working & Releasing the Audiotracks separately?

Author
Date
Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

Hi!

With all the OT-Preservation-Projects going on in the world, how about splitting up the work into smaller parts and release those parts to the community for others to work with?

Why? I will explain.

I figured out, that several projects don’t feature a pcm-digital transfer of audio, although it would be possible with most laserdisc releases. In many cases the audio gets converted from digital (pcm) to analog back to digital (pcm or dd2.0).

Although a digital (lossless) transmission is technically possible, often the laserdisc player or the soundcard lacks in an digital audio-plug.

If someone with the necessary equipement creates a pcm-audiotrack, digitally transferred from laserdisc and releases it on its own (would be approx. 1.3 GByte), others could bypass the audio-ripping step completely and therefore safe some time to concentrate more on getting the best picture out of the laserdiscs.

I am not talking about only releasing the audio from the US NTSC Faces LD Set but releasing the several other mixes, that have been released for the original trilogy on some official media. You can think off the “Digital Remastered 1985 soundmix”, the “Commentary Track” and other rare soundtracks. I am personally interested in getting all the non-english soundtracks to show up (French, German, Spain, …), so that they can be used and integrated in several projects.

We don’t have to limit this to laserdisc-releases, that feature an pcm-audiotrack but we could collect several rare (analog) soundtracks of starwars, released on laserdisc, vhs, betamax, ced and what else you can think of.

There could be some kind of database that features all released soundtracks (PAL, NTSC) and anyone can be easily updated with a better release.

There are more advantages to it than you might think. People, who are working on doing their own capture, sometimes fail to get an specific laserdisc, and therefore stop the project. “grisan” stopped his project because of that for example. The released PCM-Tracks will be useful, not only for Duallayer-Projects but even when some HD-DVD (BlueRay) Fan-Preservation releases show up in the future.

Now is the right time to collect them.

I am looking forward to capture and release the Audio only from my german VHS of “Krieg der Sterne” (Starwars Ep4) from 1990. It features Hifi-Stereo Sound and is Dolby Surround encoded. Hopefully the Moth3r PAL DVD can be merged afterwards.

If this idea is a welcome one we should build up some kind of standard for all the releases (Format, Minimum Release Infos). What do you think?

So long, R2D2
(sorry for the bad english)

Author
Time
Post link
That is a fantastic idea! While not an active OT preservationist, as a member of the forums and a big film buff, I have to encourage those who might have the know-how to consider such a benevolent idea.
Author
Time
Post link
I can do digital rips of audio tracks from LD, though I'd only be confident of doing it with an AC3 track - the reason being, AC3 is broken up into packets of a fixed length, so it's easy to tell when there's been a cut-out. I wrote a bit of C to scan through the raw recording and reconstruct the AC3 file, and if there was a skip, I could work around it or just re-record that side until it came out perfect. If I was to try the same with a PCM track, it might well have (very small) skips, and it would be hard to tell they were there.

That, and I only own the Special Edition laserdiscs which nobody wants

DE
Author
Time
Post link
Grisan reported problems when syncing TR47's audio to the video from his German laserdiscs. See halfway down this thread:
http://www.originaltrilogy.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=9&threadid=1389&STARTPAGE=2

Minor differences in the number of frames in a shot can add up to a noticeable de-sync over the length of the film. If you were to collect all the different soundtracks, you would also need some form of reference to the video as well, or some way of ensuring the audio can be synced to different video source.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
Post link
I have an Apple Lossless file already made of the original 1977 Dolby Stereo mix. The LD I got it from plays the wrong FOX music logo, but beyond that and one instance of "wow" (on the line, "He's the brains, sweetheart!") it's perfect. Naturally a lot of work would be needed to keep it in sync.

Neil

Well at least the reversed surround channels have been addressed.

Author
Time
Post link
I was able to make a digital PCM copy of the Faces soundtrack, and syncing it up to any video would be very easy in vegas. It was from this soundtrack that I created my 5.1 soundtrack, which has gotten excellent reviews.

And yes, it's a little over 1GB in size.

"That, and I only own the Special Edition laserdiscs which nobody wants"

LOL...speaking of packet errors, I've been told the last part of ROTJ is full of them. Have you noticed this, or been able to get around it?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
LOL...speaking of packet errors, I've been told the last part of ROTJ is full of them. Have you noticed this, or been able to get around it?


Nope, each side took two or three goes to perfectly record all the AC3 frames, same as all the other movies.

DE
Author
Time
Post link
Weird. I know MBJ is referring to me when he asks about packet errors. I had a hell of a time with the AC-3 on RotJ when I capped it about three years ago -- it would always have about 1000 errors. Same thing when I tried my other copy, from the Japanese SE. Only that one side of one disc was messed up, but it was messed up on two different discs from two different pressing plants! I figured it was some sort of mastering error. (I mean, what would you conclude?)

Any chance you'd be willing to post your C program (compiled, I hope) and some brief instructions? I'm more than willing to do the work myself -- in fact, I've capped the AC-3 from that trilogy several times already, so I won't need much hand-holding -- but I don't know jack about how AC-3 is structured, and even less than jack about how to program up some C to deal with it. Can ya "teach a man to fish..."?
Author
Time
Post link
Great idea. I was actually about to make a post asking if someone could provide me with digital rips of the US DC set- the films, not the extras (in original 44.1 form, still split up to each LD side). So... if anyone could help me, my PM is on. Don't really have anything to trade, but I'm currently d/ling the Editdroid set or could provide B&P. Also have Troops vob from the original "Total Movie" DVD with commentary.

Neil, was that 1977 Dolby stereo mix digitally ripped from the LD (or was this mix never in digital form on an LD?). Do you also have the ESB & ROTJ soundtracks from this set, were they theatrical stereo mixes as well?

Again, great idea and wish I could help. Don't have a digital out on my player and only have the US DC set. I could do the commentary as that's on the analog track. I can record up to 24/96, but that's major overkill for this. Btw, I can playback the commentary properly. It was incorrectly flagged as CX and it's not. That's why the volume fluctuates so badly on a lot of players. My player auto-detects an incorrectly turns CX on, but I found the pin inside to pull that disables it. Also, I've checked and the commentary is completely mono, so I could record in stereo and put the movie soundtrack in mono on the other channel. This will make it easier for those wanting to sync it back up to the film.
Author
Time
Post link
" It was incorrectly flagged as CX and it's not. That's why the volume fluctuates so badly on a lot of players. My player auto-detects an incorrectly turns CX on, but I found the pin inside to pull that disables it.

That's very interesting. I wonder if I could force CX off on my player. I ended up running the commentary through a Vegas filter that levelled out the volume at a predetermined level. It worked beautifully, but I'd still like to get a pristine recording.

"Also, I've checked and the commentary is completely mono, so I could record in stereo and put the movie soundtrack in mono on the other channel. This will make it easier for those wanting to sync it back up to the film.

When I mastered my DVD with the PCM/AC3/commentary soundtracks, I ended up grouping some of the commentaries together because I had used up all 99 chapter stops. The segements aren't exactly where they are on the LD, but they are close enough, and you can access each one individually (or in their clusters.)

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: rnranimal
Neil, was that 1977 Dolby stereo mix digitally ripped from the LD (or was this mix never in digital form on an LD?). Do you also have the ESB & ROTJ soundtracks from this set, were they theatrical stereo mixes as well?

It was the analog CAV pan and scan LD that I recorded to CD, ripped to my computer and then assembled and normalized. I didn't bother replacing the FOX logo because I'd rather have that done when synced to picture. I only have Star Wars this way.

Neil

Well at least the reversed surround channels have been addressed.

Author
Time
Post link
Great idea. I've offered several times here the spanish soundtrack. I have .ac3 files for the 3 classic movies, but a friend of mine told me he would rip the audio from the spanish LD directly to pcm (I'm still waiting).

For the synchronicity... maybe we could release the PCMs in a divx file, with the whole movie at very low video quality, just for reference. The video could be 200 Mb more, and that's nothing, since we're talking about 1,3 Gb files.
Author
Time
Post link
Distributing just the soundtrack? That seems a great idea. And it could be encoded with a lossless encoder like FLAC (flac.sourceforge.net).

A new release of Star Wars is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

Author
Time
Post link
Thanks for the positive feedback so far. I agree, that we should think of something in order to get all the audio releases sync with the video.

For the synchronicity... maybe we could release the PCMs in a divx file, with the whole movie at very low video quality, just for reference. The video could be 200 Mb more, and that's nothing, since we're talking about 1,3 Gb files.

A video as some sort of guide-track sounds good to me. Just needs to be 23.976 / 29.97 / 25 fps. This way, sync problems can be easily found and fixed.

I have recorded the audio from my German VHS (PAL) already but there is some disturbing (digital sounding) noise introduced, probably by the a/d conversion. Maybe I should reduce the recording volume. I will try to fix this.

By the way, I figured out, that Laserdisc PCM Standard is 44,1 khz while DVD PCM Standard is 48 khz (or 96khz). But that shouldn't be a problem as we can record at spdif-in with 48 khz even if the source is 44.1 khz, can't we?

I suggest the following specifications for all the releases:

AVI-FILE (shall be compressed with zip/rar when released)

Sound: WAV Format, PCM - not compressed, 16bit, Stereo, 48 khz equals 187 KB/s
Video: Any good compression Codec, NTSC (29.97 fps or 23.976 fps) or PAL (25 fps), as a reference track for easy sync and easy import in any project. Frames can be really small.
Informations: Source, Digital Transfer / Analog Transfer, any issues, any conversions done to the sound.

Do you think it's possible we release these files at Myspleen?
Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: R2D2
AVI-FILE (shall be compressed with zip/rar when released)
Good idea to have video included in the package, but there's no point in compressing it. The video will already be compressed with XviD or whatever, and audio doesn't compress well with the Rar or Zip algorithms. Why not compress the audio as lossless FLAC, then I believe you can mux with the video into the OGM container. Not that I've had much experience of using this format, but it's an idea.

I don't think this is the type of file that would be welcome on myspleen, you need to find someone kind enough (and with enough bandwidth) to run an FTP.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
Post link
Why not compress the audio as lossless FLAC, then I believe you can mux with the video into the OGM container. Not that I've had much experience of using this format, but it's an idea.

You had enough experience to encode the mono mix in that format!

I'd like to chime in on this to say that I would absolutely LOVE separate downloads of just the different audio mixes from LD.

Let me repeat: This is a wonderful idea.

How many torrents has anyone seen for downloading the 1984 pan-scan LD transfer of SW? None. And consequently very few people have the original stereo mix. I can't do this myself, but it would be wonderful if someone ran an FTP network and posted these sound mixes in month-long intervals or so:

-Original theatrical stereo from '84 LD
-Original mono from the UK broadcast (I already have this)
-Burtt's '86 revised stereo mix from '92 LD (or earlier, unless inferior quality)
-Digitally remastered "Faces" edition stereo (DC is said to have some sporadic popping and clicking)
-5.1 surround AC-3 track from the '97 SE LD.

And I know this isn't OT related, but I would also love an obscure foreign language track for Episode I, for prequel re-edits. This is a great idea, though; offer all the mixes separately so that we may pick and choose. It would also help the original mono and stereo mixes in particular to become more widely distributed.

Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

Emperor Jar-Jar
“Back when we made Star Wars, we just couldn’t make Palpatine as evil as we intended. Now, thanks to the miracles of technology, it is finally possible. Finally, I’ve created the movies that I originally imagined.” -George Lucas on the 2007 Extra Extra Special HD-DVD Edition

Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: R2D2
By the way, I figured out, that Laserdisc PCM Standard is 44,1 khz while DVD PCM Standard is 48 khz (or 96khz). But that shouldn't be a problem as we can record at spdif-in with 48 khz even if the source is 44.1 khz, can't we?


No. I'm pretty sure you can't. Unless you want to resample, but I thought the point was to capture what's there digitally, as bit-for-bit as possible.

LD AC-3 is 48kHz, BTW.


Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: Moth3r
I don't think this is the type of file that would be welcome on myspleen, you need to find someone kind enough (and with enough bandwidth) to run an FTP.

From what I gather about torrents, you don't need to upload the .torrent file to a site such as MySpleen for it to be active, just creating the .torrent with suitable tracker and 'running it' so you're a seeder will 'activate it', from there you can put the .torrent file on a website or email it to someone for others to download the actual file(s).
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/LukeCruise.gif http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/dontcare.gif
***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
Author
Time
Post link
"No. I'm pretty sure you can't. Unless you want to resample, but I thought the point was to capture what's there digitally, as bit-for-bit as possible."

It is possible, but why bother? As Karyudo said, you are better of catching it in its native form. If you are going to attempt to process it in real time while you are capturing, you better have a lot of horsepower in your computer, and don't be surprised if you get some random sampling errors.

Get a pristine master first - and then tinker with the copies all you want.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

Author
Time
Post link
@Trooperman: I meant that I hadn't much experience with the OGM container format.

@Citizen: If you register a torrent to a particular tracker, the owners of that tracker would expect you to upload it to their site. Also, uploading the torrent file somewhere else is against the rules at most sites. Having said that, I remembered that Azureus has a tracker feature built in, so if you have a static IP there's nothing to stop you running a tracker on your own PC; the bandwidth overhead should only be minimal with just a few users. That might be an idea for distribution.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: R2D2
I am looking forward to capture and release the Audio only from my german VHS of "Krieg der Sterne" (Starwars Ep4) from 1990. It features Hifi-Stereo Sound and is Dolby Surround encoded.


Wär klasse wenn Du mir das zukommen lassen kannst, wenn Du das hinbekommen hast