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Fantasia - 35mm Project (Help Needed) (a WIP) — Page 2

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Speaking of A/B comparisons, can you compare “Ave Maria” with the blu ray mix with the new 5.1 remix?🤔😊😉😊😉

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I wouldn’t be able to at the moment as that remix has not been completed yet. Perhaps when it’s finished, I will likely cut together “before and after” samples that highlight the differences and improvements made from the film’s last official release.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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The title says: “help needed”. I would love to support this somehow (techically or financially)!

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Honestly, the only thing I really need help with is what I brought up in the first post: finding Reels 1 and 4 from another 8-reel IB Tech print. Preferably from the mono '63 or '69 reissues.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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Is the Magnetic sound print IB as well? If not, the 35mm forum has people that can help find another copy.

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Those guys are great, and I have asked around a few times publicly and privately for a mag IB print. Not long after, someone offered the 1956 SuperScope print, and unfortunately I haven’t heard from them in almost two years. The stereo mag print I currently have is on SP color and already turned a very strong red. But the scanner this print is (hopefully) going through has an on-the fly fade correction algorithm that works exceptionally well, and there’s still plenty of blue and green information left intact on every reel. So again, worst case scenario, I do still have plenty of great 35mm material to worth from, thank God; I simply prefer the video be entirely sourced from an IB Tech print. If the restored mag footage looks just as good as new after going through the scanner, though, I’m seriously not splitting hairs. This project needs to move forward at some point after all. =)

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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One of the changes that encouraged this preservation project were scenes like this from A Night on Bald Mountain. Needs no explanation.

2010 DTS Lowry Restoration

Original Technicolor Timing

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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The colours on that 35mm IB Technicolor print are absolutely stunning and I can see it looks almost identical to the 1990 print.😊😉😊😉

What do the colours look like in the final shot of the film during Ave Maria🤔😊😉😊😉

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JacobTheMoviePurist92 said:
What do the colours look like in the final shot of the film during Ave Maria🤔😊😉😊😉

Frankly, pretty close to what it looks like on Blu-ray.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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JacobTheMoviePurist92 said:

I compared the Dolby Stereo mix of The Little Mermaid to the blu ray mix and there are instances when Eric plays his fife, there is an echo and it’s missing on the 1999, 2006 and 2013 home video releases, exept the recent 4K UHD 2019 release in which the echo was reinstated in the Dolby Atmos mix.

How is progress on this mammoth project?🤔😊😉😊😉

&

JacobTheMoviePurist92 said:

I Made An A/B Comparison Of 2 Sound Mixes Of The Little Mermaid Check It Out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq5MXMrgQcc

Which Sound Mix You Like Best?

Isn’t this best suited for a more relevant thread, JacobTheMoviePurist92?

Let’s keep this thread about Fantasia - thank you.
 

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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Every Fantasia project seems to die hope this one come to fruition.

The biggest challenge will have to be how to handle the Deems audio. Do you put the shortened intros? Do you put the full video with Deems where available and subs where not? Do you provide the dub as an alternate track?

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You’re welcome oojason and i still support Tony Lopez’s Fantasia 35mm preservation project😊😉😊😉

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I’m curious as to how this magnetic stereo mix differs from the 1990 reissue’s amazing soundmix.

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Class316 said:

The biggest challenge will have to be how to handle the Deems audio. Do you put the shortened intros? Do you put the full video with Deems where available and subs where not? Do you provide the dub as an alternate track?

I don’t want to reveal too much about what I want to do w/ the audio just yet, but as far as the interstitials go, for now, the truncated versions are all I can use as the release containing the extended audio (brought up in the main post) has not yet surfaced as of this writing, and suddenly muting Taylor’s audio to turn on subtitles for prolonged periods is less a cohesive experience than I was planning on creating. At the moment I’m not entirely sure I would go through the trouble of cutting together a truncated version of the 2000 dub, either. I’m honestly not too fond of it and as it turns out, many other fans aren’t, either. Perhaps the dubbed interstitials could be provided as individual bonus features for those who have never even bothered purchasing any official release and want to see the original footage play out completely.

CourtlyHades296 said:

I’m curious as to how this magnetic stereo mix differs from the 1990 reissue’s amazing soundmix.

The most important sonic characteristic which sets the mag soundtrack apart from the 1990 remix is that the former is dry as a bone; absolutely no artificial reverb or post-processing effects were thrown in to “sweeten” the audio. These really are the original left/centre/right channels of theatrical audio, albeit a generation or two away from the hissy nitrate sources. The Dolby Stereo remix from 1990 was the first time since 1940 that the movie was experienced as it was originally intended, but I noticed several times in that very mix that the centre channel, for some reason, sounded noticeably more muted than the left and right, so more than several passages of music throughout the program don’t quite have as much impact as they do on the mag tracks. On top of that, in some instances, Terry Porter doubled and slightly delayed certain passages of music in the rear channels to recreate the enveloping effects Stokowski originally intended, but even when it’s properly unfolded from the Dolby Surround track, frankly, it really sticks out and draws a lot of attention to itself, and not necessarily in a good way. In the event that I get the mag tracks (again, hoping for the best), I’ll post an A/B comparison with empirical evidence to demonstrate key differences.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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This is a project I’ll have to keep an eye on. I had not realized that they have screwed up the audio mixed on so many things. Disney really needs someone who knows what they are doing with these home video releases. I’m going to have to find that 1990 audio and listen for myself. I do have my old VHS still, but playing it is not so easy.

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yotsuya said:

This is a project I’ll have to keep an eye on. I had not realized that they have screwed up the audio mixed on so many things. Disney really needs someone who knows what they are doing with these home video releases. I’m going to have to find that 1990 audio and listen for myself. I do have my old VHS still, but playing it is not so easy.

The audio is most effective when you feed it through a receiver that can decode Dolby ProLogic (not ProLogic II) so the matrix-encoded mono surround channel is sent to the back of the room as it was intended. When it’s most active, however brief those moments may be, the mix goes all over the room, and it’s pretty darn cool.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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So cool! You will use the original Fantasound mix? or mono / stereo mix? Would you launch it in 4K (2160p)?

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I’m looking forward to the finished results of the audio.😊😉😊😉

My guesses the audio options will be the new multichannel remix in 5.1 surround sound, the 1955 magnetic stereo mix in 4.0 Dolby Surround and the original mono mix in Dolby Digital lossless 1.0

I’m based in the UK🇬🇧 and i have my PAL VHS of Fantasia which has the 1990 Dolby Stereo remix.

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JacobTheMoviePurist92 said:

I’m looking forward to the finished results of the audio.😊😉😊😉

My guesses the audio options will be the new multichannel remix in 5.1 surround sound, the 1955 magnetic stereo mix in 4.0 Dolby Surround and the original mono mix in Dolby Digital lossless 1.0

I’m based in the UK🇬🇧 and i have my PAL VHS of Fantasia which has the 1990 Dolby Stereo remix.

Fantastic! I was waiting for a Fantasia 35mm release 😄

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JacobTheMoviePurist92 said:

I’m looking forward to the finished results of the audio.😊😉😊😉

My guesses the audio options will be the new multichannel remix in 5.1 surround sound, the 1955 magnetic stereo mix in 4.0 Dolby Surround and the original mono mix in Dolby Digital lossless 1.0

I’m based in the UK🇬🇧 and i have my PAL VHS of Fantasia which has the 1990 Dolby Stereo remix.

A few things:

  • Dolby Digital is a lossy compression codec. Do you mean Dolby TrueHD (or DTS-HD Master Audio or LPCM)?
  • Fantasia’s original soundtrack was not mono; it was four (or five)-channel “Fantasound”. The film was re-released with a mono soundtrack in either 1941 or 1942.

Tony, I see you’ve called the 2000 5.0 soundtrack “insanely compressed” and said that there, the score doesn’t move around the room [“as it did before”]. Care to elaborate on that? (We already know about how messed up the 2010 7.1 soundtrack is, so I’m wondering if the 5.0 mix fares any better despite being encoded as two lossy audio tracks)

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Okay, so the original mix actually contained only 3 channels of audio, not 4; no mono surround. Just channel 1, 2, and 3, with a fourth “control track” burned in to adjust the dynamic range when need be, as seen above. Those three channels were then mixed live during the night of the world premiere in NYC. According to Bill Garity, who led the charge in the production of the Fantasound system, the only time the film actually played in surround was during the Ave Maria segment, where the sound of the pilgrims choir began at the back of the room and then slowly moved their way down to the screen as the sequence progressed. Then, for the Carthay Circle Theatre premiere in Los Angeles, automatic mixing replaced manual mixing, but again, surrounds were apparently only turned on for the finale when the bells begin to chime near the end of the Bald Mountain segment. So to recap, the final Fantasound had only 3 channels of audio, but panned around a room containing anywhere between 5-96 speakers, if not more (the answer is always different depending on who you ask). And yes, when the film entered wider distribution through RKO, a mono mixed was prepared in ‘41.

The 2000 5.0 mix, technically, respects most of the original theatrical mixing approach by having the sound play entirely in the fronts, with all the left, centre, and right pans left intact. Unfortunately, when it comes time for the bells to start ringing at the back of the room near the end of Bald Mountain, and the choir to move from rear to front channels in Ave Maria, nothing. The audio is still anchored to the front stage, and that is not what was intended. On top of that, the music sounds like a little too much digital noise reduction and filtering was applied, hampering the impact of Stokowski’s arrangements and aggressive execution. Honestly, the score sounds like it’s being shot out of a metal tin can in that mix; no low end frequencies to give it any weight, and since there’s no high end frequency information left in these recordings to play with anymore, the whole thing just sounds pretty flat. The 2010 mix tries to correct these problems with better EQ’ing, but the directional effects of the mix that Disney and Stokowski intended are almost entirely lost. Very little movement from left to right, and it has a different problem than the 2000 mix had— now there’s sound playing simultaneously from every direction. You’re filling the space with Stokowski’s music, yes, but once again, not as originally intended, where the mix would mostly be entirely in the front, but then sometimes find its way to the back, then sometimes just the front right, then just the rear left, and so on. I can think of one instance in Nutcracker where the sound actually swirls around the room in the Dolby Stereo remix. That effect is lost in every mix post 1991 LaserDisc/VHS.

So yeah, neither the 2000 or 2010 releases got the audio right. The closest thing to the original Fantasound is the reconstructed mix that Terry Porter fashioned for the 50th anniversary reissue in 1990, and even that only exists as a matrix-encoded stereo track that you have to feed through the right receiver to be able to fully appreciate. If all goes well with capturing the sound elements I have access to, we should see a mix more faithful to what was originally intended. Stay tuned.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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I agree, the left, centre, right and a forth track which is the Control Track that adjusts the dynamic range and quiet passeges in the music. The Fantasound soundtrack was first heard in 1940 for the film’s big premiere night at The Broadway Theatre in New York.😊😉😊😉😯😯😯😯⭐⭐⭐⭐

The mono soundtrack was made in 1941 and when 1955 came, they transfered the sound onto four track magnetic stereo for the movie’s SuperScope re-release in 1956.😊😉😊😉

The Fantasound soundtrack was remixed and restored in Dolby Stereo by Terry Porter for movie’s 50th anniversary in 1990 and it is very faithful to the original stereophonic information.😁😁😁😁

I have the 2010 70th anniversary blu ray and i hated that horrendous 7.1 remix because it was not faithful to the original stereophonic information.☹☹☹☹