I have been wanting to contact the owner of 007 Dossier or someone in charge of these laserdisc files since I found them again this week (I saw them before, but forgot about it, and DVDCompare mentioned them while I was searching for 007 movies).
Here’s the thing:
- These AC3/MP3 tracks don’t match in terms of sync with the current Blu-rays (and I am going to assume DVDs, too) from these movies. So far I only checked Dr. No. Here’s the problem:
If I try to insert the laserdisc commentary and the music/sound effects track (this is done using MKVToolnix) inside the Blu-ray rip, it will not match audio and video. Which means we would need to gain access to the original rip (the video) from these laserdisc captures for optimal experience.
Still, I tried to match these 2 tracks from Dr. No with my Blu-ray rip. When I say “match” I mean forcing the audio to be in sync with the video.
This is what I discovered:
- If we insert a negative delay of 18 seconds and I guess 650 ms (or 18650 ms) the gunbarrel part will be OK. I mean, the moment Bond fires his gun will be in sync with the video. And if one track is synchronized then the other will be, too, obviously.
The issue here is this: if I subtract 18.650 seconds from these 2 banned tracks then I will be removing a portion from them that starts at 1, 2 seconds from the video. That’s because the commentary, for example, doesn’t wait for more than a couple of seconds to be heard.
In other words, I can fix the sync, but at the same time I’ll be removing good seconds from these 2 tracks, which isn’t acceptable. This is happening because (and this I noticed, too) the laserdisc had more than the MGM logo, it had another one playing, so the intro was longer. (note: I have no idea if any DVD edition matches the LD, it’s worth checking).
So my only choice here would be editing the video itself and adding more content just to fix these sync problems, and I have nothing specific to add. And even if I did, that implies a reencode from the video and it would cease to be lossless (assuming this Blu-ray rip is that way).
A similar fix was done for this movie:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Superman-IV-International-Cut/id/15984/page/1
In the beginning we see the TV (or VHS/LD ?) logo. This is the only way to fix this I can think of, that would accomodate these tracks, provided the reencode is really good.
I will check the others later. Of course, without making sure these tracks are in sync with the BRRips, they can’t be enjoyed fully.