logo Sign In

Fantasia - 35mm Project (Help Needed) (a WIP) — Page 4

Author
Time

Do you also plan on scanning a 1985 LPP Irwin Kostal version if you find one?

Author
Time

CourtlyHades296 said:

Do you also plan on scanning a 1985 LPP Irwin Kostal version if you find one?

Wasn’t it 1982, and I think it was scanned, though i’m no professional.

Author
Time

CourtlyHades296 said:

Do you also plan on scanning a 1985 LPP Irwin Kostal version if you find one?

Funny you should mention that. I know a collector with a 1982 print that they claim is in pristine physical condition, even though the color has mostly faded. It contains the 4-track magnetic Kostal soundtrack, and honestly, that may be the thing worth saving the most at this point. IIRC, the key differences in the footage from the Kostal version from, say, the ‘56/‘63 reissue is the way it’s introduced; there’s a dedication to Leopold Stokowski after the Buena Vista logo fades out and before the Fantasia title card fades in. After that, members of the orchestra take their respective places and start tuning. The rest of the film plays out in much the same way the general release versions do, minus an on-screen Deems Taylor during the opening and throughout the rest of the program with a dub substituting his voice. That and the “Mickey meets Stokowski” scene after The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was also dubbed.

You could (relatively) easily cut around the ‘82 soundtrack using the IB Tech footage, and just use the first minute or so of the Kostal print to include the Buena Vista logo and Stokowski dedication, which, if I do move forward with preserving the mag mix, may be the best course of action. You get the same theatrical experience editorially speaking, but with Technicolor footage and the discrete Kostal soundtrack. But first things first: I need the Tech/mag reels that I already have to be scanned. Everything else will hopefully follow after that in due time.

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

Author
Time

TonyWDA said:

CourtlyHades296 said:

Do you also plan on scanning a 1985 LPP Irwin Kostal version if you find one?

Funny you should mention that. I know a collector with a 1982 print that they claim is in pristine physical condition, even though the color has mostly faded. It contains the 4-track magnetic Kostal soundtrack, and honestly, that may be the thing worth saving the most at this point. IIRC, the key differences in the footage from the Kostal version from, say, the ‘56/‘63 reissue is the way it’s introduced; there’s a dedication to Leopold Stokowski after the Buena Vista logo fades out and before the Fantasia title card fades in. After that, members of the orchestra take their respective places and start tuning. The rest of the film plays out in much the same way the general release versions do, minus an on-screen Deems Taylor during the opening and throughout the rest of the program with a dub substituting his voice. That and the “Mickey meets Stokowski” scene after The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was also dubbed.

You could (relatively) easily cut around the ‘82 soundtrack using the IB Tech footage, and just use the first minute or so of the Kostal print to include the Buena Vista logo and Stokowski dedication, which, if I do move forward with preserving the mag mix, may be the best course of action. You get the same theatrical experience editorially speaking, but with Technicolor footage and the discrete Kostal soundtrack. But first things first: I need the Tech/mag reels that I already have to be scanned. Everything else will hopefully follow after that in due time.

You should make a Kostal and a Stokowski version, contact RU.08 about his version.

Author
Time

UPDATE: I’m thrilled to inform all of you that the magnetic stereo soundtrack has been successfully digitized. Though I’m exceedingly satisfied with the facility’s work, the soundtrack itself is, not surprisingly, in need of some patching and restorative work before it’s in a presentable state.

Plenty of ticks and pops in quieter passages that need to be removed, tons of phase problems to correct, and the right channel to an entire reel has crackling in it that’s almost impossible to ignore. I’m chalking that last one up to the age and condition of the particular reel itself, as this isn’t a problem anywhere else in the print. But I was prepared for just about anything, and even the incessant crackling can be attenuated without destroying important frequencies. Overall, the soundtrack is discrete, exceptionally well separated, and the noise is surprisingly low for an audio source of its age. There’s no signal dropout of any kind, and absolutely no wow and flutter anywhere to be heard, which is what I was most afraid of and prepared to combat. It’s a stellar, archival-grade capture that I can totally work with, and I haven’t even gotten the rest of the audio sources preserved yet. Things are looking very good so far. I’ll post comparative audio samples as soon as I am able to. Stay tuned.

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

Author
Time

TonyWDA said:

UPDATE: I’m thrilled to inform all of you that the magnetic stereo soundtrack has been successfully digitized. Though I’m exceedingly satisfied with the facility’s work, the soundtrack itself is, not surprisingly, in need of some patching and restorative work before it’s in a presentable state.

Plenty of ticks and pops in quieter passages that need to be removed, tons of phase problems to correct, and the right channel to an entire reel has crackling in it that’s almost impossible to ignore. I’m chalking that last one up to the age and condition of the particular reel itself, as this isn’t a problem anywhere else in the print. But I was prepared for just about anything, and even the incessant crackling can be attenuated without destroying important frequencies. Overall, the soundtrack is discrete, exceptionally well separated, and the noise is surprisingly low for an audio source of its age. There’s no signal dropout of any kind, and absolutely no wow and flutter anywhere to be heard, which is what I was most afraid of and prepared to combat. It’s a stellar, archival-grade capture that I can totally work with, and I haven’t even gotten the rest of the audio sources preserved yet. Things are looking very good so far. I’ll post comparative audio samples as soon as I am able to. Stay tuned.

Can’t wait. 😃

Author
Time

TonyWDA said:

UPDATE: I’m thrilled to inform all of you that the magnetic stereo soundtrack has been successfully digitized. Though I’m exceedingly satisfied with the facility’s work, the soundtrack itself is, not surprisingly, in need of some patching and restorative work before it’s in a presentable state.

Plenty of ticks and pops in quieter passages that need to be removed, tons of phase problems to correct, and the right channel to an entire reel has crackling in it that’s almost impossible to ignore. I’m chalking that last one up to the age and condition of the particular reel itself, as this isn’t a problem anywhere else in the print. But I was prepared for just about anything, and even the incessant crackling can be attenuated without destroying important frequencies. Overall, the soundtrack is discrete, exceptionally well separated, and the noise is surprisingly low for an audio source of its age. There’s no signal dropout of any kind, and absolutely no wow and flutter anywhere to be heard, which is what I was most afraid of and prepared to combat. It’s a stellar, archival-grade capture that I can totally work with, and I haven’t even gotten the rest of the audio sources preserved yet. Things are looking very good so far. I’ll post comparative audio samples as soon as I am able to. Stay tuned.

You should ask about poita’s magnetic audio.

Author
Time

TonyWDA said:

UPDATE: I’m thrilled to inform all of you that the magnetic stereo soundtrack has been successfully digitized. Though I’m exceedingly satisfied with the facility’s work, the soundtrack itself is, not surprisingly, in need of some patching and restorative work before it’s in a presentable state.

Plenty of ticks and pops in quieter passages that need to be removed, tons of phase problems to correct, and the right channel to an entire reel has crackling in it that’s almost impossible to ignore. I’m chalking that last one up to the age and condition of the particular reel itself, as this isn’t a problem anywhere else in the print. But I was prepared for just about anything, and even the incessant crackling can be attenuated without destroying important frequencies. Overall, the soundtrack is discrete, exceptionally well separated, and the noise is surprisingly low for an audio source of its age. There’s no signal dropout of any kind, and absolutely no wow and flutter anywhere to be heard, which is what I was most afraid of and prepared to combat. It’s a stellar, archival-grade capture that I can totally work with, and I haven’t even gotten the rest of the audio sources preserved yet. Things are looking very good so far. I’ll post comparative audio samples as soon as I am able to. Stay tuned.

That’s great - no, excellent! Can’t wait to hear whatever you post…

Author
Time

Wow! What a successful capture of the 1955 magnetic stereo soundtrack and by the way, have you heard of Google Photos?🤔🤔🤔🤔

Author
Time

What an extraordinary project!
I read that you are in no need of funding. If that would change along the way due to unkown circumstances, please let me know. I would love to see this happen.
Keep up the excellent work!

Author
Time

Wow this sound like a fantastic project. Fantasia is one of my all time favorite disney movies.
I wish you all luck in this project

Author
Time

I think that there should be a 1080p version made for those that can’t play 4K.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Hey, all. Apologies for being so MIA, but rest assured I have most certainly not forgotten about the project. I somehow managed to get a hold of the 1982 reissue trailer and will be having it scanned along with the other trailers as soon as possible. Mag audio samples will be cooked up soon as well. Stay tuned.

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

Author
Time
 (Edited)

TonyWDA said:

Hey, all. Apologies for being so MIA, but rest assured I have most certainly not forgotten about the project. I somehow managed to get a hold of the 1982 reissue trailer and will be having it scanned along with the other trailers as soon as possible. Mag audio samples will be cooked up soon as well. Stay tuned.

God bless you! Hope we finally have our perfect Fantasia! And to hell with the official Disney DVDs and Blus of this.

Not sure if it helps you in any way but on myspleen there’s a 60GB release of the CAV laserdisc.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

60GB for an SD preservation? That’s about the size of 4K77 2160p. That’s definitely going overboard.

Author
Time

It’s actually closer to 9GB, and I have seen it, but would honestly get very little use out of it for this particular project, as great a LaserDisc preservation as it is on its own. I already have the Dolby Stereo soundtrack digitized and plan on including it in this project as an alternative listening option.

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

Author
Time

Yes correct it is 9gb not sure why I typed 60.

Also for those interested here is the write up on it. Be cool if someone could insert the censored bits to it.

This is the 1990 remaster of Fantasia transferred from the CAV LaserDisc boxset, released in January of 1991. This serves not only as a preservation of the 1990 remaster, but of the LaserDisc itself as this is one of numerous disc sets that has disc rot issues which will intensify with time.

Several noticeable differences to other, more modern releases include:

-Color timing is much brighter, especially in the “Nutcracker Suite” section of the film
-A recreation of the 1940 intermission card is used as a title, as opposed to the 1941 “RKO” titlecard used for the 81-minute cut and all post-2000 releases
-Alternate shots with the orchestra in darkness are used for Taylor’s narration; later cuts restore Taylor’s speaking footage
-Deems Taylor’s narration, which was replaced by an actor’s redub in post-2000 releases of the film due to deteriorated optical soundtracks
-A ~115 minute runtime made to resemble the 1946 release of the film (which restored Toccata and Fugue), as opposed to the 124-minute 1940 Roadshow version
-An end credits sequence, which all other versions lack

This boxset suffers laser rot to some degree due to the glue used; thankfully here, it’s contained to the very beginning of each side. It will be most noticeable in the beginning of the film but each subsequent disc/side has less visual “disc rot”.

Transferred using a DVL-90 player, DMR-ES15 passthrough to an AJA Kona LHe card using the S-video input.
Captured as a raw image sequence which was then ran through QTGMC and exported as a 10-bit 4.2.2 H.264 video through ffmpeg (Placebo setting).
(The film runs at 59.94p to better preserve the LaserDisc image as the high framerate and raw modulated image combine to create a “clearer” picture to the eye.)

Digital audio track piped from the DVL-90 to an X-fi Titanium card, bit-matched and recorded as a 44100Hz 16-bit PCM; the file is directly muxed to the .mkv.
Analogue audio was transferred using the AJA KONA LHe card and exported as a monaural Opus file.
Captions were transferred by way of DVD burning on the Panasonic DMR-ES15, ripped using MakeMKV/MKVCleaver and corrected to the .mkv timing in SubtitleEdit.
Chapter stops and titles are direct from the “Chapter Index” insert in the CAV boxset.

Author
Time

[Brodnation said:]
I’m not on myspleen, is their anywhere else it can be found?

I am unaware of any other place. The filename is FANTASIA (1990 Remaster).mkv

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Is there anyone here with enough skills to reinsert the censored video/audio back into that CAV LD release on myspleen? This would at least give us the most complete version of Fantasia that exists (even if it’s not the best looking version).

Author
Time

How’s the project going so far, Tony? Have you, by any chance, finished work on repairing the right channel to one of the reels on the magnetic print you obtained or turned to poita to see if he could give you a better copy of that particular reel?

Also, happy 80th anniversary to Fantasia!..albeit about a week later.