Jonno, I apologize... I was reading two different thread in two different browser tabs, this very thread and this one, and I swapped them... at least, the director is the same... (^^,) - I must learn to go to sleep BEFORE 2.00am... please forgive me...

By the way (if I'm still in the correct thread) I have the PAL Cinema Collection version of this movie ("The Thing", I suppose), so could it be useful to use its PCM soundtrack? As Pioneer usually did very good laserdisc edition, I think the audio quality is good as the US version, if not better... as usual, every time I'm talking about a movie I love that happen to be into my laserdisc collection, my "film preservation mode" is automatically turned on... "The Thing ruLes", anyone?

If you want to release a BD, you should leave the VC-1 untouched; if you want to release an AVCHD, you should reduce the size, hence you are forced to re-encode and you must use AVC anyway...

About AC3: after my JP1&2 projects, I definitely learnt how to capture AC3 laserdisc soundtrack... so, if you want to send me the laserdisc, I could do it for you - I think that the LD AC3 could be better than the DVD/BD, but I have no proof, only an "intuition", as many LD AC3 sound better than the DVD AC3 counterpart.