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The Sword In The Stone - Open Matte Original Theatrical Mono (Released)

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Jerry Shadoe presents:

The.Sword.In.The.Stone.Open.Matte.Original.Theatrical.Mono.1963.Multiaudio.Multisubs.1080p.BDremux.x264.LPCM.AC3.Shadoe

Purpose: to provide the highest quality possible of the open-matte transfer with original mono audio for as many languages as possible. The official BD release is a “smear-o-vision” DNR’ed and EE’ed to death mess, is cropped to supposed “OAR,” and does only provides a 5.1 upmix for almost all language options.

Video sources: 1080i Disney Cinemagic broadcast, 720p-rip of a 1080i Disney Cinemagic broadcast (different broadcast with logo placed in different place) old transfer 1080p itunes web-dl, EUR/US BD (for timing purposes ONLY)

Audio sources: Lossless audio - LD PCM, lossy - numerous DVDs and DVB broadcast

Subtitles sources: various DVDs and BD

Bonus sources: a film blog for the final draft (thanx to TServo2049 for sharing the link)

Final format: MKV/BD-25

Project info:

The Sword in the Stone has one of the worst releases I have ever seen on BD. It’s a DNR’ed mess. On top of that, it’s presented in “OAR” at a 1.75 AR which just seems like everything is overcropped. It also does not contain almost any original mono mix. I found two different Disney Cinemagic transfers with the logo in a different spot and managed to “patch” the logo with just those two “patching each other.” There was a little bit left that I ran through a de-logo avisynth script. This provided a decent result, but there were still some artifacts present here and there. So, I took the old 1080p itunes transfer, color-matched it to the HDTV (they were close but not identical) overlayed it with a real 35mm grain plate and rendered that out. I used that as an overlay for the HDTV which helped mask any artifacts left and brought some detail out that was missing before (there were frames were due to compression part of the frame would look better on one versus the other and they kind of compliment each other when overlayed) Then, I took that render and overlayed real 35mm grain on that which produced a beautiful result.

I wanted to include all of the original mono mixes I could find and tracked down the English and French PCM from Laserdiscs and tracked down all first edition R1 and R2 DVD releases from 1999 (this was an expensive, painful process for the DVDs) In total, I have 24 original audio mixes included here, most of them the original mono. It took me over two weeks to sync them all…

While syncing each audio track manually (I used the BD video/audio as a time-sync reference for the audio and video of this project) I discovered something at the opening scene at the 27th minute into the film where you can clearly see Merlin talking but there is no audible dialog. There was dialog there originally, which is proven with the fact that the lines are present on two of the dubs (The French and the Italian) as well as in the final draft (thanx to TServo2049 for supplying to link so source images) I downloaded all the source images (all 236 of them) for the entire draft and created a PDF document, which is included with this release. In it, you will see the missing part of the dialog is:

Merlin: “Well, after you become a squire then in time you’ll be a knight I suppose.”
Wart: “Oh, I wish I could.” I’d give anything to go… here, the part NOT in quotation marks is where the dialog actually starts in the film… These line were impossible to reconstruct, which I really wanted to do, because there is no place in the film (or other films, as I researched the voice actor and some of his other work) where he uses the word “squire” which really sucks. This missing dialog IS present in the English SDH subtitles that I included:)

Main Feature Video:

1920x1080, 23.976fps, A.R. ~1.34 (Pillarboxed) AVC encoded ~26mbps

Main Feature Audio:

English - Original mono sourced from JPN LD
English - Original mono sourced from R2 DVD (slightly different than LD track, as it’s missing a sound effect)
English - downmixed BD stereo track to mono for reference (included it’s for comparison)
French - Original mono dub sourced from PAL LD
Arabic - Original mono dub sourced from a bootleg R1 DVD
Bulgarian - Original mono voice-over sourced from R2 DVD
Chinese Mandarin - Original mono dub sourced from NTSC VCD
Czech - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Danish - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Dutch - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
German - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Greek - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Hebrew - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Hindi - Original mono dub sourced from German BD
Hungarian - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Italian - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Korean - Original mono dub sourced from R3 DVD
Norwegian - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Portuguese (Brazil) - Original mono sourced from R1 DVD
Portuguese (Euro) - Original mono sourced from R2 DVD
Romanian - Original Dolby Stereo dub sourced from R2 DVD
Russian - Original Dolby Stereo dub sourced from EUR BD
Spanish - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Swedish - Original mono dub sourced from R2 DVD
Ukrainian - Original mono voice-over sourced from PAL DVB broadcast

English (all) and French audio are 2ch LPCM 16bit @1536kbps @48kHz
All other audio tracks are 2ch AC3 16bit @224kbps @48kHz

Main Feature Subtitles:

English, French, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese Brazilian, Portuguese European, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.

Bonus Feature:

The Sword in the Stone Final Draft (external PDF file)

Please feel free to share this release BUT KEEP THIS INFO FILE and the PDF file.
Thanx and Enjoy ;o)
Jerry Shadoe

for information on the development of this project, you can go here:
http://forum.fanres.com/showthread.php?tid=597

Release Date: 11-17-2015
by Jerry Shadoe

Extra-Notes: I included all the chapters, with their titles, from the BD release;)

Screenshots:

http://i.imgur.com/qXAsIVn.png
http://i.imgur.com/yUw7rpo.png
http://i.imgur.com/vCH5gnR.png
http://i.imgur.com/K60zMKC.png
http://i.imgur.com/U2yJA2J.png
http://i.imgur.com/ygG7pXu.png
http://i.imgur.com/XhqtWNL.png
http://i.imgur.com/b0vhM7k.png
http://i.imgur.com/pGVN0Jr.png
http://i.imgur.com/4nYPwix.png
http://i.imgur.com/V2o6fLH.png

Available now at an internal organ near you;)

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Excellent project!

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The Sword In The Stone
Original Open-matte [in yellow] . vs . Blu-ray widescreen [in blue]
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Yeah, once again they decided to yank one of my posts because it’s dis-ney which is ridiculous considering all the dis-ney stuff on there.

This thread has a sister thread over on fanres (http://forum.fanres.com/showthread.php?tid=653)
and I am asking the same question there: Any suggestions for a place to post this?? (and not on BT because that’s too small of a community)

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This is now available aboard “the pirateship in the bay.” 😉

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Snatching this right now. Thanks very, very much for the hard work put into this! One of my favorite animated Disney classics. Btw, Do you have any idea why there is missing dialogue? I never heard any details on it.

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I have been trying to find information about this all over the internet and so far I am coming up short. There is a discussion about this over on fanres and thanx to Servo and the draft he pointed out (which is included in PDF format with this release) where there is evidence of the fact that this dialog did exist. It’s also present in the French and Italian dubs but NOT on the subtitles for either one of those languages, nor is it present in any other dub and I have a huge amount of dubs to compare with.

Here, I have a couple of theories:

a) the dialog was recorded and present in the theatrical release and over time, the master audio track got damaged, so Disney wasn’t able to include it (it’s never been present on any English home-video release in any format, including Laserdisc and first edition VHS tapes)

b) the dialog was recorded and dropped very close to release, but after the French and Italians already had a copy containing the dialog, so it was dubbed and no one noticed.

This one is a hard call because evidence leans toward the second option by the fact that no other dubs contain this dialog and even the dubs that do, don’t contain the dialog in the subtitles. On the other hand, this scene always seemed like the dialog starts abruptly (where if the entire dialog is included, the conversation makes more sense) AND you can CLEARLY see Merlin’s mouth moving in that shot. Obviously it was animated for the dialog to be present and the draft verifies this, so… yeah, without any other concrete source of information this is all just speculation. The ONLY way I could see verifying if it was, in fact, present for the theatrical release is to get a 35mm (or 16mm since the audio here is more important, as the video on my release is good enough) of a print from the original release back in 1963.

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Thanks for the detailed information, I appreciate it. Who knows what the deal is… But I agree that a 16 or 35mm print would finally give the evidence you need to lay this mystery to rest.

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Have been skipping through this today, Damn it looks great! Way better than the official BD release. I can’t thank you enough for this wonderful release.

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Thanx for the kind words😉

FYI: This is now also available on BT.

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Hi. I have an HD open matte version of “Sword” that isnt a TV Broadcast, but an alternative download only (itune) version that I’ve found some months ago on another forum (Paradox, I think). Are you be interested to get it and see if the quality is fine with you for your project ?

In any case, let me know by PM.

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 (Edited)

jerryshadoe said:
…Video sources: 1080i Disney Cinemagic broadcast, 720p-rip of a 1080i Disney Cinemagic broadcast (different broadcast with logo placed in different place) old transfer 1080p itunes web-dl, EUR/US BD (for timing purposes ONLY)…

Thanx, but as you can see in the description in the first post, I have that source as well and it was used for this project. Between all the spots I have posted about this project, you’re the third or fourth person to mention the old itunes transfer which just tells me people are not actually reading the description.

EDIT: Also, this is a completed and RELEASED (as the title suggests) project and will NOT be worked on further as it does not require any changes/alterations. This thread is only for the purpose of informing people of the project, that it is available, and any potential comments.

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The torrent is still seeded at the time (one peer at 100%).

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Is anyone able to seed this? If not, maybe point in the direction of where to find it. Got to about 30% on the bay. Appreciate it!

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I haven’t been able to find this release anywhere, and would love to see an unsullied version of this animation. Does anybody have a tip on where to look?