Can confirm that apart from the missing “previously on…” S06E01 + S06E02 on the NTSC DVD is exactly the same as broadcast including the “Moon logo” end-credits.
The two part version on streaming has both parts run 43 minutes, I examined it next to the 89 minute movie version of the episode and determined all of the cuts to the episode in the two part version were in part 1
Part 2 had nothing cut from it but one of the scenes from part 1 was moved to part 2
Raccoons
Hey. Did the buffy fan edits get finished or anyone else’s that see this? Woul love a link if ya happy to share it?
Also has anyone joined the double episodes together? I really loved the 4 VHS tapes that joined the doubles of hellmouth and becoming and all them.
Regarding the 5.1 mix - I’ve only reviewed one episode (S01E02) - but if that’s consistent with the rest of the series I can say the following:
I believe the 5.1 mix is the results of taking the stereo “music and effects” tracks, and running it through a Dolby surround decoder to get Left, Right, Surround Left, Surround Right and a low passed LFE channel - the mono dialog track is used to populate the center channel. My evidence for this is:
– Zero dialogue leakage to left, right, surround, or LFE channels
– Surround and LFE channel activity correlates pretty much 100% with activity in the left and right channels
— Checkout the dialogue heavy section between 02:14 and 03:48 (Giles spins a globe and spouts exposition), no LFE, no surround.
– Seems they’d likely have a M&E/Dialogue split so they could do other language dubs.This means a mixdown should be transparent-ish (see below images)
– A downmix of the 5.1 streaming track I made using ffmpeg looks pretty similar to the original soundtrack, there might be some minor equalization differences - but notice the ~15khz CRT whine in the spectrogram particularly at ~16 minutes present in both it looks to be identical (seems to be coming from the dialogue track)
– There is a question of the relative phase of the surround channels to ensure correct Dolby Surround compatibility in the downmix - would need to check thatAssuming this holds, it should mean that the streaming soundtrack can be downmixed (with the right ffmpeg command) to produce something very very close to the broadcast stereo soundtrack at much higher quality than any actual recording of the original broadcasts we happen to have copies of.
5.1 Streaming mix
DVD Audio 2.0
Streaming mix downmixed to 2.0 in ffmpeg
Don’t forget that many stereo TV broadcasts were actually surround sound and meant to be decoded with Dolby Pro Logic if you had that capability so even during the original TV broadcasts.
"Dolby Surround Pro Logic is the full name that refers to the matrix surround format and decoding system in one. When a Dolby Surround soundtrack is created in post-production (Dolby MP Matrix), four channels of sound are matrix-encoded into an ordinary stereo (two-channel) soundtrack. The center channel is reduced in level by 3 dB and summed to the left and right channels; the surround channel is attenuated by 3 dB, passes through a band-pass filter (cutting frequencies under 100 Hz and above 7 kHz), passes through Dolby B noise reduction and is encoded on the left and right channels with opposite polarity (this is achieved by applying a +90-degree phase shift to the left channel and a −90-degree phase shift to the right channel).[2] The surround channel was often used for ambient background sounds in the original recording, music scores and effects.
A Dolby Pro Logic decoder/processor “unfolds” the soundtrack back into its original 4.0 surround—left and right, center, and a single limited frequency-range (7 kHz low-pass filtered)[3] mono rear channel—while systems lacking the decoder play back the audio as standard stereo. "
"Note that the original Pro Logic had mono surrounds so the side surrounds were the same signal, but Pro Logic II has some additional processing which creates separation in the side surrounds. The end result is a reasonable spacial sound-field but due to nature of matrix encode/decode U are limited to about 20dB separation between channels while with a Dolby Digital 5.1 encode/decode process will yield >50dB. "
I’m not quite sure if NTSC TV broadcasts got switched to try to deliver split surrounds and LFE in 2000 or not.
Anyway, the point is that there is no need to downmix any of the 5.1 sources to try to get the ‘original’ stereo TV broadcasts since they were surround sound to begin with. That said probably for the first four seasons the surrounds were probably not split so technically the 5.1 digital sources wouldn’t be quite the same though I guess (assumg they even actually feature true split surrounds).
MonkeyLizard10 said:
Is often heavily compressed streaming audio actually better quality than VHS HiFi audio recording?I agree that VHS HiFi can sound pretty good, almost as good as CD quality in the right conditions (good tape, good deck).
But: the streaming audio is 640kbit Dolby Digital 5.1 encoded from (probably) a 6 channel 48khz 16 bit PCM master.
If you have an off-air recording onto VHS, the signal has been on long journey before it hit your VHS deck. Starting from a comparable master tape (probably 48khz 16bit PCM stereo) -> C-band (NTSC) -> Beta SP tape (whatever your local TV station had at the time, maybe DVCAM or digiBeta towards the end) -> SDI (for adding station logos) -> NTSC over whatever medium -> VHS -> whatever you can digitize it with.
The VHS tape, even on a good day, is a couple of analogue generations behind the streaming audio.
I know the TV networks were shifting over to high-bitrate MPEG-2 based distribution of material (not sure if the audio was compressed or not in the MPEG-2 feed) towards the end of Buffys run, and digital tape like DVCAM was becoming pretty cheap - so for the later seasons, assuming you had digital cable (probably Dolby Digital stereo at 192kbits) fed from a digital-only station - it’s much closer. But it’s still adding a layer of wow-and-flutter and an digital -> analogue -> digital round trip to a Dolby Digital signal encoded at a lower bit-rate than the streaming.
That said - if you do have VHS recordings of any of the original airings of Buffy episodes - it would be great to confirm the openings I posted above are correct. It would also be great to clarify which “Tonights presentation is intended for our …”/“New Tuesday” bumper was used with which episode - if you can post any information you have that would be great !
Canon.
Although it should be noted that many cable system re-compress all the video AND audio and often the digital audio is very crappy compared to the original digital compressed audio so it is often hardly any sort of pure chain either and usally just 192bitrate. It all depends upon the year and the exact cable system recorded off of. But it didn’t seem that rare to me that taped HiFi VHS would sound better. It really depends.
But yeah I guess the streaming DD would be direct and most likely not re-compressed and could be higher bitrate, but could sometimes still just be 19s.
The original OP is no longer working on this project, so I’ve taken over. That’s awesome to hear that you’ve put alot of research into it and if you’d like to help out, I’d love to get a PM from you!
Hey. Did you ever make any progress with this project?
I know the original broadcast version of Series 6 finale (eps 21 and 22) was 2 episodes together as a “film”, I should have it recorded on vhs and all intro credits are at front, nothing for second half. The vhs release for season 1 episodes 1-6 (https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/The_Slayer_Pack) I believe has the 90 minute version with no credits on Harvest episode. I also have this series of PAL release (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffy-Vampire-Slayer-Complete-Seasons/dp/B005MX6Y6E)
I know the original broadcast version of Series 6 finale (eps 21 and 22) was 2 episodes together as a “film”, I should have it recorded on vhs and all intro credits are at front, nothing for second half. The vhs release for season 1 episodes 1-6 (https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/The_Slayer_Pack) I believe has the 90 minute version with no credits on Harvest episode. I also have this series of PAL release (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffy-Vampire-Slayer-Complete-Seasons/dp/B005MX6Y6E)
If you have the uncut version of the season 6 finale that’d be fantastic
Raccoons
I know the original broadcast version of Series 6 finale (eps 21 and 22) was 2 episodes together as a “film”, I should have it recorded on vhs and all intro credits are at front, nothing for second half. The vhs release for season 1 episodes 1-6 (https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/The_Slayer_Pack) I believe has the 90 minute version with no credits on Harvest episode. I also have this series of PAL release (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffy-Vampire-Slayer-Complete-Seasons/dp/B005MX6Y6E)
If you have the uncut version of the season 6 finale that’d be fantastic
I will look to see if I can find the tape…
