Class316

TonyWDA said:

That bridge will certainly be crossed once there’s a clearer picture of how this preservation project will be cut together. There’s nothing I can just slap the LaserDisc tracks over at the moment, and odds are the video will not be in perfect sync with the audio to the 1990 release anyway, so I’ll have to do all of the patch work myself if I decide to include those audio tracks. All in due time.

Yes I understand. Every step on its own.

Starbond9 has done an excellent job patching the Laserdisc release with audio to fill in the seconds of gaps due to censorship and reinserting Sunflower. These mono and stereo tracks would be perfect alternate audio tracks for this ambitious project.

So, to update everyone, the two prior guys I was working with disappeared long ago. But on comes Starbond9 and posts here.

I sent him the full 9GB laserdisc release that was on myspleen along with other materials he could use. Seems to be skilled enough and knows what he is doing. I thank him for taking on this project when no one else would.

He is using his skills to patch up the laserdisc audio tracks (both mono and stereo) to remove gaps due to a few seconds censorship and also to insert back the censored Sunflower scenes into the laserdisc video.

Now this won’t be the best looking version of Fantasia, but it will be, to my knowledge, the most authentic version that has ever existed.

The LD is closest we ever got to the original as far as Disney releases go. The images are most faithful to the original (ie no retouched “updates” of the DVD and blu), the audio is based on the early 90s recreation of Fantasound, and Deems Taylor talks. Plus it has the shortened intros which are generally preferred over the longer ones of the DVD and blu.

So once he is done with this, if all goes well (pray to the lord it does) then it will be the closest Fantasia has come to ever existing in its original form since the 40s/50s. That is until this project comes to fruition: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Fantasia-35mm-Project-Help-Needed-a-WIP/id/73694

On a side note, those patched up laserdisc audio tracks Starbond9 is working on could also be used as alternate tracks for this ambitious 35mm project.

Also, here is the write up on the laserdisc release on myspleen (which forms the bulk of what this release will be):

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.

monks19 said:

Looking forward for this project.Please people. Don’t jinx it (again).

I know, right? Fantasia is cursed to never have a good release.

monks19 said:

Class316 said:

monks19 said:

@Class316: Have you been able to find a better audio source for the 3 little pigs ?

I have not revisited this since this post.

As far as a better source, The only thing I think about, I believe there’s a soundtrack CD with the original lyrics. This would be the only thing I can think of as far as a better source.

Do you have the full CD ?

No I don’t. At this point I don’t even recall which one it would be either.

Here’s another source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC9V9GkoiSg

monks19 said:

@Class316: Have you been able to find a better audio source for the 3 little pigs ?

I have not revisited this since this post.

As far as a better source, The only thing I think about, I believe there’s a soundtrack CD with the original lyrics. This would be the only thing I can think of as far as a better source.

This version is on myspleen, which is the only HD version of the LD cut that I ever found:

As you may know, thxita, a member on the board, recently obtained a 35mm IB print of THX 1138. This print is from Italy so all the titles, and computer screens are translated into Italian and the sound contains the Italian dub. The print has been scanned and is currently being cleaned up by Poita and Harmy has expressed interest in creating a ‘despecialized’ version.

While their efforts will help create the best version of this film whose original version has little chance of seeing the light of day, I thought it would be nice to take what we have so far and whip up a quick and dirty English version for people to enjoy now. Poita recently released a file containing the whole scan as-is, and I took this and made an English version.

I used the laserdisc as a point of reference for this sync because it’s the only official release of the original version of the film. In a sense, I felt this to be the closest thing to a ‘GOUT’ that THX has. This is the 1st director’s cut of the film that was released after the success of Star Wars; the 35mm print, however, is the 1971 theatrical cut. The only changes between the two are re-arranged scenes in the middle and a shortened scene towards the end between SEN and a couple of young children (and by short, it’s only about 5 seconds shorter). I decided to maintain the edit of the laserdisc version because it was easier to simply edit the footage to the laserdisc than trying to edit both the 35 and the laserdisc and moving both around. I’ve viewed both versions of the film and to be honest, it doesn’t change much. The scenes in question are independent of each other and don’t enhance or take away from the overall narrative. At worst, these edits change our views about how quickly this futuristic society expedites criminals or tortures them prior to trial depending on which version you watch. I just say: meh.

Here are some additional notes:

• The first 3 minutes of the film were taken from the bluray version. This includes Buck Rodgers, the Warner Bros logo, the Zeotrope logo, the intro titles and a close up of a clock. At first, I was going to just leave the laserdisc footage, but Buck Rodgers looks particularly bad on the LD and three minutes is a long time to look at badly upscaled LD captures.

• Any additional missing footage though is filled in with the laserdisc. This is much easier to do since the laserdisc footage was already laying under the 35 footage in my timeline and any gaps in the 35 timeline is replaced by the laserdisc footage. These last from a mere few frames to a few seconds at a reel change. I really didn’t feel like pulling out my hair to splice in frames from other sources and I prefer this to black frames. Plus, this helps show the difference between this and the LD and what footage is missing from the print and what any future restorer will need from alternate sources. I also might have missed a few frame splices here and there and the sync may slightly go out here and there.

• I replaced all of the Italian info screens with the laserdisc. The Bluray uses new computer screens so that was worthless anyway. A future restoration might be able to use the 16mm print that Poita scanned.

As mentioned the German release is simply “uncut” because the US release was censored in Germany. Has nothing to do with those unrated scenes.

If one wants to restore scenes to something, why not tackle the classic anime Fist of the North Star. The scenes of that actually exist, unlike Total Recall.

There is this blu ray:

https://www.rightstufanime.com/Fist-of-the-North-Star-The-Movie-Blu-ray

However, some scenes are still censored. But there’s an Italian VHS and a Japanese trailer that shows some of these scenes uncensored. Here is a page that compared the censored/uncensored scenes and has info on them

https://lostmediawiki.com/Fist_of_the_North_Star_(partially_lost_original_uncensored_version_of_anime_film;_1986)

If someone could replace those censored scenes into the 4x3 aspect ratio blu ray footage that would be divine

Brodnation: Check your PM maybe we can work something out

WaltWiz1901: Yes I did see it hence my response as a follow up

MASTER260 said:

TonyWDA said:

That’s not what this is, though I wish it were. Until Mr. Taylor’s complete commentary tracks somehow surface, the aim of this project is to reassemble the general release version in much higher quality than is currently available. As of this writing, I’m unable to provide an estimated completion date but will be making updates here as often as I can.

Is this going to have the racist centaur?

If he’s going to go through all that effort to do what he’s doing I would certainty hope he is not foolish enough to censor.

That being said, since this project won’t be done anytime soon (not complaining or anything just observing) couldn’t anyone re insert the censored bits back into the CAV laserdisc release on myspleen? This would at least be the most complete version of the movie that exists. Please? Pretty please? Anyone?

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).

Very nice! And much needed!

The 1989 English sub is considered the best. But which subtitle is considered the best one? Is it English (Island/Streamline)

Like Disney’s Fantasia, Terminator 2, THX 1138, and the original Star War Trilogy, no good official version of this movie exists on disc format.

So there’s two main official versions:

The most recent 40th Anniversary release (on both blu and 4K)

The Grease Rockin Rydell (edition released in 2009)

Here you can compare all versions: https://caps-a-holic.com/c_list.php?c=3121

Each of these has advantages over the other.

The first issue is the logos. The original theatrical had blurred out Coca Cola logos. This is what is present on the older blu release. On the 40th anniversary release they went George Lucas and put CGI’d Pepsi logos.

The 40th anniversary release has original Paramount logos and the original audio mix. So it’s better than the 2009 release in that respect.

Now comes the image quality, which isn’t so clear cut which one is better.

Some comments taken from https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=302428&page=37

"It’s not as simple as dnr vs no dnr in this case. The new release does allow more detail and there are shots that look plenty filmic but the experience overall is inconsistent. The colors are better this tike around although they can be oversaturated as well. I’d take this release over the old one any day, personally. I doubt the old Rockin’ Rydell is a great representation whereas the new release course corrects a bit too much.

Pick your poison."

“Despite the original audio mix – which was a HUGE temptation – I just couldn’t bite on this release… even though GREASE has always been a fave. (First crush I ever had was Olivia Newton John singing “Hopelessly Devoted”.) But all the Lucas-y crap with the Coke/Pepsi signs and the horrendously poppy, candy-coated revisionist color palette really turned me off. This ranks up there for me as one of the biggest home video disappointments, in a lonnnng lifetime-full of collecting this stuff.”

So this one is itching for a “despecialized” release, IMO. Perhaps the best way would be to take the 4K release, re add the blurred coke logos from the 2009 release, and fix the colors where needed?

JadedSkywalker said:

I thought it was interesting when i found that not only did THX 1138 have an IB tech Print, but so did American Graffiti and so did Star Wars.

I’ve seen 4K77. Would love to see similar restorations of the other 2 films.

Correct me if I’m not mistaken, but the American Graffiti blu isn’t really desecrated like THX or Star Wars. The changes are very minor.

Hyperion2323 said:

If and when I’m able to afford an Adobe Premiere Pro subscription again, is anyone interested in me color-correcting the Grindhouse edit to match skin tones closer to the director’s cut? Something akin to Harmy’s work on SW.

You do know there are “alternate” ways to get such things, right?

On myspleen this awesome version was released. Check out the write up:

The mission here is to hopefully provide the best possible viewing and listening experience of T2 that we can get, using the latest 2017 StudioCanal “remastered” transfer as the main source.

First, a big thank you and credit to sanjuro_61 for his release of this film that we used as a basis to work from, found here: https://forum.fanres.com/thread-2885.html

Further alterations from his release as follows:

VIDEO

• Painstaking regrading of the film, not just scene to scene but in some cases shot to shot or even single frames where necessary in order to restore the film to something closer to previous releases (This took a lonnng time!)

• Restored bendy knife in bar scene

• Restored stuntman’s head in the slo-mo bike jump scene

• Replaced shots throughout film where lost detail could not be recovered from the 2017 transfer by using the 2015 Lionsgate transfer instead, with additional regrading to match the rest of the film

– We decided to use the 2015 transfer for the first shot of the T800 crushing the skull with the pink lasers overhead, as removing the ridiculous amount of blue was not possible with the 2017 transfer

– The lava at the end of the film has been turned to yellow with too much detail lost in the process, so the 2015 transfer was favoured in some shots

• Cropped a shot in the car after the Sarah Connor asylum breakout due to presence of border of projected backdrop being visible in 2017 transfer

AUDIO (THEATRICAL)

• DTS-HD MA 5.1 (StudioCanal 2017)
• DTS-HD MA 5.1 (Lionsgate 2015)
• DTS-HD MA “6.1” (Skynet 2009)
• Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (Japanese Premium Edition 2008)
• DTS-HD MA 5.1 (French CDS Mix “Remaster” 2008)
• DTS 5.1 (Japanese CDS Mix 2003) [Thanks to Chewtobacca for his resync of this]

So, I’m not completely happy with the sync up of the 2008 CDS “Remaster” audio, but it’s as good as I can get it really and is still very watchable. If anyone else wants to have a crack, go nuts.

I have the Lionsgate 2015 audio as the default selected track.

SCREENSHOTS

https://imgur.com/a/X23ZpTY

And for the SE:

The mission here is to hopefully provide the best possible viewing and listening experience of T2 that we can get, using the latest 2017 StudioCanal “remastered” transfer as the main source.

First, a big thank you and credit to sanjuro_61 for his release of this film that we used as a basis to work from, found here: https://forum.fanres.com/thread-2885.html

Further alterations from his release as follows:

VIDEO

• Painstaking regrading of the film, not just scene to scene but in some cases shot to shot or even single frames where necessary in order to restore the film to something closer to previous releases (This took a lonnng time!)

• Restored bendy knife in bar scene

• Restored stuntman’s head in the slo-mo bike jump scene

• Replaced shots throughout film where lost detail could not be recovered from the 2017 transfer by using the 2015 Lionsgate transfer instead, with additional regrading to match the rest of the film

– We decided to use the 2015 transfer for the first shot of the T800 crushing the skull with the pink lasers overhead, as removing the ridiculous amount of blue was not possible with the 2017 transfer

– The lava at the end of the film has been turned to yellow with too much detail lost in the process, so the 2015 transfer was favoured in some shots

• Cropped a shot in the car after the Sarah Connor asylum breakout due to presence of border of projected backdrop being visible in 2017 transfer

• Inserting and regrading of Special Edition scenes to match the rest of the film

AUDIO

• DTS-HD MA 7.1 (Ultimate Lionsgate Hybrid 2020)
• DTS-HD MA 7.1 (Ultimate Premium CDS Lionsgate Hybrid 2020)
• DTS-HD MA 5.1 (Premium CDS Lionsgate Hybrid 2020)
• DTS-HD MA 5.1 (Lionsgate 2015)
• DTS-HD MA “6.1” (Skynet 2009)
• DTS-HD HR 7.1 (German Ultimate Edition 2008) [Thanks to Kurtos for sending me this rarity - only present on a German HD-DVD from 2008 for some reason!]
• Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (Japanese Premium Edition 2008)

They botched the timing of the Special Edition scenes with the StudioCanal 2017 audio, so I didn’t include it.

The top three tracks for SE, I put together myself. I found that the volume of the German Ultimate Edition 7.1 was set too high, “brickwalling” it more so than other remixes, so I took the side surrounds from the German Ultimate Edition 7.1 and lowered them accordingly to match the Lionsgate L, R, C, LFE and rear surround channels, which are identical more or less to the German Ultimate Edition anyway, but with a higher bitrate and less brickwalled. So if you want a remixed 7.1 experience, the first track is probably the way to go.

The third track is the Japanese theatrical CDS Mix, with Lionsgate SE scenes spliced in for L, R, C and LFE. I took the rear channels from the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Japanese Premium Edition for SE scenes, as their volume levels matched more closely to the CDS Mix without any need for editing. Other than the volume being lower, they’re identical to the Lionsgate. This is as close as it gets to watching the film with original audio, if you’re interested in SE.

The second track is the CDS Mix L, R, C and LFE channels. with Lionsgate SE scenes spliced in for L, R, C and LFE, combined with the side surrounds from the German Ultimate Edition, with volume adjusted accordingly to match the CDS. Most people would consider this blasphemous, but if you want that original mix with 7.1, use this Tongue

I have the Lionsgate 2015 audio as the default selected track.

SCREENSHOTS

https://imgur.com/a/X23ZpTY

Chewielewis said:

Well I saw this yesterday. An interesting experience. I had never seen the original cut.

It was the roughest print I had ever seen, red as hell, so scratched and dirty it makes 4K77 grindhouse look pristine.

Came with the Buck Rogers trailer at the top and a rather modern looking warner logo rather than a WB shield.

Got a good laugh when the officer fell of his bike and the number of active officers changed by one.

Very confusing movie, the directors cut makes a lot more sense, although I hate the CGI changes in it.

SilverWook said:

Off the top of my head, look for the extra few seconds of SEN interacting with the kids towards the end of the movie.

Scene ended at the point where he references the huge bottle of economics he had to take. Don’t think there were any extra seconds, will have to review the LD.

On my spleen they have this version which IMO is the best version that exists. From what I understand multiple sources were used to restore the laserdisc release. Here is the write up:

As you may know, thxita, a member on the board, recently obtained a 35mm IB print of THX 1138. This print is from Italy so all the titles, and computer screens are translated into Italian and the sound contains the Italian dub. The print has been scanned and is currently being cleaned up by Poita and Harmy has expressed interest in creating a ‘despecialized’ version.

While their efforts will help create the best version of this film whose original version has little chance of seeing the light of day, I thought it would be nice to take what we have so far and whip up a quick and dirty English version for people to enjoy now. Poita recently released a file containing the whole scan as-is, and I took this and made an English version.

I used the laserdisc as a point of reference for this sync because it’s the only official release of the original version of the film. In a sense, I felt this to be the closest thing to a ‘GOUT’ that THX has. This is the 1st director’s cut of the film that was released after the success of Star Wars; the 35mm print, however, is the 1971 theatrical cut. The only changes between the two are re-arranged scenes in the middle and a shortened scene towards the end between SEN and a couple of young children (and by short, it’s only about 5 seconds shorter). I decided to maintain the edit of the laserdisc version because it was easier to simply edit the footage to the laserdisc than trying to edit both the 35 and the laserdisc and moving both around. I’ve viewed both versions of the film and to be honest, it doesn’t change much. The scenes in question are independent of each other and don’t enhance or take away from the overall narrative. At worst, these edits change our views about how quickly this futuristic society expedites criminals or tortures them prior to trial depending on which version you watch. I just say: meh.

Here are some additional notes:

• The first 3 minutes of the film were taken from the bluray version. This includes Buck Rodgers, the Warner Bros logo, the Zeotrope logo, the intro titles and a close up of a clock. At first, I was going to just leave the laserdisc footage, but Buck Rodgers looks particularly bad on the LD and three minutes is a long time to look at badly upscaled LD captures.

• Any additional missing footage though is filled in with the laserdisc. This is much easier to do since the laserdisc footage was already laying under the 35 footage in my timeline and any gaps in the 35 timeline is replaced by the laserdisc footage. These last from a mere few frames to a few seconds at a reel change. I really didn’t feel like pulling out my hair to splice in frames from other sources and I prefer this to black frames. Plus, this helps show the difference between this and the LD and what footage is missing from the print and what any future restorer will need from alternate sources. I also might have missed a few frame splices here and there and the sync may slightly go out here and there.

• I replaced all of the Italian info screens with the laserdisc. The Bluray uses new computer screens so that was worthless anyway. A future restoration might be able to use the 16mm print that Poita scanned.

[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

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.

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.

UncutIsSuperior said:

Class316 said:

On myspleen there’s actually a full 60GB release of the CAV LD. Be cool if someone put the censored bits back.

I’m pretty sure that’s just the 1990 re-release.

It is. But it’s the closest any home release has come to the original.

On myspleen there’s actually a full 60GB release of the CAV LD. Be cool if someone put the censored bits back.

Does anyone know where one can get restored versions of Disney classics? Myspleen has Song of the South, a Lion King laserdisc rip, but not much else.

Can anyone hook me up on a link for this? Or an invite to Blutopia?

TonyWDA said:

I don’t want to reveal too much about what I want to do w/ the audio just yet, but as far as the interstitials go, for now, the truncated versions are all I can use as the release containing the extended audio (brought up in the main post) has not yet surfaced as of this writing, and suddenly muting Taylor’s audio to turn on subtitles for prolonged periods is less a cohesive experience than I was planning on creating. At the moment I’m not entirely sure I would go through the trouble of cutting together a truncated version of the 2000 dub, either. I’m honestly not too fond of it and as it turns out, many other fans aren’t, either. Perhaps the dubbed interstitials could be provided as individual bonus features for those who have never even bothered purchasing any official release and want to see the original footage play out completely.

I’d be all for truncated versions in the main feature plus the full footage with dub as extras. Anything to finally see this restored as intended as much as possible.