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Starbond9

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Join date
26-Aug-2017
Last activity
26-Jan-2024
Posts
35

Post History

Post
#1464188
Topic
Info: Jurassic Park - Bootleg / Workprint / Extended Cut on video
Time

Ivan Batches said:

I’ve borrowed a VHS player and this looks like a cam version. The sound and video quality is terrible and it looks like a camera pointing at a projection from the bad cropping.

https://imgur.com/a/0HftVIO

Could someone please clarify at what points in the film time wise the missing parts happen, as I’m not that familiar with the movie.

The first one would be around the ~9 minute mark, two characters walking up a hill talking, right before it cuts to a helicopter coming to land.

Post
#1456152
Topic
Fantasia - Special Edition laserdisc (Released)
Time

oojason said:

If anything, it is the owners of these franchises wanting to re-write history in an attempt to show they weren’t offensive, derogatory, or used racial caricatures and so on, in their past content. A bid to retcon their own history - which they obviously have issue with.

I think you really nailed it here. Companies revise their own histories to appear as if they were against it all along, and people believe it wholeheartedly. Similar to a politician who does one thing his whole career and runs on campaign promises of the opposite thing and votes think “wow he’s totally being honest now, all the stuff he did before wasnt his fault”
Either way, I’d just prefer these companies to say “Here’s how it was originally shown, we know social sensibilities were changed but we will not pretend it never happened” similar to what WB did.

Post
#1427292
Topic
Jurassic Park (1993) with complete restored John Williams score (WIP)
Time

spoRv said:

Nice project, eagerly waiting to hear it!

About the replaced parts, are the dialogs on the center channel only, and music outside that? In that case, it should be “trivial” to replace the center channel with localized versions!

On a two channel downmix, it is very easy to do just that. However on the 6 channel version, the vocals are one center but the music is heard on all the other channels (including an echo-y delay on the RL RR channels). If I were to just mute all 5 channels and put the correct music in, you’d notice right away when your surround sounds sounds ‘wrong’.
It sounds like trivial issues but I think about sound mixing a lot…

After the lengthy time it has taken to get the 5.1 version ready for release I might just release my 2 channel draft version to you all first, and subsequently release the 5.1 version when it’s ready.

Post
#1420042
Topic
Fantasia - Special Edition laserdisc (Released)
Time

monks19 said:

Hello all. Just saw the “restaured and uncensored” version you did of the movie. Good job. Although, I have two things to poind out that stick out a little bit and could be corrected in the future:

1- The HD scan of the censored parts. Any chance to clean it it up a little bit ? It’s marred with both vertical lines and spots that could probably cleaned up alittle bit. Also, the images look a bit darker than the ones coming from the LD/Early DVD (I don’t think Blu-ray image was used on this, right ?)

2- The audio reconstruction. The sound is good, but seems very weak at times (almost too low). Also, the different sources do stick out a bit on occasion (differend hissings and lack of it). Any chance to rework it a bit more so the changes become seamless ?

Otherwise, very good job and thanks to everyone involved.

For the audio, there are three sources used:

  • The audio on the laserdisc itself (a dolby surround encoding)
  • The DVD stereo
  • The 1961 vinyl for mono
    As you can imagine, we’re all over the place with eras of sound quality. The 1990 CD that was released with the LD/VHS unfortunately is edited the same as the movie, meaning we have no 1990-era audio to fix the deleted sections. The DVD is the second closest, but it is not mixed in Dolby Surround, meaning the spatial effects thin out and weaken during those ~5 seconds. The mono dub spots are just weak overall, what would be ideal is a magnetic copy of the mono soundtrack. I’m sure someone is in possession of one with the other Fantasia projections going on. This would eliminate both the hissing and scratching artefacts and provide better EQ (the vinyl copy is mixed very low and hardly has any bass). Of course, you could also just process everything to try to get as close to the LD audio as possible, which would be the quickest fix.
Post
#1416540
Topic
Jurassic Park (1993) with complete restored John Williams score (WIP)
Time

I’m working on a project restoring all of the Williams score that was removed from Jurassic Park, shorly before the final release. Obviously the tracks were pulled for a reason, but now you can hear the movie as it was originally scored with 100% John Williams tracks restored. Speculation, but some were possibly removed for being too over the top, or setting the wrong mood for the scene, while rumor has it that first half of Raptors in the kitchen was removed for being too frightening. Since a majority of these score pieces were just “muted” out of the final cut, it was easy to drop them back in place. There will be a few challenges:

  • Removing the score when Ellie is attacked by the Raptor (repeated from her run to the generator shed). The track Hungry Raptor should belong there, hopefully without the the movie audio bleeding through
  • When Tim and lex are sneaking around the Kitchen a repeat of Ellie and Muldoon in the forest is played. This will have to be muted for the acutal Raptors in the kitchen cue
  • The “t-rex saves the day fanfare” will be replaced by the original cue from the score, a more sinister section.

The following scenes will have the removed score added back into it (and the corresponding soundtrack piece),:

  • Introduction to Dodgson (Entrance of Mr Hammond)
  • The Explorers approaching the T-rex fence (Eye to Eye)
  • Nedry reviewing the security cameras (The Saboteur)
  • Timmy approaching the Triceratops (Ailing Triceratops)
  • The first moments of the Explorer in the tree as it falls (The Falling Car and the T-rex Chase)
  • The ominous sounds as Malcolm hears the T-rex footsteps (The Falling Car and the T-rex Chase)
  • You Think They’ll have THAT on the Tour? (The Falling Car and the T-rex Chase)
  • Grant and the children approach the fence (High Wire Stunts)
  • Ellie is attacked by the Raptor (Hungry Raptor)
  • Raptors in the Kitchen (The Raptor attack)
  • The surprise arrival of the T-rex (T-rex Rescue and Finale)

For the last scene, I have inserted sound effects over the muted audio as I could not separate the “fanfare” dub from the scene. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmPp-SCr0Ew

I have the individual clips of the scenes in the movie that I’ve reinserted the audio into, but now I want to make a full movie version.
I have a low-quality 720p, 2channel rip that I used to share, but instead of confusing everyone with multiple releases, I will wait wait until I remake it with a 1080p source and a 5.1 soundtrack.

My YT channel where the individual scenes can be seen: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj97d8rNyhFej81v41mr49lPILyOxVMvQ

Lastly, is there an ideal place to share this when it’s done? This is my first contribution, and in the past I’ve had people download a torrent file that was being seeded by my own PC, but not sure if there is a protocol here.

Post
#1413049
Topic
Fantasia's 'Fantasound' Manual Recreation (WIP)
Time

Yes you are correct and I wasn’t trying to conflate the two. But the idea still stands that for Fantasia they recorded 8 individual tracks to send to whatever speaker they wanted to. In a modern recording a sound engineer might just decide on a permanent playback speaker depending on where the instrument is physically located in the soundspace. But thats not to say they couldnt feed, say a woodwinds mic, through the left then right then rear etc. to create movingc clarinets. Its very possible today but A LOT more work and ultimately based on a creative decision.

So I’ve tried to distill what is missing from today vs then. If you take it down to the most basic elements you had

8 input tracks

  • 1-6, instrument pickups
  • 7, mix of 1-6
  • 8, a distant mic

3 output speakers(or 5 if you used Mark X)

  • Left
  • Center
  • Right

What we have today is a mono track (possibly a mix of input track 7 and 8) and a stereo track of which I don’t know how the mix down was performed from the initial tracks.

Ultimately the point being that the dolby 1990 mix is the best separation we’ll get but there is still potential for a 5.0 true remake of it on modern computers, which would be more accurate than the DVD version.

Post
#1412451
Topic
Fantasia's 'Fantasound' Manual Recreation (WIP)
Time

After reading through http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/sound/fantasound1.htm again it sounds like my scope is more of “remaking the dolby surround” track using a standard 5.0/5.1 channel setup. Since Terry Porter was working with the same two channels we have access to this would be like a refresh, trying to emulate the directional sound using an keyframed surround panner. As others have said, the DVD mix wasnt very good and the 7.1 mix wasnt much better, but I feel there is a lot of potential here. Still is a shame the original stems are long gone.

Although I am curious if anyone has recorded a modern classical performance for Surround/Atmos yet, because that would essentially be a modern Fantasound, at least the Mark II version. As said in the write-up “Separate channels recorded close pick-ups of violins, cellos and basses, violas, brass, woodwinds, and tympani. The seventh channel recorded a mixture of the first six channels and the eighth channel recorded a distant pick-up of the entire orchestra.” Seems like that would be very easy on a recording today.

Look:

Mark I - 3 front horns, two rear…essentially a modern day 5.0 system
Mark II - 3 front horns, two rear, two sides, one top… a hybrid 7.0/atmos system
Mark IV - automated TOGAD of Mark II
Mark VI - reduced back to 3 front horns. First Fantasia Dub
Mark X - added back the two rear horns to the Mark VI system, and used on roadshows…again a 5.0 mix

Post
#1411324
Topic
Fantasia's 'Fantasound' Manual Recreation (WIP)
Time

stwd4nder2 said:

Is it possible to mix Atmos without some expensive Dolby workstation? I bet you could do something really cool with a good Atmos mix to Fantasia, even if it’s not 100% true to the original Fantasound.

That would be interesting, another way that enthusiasts could mix their own versions. I don’t have Atmos, and I wonder how effective it will be with a stereo source but I think there is potential.

4throck said:

From reading http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/sound/fantasound1.htm I think there where 3 independent sound channels.
Each channel was directed towards a speaker (L C R Ls Rs) according to a control track. Basically they did the mix on playback.

The 3 original channels don’t correspond to any specific speakers. Channel 1 could be directed to L at one point, and later on to R. So you absolutely need the control track to recreate it.

In theory Dolby Surround can reproduce the original mix perfectly.
Modern signal processing gives you quite good separation, even with complex sounds.

Dolby Surround could work as an automated approach with it’s ‘steering’ to focus sound on whichever speaker has the loudest waveforms, which is possibly what was done in the 90s. I think a more live approach could be interesting.
While the technical approach is good for a background understanding, I feel what what he have left today, that a dolby-esque mix is about as good as we could get it. This would be going beyond simply creating a 5.1 mix which is what the DVD/BD did and was unsuccessful.

The gif link here shows how Vegas will pan the sound depending on my keyframes.
https://imgur.com/a/c8pKJv0