I’m starting to feel like the 60th Anniversary master is the best of the modern masters for Dumbo. Is it possible that it and the 1995 laser videodisc master are one and the same?
Fairly certain they’re not the same master.
From what I’ve heard, Teletubbies was one of the first children’s shows shot in high-definition (though I could be wrong on that and it might’ve merely been shot and edited on standard PAL video [with conversion to NTSC for American broadcast]). Are the Roku transfers HD (as the YouTube transfers undoubtedly are)?
One other thing to note is that WildBrain has a habit of tweaking the aspect ratio whenever they post something to YouTube (like squeezing a 16:9 show to 4:3, as I’ve seen on some Boohbah uploads). While I don’t doubt that the later episodes may have been 16:9 from the get-go, I’m wondering if the earlier episodes were native 4:3 or 16:9 cropped or stretched to 4:3…
I’m fairly certain Mary Poppins on Disney+ is the same HD master from 2013 (as used on the Blu-ray), but with a lower bitrate.
Never knew there were children’s book adaptations of Runaway Brain! Which books are those pages from?
Out of curiosity, does the print you’re working with have the Dolby logo in-between the sprocket holes? If it does, maybe you can get someone to make a transfer of the 5.1 soundtrack on the print.
To the best of my knowledge, Toy Story has never been presented in 60 fps - only 24. The DVDs and Blu-rays are all at that same frame rate, so an ISO rip of whatever you plan to use for this project would be 24 (or technically 23.976) frames per second.
Nice work so far (although it would look even better color-corrected)!
Assuming the audio track on that print is 5.1 (or Dolby Stereo Digital, as it was billed back then), do you plan to capture it that way?
I voted! As I plan to donate to some of your projects from time to time and would be beyond interested to see how they would turn out, I couldn’t pass up the chance to say that “I’d be interested and would join”.
On Thunderbean what is the 1967 feature, and 1973 feature?
I don’t want to order them unless they are Jungle Book and Robin Hood.
The 1967 and 1973 features are The Jungle Book and Robin Hood (and they’re both open-matte). Thunderbean always addresses the Disney film prints they sell on disc as “[year of release] features” (for somewhat obvious reasons).
But Sleeping Beauty is 1959… whereas Cinderella is 1950? So which is right? Does anyone know?
It’s more likely Cinderella.
Starbond9 said:
This would be going beyond simply creating a 5.1 mix which is what the DVD/BD did and was unsuccessful.
The 2000 DVD audio mixes were 5.0; the 2010 Blu-ray mix was 7.1. Only the 2010 DVD and the Disney+ stream are truly 5.1.
I’d say the 2000 mixes are more faithful to the original Fantasound mix than the 2010 mix, even if the surround channels are less active than they are on LaserDisc. The 2010 mix is, from what I’ve heard, plagued with some pretty egregious noise reduction!
No hurries, Tony, take your time!
One thing’s for certain, no matter what - I’d love to see what you’ve done as soon as this project is completed.
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.
Tony already mentioned above that he won’t censor the black centaurettes out of The Pastoral Symphony. Didn’t you notice that?
How’s the project going so far, Tony? Have you, by any chance, finished work on repairing the right channel to one of the reels on the magnetic print you obtained or turned to poita to see if he could give you a better copy of that particular reel?
Also, happy 80th anniversary to Fantasia!..albeit about a week later.
Unfortunately not a LaserDisc rip (which would’ve been way better), but someone on Internet Archive has finally uploaded a full hi-fi rip of the 1996 VHS! Considering he previously also uploaded a rip with a linear mono track and a split-up rip with the hi-fi stereo track, this was a godsend for someone who really wanted to find a better, full rip of this particular release.
I’ve already sent you my copy of the LD. Did you check your messages ?
I did, but I couldn’t play it. Is there any way you could make a rip file that’s easier to watch prior to - or without - downloading it?
I can send an LDrip in mkv format through pm if desired.
Either that or an .mp4 file could do!
Unfortunately not a LaserDisc rip (which would’ve been way better), but someone on Internet Archive has finally uploaded a full hi-fi rip of the 1996 VHS! Considering he previously also uploaded a rip with a linear mono track and a split-up rip with the hi-fi stereo track, this was a godsend for someone who really wanted to find a better, full rip of this particular release.
I’ve already sent you my copy of the LD. Did you check your messages ?
I did, but I couldn’t play it. Is there any way you could make a rip file that’s easier to watch prior to - or without - downloading it?
Unfortunately not a LaserDisc rip (which would’ve been way better), but someone on Internet Archive has finally uploaded a full hi-fi rip of the 1996 VHS! Considering he previously also uploaded a rip with a linear mono track and a split-up rip with the hi-fi stereo track, this was a godsend for someone who really wanted to find a better, full rip of this particular release.
Sleeping Beauty’s 1997 Laserdisc is the digitally restored one with rotoscoping. The feature about rotoscoping all the characters out, is a feature on that laserdisc.
So the aggressive restoration it mentioned is from 1997, not 2003. Only the pre 97 versions would be purist, although they are Pan and Scan.
I’ll add a few other corrections:
Isn’t using the term “reanimation” to refer to Lowry’s (or, prior to the mid-2000s, Disney’s own extensive) restorations misleading (and a bit of an oxymoron), as other than the digitally recreated visual effects in Alice in Wonderland, nothing is being reanimated (or for that matter, redrawn) in the general sense of the term?
“(Digitally) recomposited” and/or “rotoscoped” would be more accurate terms to use. (On another note, I don’t think the 1993 Cineon restoration of Snow White was a reanimation recomposition job, as the restoration featurette on the 2001 DVD states that what was done was “cleaning and refurbishing” the film frame-by-frame)
Currently watching The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh on Disney+. Most of the episodes on there are in HD and in 4:3, which is a pleasant surprise because the other remastered late '80s/'90s Walt Disney Television Animation shows are only in cropped 16:9.
I should also note, though, that some shots do appear to be slightly cropped on at least three sides of the frame compared to the SD masters (this makes for some odd framing issues) - any idea if the 16:9 crops mentioned above preserve what’s been cropped away from at least the left side?
From what I can tell, all English & German episodes are in stereo.
From what I can tell, most English episodes (“Pooh Oughta Be in Pictures” to “Pooh Skies”) are in mono and the rest (“To Bee or Not to Bee” to “Owl’s Well That Ends Well”) are in stereo. Have the former set of episodes been released or broadcast anywhere in stereo?
If the source was a mono film, they should be, but there are quite a few films that were mono in theaters but remixed to stereo for home video: https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/threads/the-ultimate-list-of-mono-to-stereo-remixed-soundtracks.339481/
Quite a couple of the films on that list had certain elements (namely the music stems) recorded in stereo, but downmixed to mono for the optical soundtrack on a film strip (which was, obviously, monaural). Just saying…
This sounds like a great idea! A few things, though…
-Make a Dolby Stereo mix for the episodes
-Upscale them for HD
The final mixes for the original cuts of Pingu were (presumably) mono. Are there any (and enough) efficient elements available to use for the Dolby Stereo/Surround mixes? It’d be interesting to know anything you think would benefit from a matrixed surround remix.
What resolution and frame rate do you plan to upscale to? The series was (presumably) shot/edited at a frame rate of 25p/50i.
UPDATE: I’m thrilled to inform all of you that the magnetic stereo soundtrack has been successfully digitized. Though I’m exceedingly satisfied with the facility’s work, the soundtrack itself is, not surprisingly, in need of some patching and restorative work before it’s in a presentable state.
Plenty of ticks and pops in quieter passages that need to be removed, tons of phase problems to correct, and the right channel to an entire reel has crackling in it that’s almost impossible to ignore. I’m chalking that last one up to the age and condition of the particular reel itself, as this isn’t a problem anywhere else in the print. But I was prepared for just about anything, and even the incessant crackling can be attenuated without destroying important frequencies. Overall, the soundtrack is discrete, exceptionally well separated, and the noise is surprisingly low for an audio source of its age. There’s no signal dropout of any kind, and absolutely no wow and flutter anywhere to be heard, which is what I was most afraid of and prepared to combat. It’s a stellar, archival-grade capture that I can totally work with, and I haven’t even gotten the rest of the audio sources preserved yet. Things are looking very good so far. I’ll post comparative audio samples as soon as I am able to. Stay tuned.
That’s great - no, excellent! Can’t wait to hear whatever you post…
I’m looking forward to the finished results of the audio.😊😉😊😉
My guesses the audio options will be the new multichannel remix in 5.1 surround sound, the 1955 magnetic stereo mix in 4.0 Dolby Surround and the original mono mix in Dolby Digital lossless 1.0
I’m based in the UK🇬🇧 and i have my PAL VHS of Fantasia which has the 1990 Dolby Stereo remix.
A few things:
Tony, I see you’ve called the 2000 5.0 soundtrack “insanely compressed” and said that there, the score doesn’t move around the room [“as it did before”]. Care to elaborate on that? (We already know about how messed up the 2010 7.1 soundtrack is, so I’m wondering if the 5.0 mix fares any better despite being encoded as two lossy audio tracks)
Disney is wildly inconsistent with the A/V quality of some of their titles. The Jungle Book is another one that comes to mind. If ever you can, listen to the 1990 Dolby Stereo soundtrack; it’s noticeably more enveloping and consistently separated than the 2007 Platinum Edition mix, despite the latter being presented in discrete surround. Sound effects pan more frequently in the Dolby Stereo mix, and while the underscore for almost every song is mixed in broad mono that sounds flat as a pancake in the Platinum Edition (”Trust in Me,” “My Own Home,” and the closing “Bare Necessities” reprise being the only exceptions), you can hear separate music stems at play in the Dolby Stereo mix. The differences between 1990 and 2007 “I Wanna Be Like You” in particular are like night and day. (I’ll probably post the A/B comparison videos here soon.) So, yeah, there’s trade offs between both options— few scenes have broad mono score while most are in true stereo, and it isn’t always the same scene in both mixes.
I’ll take your word for it regarding The Jungle Book, but I personally thought that film’s discrete surround remix fared much better than that for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Compare how the music playing over the opening credits (and a few other scenes) sound(s) on the 1996 releases with how they sound on the 2002-onward releases…it’s even more night and day than the differences between the matrix surround and discrete surround versions of “I Wanna Be Like You”.
Are you gonna have the remixed audio in 5.1 surround sound?
Are you referring to the 5.0 mix on the 2000 DVD or the half-baked 7.1 mix on the Blu-ray? I hope you’re referring to the former, because the latter is far from perfect…
(Semi off-topic here, but why does Disney insist on compressing the dynamic range on most of their early stereophonic titles? Off the top of my head, Grand Canyonscope is in mono on Disney+ (versus the much more robust Dolby Surround audio track on the Chronological Donald volume it’s on), the music stems to the first three “Winnie the Pooh” featurettes/The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh surprisingly sound rather flat on the latter’s 5.1 mix on DVD and Blu-ray versus the incredibly robust stereo mix on the second VHS and LaserDisc, and of course whatever the frig went on with this film’s soundtrack…what for?)
So, have anybody else attempted to rip the 1996 LaserDisc and upload it online? The first poster to do so hasn’t shared us the link to their rip yet.
Also, I’ve been thinking - has anyone here attempted to create a new and improved 5.1 remix using the stereophonic score stems from the 1996 releases? It sure would beat the “broad mono” track on the 2002-onward releases…