WaltWiz1901

simps said:

WaltWiz1901 said:

rwinger24 said:

WaltWiz1901 said:

Had a listen to this mix via some videos on both the playlist embed in the original post and an Internet Archive playlist of the same tape (unfortunately featuring only the first 20 minutes or so of the film as opposed to the YouTube playlist), and I am floored by how wide/spacious it is compared to most of the other home video releases’ audio tracks! Any idea if the opening music to Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and the closing cues to …and the Honey Tree and …and Tigger Too were recorded in stereo, too?

If Disney can’t be bothered to use the original stereophonic stems for their multi-channel remixes, they should definitely use them for a Legacy Collection CD set of the “Winnie the Pooh” featurettes/The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh…

It is possible that Buddy Baker’s recordings were a simple three-channel mix. As in Honey Tree was recorded in 1965/66. On 35mm magnetic track masters. The 1996 laserdisc of Many Adventures is probably the highest quality out there. The 5.1 mix doesn’t come close to it.

Very interesting! (I had a listen to the 5.1 remix (which has been Disney’s go-to audio track for this film since 2002) not so long ago, and aside from a few directional sound effects here and there, it just wasn’t the same as the Masterpiece Collection releases’ stereo surround mix. The Blu-ray apparently has a 2.0 surround track in addition to the three main English/Spanish/French 5.1 tracks, but I’m not sure if it’s the same mix as the VHS/LaserDisc or a downmix of the English 5.1 (really, really hoping it’s the former…).)

Has anyone on or outside of this forum attempted ripping the PCM Dolby Surround(?) mix from the 1996 LaserDisc (the front cover semi-erroneously addresses Dolby Surround as “Dolby Stereo”, which is the theatrical name for that encoding process)? PM me if you have.

I have the 1996 Laserdisc and I ripped it if you’re interested. 😃

Cool! I’d love to hear it (and I’m pretty sure there are a few others out there who feel the same way). The audio mixes on most releases of this film are way too flat compared to the robust stereo mix on the 1996 releases.

jolennon said:

The Toy Story change was made before the first DVD release. The original opening never made its way to digital home video, only laserdisc/vhs.

The original opening was left intact on the 2000 DVD releases and the 10th Anniversary Edition.

tonik2000 said:

Dumbo on Disney + ?
Are there any alternative versions of Dumbo?

Bluray (plastic)

DVD (blury)

40%Bluray + 60%DVD (?)

(clik to enlarge)

Is that second screenshot from the DVD that comes with the Blu-ray or the Big Top Edition? The 60th Anniversary Edition, if I remember correctly, has a more filmic-looking transfer.

Are you, by any chance, going to be using the four-track magnetic stereo surround mix for this project?

Steve Stanchfield offered that mix on a special Blu-ray featuring Fantasia a few months back, but I never got the chance to order a copy. You said that the four-track mix sounded way better than the sound mixes on the official releases, so I’d like to have a listen to it.

Dek Rollins said:

In my opinion, the 1.66:1 framing feels way too tight in many scenes. The crop isn’t even applied consistently, leading me to believe it may not have been intended to be masked.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/9B2BMNNU

Really? Those matted screenshots sure do show more horizontal picture info than the open matte screenshots…

d00mb0yz96 said:

The 1995 CBS/FOX VHS releases have the correct pitch audio, as well as the 2001 Warner/BBC DVD (don’t know if that release has the altered audio since it was released after 2000; we actually rented that DVD from Netflix in 2006 back when they were doing DVDs by mail). I’m not sure why the CBS/FOX DVD version has AGDO and TWT running at 24 and ACS at 25, why couldn’t they do pulldown on AGDO and TWT like ACS?

After ripping my 1999 DVD, AGDO and TWT run at 23.976, but ACS plays at the original 25 fps (even though it’s an NTSC release, 720x480, NOT 720x576). Luckily I grew up with the 2001 Warner DVD back then and remembered the pitch it was. After trying to watch W&G years later, the audio didn’t sound right until more than a year ago I found out that Aardman shot the films and did post at 25fps instead of the standard 24fps.

Honestly, if they really wanted to go 24fps, at least keep the audio the same. It’s just like 24fps get sped up for PAL regions at 25fps and the film audio is sped up, except it’s the reverse. We’re watching the film at an incorrect speed!

Is it possible, though? If I remember correctly, whenever a PAL (25p or 25i) source is converted to NTSC (24p with pulldown to 30p or 30i), most companies opt to convert the 25 frame/field-per-second source to an interlaced format (the aforementioned 30i), even if it was shot progressive (i.e. on film). In most instances of this method, the pitch of the original source is kept intact; could converting a progressive PAL (25p) source to progressive NTSC (23.976/24p) bring similar (if not completely identical) results? Many of the posts on this thread suggest that most U.S. home video releases of the “Wallace & Gromit” shorts present each short converted incorrectly.

(Oh, and one more thing: don’t you actually mean 640x480? The video of an NTSC DVD is indeed stored at 720x480, but is scaled to either 640x480 (4:3) or 853x480 (16:9))

UncutIsSuperior said:

A very exciting update on this topic. Almost every episode of Bob the Builder (1998-2011) is available on CBS All Access in their original aspect ratio. The only exception is Series 1, which is cropped to widescreen. Unfortunately, the shorts are not included, so the shorts will be excluded from my preservation. This may cost me money to preserve one episode from Series 5, as well as every episode from the following series, but I’ll hold out somehow.

Very interesting! Are they the British dubs or the American dubs?

rwinger24 said:

WaltWiz1901 said:

Had a listen to this mix via some videos on both the playlist embed in the original post and an Internet Archive playlist of the same tape (unfortunately featuring only the first 20 minutes or so of the film as opposed to the YouTube playlist), and I am floored by how wide/spacious it is compared to most of the other home video releases’ audio tracks! Any idea if the opening music to Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and the closing cues to …and the Honey Tree and …and Tigger Too were recorded in stereo, too?

If Disney can’t be bothered to use the original stereophonic stems for their multi-channel remixes, they should definitely use them for a Legacy Collection CD set of the “Winnie the Pooh” featurettes/The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh…

It is possible that Buddy Baker’s recordings were a simple three-channel mix. As in Honey Tree was recorded in 1965/66. On 35mm magnetic track masters. The 1996 laserdisc of Many Adventures is probably the highest quality out there. The 5.1 mix doesn’t come close to it.

Very interesting! (I had a listen to the 5.1 remix (which has been Disney’s go-to audio track for this film since 2002) not so long ago, and aside from a few directional sound effects here and there, it just wasn’t the same as the Masterpiece Collection releases’ stereo surround mix. The Blu-ray apparently has a 2.0 surround track in addition to the three main English/Spanish/French 5.1 tracks, but I’m not sure if it’s the same mix as the VHS/LaserDisc or a downmix of the English 5.1 (really, really hoping it’s the former…).)

Has anyone on or outside of this forum attempted ripping the PCM Dolby Surround(?) mix from the 1996 LaserDisc (the front cover semi-erroneously addresses Dolby Surround as “Dolby Stereo”, which is the theatrical name for that encoding process)? PM me if you have.

Had a listen to some of the hi-fi era tracks on The Carl Stalling Project CDs (via SoundCloud) and they all sounded monaural to me. Were any of Milt Franklyn’s scores done in stereo (I know What’s Opera, Doc? was, but am not sure of any others) and are/were they available anywhere in that format?

If they are/were, would anybody be up for syncing them to the current HD Blu-ray/DVD masters?

tomi said:

but it’s cropped )-:

It isn’t cropped, it’s matted. The 2013 Blu-ray was matted and cropped on all four sides compared to the open matte Gold Classic Collection/45th Anniversary Edition DVD and the matted Disney+ stream.

Shortly after the Warner Bros. animation division recovered from a six-month closure in 1953, nearly every major movie studio switched from recording their movie/short soundtracks on optical film to recording them on high-fidelity magnetic film. Warner’s scoring stage was retooled for stereo recording around this time, and most (or some?) of their “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” were recorded on this stage in this manner from 1954 to circa 1963(?).

This thread on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums chronicles Hoffman’s job as a music storage archivist at Warner (among the things he remembers salvaging are some hi-fi “LT”/“MM” scores). Although most of the material he was working with was thrown out shortly after his time there, it is implied a few pages into the thread that he transferred the scores to digital audio tapes. He also recalls finding a magnetic stereo track for What’s Opera, Doc? (much to the animation department’s delight), indicating that at least a few of the short scores were indeed recorded stereophonically.

However, all of the isolated music tracks for the magnetically recorded shorts on the Golden Collection DVD sets and the Platinum Collection Blu-rays are in mono, and (AFAIK) the packaging and liner notes of both volumes of The Carl Stalling Project CDs don’t say if anything is in mono or stereo. However, some shorts have aired on Cartoon Network with stereo soundtracks before, including (according to a Golden Age Cartoons forum thread post) Bonanza Bunny. Are there any other stereo soundtracks to the post-shutdown WB shorts making the rounds (like on The Carl Stalling Project CDs(?), hi-fi VHS/digital recordings of the CN broadcasts, etc.)? It would be interesting to see and hear the 1990s-2010s restored versions with whatever is known to exist (or circulate).

This sounds like a rather ambitious project…

…but were the final masters stored/edited on film or SD video? If they were finished on the latter, I doubt you’d get that much of an improvement. Would doing a 1080i restoration be a better way to go if the latter was the case? (I’d be all in for a 4K restoration as long as film prints for at least some of the episodes are known to exist)

alloneword, check your PMs (I started a private topic with you about this subject matter).

Had a listen to this mix via some videos on both the playlist embed in the original post and an Internet Archive playlist of the same tape (unfortunately featuring only the first 20 minutes or so of the film as opposed to the YouTube playlist), and I am floored by how wide/spacious it is compared to most of the other home video releases’ audio tracks! Any idea if the opening music to Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and the closing cues to …and the Honey Tree and …and Tigger Too were recorded in stereo, too?

If Disney can’t be bothered to use the original stereophonic stems for their multi-channel remixes, they should definitely use them for a Legacy Collection CD set of the “Winnie the Pooh” featurettes/The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh…

Had a look at that video a few days ago.

I have a feeling that what we’re calling the “original” version is actually more a workprint than a final print; some music cues and sound effects are absent and at one point, when Charlie Brown realizes that Snoopy is decorating for a “lights and display contest?!”, his voice is not provided by Peter Robbins. Is there anyone out there who can do a reconstruction of what would’ve aired on CBS less than 55 years ago?

Additionally, the music was recorded in stereo, but downmixed to mono on both the workprint and the broadcast prints. Anyone here willing to sync the stereo score elements (most of which were released on CD and vinyl) to the video of the official Blu-ray release - or their own restoration/preservation - of the special? Here’s a very useful cue chart.

Charles Threepio said:

Myself, I’m hoping to do a full-length restoration of A Charlie Brown Christmas based on the Blu-ray and a 16mm print I downloaded from MEGA as part of this project.

The Internet Animation Database forum has a thread about the original poster obtaining a 1965 workprint and listing all the differences between it and the much more common re-edit. Here are some of the differences…

• The Coca-Cola references are left intact
• When Snoopy decorates his doghouse and Charlie Brown reads the paper about the lights and display contest, an instrumental version of “Christmas Time is Here” plays instead of “Surfin’ Snoopy” and Charlie Brown’s voice is softer
• Various sound effects are missing or different
• There is no close-up of Lucy’s hand when she gives “five good reasons”
  …and here’s the thread I’m referring to. Was the print you downloaded the same as or similar to the one the thread was about?

Additionally, are you going to sync some of Vince Guaraldi’s full stereo soundtrack elements, most (if not all) of which are available on CD and vinyl, to the video of your restoration project?

Is this project still active? If it is, can anyone see if they can sync (most of) Vince Guaraldi’s full stereo score elements for A Charlie Brown Christmas to the footage from the special? It would make for quite an interesting audio track option…