I've been considering typing up a comprehensive list of all differences between the various audio tracks. Just have to get around to actually doing it.
Watched Angel season 5 recently. Absolutely love this.
Now in the middle of Buffy season 2. Even though there are great episodes later that exceed it, overall this is probably my favourite year for the show--the whole thing just flows really well and naturally develops in a consistently enjoyable way. I say this even though I don't really 'ship' Buffy with Angel, mainly because he is such an evil bastard at heart, held back only by the soul forced on him; as opposed to Spike who much later earns his by learning to do right, even while still soulless. The distinction between the two vampires is very interesting to say the least.
Metallica's 'Mercyful Fate' medley.
Recorded in 1998, ironically it is much better than any of their original songs from the same time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjsROaIRD5A&feature=watch_response
GoldenEye players may find this as hilarious as I did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llza5PYsp-k&feature=related&fmt=18
Oh, Spike! You're the Big Bad!
@ d_j:
I do prefer mine, of course, since I spent a lot of time getting it exactly the way I wanted it to sound (lol), but adywan definitely did a good job with it. There are a couple places where the '04 surrounds don't quite match up with the '97 version (which is what he used for most of it), but really it's only a matter of splitting hairs--it never sounded bad, just different sometimes. The main thing I don't like about the SE mixes is that the surround channels are always way too loud, but he must have corrected for that problem, because the only times they ever distracted me was when they added new sound effects. Having discrete channels and stereo surrounds does sound nice, though mine are more 'authentic' with the mono rear effects how they would have been originally.
It's probably not a good idea to try to synch it with the GOUT, because it has already gone through lossy encoding twice, so that would end up with three stages of sound quality degradation.
@ Dunedain:
Harmy's description is correct, the 'purist' tracks are the ones that sound just like the theatrical releases, ie no music for Ben in RotJ, and the sliced up cue for Fett in ESB. The SE reinstated the music as recorded for the Fett scene, but no version ever used the Ben cue; it's only ever been available on the score releases. I used them for my own benefit because I like the way they sound (and could considered more 'original' in the sense that that's how John Williams composed them), but doing so is pretty much fan-editing the sound from how it is officially; hence making both available. The ESB cue came from the '97 stereo PCM and the RotJ cue was from ABC's remastered score, iZotope resampled to 48 khz.
Yeah, I checked adywan's ESB mix too by decoding it to individual wavs, and it definitely doesn't synch with the GOUT. In the beginning and the end of the movie it's delayed by about 8,000 samples or thereabouts (approximately 4 frames), but in the middle it fluctuates quite a bit, sometimes only half a frame off and other times around 2 or 3, but never by the same amount. If it were consistent it wouldn't be too difficult to get it to work with GOUT-based video, or using GOUT-synched audio tracks with his video, but since the synch keeps changing it's never going to line up all the time. It could be watchable, but it's probably best not to do that. I guess his version doesn't have quite the same frame count, even though it's close. It's quite a good track, though; I have only a few minor quibbles with some of the SE's mixing choices, but most of it sounds great.
All right, here's all the differences between the various 5.1 versions:
All of them are primarily derived from the 1993 PCM tracks, but with certain edits and changes according to whatever I was trying to accomplish with each one. These edited stereo tracks were upmixed to five channels and combined with LFE bass from the special editions. As such they have a very authentic feel, intended to be reminiscent of the 70mm theatrical releases, though some of the specifics are not the same.
SW's 5.1 is the closest, because there are in-theatre recordings of the actual mix available, and the 1993 version was sourced directly from the 70mm printmaster, albeit with additional sound effects layed on top of it. I removed these extra sounds using the 35mm stereo soundtrack, while most of the LFE came from the 1997 5.1 mix, with some 2004 and 1993 bass in places where those seemed to work better. Each bass effect was individually level-adjusted, and sometimes also in synch and duration, to provide the optimum blend with the main channels. It's not perfect, because the 35mm replacements are less dynamic and have narrower imaging and lower fidelity than the '93 mix, but I did my best to make it all sound like one consistent track without any jarring leaps between sources. How well I succeeded depends how good your ears and audio equipment are, and how picky you are about such things, but overall it sounds rather good, if I may say so myself. ;)
The other two movies don't have 70mm recordings available, and their '93 mixes were made somewhat differently than Star Wars, so direct reproductions were out of the question. Because of that, I wanted to make 5.1 versions that sounded best to me. For ESB, this meant inserting the snowspeeder crash sound from the 1980 stereo (missing in the '93), and replacing Boba Fett's departure from Bespin with the 1997 mix, since the music cue in the original was hacked up in order to end when Chewie begins firing at the ship, while the SE used the cue as composed until the scene ends. I also repaired two distracting glitches in the PCM. For RotJ, I inserted the deleted music from Obi-wan's appearance on Dagobah, since to me the scene is greatly improved by its presence, and used the 35mm stereo for Vader's defeat since the music is heard more prominently this way (which also fixes a glitch heard in this part of the '93 mix). The LFE channels came from the 2004 mixes and were again level- and synch-adjusted for the best sound. These edits comprise the 'version 2' 5.1 tracks listed above.
Not everyone wants to hear the movies with all of these changes, since some of them are in fan-edit territory, so by popular request the 'version 3' mixes were made, and will be used by d_j along with the SW 70mm on the upcoming dvd's. For the most part they are exactly the same, except the music edits for Fett and Obi-wan were removed and reverted to their 1993 forms. The 35mm inserts for the snowspeeder and for Vader's defeat are still present, as are the glitch repairs.
The 'version 1' were made a while back and were rougher attempts at what I've since perfected in the later mixes. They used the 1993 tracks without any changes, along with the 2004 LFE; but the bass editing was not as good as what I managed to do later. Mostly they still sound similar, but the 2nd and 3rd versions give much more pleasing results.
The actual upmixing and encoding to ac3 was done by Satanika, since I could not get any upmixers to work on my computer, and I'm grateful to him for helping me out with that. :)
Dude, you couldn't have used commas to separate those names rather than hitting enter after every single one?
I think one of the reasons it took me a while to see just how bad the RotS film actually is was that I'd read the novel first. The book, while essentially the same story overall, is very well written and in particular the turn to the dark side felt like it made a lot more sense. Since I had those notions in my head already while watching the movie, the differences and nonsense didn't become apparent to me until later on. I always knew something was off about it, but for a long time it was only a vague feeling I couldn't articulate and tried to ignore.
I haven't actually read the book for quite a while, but I probably will again at some point. It's still not even close to the way I actually think of the Empire being formed and so forth, but it's a more palatable version than the movie at any rate.
everybody to the limit, The Cheat is to the limit, everybody come on fhqwhgads
Eat shit: a trillion flies can't be wrong!
Cuz ya know Bob is all about retaining that anus . . .
I'm in a bit of a Terminator phase at the moment.
Somehow, I never saw any of them until a couple years ago, when the lady friend got me to watch the first two movies. I didn't give them as much thought as I would later, but found them to be pretty cool. I think I liked the second one more, not so much because the effects were better but the story seemed more involved and developed and so forth, and it was just plain thrilling to watch. Which is not to say that I didn't like the first, of course, I like them both considerably.
I've never seen the third or fourth movies. From what I've heard, they sound like they're pretty bad, so I'm going to steer clear of them.
Several months ago we started to watch the tv show, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The fact that it starred Summer Glau played a part in that, because we were already big fans of Firefly. I found myself particularly intrigued by her character, since there was a strange and fascinating disconnect between her nature as a killing machine and her ability to convincingly fake (or not fake?!) real feeling. The show does have some writing problems, namely that whole wretched subplot with Riley and Jesse; and tvtropes accurately describes the show as suffering from "designated protagonist syndrome", meaning that Sarah Connor is ostensibly the main character and yet her part of the story isn't nearly as interesting as Cameron's and others. Still, while there are flaws, as a whole it was a good show that I enjoyed quite a lot, with a lot of really cool ideas (Catherine Weaver and John Henry, especially), and I was sorry to come to the end of it. With the cancellation leaving it on a ridiculously epic cliffhanger, sometimes I drive myself bonkers trying to figure out what the hell was supposed to happen next!
One of the things about the show that I appreciated was that it pretty much ignores the other movies and only follows from the first two. It was kind of like, yeah, that's nice, but we're doing a completely separate thing that overwrites it. Honestly, the idea that a completely different computer system could go on to become exactly the same as the one built by Miles Dyson was ludicrous to the extreme. The show's approach was more along the lines that Skynet was actively aiding the process of its own creation, rather than it being crazy random happenstance, so in that case it makes a lot more sense.
Still, ultimately the first two movies are the essential heart of the Terminator story, more important than anything else, and there are times when I choose to believe that Judgement Day was averted and everything was just dandy after that. ;)
On a tech level, the existing Bluray of the T1 apparently does not have a original mono mix, while the dvd I have does. I haven't done an exhaustive comparison of it with the 5.1 version, but the balance was usually quite different from what I remember. The original is an aesthetically superior mix, but I'd have to go back and listen again to make any more meaningful comments. The thing that really stood out as being objectionable and unnecessary was changing the sound of Arnold's pistol from the .44 Magnum effect to something else entirely. No idea why they did that, but it was an unfortunate change that shouldn't have been made.
My copy of T2 has a 6.1 remix in DTS that sounds fantastic. I haven't heard the original 70mm/CDS version. Does anyone know if there are any significant changes or differences?
Comedian Phrinke, was comedian.
:p
*is mildly disappointed that no one else saw fit to expound on the awesomeness that is Summer Glau*
lol!
I've seen Steamboat Bill Jr. at Film Forum in New York with live piano accompaniment and it was awesome, one of the best movie-going times I've had. That was several years ago, but I remember it vividly.
Film Forum plays a lot of weird movies nobody's ever heard of, but they often have screenings of classics as well. I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail there a few years ago, as well as On Her Majesty's Secret Service when they were doing a James Bond marathon, and numerous other Buster Keaton films, both shorts and features, when I was young. Good times . . .
Obviously the more accurate they are, the better, but so long as the synch is kept to within that small a level of tolerance, there shouldn't be any problem.
Out of principle I did make the 70mm completely sample accurate to Belbucus' original '93 mix file, though there weren't as many edits involved as you've got for those stereo tracks, and I knew exactly where they all were as opposed to having to find where it lost synch each time. I do know what a pain it can be doing all that. ;)
These don't necessarily have to be synched to absolute perfection. When I was doing the 70mm mix I found that Belbucus' files tended to be off by anywhere from 10 to 52 samples from each other. This is a very impressively small margin of error, certainly not even remotely noticeable--the largest discrepancy is only just over a millisecond, far less than one frame. Trust me, nobody's going to notice that at all. If they're going off by large amounts, then something is seriously wrong, because the work on those is all done already.
Well, here's my upload. Flac file contained in a four-part rar.
part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/dahw4i
part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7nzky3
part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/1v38no
part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8y50mu
edit: I seem to recall that the original wavpack file I downloaded a few years ago needed the 1.017 second delay added to the beginning to synch with the GOUT video, but this one already has that.
Put a pic of Summer Glau on my desktop recently. This pic, specifically: http://files.myopera.com/indrid%20cold/albums/660844/summer-glau-ballet-03.jpg
Girlfriend saw it and seemed to become jealous of my admiration for someone so beautiful and talented. Reminded her that she used to crush hard on Daniel Radcliffe a few years ago and had all kinds of pics of him everywhere. Pretended to a greater amount of jealousy than I had actually felt at this (was really more a slightly uncomfortable amusement). Seemed to cheer her up somewhat. Left to ponder strange nature of such things . . .
TheBoost said:
There's nothing mutually exclusive about these dweeby things we love, and lovin' the ladies.
I agree, it's just a matter of finding the right ladies.
The stereotype of hopeless nrdz who can't ever get laid or whatever is kind of insulting, and also untrue. I like The Big Bang Theory as much as anybody, but that kind of perception of smart/dweeby people doesn't mean a whole lot in reality.
I'll upload a flac file for the mono mix as soon as I can. ;)
My mixes were made to synch with the NTSC version of the GOUT. There's apparently a very slight difference in the frame count, but it's quite possible that any synch error could pass unnoticed if you're not looking very closely. No delay should be necessary.
I will most likely make a single layer dvd for myself with the music-edited 5.1 muxed in, but also burn stereo versions for some friends and family who do not have surround systems. The 5.1 tracks are 448 kbps, while Harmy indicated he's using 224 for the stereo--depending on the size of the video some very slight recompression might need to be applied, but it probably wouldn't be too noticeable if it was only a small amount.