Hello this DTones,
Huge Blade Runner fan

Movie: The Great Escape 1963
IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057115/

Ref: https://blah-ray.blogspot.com/search/lab...%281963%29
Looking for the MGM LD audio, would be awesome if a kind soul could share it. Also would be interested in the CC LD or the early non-anamorphic MGM DVD as a sample for reference to test and practice audio comparison if possible. For other audio(s) I have them from Blu-ray, if interested PM me.

Regards

Just learned about several projects taking place here.  Glad to join!

So, I am always disappointed that there is no perfect choice in watching The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy.
The DVDs have the best colours but are painfully low-res for modern displays, and have lossy audio. The older Blu-rays have whack colour grading, but the best grain and the best audio mixes so far. The 4K UHDs have better colour grading than the Blu-rays (still worse than the DVDs) and the best resolution, but far worse DNR, an inferior Dolby Atmos remix.

This got me and a friend of mine thinking what could possibly be the best way to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy.
We just thought of syncing the older Blu-ray audio mixes with the DVDs, and just stick to watching them on CRT displays.
But, we thought that most people wouldn't want to watch a 480p DVD transfer in 2023.

So the best solution would be to regrain the 4K UHD and regrade it to the DVD colour timing.
But we cannot do this, so we thought of this as an idea.
We saw regrained fan restorations of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which were sourced from that film's 4K "remaster", which had even worse DNR. And it looked amazing.
We thought that regraining and regrading the film would fix the 4K "remaster". The 4K "remaster" was also done in HDR. So, a potential HDR upgrade (one that stays mostly true to the DVD's colours, but with the upgraded dynamic range of the 4K UHD) would be great as well, especially if one can make Dolby Vision and HDR10+ dynamic metadata similar to the 4K UHD Blu-ray and the Amazon Prime Video streams.
Essentially, "demastering" the newer 4K "remaster" with elements from older releases (the inherent grain being restored,  the Blu-ray and VHS audio tracks, and the DVD's colour grading).
All to create the definitive releases of the trilogy.

As for the audio, it would be best to include not only the DTS-HD MA 6.1 tracks from the old Blu-rays, but also the 2020 Dolby Atmos remixes and the Hi-Fi VHS Dolby Stereo SR 2.0 tracks.
It's easy enough getting the DTS-HD MA 6.1 and Atmos remixes, but it would be significantly harder to track down VHS copies in good condition (only US copies, as they are the only ones to get NTSC English VHS tapes, and the only ones to get the Extended Editions on VHS). And another challenge would be to capture the Hi-Fi VHS audio and sync it up to the now-Demastered 4K UHD.

However, one thing I am still not sure of, is if regraining the 4K "remasters" would restore the illusion of resolution, and if it would make the films look filmic and not a waxy DNR hell.
Another thing would be the challenge of basing the regrades around the DVDs, but making them in HDR. And not just regular HDR, but also Dolby Vision and HDR10+. It is possible to make custom Dolby Vision and HDR10+ gradings, but it's probably not easy, to say the least.

I hope one or more brave souls can take part in the journey of demastering The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy.

Very happy to be part of this forum. I am a cinema lover. I collect movies in any existing physical format. Even 35mm.

So this one is a passion project that has taken a lot of work. It's easy to write this off as a cash grab, as famously Coppola did it when he ran out of money while working on Apocalypse Now. However, the idea of a chronological extended version using deleted scenes had been around since 1971, way before Apocalypse Now. In fact, the original cut of Godfather Part 2 was chronological and the flashback narrative was an afterthought. If anyone is interested there is a lot of detailed information about the history of this version on The Godfather Museum.

Anyway the television event in 1977 was the TV debut of The Godfather Part 2, combined in chronological order with the first movie, plus a load of new footage, to run for roughly 7 hours in 4 parts/episodes. Over the years there has been several different versions of this chronological edit, there was an LD set, VHS, HDTV broadcasts and fan edits, some including part 3 as well. This project is an attempt to recreate the original broadcast version using only HD 16:9 footage.

In order to create this I used the following:

• The blu ray from 2008. I used this version because I prefer the colour grading, the colour grading is a very close match to the extra TV footage and the aspect ratio is 1:78:1 like the extra TV footage.
  
• The HD Broadcast shown on AMC. It has an AMC logo throughout, massive on screen adverts in places and also TV14 logos. It is structured as four episodes with opening/closing credits. This is 1080i and there are two different recordings. There was a release put out by NTB with 5.1 audio and another release from someone on OT with 2.0 audio. The NTB release was favoured for the video, as I found that the other release had pixelation and video breakup in parts. The non NTB release was favoured for the audio as it was 2.0 (it wasn't true mono so has been remixed to mono in Izotope). I did find some very slight unique differences between these two so at times I had to use what I could.
  
• A different 720P version, which is one long movie without episodes and does not have a logo or on screen adverts. The audio is 5.1.
  
• A VHS rip of an older SD airing. I do not know the exact date of this, it was not the original broadcast as that would have been betamax, but it is the earliest version I have.
  

• 2 x BD50 with animated menus, background video, pop up menus and resume function
  
• 4 x Episodes, complete with opening and closing credits. 1080P AVC Video.
  
• English Dual Mono 2.0 Wav Audio
  
• English SDH Subtitles
  

When importing a DTS-HD file in Audacity, is it using the lossless or lossy core audio?

Is it best to transcode DTS-HD (or True-HD, for that matter,) to PCM before editing?

Thanks for any help!

Bit-perfect capture 16/44.1

Converted to 16/48 with r8brain before editing/syncing. Final output 16/48.

This was a very tricky sync. There seemed to be some timing differences with music, sound fx, and ADR (which is most of the dialog in this film) between the LD audio and the 5.1mix. My main goal was to get the human dialog synced perfectly to the BD 5.1 audio.

PM for link, would also love feedback!

   

I'm really glad to be here. Reading about Laserdisc audio led me here. Hoping to find some good stuff. Thanks.

I’m not pleased with Paramount’s 4k master for Kino’s UHD of The Italian Job….The source scan seems great and it’s better than the hideous DNR fest 2009 UK BD…
But it has dodgy color timing with teal infusion in spots, some random DNR shots, moments of crap encoding with noisy frozen grain/noise shots though thankfully they’re mostly limited to long shots though there are one or two fleeting noise halos, HDR that’s okay but makes everything more obvious so that the SDR BD hides the transfer anomalies more and even redone text in the opening titles.

The crap 5.1 remix is here but thankfully for the first time since LD there’s a mono track. It sounds clearer than the LD mono which sounds a bit veiled by comparison yet the Kino mono has different levels at points for all the effects so it may be a newer mono moxdown transfer from the stems like Paramount used to do.

I think this master was done in 2019 for the 50th anniversary DCPs in the UK and was finally given over to Kino.

Has anyone here seen the Kino disc? I’d be curious to hear everyone’s thoughts. This could have been great but it’s sure frustrating. At least it’s better than the hideous 2009 disc and has a version of the mono plus all the old extras.