The old-timers here will be well aware of this phenomenon and I certainly won't claim to have been the first to figure out what it was; a bunch of people here had worked this out long before I was even doing this kind of stuff, but I don't know if anybody's actually explained in any detail why it's at the specific frequency that it usually is. I figured others who also find this kind of thing interesting might benefit from having the numbers laid out clearly. This isn't the kind of thing that will help you capture LaserDiscs correctly, but it will give you some background info on what the hell those big horizontal lines are that appear in the spectrograms of the vast majority of LaserDisc captures (in my experience at least).

Quick note on fields vs frames: a "field" is half of one full frame of picture, containing either the odd-numbered or even-numbered scanlines. The electron beam in a CRT renders these alternately, drawing odd then even then odd and so on (I won't go into field order here because it's not really important to the thing I'm talking about, but you get the idea).

Right, so. Here's an example of a spectrogram for a PCM audio stream captured digitally from a LaserDisc (side 1 of one of my three different copies of THE HUNGER):



Notice that there's a very obvious straight horizontal line through basically the entire recording, just below 16 kHz:



As others have quite astutely noticed, this line is created when the person recording the soundtrack does so in the same room as one or more powered-on CRT monitors/TVs.

A CRT TV or monitor contains a flyback transformer that sends a sawtooth signal to the electromagnet, which is what causes the electron beam to bend in order to "draw" scanlines horizontally across the screen. Since the (full) resolution of NTSC video is actually 525 lines (of which only 480 are usually intended to be visible), and the frame rate of NTSC is 30/1.001 whole frames per second, this means that to render one full frame of video, the flyback transformer in an NTSC monitor or TV has to go on and off at 525 x (30/1.001) = 15,734.27 times in one second. In other words, it oscillates back and forth between being magnetised and demagnetised at a rate of about 15,734 Hz. As this happens, the magnetic core very, very slightly deforms then snaps back to its previous shape over and over again due to a phenomenon called magnetostriction, which creates an audible noise at that frequency. Incidentally, magnetostriction is also what makes those retail security tags work: they contain a small magnet and a thin, ferrous metal ribbon that's cut so that magnetostriction will cause it to oscillate at a frequency of around 58 kHz when its subjected to an alternating current electromagnetic field (e.g. the one created by those security things at the doors of a shop). There's a really good video about that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAm7qAKAXwI

Anyway, yeah, so the magic number here is 15,734 Hz (15.73 kHz). Sure enough, that's pretty much exactly where that line seems to sit on Spek's Y axis scale: I quickly cropped in from the top and bottom to see how many pixels off 16 kHz the line is, and it's 10 off 16 kHz in the exported image with 75 pixels in between 14 and 16 kHz meaning that that line is at (65/75) * (16 - 14) + 14 = 15.73 kHz.

But what's that? There are *two* horizontal lines in the above spectrogram? Why, yes! Just beneath the 15.73 kHz line there is a significantly fainter one that *also* runs through the entire recording from start to finish.

All the numbers used above are for NTSC, but there might be some cases where the line will be shunted downwards a little bit. If so, it's probably a decent indicator that somewhere in its lineage, it's been recorded in Europe, or another PAL region. PAL TVs/monitors render 625 lines (576 of which are visible) at an effective rate of 25 fps. So the calculation from before becomes 625 x 25 = 15,625‬ Hz (15.63 kHz). And sure enough, if I use the same method of just cropping the image by a pixel at a time, I find that in that 75-pixel range between 14 and 16 kHz, the lower of the two lines sits 61 pixels beyond 14 kHz, which means it's sitting at (61/75) * (16 - 14) + 14 = 15.63 kHz. So indeed, at some point, this track has been recorded with a PAL monitor running somewhere nearby. The effect of the NTSC resonant frequency however is a lot stronger in this example, which makes sense because it's an NTSC LaserDisc.

Some more recent home video releases deal with this artefact in a fairly unsophisticated way: they sometimes use what I've referred to in the past as the "ice pick lobotomy" method, a term I decided was appropriate because it looks rather like they just smashed a long, sharp implement through the spectrogram somewhere between 15 and 16 kHz, obliterating everything in the chosen range (which is arguably as devastating to the 15-16 kHz frequency band as a lobotomy is to a person's prefrontal cortex). You can clearly see this on TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, for example, as it appears on the now out of print 2008 French Blu-ray Disc:



For comparison's sake, here's an earlier version of that same track (from an old Japanese DVD):



(T2 CDS mix spectrogram discussion is in this thread: https://fanrestore.com/thread-1876-page-14.html. Thanks to @MrBrown, @Stamper, and @Chewtobacca for info on the 2003 Japanese DVD and 2008 French BD containing this particular track.)

First of all...

Wikipedia (Saving Private Ryan):

Distributed by

DreamWorks Pictures (North America)
Paramount Pictures (International)

After Spielberg signed on to direct the film, Paramount and DreamWorks, who agreed to finance and produce the film together with Amblin Entertainment and Mutual Film Company, both made a distribution deal where DreamWorks would take over the film's domestic distribution while Paramount would release the film internationally. In exchange for distribution rights for Saving Private Ryan, Paramount would retain domestic distribution rights to Deep Impact, while DreamWorks would acquire international distribution.

Wikipedia (Deep Impact):

Distributed by

Paramount Pictures (North America)
DreamWorks Pictures (through United International Pictures) (International)

But, what can we see in the blu-ray releases? This order:

Deep Impact - Paramount logo-Dreamworks logo - RIGHT
Saving Private Ryan - Paramount logo-Dreamworks logo - WRONG?

Why? Ok, what about other Dreamworks-Paramount movies?:

Imdb (Michael Mann's Collateral):

There is no sound during the opening DreamWorks logo sequence but the sound of a jet landing are heard during the Paramount logo sequence. In the non-US versions, the studio logos order is reversed, so there is no sound on Paramount's and a jet landing is heard over Dreamworks'.

Like Collateral, I suppose the order must be Dreamworks logo-Paramount logo (for the US prints) and Paramount logo-Dreamworks logo (for the International prints). The US Collateral Blu-ray is ok, but what happens with Saving Private Ryan?

First Question - The UK Blu-ray release shows a runtime of 2:49:28 (with the wrong logo order, I suppose International version) Is there no blu-ray release of the US version?

Second Question - Are there any further differences between the US and international versions? There are some differences between the theatrical version and the DVD version. Perhaps the US theatrical version was also not released on Blu-ray.

Wikipedia:

Differences between theatrical version vs. DVD

• on the beach in Normandy Tom Hanks orders his men to take out the sniper that has them pinned down. Soldier after soldier die as they go around the corner while they have covering fire. There is a scene that was cut where he is telling a soldier (after soldier baulks) that they will both go out together. Tom counts down and fakes going out and the other soldier goes out and is gunned down.
• Scene where they let the two German soldiers walk away - DVD version does not show them shot in the back as they are down the road.

A 35 mm. print of the US theatrical version can shed light on these issues.

I had a copy on a HDD that crashed and was looking to find the track again for a possible project.

Indulging in a rare cross-post because this seems more relevant here than in the original thread it grew out of...

I watched the UK release of this a while back (distributed by Second Sight) and was relatively impressed overall except that the transfer suffers from a really distracting "bump" at nearly every hard cut in the entire film, which initially confused the hell out of me, but I've since decided is just an artefact of the physical cutting of the final IP at 16 mm size and is therefore inherent to the scan, though they could've easily fixed it by stabilising it digitally.

I learned afterwards that Arrow actually had their own restoration (courtesy of MoMA) but it was never released here, presumably because Second Sight has the rights. My experience of Arrow had been overwhelmingly positive so I ended up importing a copy. I had a vague intention to reinsert a missing distributor logo from the Second Sight version or the original US release of the same transfer, but I've been distracted with hundreds of other things and only just decided I wanted to do that now. But I think having compared the three releases, I've now changed my mind, at least for the time being.

See, in the interim, I've realised that Arrow's Achilles' heel more often than not seems to be colour grading accuracy. This makes sense to me, because they very often scan negatives, rather than IPs; I guess they're not necessarily aiming to recreate the original colours but rather just make them look subjectively "good". I feel like this would be more or less a non-issue if they graded to reliable colour references but from looking at this film and others they've released, I'm not convinced that they always do.

What I've ended up doing is lining up all three versions and comparing them, as I've done with some other things (including, recently, DRACULA). Look at the difference!

So just a question that I've been meaning to ask for a while. I consider 1080p to be the default nowadays and really don't see 2160p supplanting it for awhile at current pace. So most of my projects will still be 1080p for the foreseeable future.

The question I wanted to ask, was if I have a chance to do something in 2160p (probably 4K/2020/SDR, maybe HDR) would people want that over 1080p? I know a good chunk of members have moved up to 4K TVs which would say to me to go 2160p but the benefits at proper distance are limited and the render time is longer.

Just curious to hear from you good people here on fanres as to what you prefer.

This isn't about the various different cuts; I more or less see the unrated theatrical cut as definitive, the R-rated cut as a weird curiosity (the hypnotism subplot is very odd but explains some things better than they ended up being explained in the film), and the integral cut as an overlong mess.

No, what I'm confused by is the soundtrack.

The UK releases from Second Sight only have a "stereo" mix as LPCM and a 5.1 mix. The Arrow release that I only just discovered the existence of (because it wasn't released here due to Second Sight having the rights) also has a mono track. My assumption would be that the mono is the original audio and the other two are remixes. IMDb seems to disagree, claiming it was originally Ultra Stereo, and 4-track stereo "Bionic Sound" in Japan:



So uh... what gives? Where's this mono track coming from? Is IMDb just wrong? Where the heck might they have got the info from, if so?

I saw a 35 mm print of the unrated cut years ago but it was so long ago that I wasn't really paying enough attention to work out whether the soundtrack was stereophonic or not. It wouldn't surprise me either way, tbh. EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced the print I saw (which I believe was a US print but might be wrong) was monophonic. The opening theme was noticeaby absent of stereo separation at the very least and I feel like if you're going to make a stereo mix that's one thing you'd make an effort to stereo-ise.

Hi,

I am desperately looking for a bonus video only available on the theatrical version bluray disc of LOTR ROTK.

Please note that it's only on Region-A (US) bluray. Not on Region-B Europe theatrical discs, or extended cut discs, or any other previously-released DVDs, or 4K-bluray discs,

The video I request is special extended edition preview trailer (about 7 minutes) of Return of the King.

Any help from US or Canadian members will be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Here's a very quick one for you. (Not like me, eh?)

Working on this today. Just watched the film with the audio that's on the disc, which actually was pretty good overall (not anything particularly incredible, but a pretty pleasing mix to listen to on my system in any case). But then it got to a dramatic moment near the end of the film and *this* happened...

Hello people from Syberia, Russia!

I'm a movie fan for as long as I can remember.
I'm a big fan of horror movies.
But I'm a big fan of movies based on Stephen King novels much more.

I'm brand new here and glad to be a part of this forum.

Before I start, this is not about the home video version of DTS, which is actually called DCA (for DTS Coherent Acoustics). It's specifically about the DTS cinema codec, which is APTX-100 (or APT-X100, depending on where you look). Just in case anybody gets confused by them both being "DTS".

I'm writing this mostly to solidify some stuff that I only even thought about thanks to @schorman noticing that the levels of the surround and subwoofer channels from the output from the foobar2000 APTX-100 plugin did not match those from an actual DTS-6AD cinema processor that he has fairly recently tested. A huge amount of credit therefore has to go to him here, since I wouldn't even be looking at it otherwise, and the information gleaned from testing the DTS-6AD was instrumental to a lot of what I'm about to say, including the actual numbers for the foobar2000 plugin (which I just verified after he worked them out, rather than realising them on my own). I'm just compiling the info here in case anybody else might benefit from it.

This will be a very long post (surprise surprise). In case you don't really care about ther "why" and just want to know the "how", I'll give you the TL;DR up front.

The foobar2000 APTX-100 plugin does not calibrate the relative levels of its output in accordance with the DTS cinema standards. To correct for this, you need to reduce the gain of the surround channels by 3 dB, and increase the gain of the subwoofer channel by either 3 dB or 6 dB depending on the original release date of the particular film you're decoding. Films released on or after the 1st of January 1999 need the subwoofer level increased by 6 dB, and films released before then only need it increased by 3 dB.

If you're using the current version of the plugin, you can correct the subwoofer level natively inside foobar2000 (but not the surrounds). Go to File\Preferences\Advanced\Tools and you'll see the settings for the APTX-100 plugin. Change "LFE level" to your 3 dB or 6 dB, depending on the film's release date.

For the surrounds, you could do this one of two ways. The first way would be to reduce the surrounds directly by applying a manual gain adjustment of -3 dB to each of them and dithering appropriately, which in my opinion should always involve auto-blanking so you don't dither silence (this is particularly important if you're going to encode to DTS-HD MA for delivery because it won't decode properly if the file doesn't have clean silence at the start of all channels). The other way would be to just have your encoder reduce the surrounds by 3 dB, which you can do in the DTS Suite and probably many other encoders very easily by just flipping a switch!

That said, I'll move onto the "why", for the curious...

APTX-100 does not actually store every channel at the "correct" level per se, but rather in accordance with a set of guidelines for calibrating them to your particular theatre. This is not really taken into account by the APTX-100 Winamp or foobar2000 decoder plugins, which (by default at least) just decode it as it is, leaving the levels as they're stored. This is not necessarily inherently "wrong" as such, but for things like fan projects that utilise cinema DTS audio, you're not quite reproducing the sound as it was meant to be reproduced if you don't correct for this calibration at delivery. All I'm going to explain here is how a cinema screening room is calibrated for DTS and how this relates to decoding it for alternative purposes, but it's important to note that a living room is not going to be kitted out the same way as a cinema (generally speaking), nor is it likely to be the same size, so these calibrations won't necessarily produce "appropriate" results for home use. They are, however, correct to how it was done in the cinema.

Basically everything I'm about to say from this point onward comes from either the November 1999 version of the DTS post production guide (http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/manua...STPROD.pdf) or the operation manual for the DTS-6AD cinema processor (http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/manuals/DTS6AD.pdf). I'll quote both, but you might find other things in there interesting as well.

First off, here are the guidelines for correctly calibrating a cinema for 6-track DTS from 1999 onwards:

DTS-6AD CINEMA PROCESSOR Installation and Operation Manual (March 1 2000) Wrote:5.3.1 SPL ADJUSTMENT

(...)

• Repeat procedure for all channels, set to the following SPLs:
  
  Left, Center, Right 85 dBC
  Left & Right Surrounds: 82 dBC
  Subwoofer: * 85 dBC
  
  * NOTE: The above levels are for use with the internal pink noise generator. When playing back a DTS Set-up or Empirical Disc, the subwoofer level should be 91 dBC. This setting conforms the subwoofer level to the SMPTE RP200 standard of having +10dB in-band gain in relation to the screen channels.
  

(...)

5.3.4. DTS SUBWOOFER LEVEL

(...)

• If a RTA is not available, the DTS subwoofer can be measured using a SPL meter.  The SPLmeter must be set for “C” weighting and “slow.” It should read about 91 dBC when the (DTS Setup Disc) subwoofer pink noise is playing in theater. Take measurements in different areas ofthe auditorium to prevent subwoofer from being adjusted too loud.
  

DTS-6AD CINEMA PROCESSOR Installation and Operation Manual (March 1 2000) Wrote:5.3.3. DTS DIGITAL SURROUND SIGNALS

With the RTA connected, notice a dramatic roll-off at 80Hz. DTS derives the digital subwoofer by filtering out the surround signals from 80Hz and below. This is normal when in the DTS digital format and surround pink noise is playing in the theater.

DTS POST PRODUCTION GUIDE TM-E229 (19 November 1999) Wrote:Subject: SMPTE RP200 changes DTS subwoofer level (REVISED), August 1999

At a SMPTE meeting held in late 1998, all three digital sound companies agreed to comply with the recommended practice for subwoofer level, SMPTE RP200. The subwoofer level has changed to enable the use of one master recording when transferring to all three digital sound processes and to provide playback consistency in theaters. As of January 1, 1999, the recorded subwoofer level on 6-track masters has been lowered to the SMPTE recommended level of 10dB in-band gain (as compared to the screen channels).

To comply with this new standard, all DTS films released in North America after January 1, 1999 have been transferred into the DTS digital process with subwoofer at 10dB in-band gain. The SMPTE RP200 logo is clearly visible on the discs of these films.

Because the recorded subwoofer level has been lowered, the DTS theater subwoofer playback should be increased. Increasing the DTS subwoofer level compensates for the new lowered recording level, resulting in the same playback as before the change. To maintain the integrity of the cinema sound equipment, DTS discs of pre 1999 films should be played only after the subwoofer playback level has been restored to the previous 88 dBC level.

Technicians should follow these steps

Equipment needed: DTS Setup Disc, DS1 or Rev. C

1. Verify the cinema processor is correctly calibrated. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for proper playback levels (when using a DTS-6AD, see 4. Below).
2. Using the DTS Setup Disc, adjust the DTS output levels as normal: L, C, R to 85dB SPL and surround(s) to 82 dB SPL* in the theater.
3. Adjust the DTS-6 or DTS-6D subwoofer to 91dBC SPL in the theater.
4. When adjusting the output of the DTS-6AD Cinema Processor using the internal pink noise generator, adjust the DTS subwoofer to 85dBC SPL in the theater.

NOTE
* It is recommended that the subwoofer amplifier be turned off during the surround level adjustments. Turn the subwoofer amp back on after the surround levels have been set.

DTS POST PRODUCTION GUIDE TM-E229 (19 November 1999) Wrote:4. When adjusting the output of the DTS-6AD Cinema Processor using the internal pink noise generator, adjust the DTS subwoofer to 85dBC SPL in the theater.

DTS-6AD CINEMA PROCESSOR Installation and Operation Manual (March 1 2000) Wrote:5.3.1 SPL ADJUSTMENT

(...)

• Repeat procedure for all channels, set to the following SPLs:
  
  Left, Center, Right 85 dBC
  Left & Right Surrounds: 82 dBC
  Subwoofer: * 85 dBC
  
  * NOTE: The above levels are for use with the internal pink noise generator. When playing back a DTS Set-up or Empirical Disc, the subwoofer level should be 91 dBC. This setting conforms the subwoofer level to the SMPTE RP200 standard of having +10dB in-band gain in relation to the screen channels.
  

(...)

5.3.4. DTS SUBWOOFER LEVEL

(...)

• If a RTA is not available, the DTS subwoofer can be measured using a SPL meter.  The SPLmeter must be set for “C” weighting and “slow.” It should read about 91 dBC when the (DTS Setup Disc) subwoofer pink noise is playing in theater. Take measurements in different areas ofthe auditorium to prevent subwoofer from being adjusted too loud.
  

gregorio Wrote:85dBC is the level measured with an SPL meter with the main/screen speaker outputting 20Hz-20kHz pink noise (at -20dBFS). Our LFE is level calibrated to +10dB
in-band gain relative to our main/screen speaker. The "In-band" part means that our LFE/Sub should be outputting 10dB more 20Hz-120Hz than the amount of 20-120Hz our main speaker is outputting. The issue should hopefully now be obvious, our main speaker is not outputting 85dBC of 20Hz-120Hz, it's outputting 85dBC of 20Hz-20kHz. If we remove the 121Hz-20kHz output of our main speaker (so that it's only outputting our required 20Hz-120Hz), it's output level will obviously be lower, it will be approx 81dBSPL and our sub is then calibrated 10dB higher, which is about 91dB. In practice, we wouldn't try and "remove the 121-20kHz", we'd just use an RTA to measure the 20Hz-120Hz portion of the main speaker's output. In other words, your equation should read: "85dBC - (the 121Hz -20kHz band) +10dB = 91dB".