I've been working on these tracks in one form or other for quite a while now. I've just now had the time and tools to put everything together - hope it proves of use or at least interest to someone!

The original Planet of the Apes movie has had quite the convoluted history of soundtracks. Legend has it it initially received a 4-track stereo mix, which some claim to have heard on the film's original run, while others insist that only mono prints ever made it to theatres.

In any event, any original stereo mix is long gone and even that theatrical mono track is something of a rarity, since it was only used in home video releases for a very small window of time before Fox commissioned a stereo rework by Chace Audio (more on that in a moment). Here are the three tracks that make up my Blu-ray synced preservation project, starting with the way it was heard in theatres.

The original mono mix



For my preservation of the theatrical mono, I used the non-CX analogue sound from the 1982 Japanese laserdisc FY515-26MA. It's not terribly high quality, with an overall harsh sound and occasional crackles and pops (none of which I have attempted to clean up). That said, it is clearly a different piece of work from anything released since, with the fantastic music well to the fore as opposed to buried under sound effects (and it's quite obvious now that the so-called original mono on the BD is nothing of the sort). If you want authentic, this is the way to go.



Update: Having finally had the chance to do a proper comparison of the French LD track from Falcon, I would now strongly support that version as the best choice for original mono! This disc was released on the French label PFC Video in 1993, with two digital mono tracks (French and English) presented side by side on the PCM channel. This rendition of the English mono has greater definition and dynamic range than the analogue discs (though not suspiciously so) and, predictably, less noise. I've also confirmed that the content is correct for the original mix, with the music as big and bold as it should be. Thanks Falcon!

The Chace stereo mix



Chace's stereo mix was commissioned for the mid-80s VHS release and carried over to the 1990 Special Widescreen Edition laserdisc (1054-80, the belated first issue for this film in the US). While it's undoubtedly cleaner than the old analogue mono, its stereo steering (based on mono dialogue, sound effects and music elements) is forced and phony, and (as mentioned before) the score is frequently buried in the mix. I've captured and synced this track (in digital PCM) for posterity, though it's not really one I'd choose to listen to.

The 5.1 anniversary mix



When the first DVD was released in 2000, the Chace mix was rechanneled to 5.1 and pretty clunky-sounding as a result. A few years later, a new disc was released for the 35th anniversary and a proper 5.1 mix was made from scratch. This mix is far more careful and respectful than the previous remix efforts, with excellent clarity and balance between the elements. The new 5.1 was presented in both Dolby Digital and DTS on the disc - I've losslessly resynced the DTS for this collection. If you want to hear this film in its best fidelity, this is my recommendation.

This timeline brings us to the Blu-ray that these tracks are intended for (the same disc that Fox have repeatedly reissued since its first release 16 years ago). Its DTS-HD master 5.1 is curiously flat compared with the 2003 mix (and clearly still from mono elements, including the music), and the included 'mono' track is most likely a fold-down of the elements prepared for the surround.

Now that I've excavated the first movie as far as currently possible, I'm keen to keep going with the four original sequels, whose sound stories are somewhat simpler than the original (though not without incident). More to follow!

Hello. I like movies. And cars. Especially movies about cars. Oh and Godzilla.

1. English for "pure" Cantonese tracks
   
2. English for my custom HKR Cantonese/English track
   
3. English for the English dubs
   
4. SDH for Miramax dub
   

hi im a 40yo film nerd living in nashville TN. i play music and like to Dj\VJ. really interested in seeing some of these fan restorations and maybe doing my own some day. just want to learn more about the community and see what projects everyones doing. esp interested in 90s tv remasters, avant-garde, artsy obscure stuff, the weird and rare. glad to meet yawl.

New to the site. Nice to be part of this community.

I am new to this site!

Jay

And so, I was interested in the TV version of the film, in which there is a voice-over announcer describing each character at the station, there is also a scene in which the name of the Norwegian who shot at the dog is said, and the ending also has a quote from the announcer. I plan to transfer all these moments to the full version of the film, or rather its 35mm copy, which has 5.1 sound. I had already transferred most of the lines to the arrangement of the central channel, but I had to move all these descriptions to completely different scenes, because in the TV version there were duplicate scenes under the announcer’s voice.
I placed the scene with the conversation about the Norwegian’s name, which was not in the full version, at a convenient moment where the turner is on roller skates just during this conversation, because in the TV version, just during his roller coaster, the scene of the conversation about the name takes place.

I found a pretty cool tool recently when looking foe some HDR analysis stuff called DoVi_Scripts. Not sure how well known this is but it can do some cool stuff with DV so I thought I’d share. (also the YT vid the github links to for this looks to be outdated)

I’m by no means an expert, but, from my understanding, Dolby Vision has these things called trim passes, which basically are data on how to tonemap the image for certain brightness values. One of the passes is for 100nits, which is effectively SDR, so this is data on how to tonemap the HDR image to SDR.

Motivations are hopefully obvious: high quality SDR versions of 4KBDs, especially interesting for titles which the 4KBD differs from the 2KBD in terms of, say, the transfer, or even something more significant like Gemini Man (2019)’s 60fps presentation. The tonemap also can retain 4K 10bit which may be a plus for projects and such.

The main limitation is, of course, that this only applies to Dolby Vision, and that the DV titles need to have the 100nit trim pass. Basically all the titles I’ve tested so far (8) do have it, but I did run into the curious example of The Last of Us (2023) only having it for episode 1, with the other episodes being absent it, so its possible to not be there.

Anyway, enough rambling, how can it be done?

DoVi_Scripts is basically a collection of tools focused around processing and analysing DV and HDR videos, looks to be mostly focused on DV hybrid stuff.

But it can do some other stuff; Under video encoding settings [8 MIXED: Audio/Remover/Encoder/Playlist/Sample → 2 VIDEO Encoding → 4 PRORES DV to SDR], there is a DV to SDR 100nit trim pass delivery option, which is what we’re looking for.

However, a couple of notes first. It doesn’t seem to work properly in v2.0.3 (current), instead just falling back to the standard tonemapping option. v2.0.2 works fine however. Next, you’ll need to download Dolby’s DV tools; you need to sign up but its free so not too much of an issue. DoVi_Scripts is actually using an official Dolby tool for this conversion which is interesting to see.

An optional step is checking to see if your file has a 100nit trim pass. In DoVi_Scripts, option [2 DoVi Fix/Edit/Extract/Verify/Info → 2 RPU Extractor/Reader] you can get a summary of the DV metadata, and youre looking for the line “L2 trims”, and see if 100nits is there. Alternatively just throw your file into the DV to SDR converter and it’ll tell you if there isn’t one, but it does some pre-processing so checking first saves a bit of time.

Finally, note that the conversion results in a ProRes output file. Which is huge. In the 100s of Mbps range, which adds up very quickly. Personally, I have processed everything so far in chunks then compressing each one with x265 to keep the storage usage manageable for me. So far this doesn’t seem to result in any issues.

Ok! so I have tested so far with Gemini Man (2019), and Belle (2021) to see how the results stack up. Gemini Man is 60fps so id like a SDR version, and Belle I remember having some brightness issues with tonemap testing I did a while ago.

As well as comparing against the SDR Blu-ray, I’ve compared against Handbrake’s colourspace filter, and DoVi_Script’s own standard tonemapping (uses DoViBaker/libplacebo). I know there are other (potentially better) methods out there, but I’m not overly familiar, plus all these options are around the same effort level, there’s no tweaking.

Gemini Man:



Belle:


(there are more comparisons on my Gdrive, all of which are full res PNGs) 

So, overall, its clear handbrake notably undershoots brightness in all of my testing. Belle seems to be graded not super bright so perhaps that’s not entirely unexpected but regardless its not what I would consider to be a good result.

DoVi_Scripts own tonemapping (again, DoViBaker/libplacebo under the hood, which tbh I know nothing about) fairs a bit better. Belle is once again undershot, but Gemini Man is a lot closer and even overshoots in some shots.

The 100nit trim pass basically nails the required brightness. It looks to be slightly more off with Gemini Man than Belle, but its close enough that most of the time even side-by-side its a bit hard to tell.

There are some slight differences in colour temp and contrast (again, more notably in Gemini Man), but small. Super bright elements in Gemini Man (fire/explosions) look to be a bit oversaturated at times where the SDR grade blows them out to white, but again overall I’m quite happy with the results.

I own the 2009 Diamond Edition Blu-ray + DVD set release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and was wondering if anyone has the 1994 Deluxe CAV LaserDisc Edition box set [2921 CS] of the movie. I would like the restored Dolby Surround Stereo remix track, original mono theatrical track, and restored music-and-effects track from the movie laserdiscs synced to the recent 2023 Ultimate Collector's Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray.

Does anybody have them? I'm kind of working on a project here, And I'm also very interested in foreign dubs.
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/06719/8761-85/Aliens
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/49177/1504-80/Aliens
Thanks