[Request] NEAR DARK NTSC audio

[pipefan413]

What I ended up doing was as follows...


VIDEO:

Using the French Blu-ray Disc's AVC video track (31.9 Mbps before trimming), I...

1. segmented out the first 24 frames (which are just black frames before the SC logo starts)
   
2. trimmed off the SC logo along with the black frames before the DEG logo
   
3. rejoined the 24 black frames before the DEG logo so the file doesn't immediately start on the first frame of the logo (gives you a second to get settled in)
   

The resulting AVC track has 135085 frames of video and an average bitrate of 31.9 Mbps.


AUDIO:

Using the mosquito-slap as sync reference point, found that it fell at...

• 00:00:47.841 on source French Blu-ray Disc, but I've removed 20.938 seconds' worth of frames from the video track so sync ref point becomes 00:00:26.903
  
• 00:00:42.975 on NTSC DVD, so removed first 16.072 sec to sync
  
• 00:00:46.527 on US/UK Blu-ray Disc, so removed first 19.624‬ sec to sync
  

As of now, here is the list of included audio options:

1. DVD stereo (Dolby Digital 2.0 @ 192 kbps)
   
2. Director commentary (Dolby Digital @ 192 kbps)
   
3. BD surround mix (DTS-HD Master Audio, 16-bit)
   
4. DVD DTS surround mix (DTS 5.1 @ 768 kbps)
   
5. DVD Dolby surround mix (Dolby Digital 5.1 @ 448 kbps)
   

Interestingly, my UK PAL DVD has the stereo track and commentary at 224 kbps instead of 192 kbps, and the commentary in a 4.0 mix (which I prefer) instead of 2.0. I've got another NTSC DVD in the post and will update if I discover that to have better tracks than what I've muxed in here.

In terms of the 5.1 mixes, I haven't yet had a chance to compare them properly but at a glance the Blu-ray mix actually does sound decent. It doesn't seem to have the same tinny quality that the 2.0 LPCM / DTS-HD MA mixes did on the Blu-rays and dynamic range and clarity is significantly better than some of the alternatives. I'm currently leaning towards making that the one that goes on the disc version of this and leaving the other two off the disc but perhaps including them in an MKV version instead (they're better for compatibility on a USB device or what have you).


SUBTITLES:

Reckon I may as well include the following PGS subtitle tracks from the Blu-ray Discs:

• English subtitles from US BD (-19624 ms)
  
• English SDH from US BD (-19624 ms)
  
• Spanish subtitles from US BD (-19624 ms)
  
• French subtitles from French BD (-20938 ms)
  
• German subtitles from German BD (-20938 ms)
  
• German subtitles for English director commentary from German BD (-20938 ms)
  

I'll check the total file size once I've looked at the subtitles and compared the 5.1 DTS off the DVD to the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio off the US BD, but I if I only keep one of the 5.1 tracks I can likely get this to fit on a 25 GB BD-R which should mean it plays in an ordinary player with the subtitles all working and so forth. I will probably also keep an MKV version for playing off a USB stick that I may not put the subtitles in since some players (including mine) seem to have issues playing PGS subs off USB anyway.

Not sure how best to go about this since I've not released much but I'm guessing best thing to do would be create new thread in Released subforum with full details once finalised? Ideally I'd like to put it on a BD-50 with all the bonus content included, but I need to investigate menu creation in new software before I'd feel anywhere like ready to do that properly. For now, it'll just be either an MKV, BD-25 or possibly both.

Thanks all, particularly Stamper, for your help sourcing stuff!

[Stamper]

I checked out this bizarre commentary track in 4.0 and it looks like the commentary is in stereo in the main (with the same content on both sides), and in the back surrounds, they just inverted the phase of the front tracks to create a kind of stereo effect.

I need to compare to the just stereo one on the NTSC disc this is just weird LOL

[pipefan413]

I checked out this bizarre commentary track in 4.0 and it looks like the commentary is in stereo in the main (with the same content on both sides), and in the back surrounds, they just inverted the phase of the front tracks to create a kind of stereo effect.

I need to compare to the just stereo one on the NTSC disc this is just weird LOL

Hahaha! That's mad. I hadn't bothered to check, since I'm waiting on an NTSC DVD coming in the post myself and it's the exact same edition as mine but from the US, so I was going to see if that had the 4.0 and consider muxing it. I... I might not if that's all it is.

That said, I'm also hoping that it might have the slightly higher bitrate 224 kbps main 2.0 stereo track, which would be nice to have rather than 192 kbps.

[Stamper]

Don't you have already the NTSC SE ? Is the track just 2.0 on that one?

[pipefan413]

Don't you have already the NTSC SE ? Is the track just 2.0 on that one?

I have the 2-disc PAL Anchor Bay SE but the NTSC disc I've got is 192 kbps 2.0 for both main audio and commentary, as opposed to 224 kbps 2.0 main audio and 224 kbps 4.0 commentary. The equivalent 2-disc NTSC Anchor Bay release is winging its way to me as we speak, so I'll check that and see if it's any different from the NTSC source I've got. If not, I'm still happy to add it to the shelf beside all the other copies of this film I'm even considering importing the ridiculously overpriced Japanese one if for no reason other than to complete the set, but it's unlikely to be useful as a source so that's probably madness.

[Bigrob]

Yeah sorry for the delay. Oldest and youngest birthdays this week (yesterday and today back to back) so been a bit busy. Will be collecting the DVD on Thursday lunchtime though when I drop them back to their mums

[Stamper]

I can sync all the Pal DVD tracks back to 23.976fps if you want to sync them to the Blu-ray.
The process shouldn't show any major damage to the tracks.

[pipefan413]

I can sync all the Pal DVD tracks back to 23.976fps if you want to sync them to the Blu-ray.
The process shouldn't show any major damage to the tracks.

I can do that myself in Audacity but it sounded fairly horrendous when I repitched the LPCM BD audio so I would rather avoid it if at all possible, especially with AC3 (although I realise that re-pitching is probably a more invasive adjustment than just re-timing, so it might not be a huge issue apart from the need to re-encode again - although I could leave as PCM to avoid that, I guess). I may as well wait for the double disc NTSC DVD set first to see if that has the same 224 kbps tracks (but NTSC), since that would render adjusting the PAL tracks unnecessary anyway.

Yeah sorry for the delay. Oldest and youngest birthdays this week (yesterday and today back to back) so been a bit busy. Will be collecting the DVD on Thursday lunchtime though when I drop them back to their mums

Don't worry! All got Life Stuff happening, it's cool. And I've managed to buy a sealed (!) copy of the 2-disc Anchor Bay NTSC DVD on eBay anyway so fingers crossed that arrives soon and has 224 kbps Dolby Digital like their PAL version!

EDIT: US Anchor Bay 2-disc DVD received and confirmed to have equivalent audio tracks to previous NTSC source (both stereo audio and commentary are 192 kbps 2.0, as opposed to 224 kbps 2.0 and 224 kbps 4.0 on my PAL copy). Interesting! The PAL set is dated 2003, a year later than the 2002 NTSC version of the same release. I guess they tweaked it a bit. I appreciate the fact they at least retained the correct pitch, unlike so many PAL DVDs...

It probably isn't worth re-timing the 224 kbps PAL tracks to NTSC-spec 24000/1001 framerate for the sake of a small bitrate bump; any benefit that might've been present from going from 192 to 224 kbps would be lost after re-timing and re-encoding anyway. The only curio is the 4.0 "surround" version of the commentary, which I guess I can stick in an "alternative audio" folder or something, maybe.

[pipefan413]

OK so I might be insane but I'm determined to get this working on disc as well as in an MKV container so I'm making a new version of the entire thing.

The first version is as I described previously: split the French AVC track into 3 parts, then joined parts 1 (24 frames of black) and 2 (film). However, this broke Blu-day Disc compliance and when I burned it, it was screwed.

So to retain BD compliance, this new version does not crop out the logo but instead leaves it alone and does what I originally set out to do: cuts the old logo jingles off all audio sources (2002 DVD and 2009 BD) then re-adds the new 2018 logo jingle.

I gave up on this before because I couldn't concatinate DTS and I wanted to keep the DTS and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks in the remux. However, I've since worked out how to encode BD-compliant DTS and DTS-HD, so I have gone ahead and done it after all.

To achieve this, I encoded 3 new versions of the 2018 logo music (each appropriate to the main audio tracks included) and concatinated them, which included having to convert the DTS-HD MA to PCM, trim it appropriately, concatinate, then re-encode back to DTS-HD MA again with the same channel layout and retaining a lossy DTS core for systems that can't decode Master Audio.

BUT... there's a problem.

Y'know that correctly-pitched wonderful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix on the UK and US Blu-ray Discs? It's screwed up. SURPRISE! It starts stuttering like hell right before the end credits roll, and I'm sure there are likely other problems I haven't found yet but I don't care to keep looking because there's no way I'm using it any more. So after going to the hassle of encoding my own super duper DTS-HD MA track with the logos and everything else in perfect sync, I'm dropping it entirely in favour of the lossy 448 kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 mix off the ancient 2002 NTSC DVD because at least that has the correct pitch and doesn't start stuttering like a late 90s PC trying to run The Witcher. I'm thinking about whether it's worth including the old DTS version of the DVD's 5.1 mix as well, but that would necessitate re-encoding it and that means degradation; it's probably unnecessary anyway as the Dolby Digital track sounds pretty comparable to my ears anyway (all the audio for this film sounds a bit ropey tbh) and would probably compare even more favourably after re-encoding the 768 kbps DTS.

As a result, I now have two versions of the remux:

1. An MKV version (v1) that's too big to fit on a BD-25 and isn't disc compliant anyway, but has the SC logo trimmed off the start entirely, so none of the audio tracks are altered in any way except to trim them off at the start for sync. This includes the 5.1 768 kbps DTS mix from the US NTSC DVD because I altered the video track, meaning I could sync the audio losslessly without any re-encoding (just subtracted the correct time from the start of each audio track).

2. A BD-25 (v2) with both the 2018 high-bitrate video including current (as of 2020) StudioCanal logo and the correct pitch for the English main audio, for the first time ever (ridiculous, I know). As of tonight, no 768 kbps 5.1 DTS track here, because I don't fancy re-encoding it when the 448 kbps 5.1 Dolby Digital (AC-3) is probably fine as is and likely more compatible as well. I'll still probably try re-encoding the 768 kbps DTS to 768 kbps again or higher and seeing if it sounds any better or worse than the Dolby, but I don't think it'd fit on a BD-25 in any case because it all just barely fits with the Dolby Digital tracks and subtitles. I could avoid any degradation at all by re-encoding it losslessly to DTS-HD MA but that would guarantee it not fitting on a BD-50 which rather defeats the point. Perhaps I could stick it to one side as FLAC or DTS-HD MA as an alt to mux in yourself if you're not bothered about disc compatibility.

I'm going to bed because I've spent entirely too much time on this today but I reckon I'll have this finalised by tomorrow, all being well. If so, I'll open a thread in Completed for it with full details.

[Stamper]

Awesome!

Never mind adding the DTS to the BD if it doesn't fit.

Most people will be happy with the mkv with all the correct tracks if they want it all!

You finally saved that film.