[Released] NEAR DARK (1987): a pipefan413 preservation

[pipefan413]

NEAR DARK

a pipefan413 preservation

Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 vampire opus NEAR DARK is a film that's been horribly mistreated over the years. On its theatrical release, it basically tanked in the presence of its big budget brother THE LOST BOYS, the DVD releases were kinda hit and miss, and the Blu-ray options are all pretty horrendous even compared to the DVDs we got nearly 20 years ago. I put this custom version together mostly for my own purposes, but I may as well make it available to the rest of those who consider this a worthwhile "cult film" and would appreciate being able to watch it in the best quality currently possible, until a decent official release hopefully appears one day. As of today (the 2nd of May 2020), I understand the UK (2009), US (2009), Canada (2009), Spain (2013), Japan (2018), France (2018), and limited edition Germany (2019) releases all to be out of print, and the only one due out is a non-limited re-release of the German version toward the end of this month which (according to its distributor) has identical content to the 2019 discs.

This is a custom, painstakingly re-synchronised remux of NEAR DARK, using the best available video (high bitrate 1080p AVC), audio (DTS and Dolby), and subtitle (PGS) tracks available from various out of print official releases. All audio tracks are English, but subtitles are included in English, English SDH, Spanish, French and German (including a German one translating the English director commentary). This includes all 4 audio tracks from the special edition 2002 Anchor Bay DVD with the old StudioCanal logo music switched for the new version to precisely match the video track from the 2018 French Blu-ray Disc. This was done without re-encoding any of the main audio (the 2018 StudioCanal logo music was encoded from lossless DTS-HD Master Audio to several target codecs to match the main audio tracks it was being appended to the start of).

THIS IS A FAN-MADE PRESERVATION OF A FILM I CARE DEEPLY ABOUT, AND HAVE SPENT A GREAT DEAL OF MONEY ON BY BUYING ALMOST EVERY OFFICIAL RELEASE OF IT SINCE 2002. IT MUST NOT BE REPRODUCED FOR PROFIT. I DO NOT ENDORSE PIRACY.

If I know you and/or you're an active contributor around these parts, PM me for details (I do have the BD25 ISO but am not making that quite as readily available as the MKV). If you're interested to know how I put this custom preservation together, I have a very (painfully) detailed .nfo file that explains the whole thing from start to finish, command line instructions and all. Otherwise, just enjoy the film!

Thanks to Stamper and schorman for their help while I was working my way through this.

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TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

For my own purposes, I made this disc compliant and put it on a BD-R SL (BD25) so that I could stick it inside one of the boxes of my many retail copies of the film. This is much more likely to be reproduced for nefarious purposes, however, and people seem to largely prefer the flexibility of MKV, so this upload is in an MKV container instead.

VIDEO:      H.264 AVC @ 31.9 Mbps from 2018 French Blu-ray Disc
CHAPTERS:   13 chapters, from 2019 German BD but very slightly tweaked
            (e.g. chapter 13 now starts in time with the end credits music)
AUDIO 1:    DTS 5.1 @ 754 kbps from 2002 US DVD*
AUDIO 2:    Dolby Digital 5.1 @ 448 kbps from 2002 US DVD*
AUDIO 3:    Dolby Surround 2.0 @ 192 kbps from 2002 US DVD*
AUDIO 4:    Dolby Surround 2.0 director commentary @ 192 kbps from 2002 US DVD*
SUBTITLE 1: English, PGS from 2009 US BD
SUBTITLE 2: English SDH, PGS from 2009 US BD
SUBTITLE 3: Spanish, PGS from 2009 US BD
SUBTITLE 4: French, PGS from 2018 FR BD
SUBTITLE 5: German, PGS from 2019 DE BD
SUBTITLE 6: German translation of English commentary, PGS from 2019 DE BD

* 2002 StudioCanal logo music removed and 2018 StudioCanal logo music added from 2018 FR BD (without re-encoding the main audio)

[Stamper]

Fingers Lickin' Good!

[spoRv]

No Italian tracks?!?

[pipefan413]

No Italian tracks?!?

No Italian release, no Italian tracks, sadly!

The UK and Spain Blu-rays both had no subtitles whatsoever, France and Germany only have French and German respectively, and the US one just has English and Spanish.

[Evit]

I'm seeding this beauty. Thanks for making it, I've never actually seen the film so this is a great occasion. As for the Italian version, would you like me to pass you the Italian track that is floating around the web. I guess it was taken from VHS or even from the RARE Italian DVD, these are the only sources available to us here in Italy.

[pipefan413]

No Italian tracks?!?

I'm seeding this beauty. Thanks for making it, I've never actually seen the film so this is a great occasion. As for the Italian version, would you like me to pass you the Italian track that is floating around the web. I guess it was taken from VHS or even from the RARE Italian DVD, these are the only sources available to us here in Italy.

If you want to send me the Italian audio, I might do a followup audio-only release (I suppose a bit like my Millions of Voices project) with optional tracks synced to this release in the same way as I did the English tracks off the old DVD... sound good? I already had a request for the French one (already synced, I just need to rip it again) and the German one is also in sync because it uses the same video, but I'd need to sync the Spanish and don't yet have the Italian or any others that might be on the go. Would be cool!

On an unrelated (to Near Dark) note, I don't suppose either of you happens to have an Italian copy of Snowpiercer by any chance? If so, please chuck me a PM, because I've a favour to ask...

[PDB]

I really enjoyed this project pipefan. Thanks for putting it together.

[The Aluminum Falcon]

Thanks for the work, pipefan! Also appreciate it. Wish we had a new master coming soon but good to have it in the correct pitch for now.

[Evit]

No Italian tracks?!?

If you want to send me the Italian audio, I might do a followup audio-only release (I suppose a bit like my Millions of Voices project) with optional tracks synced to this release in the same way as I did the English tracks off the old DVD... sound good? I already had a request for the French one (already synced, I just need to rip it again) and the German one is also in sync because it uses the same video, but I'd need to sync the Spanish and don't yet have the Italian or any others that might be on the go. Would be cool!

On an unrelated (to Near Dark) note, I don't suppose either of you happens to have an Italian copy of Snowpiercer by any chance? If so, please chuck me a PM, because I've a favour to ask...

I never got around to buying Snowpiercer, although I might in the future. I'll PM you for the Near Dark audio, thanks a lot!

[pipefan413]

UPDATE:

I have now made a bit-perfect capture of the lossless digital 2.0 PCM from the 1989 US LaserDisc, which contains the original theatrical Ultra Stereo mix!



I dunno about you, but I'm excited.

This is the best the authentic theatrical soundtrack for this film ever sounded. The old Anchor Bay Special Edition DVDs have this mix encoded as lossy 192 kbps Dolby Digital (AC-3), but the main audio option on those is a 5.1 mix (as 754 kbps DTS and 448 kbps AC-3). The Blu-rays do have a lossless version of the track, but it's got a bunch of issues, not the least of which is that they have pitch shift from PAL speed-up even though they run at the correct speed for 24000/1001 fps video (quite why you would resample for speed but not pitch is absolutely baffling to me but that's what they appear to have done).

The only reason I previously put the 5.1 DTS in the top spot was that I didn't have this and the DVD version of it was really low bitrate. I think I'll therefore relegate the 5.1 DTS to 2nd, remove the 2.0 AC-3 entirely, either remove the 5.1 AC-3 or stick it in a folder separately, and put this new 2.0 PCM track in the top spot as lossless 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio encoded as Lt+Rt so AVRs know to decode it as surround. But fret not, PCM fans: I always go to great pains to make sure any DTS-HD MA encodes I make can be decoded back to a bit-perfect copy of exactly the same PCM I fed to the encoder, so you can do that if you don't like or have some kind of technical issue with DTS-HD streams.

Proposed new list of audio options:

1. Ultra Stereo theatrical mix as lossless 2.0 (matrixed) DTS-HD Master Audio

2. DVD surround mix as 5.1 DTS at 754 kbps

3. DVD commentary as 2.0 AC-3 at 192 kbps


Potential bonus audio options could theoretically be included if there's sufficient demand. Note that these are all very much of secondary priority for me since I'm a strong proponent of original language regardless of what language that happens to be. Possible extra audio options:

French dub
Italian dub
Spanish dub
German dub
5.1 mix as 448 kbps AC-3 for compatibility if needed
2.0 mix as 192 kbps AC-3 seems pretty pointless imo since you could just decode the lossless 2.0 to PCM and use that instead of settling for heavily compressed audio

I think just about the only one I don't have is the Japanese dub. There's a Hong Kong LaserDisc as well but it seems there's no Cantonese dub, just subtitles.

Note that any and all audio I make for this film will be customised to fit the out of print French Blu-ray Disc encode at least until any potentially better new HD master is one day made (which I still desperately hope will happen eventually). This means that I have to make a custom encode of the modern StudioCanal logo for every audio option I include, or at least for every encoding method (so for instance if I have multiple tracks with the same encoding, e.g. 192 kbps AC-3, I can theoretically append the same custom encode of the logo jingle as 192 kbps AC-3 to each one, as long as they have similar enough sync).

Also at the top of my priority list right now are audio for two of TAF's projects: RESERVOIR DOGS (bit-perfect cap of one LD now done, will cap another different LD as well and determine which to use) and THE EXORCIST (analogue mono mix with video cap for more accurate resync). WIP!

EDIT: Thinking about this again, I expect more people will have the 2002 US DVD than have the 2018 FR BD, and all of the BD releases of this film are notoriously unpopular because they scrubbed the crap out of it with DNR and it's clearly from the DVD master anyway (presumably 1080i as opposed to 1080p but it's been made progressive, though that's conjecture). Would it be desirable to make a version of the LaserDisc PCM track that syncs with the old Anchor Bay DVD rather than the Blu-ray? I might end up making both for my own purposes anyway, I haven't decided yet. Thoughts?