Braindead - Japanese LD audio

[pipefan413]

Never got around to picking up the JP LD myself, so I'm currently looking for it. Depending on how soon I found it, I can maybe capture it if no one else has by then.

I've already got it so can capture whenever, just a matter of which order to do captures in! Might try this one today. UPDATE: Capturing (with video) now!

EDIT: PM sent.

[pipefan413]

Today I confirmed my suspicion that the JP LaserDisc and the UK DVD are from the exact same print source. However, I was rather frustrated to find that they line up *really* badly... and it's less the fault of the LD and more the DVD.

The LaserDisc is missing, I think, about 6 frames. Max missing in one go is 3, which isn't bad at all except that it happens right smack bang in the middle of a shot (not at a cut). Oh, and speaking of cuts, the reason I'm saying "about" rather than saying with confidence that it's missing precisely 6 frames in total is that this is one of those horrible old telecine transfers (like the Japanese one of THE EXORCIST) that turns almost every hard cut into a horrible blended mess of about 1 to 5 frames of messed up nonsense:



The DVD looks a fair bit better and shows more image on the sides but it's also missing an absolute crapload of frames. While the biggest hole in the LD is 3 frames, the DVD is missing as many as 12 frames in one go. In total, it seems to be missing about 35 frames - about 30 more than the LaserDisc!

So yeah, what I was hoping would be a really fast resync (due to the identical source) is probably going to be a pain in the hole. I might try playing fast and loose with a 32-bit float in REAPER, rather than my usual. At least aligning the video has pointed out where to edit; it doesn't necessarily matter that much what I then use to do those edits, I suppose.


Other points to note:

• LD is fullscreen but DVD is a sort of messy open matte widescreen that looks vaguely 1.66:1 ish (am guessing that's basically the entire negative, without checking so far)... except for the very first shot of the film, which on the DVD is fullscreen exactly like the LD but less cropped (which is probably because it's footage of Queen Elizabeth II from what I think is a '50s print that may have had a more square negative aspect ratio).
  
  
• One gore shot on the LD is for some reason colour-inverted, as in, it's still in negative colours instead of matching everything else. This has been fixed on the DVD. I'm wondering if this is maybe because of something daft like them having to scan this in off an internegative as an insert because it wasn't in the main source, but then forgetting to invert it (or just not bothering).
  
  
  

[pipefan413]

Did a fresh cap of BRAINDEAD with IRE set to 7.5 because despite Japan ostensibly using IRE 0, this is clearly not the case for the majority of Japanese LaserDiscs I've captured. I think it seems to be that they changed the *broadcast* standard to IRE 0, but LaserDiscs and possibly other home video releases continued using the old IRE 7.5 standard (which the US kept using as well and never switched to IRE 0 at all).







To be honest, the UK DVD probably looks better than the LaserDisc and is basically a less cropped version of the exact same source (without the aforementioned mistake with one shot being in negative) so the better thing to watch would probably be the LD audio resynced to the UK DVD with the frame rate adjusted to 24/1.001 fps. Which is exactly what I'm going to do myself. It would arguably also be worth matting it down to something tidier depending on how much image can be retained while doing so (supposedly it's meant to be screened at 1.66:1 but it looks like the image on the DVD is roughly 1.66:1 but has warping at the top and bottom that's visible in frame)... but the trouble with that is that it means re-encoding when I could instead just change the FPS and avoid a re-encode.

Think this is going to be kind of a pain to sync the audio from; there are some points where the video is missing frames but the audio isn't at that point, I'm not yet sure if it jumps 20 frames later (since the audio is printed 20 frames offset due to the audio heads being further down in the projector than the gate). I might not use my usual workflow for this one and just edit it directly from 32-bit float in REAPER before exporting and dithering with auto-blanking in RX as always (REAPER may do auto-blank dither as well, right enough, but I expect probably not).

[EvilJames]

My uncut 1080p file, using both the LD audio kindly supplied by pipefan413 as well as a composite of the LD and BD audio, is now seeding on CG, with the organ to follow tomorrow.

[pipefan413]

What did you end up using for the uncut shots not on the Blu-ray?

I have the JP LD, UK DVD, and imported a DE DVD, but that turned out to be an obvious bootleg of the UK DVD which was annoying. There is another PAL DVD out there somewhere that has different colour and looks more neutral than the noticeably blue tinted UK DVD.

[EvilJames]

What did you end up using for the uncut shots not on the Blu-ray?

I have the JP LD, UK DVD, and imported a DE DVD, but that turned out to be an obvious bootleg of the UK DVD which was annoying. There is another PAL DVD out there somewhere that has different colour and looks more neutral than the noticeably blue tinted UK DVD.

I used a German DVD for the Braindead footage - I’m fairly certain it’s the same master as the UK DVD upscaled to 16:9 though. I believe there’s also a cut Italian DVD that’s transferred from a 35mm print and may be 16:9.

[pipefan413]

I used a German DVD for the Braindead footage - I’m fairly certain it’s the same master as the UK DVD upscaled to 16:9 though. I believe there’s also a cut Italian DVD that’s transferred from a 35mm print and may be 16:9.

See that's why I know mine's a bootleg: the box says 16:9 but it's 4:3, same as the UK one. And yes, it's the same source, but the colour is different: the German one is closer to white during moments where the UK one is very blue (they've put a blue tint on night scenes but it appears in other shots too). They're both the same source as the Japanese LaserDisc but the LD is cropped to 4:3 and the DVDs are opened up instead, although even on the LD you can see the messy, warped bottom edge of the frame in some shots. But the LD appears to have frames missing in places that the DVDs don't, I guess just because it was a dodgy telecine.

There's also the fact that the packaging of my copy looks like it's printed on a £25 HP inkjet printer...

[EvilJames]

I hadn’t looked at it for a while but it turns out it wasn’t a DVD-R I’d used, but an MKV I’d found somewhere (though I’m not sure where?) that had clearly been re-encoded as it’s 10.5GB in size. The file name is “Braunrcolgra.mkv”, but I’ll be damned if I can remember where I found it - the Bloodsuckerz board, maybe?

Braindead is now uploaded and seeding on both CG and the organ - enjoy!

[TheUndertaker180]

CG? Whats that and link please?