[Proposal] Halloween 2020 pipefan413 preservation: THE EXORCIST (1973)

[pipefan413]

EDIT: Original thread title was "[Proposal] Pick a Halloween resync!" but after THE EXORCIST was selected, the thread has basically turned into me analysing the various LaserDisc audio tracks for that film and detailing the process of creating new resyncs for them. I could potentially branch it off into a new thread entirely, but I figured I'd already put so much of that kind of stuff here that it would be weird unless those posts were also moved. Admins/Mods: by all means let me know if you'd rather move the more Exorcist-specific posts in this thread into a separate one, and I'll edit accordingly to contextualise that.

Many of my previously started / researched projects are either sort of on hold indefinitely while I focus on capturing various LaserDiscs and in most cases resyncing audio to something else. But it's October, we're rapidly approaching Halloween, and I'd like to get at least one or two resyncs done in time for the 31st. But I can't decide which one(s) to prioritise because there are so many that I'm excited about.

So I think it might be worth putting this to a vote!

Here is a selection of some of my more horror-y LDs that I've either already captured or plan to capture this month. I'm still relatively new to doing full resyncs from scratch so I'm not working very quickly (or maybe I am? I don't really know!) but in any case I won't get all these done before the 31st. Pick one, and if you have a second choice, let me know your two picks in the thread! All the digital ones will be bit perfect digital rips (largely thanks to @bronan's test kit and helpful posts on that subject).



THE EXORCIST (1973) original mono, analogue [10JL-1007 *and* NJEL-01007]



@The Aluminum Falcon did a resync of the first pressing audio for his excellent theatrical cut restoration but due in part to the lack of availability of the LD video, prioritised the surround track made for the later 70 mm re-release. I'd like to see the original mono given some love so I've bought *both* pressings of the Japanese LD with the original mono track, and have captured them both multiple times (with the video) to ensure good coverage and so on.


ERASERHEAD (1977) original mono, analogue [NDH-101]



Yes, the actual mono track. No, not the Dolby Stereo remix overseen by Lynch, which might be subjectively "better" for all I know but certainly is not what was heard in 1977. This is a new one afaik. One of my players has an issue playing side 2 for some reason but the other has no such problem and the disc is spotless so I dunno what's going on there.


HALLOWEEN (1978) original mono, digital [AML-0040]



The Criterion mono was already captured and resynced by @spoRv as 1.0, but I'd still like to capture and resync this later Japanese version, keeping it as 2.0 for the sake of archival, partly to see if it's meaningfully different to the Criterion one. The existing resync is the only way I'll watch this film at the moment, because the only post-LD release of the mono is on an OOP US Blu-ray and even that has been assaulted by noise reduction that takes all the power out of it.


THE EVIL DEAD (1981) original mono, digital [STLI-3001]



The existing BD-targeted resync is from the analogue track, whereas the digital track has only been resynced to the UHD as far as I know. I don't have the UHD mostly because I don't have a UHD display nor the desire to have anything in 4K for viewing purposes, so I don't really want to be watching everything resampled to 8-bit and SDR in real time in case that causes issues. I'd potentially be resyncing the digital mono to the fullscreen German Blu-ray, most likely, which is identical to the fullscreen US Blu-ray as far as I'm aware. However, it might be good to resync to DVD video which hasn't had Rob Tapert removed from the side of the bridge and the moon optical shots fixed, because it really irritates me that those things were changed; I have the PAL 1.85:1 DVD from Anchor Bay and the NTSC 1.33:1 DVD from Elite, most likely the 1.33:1 will be my preference but I've not watched them to compare yet.


NEAR DARK (1987) original Ultra Stereo, digital [ID6585HB]



I previously restored NTSC DVD audio to the French/German Blu-ray video, but this is the holy grail: the original Ultra Stereo in lossless PCM, rather than 192 kbps Dolby AC-3. As far as I'm aware, this LD is the only lossless release of this track ever to see the light of day.



There's also another one that I'm quite excited about, but I don't yet have a video to go along with it, so I think it'll have to wait:

BRAINDEAD (1992) original Dolby Stereo, digital [PILF-1822]



I don't know if this has ever had an uncut HD release, but supposedly the UK version remained uncut so maybe the 97-minute runtime on Blu-ray.com is either incorrect or accounting for PAL speedup. In any case, this LD is uncut at 104 minutes. The 97-minute Blu-ray releases in the US and AU are long OOP I think, and I don't have either, just that DVD.

[spaceboy710]

Love this! I'm capturing this edition of Eraserhead today:

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00677/30176/Eraserhead

I THINK it is stereo but it could be mono. It definitely has a harsher sound than the Criterion though. I've also got the 2.0 stereo AC-3 from an older DVD release that I will send your way. Obviously not mono though.

Do you have the JPN Halloween release? If not, I'd be up for buying it and capturing it. I might not be able to have it to you before the week before Halloween though.

[pipefan413]

Love this! I'm capturing this edition of Eraserhead today:

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00677/30176/Eraserhead

I THINK it is stereo but it could be mono. It definitely has a harsher sound than the Criterion though. I've also got the 2.0 stereo AC-3 from an older DVD release that I will send your way. Obviously not mono though.

Do you have the JPN Halloween release? If not, I'd be up for buying it and capturing it. I might not be able to have it to you before the week before Halloween though.

I have all of these, yep. Things I do not have include: any money left.

I've been investigating some weird A/V sync issue with captures. I found during my RESERVOIR DOGS resync that the audio was ahead of the video and initially thought it must just be like that on the LD but I'm now thinking that this is an artefact of the capture chain. It is fairly minor so I hadn't thought anything of it until I went into detail, but I'm now seeing it in THE EXORCIST too. This kid jumps on a car bonnet and you hear it a few frames before you see it, which is obviously wrong:



Similarly, I was seeing punches land visually after they were heard on RESERVOIR DOGS and so on. I was under the impression AmarecTV was set up correctly but it appears to be overcompensating somehow and shunting the audio too far ahead, so I'm now experimenting with different settings. I just did a fresh EXORCIST cap with the audio "allocator" switched off entirely, and the "start audio and video together" setting switched on (both different from default), but this still appeared to put audio slightly ahead so I tried again with both switched off and it does seem to have helped although I still think it looks a frame or two ahead.

I guess I could try to deal with this by just realigning the start of the audio to the audio of whatever I'm resyncing to, then resyncing structurally from there. That's what I initially tried to do with RESERVOIR DOGS until I realised there were also other moments in the LD where audio appeared to creep ahead and ended up further expanding it with slightly longer crossfades to fit the target audio better, rather than just adjusting based on missing video frames as I'd initially intended. But it's a pain in the arse, in any case. I was hoping to have a rock solid A/V sync reference to work from that didn't rely on matching waveforms.

[zoidberg]

Braindead's been on my wishlist for years, cheapest I ever saw it was on goodsquid but I dithered and it sold. I have Dead Alive but I much prefer the original cut

[pipefan413]

Braindead's been on my wishlist for years, cheapest I ever saw it was on goodsquid but I dithered and it sold. I have Dead Alive but I much prefer the original cut

Yeah some of these are ones I've wanted for a long time so I was kind of in the "f*** it, I'll be dead one day" mindset when I bought all these. I didn't want to miss an opportunity and then have them disappear and not find another copy at that sort of price for years. I've only ever seen one copy of NEAR DARK for example, and THE EXORCIST doesn't seem to show up all that often (it's also old and likely to rot away if not captured soon). Ditto JP Eraserhead.

So far there's only really one that I regret not buying: somebody was selling a set of 3 or 4 which included THE TERMINATOR and T2, I wasn't all that fussed about T2 but really would have liked to have the first one on LD. It sold for about £30 for the whole lot and now the only ones I can find are like £60+ for *only* THE TERMINATOR. So uh... whoops.

This sync issue is driving me crazy and I'm not really sure how best to handle it. Maybe I could just find moments like these sudden impact noises and use those to decide how many frames to offset the audio by, but that's slightly more subjective than I'd like (should a punch be heard in the same frame you see it? 1 frame later? later than that?) so I dunno. Or I could just do what I was going to do on RESERVOIR DOGS and realign the start to the audio from the target video, then resync it from there structurally according to the video frames. If anybody has experience with AmaRecTV and/or a Decklink Studio 2, gimme a shout.

[MrBrown]

Love this! I'm capturing this edition of Eraserhead today:

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00677/30176/Eraserhead

I THINK it is stereo but it could be mono. It definitely has a harsher sound than the Criterion though. I've also got the 2.0 stereo AC-3 from an older DVD release that I will send your way. Obviously not mono though.

Do you have the JPN Halloween release? If not, I'd be up for buying it and capturing it. I might not be able to have it to you before the week before Halloween though.

I have all of these, yep. Things I do not have include: any money left.

I've been investigating some weird A/V sync issue with captures. I found during my RESERVOIR DOGS resync that the audio was ahead of the video and initially thought it must just be like that on the LD but I'm now thinking that this is an artefact of the capture chain. It is fairly minor so I hadn't thought anything of it until I went into detail, but I'm now seeing it in THE EXORCIST too. This kid jumps on a car bonnet and you hear it a few frames before you see it, which is obviously wrong:



Similarly, I was seeing punches land visually after they were heard on RESERVOIR DOGS and so on. I was under the impression AmarecTV was set up correctly but it appears to be overcompensating somehow and shunting the audio too far ahead, so I'm now experimenting with different settings. I just did a fresh EXORCIST cap with the audio "allocator" switched off entirely, and the "start audio and video together" setting switched on (both different from default), but this still appeared to put audio slightly ahead so I tried again with both switched off and it does seem to have helped although I still think it looks a frame or two ahead.

I guess I could try to deal with this by just realigning the start of the audio to the audio of whatever I'm resyncing to, then resyncing structurally from there. That's what I initially tried to do with RESERVOIR DOGS until I realised there were also other moments in the LD where audio appeared to creep ahead and ended up further expanding it with slightly longer crossfades to fit the target audio better, rather than just adjusting based on missing video frames as I'd initially intended. But it's a pain in the arse, in any case. I was hoping to have a rock solid A/V sync reference to work from that didn't rely on matching waveforms.

I haad that with my captures too. I just avoided it by putting a delay on teh audio of the captured file... it was always abaout half a second not in sync.

[pipefan413]

I haad that with my captures too. I just avoided it by putting a delay on teh audio of the captured file... it was always abaout half a second not in sync.

This looks like it's roughly 3 or 4 frames, so less than a quarter of a second. But then again, this is based on me making an assumption about where the "correct" sync lies on the LD based on what I think should be the case: if you get a sudden loud noise like a sound effect made by an impact, for instance, should you hear it 1 frame later? 2? 3? Might be splitting hairs here, and I guess the only other way to determine what's "right" would be to use the audio from the target video as an initial ref as I did with RESERVOIR DOGS, but after all I've seen, I don't trust the distributors to get sync right to begin with. Especially SC...

EDIT: Oof, this is looking surprisingly decisive! I thought it might be more split! Well, I guess I should get started then shall I? Capture's pretty much done already apart from me getting annoyed with this sync discrepancy and redoing capture several times with different settings to see if it changes sync (which it turns out it does, but maybe not necessarily consistently... we'll see how this goes).

[zoidberg]

Virtualdub has some sort of function that resamples the audio to maintain sync with the video, don't know about other capture software. I use the audio from a video capture to line up the PCM which is captured with separate software.

Yeah there have been plenty of YOLO purchases over the years although Braindead and Near Dark have eluded me so far. I hope you're enjoying your laserdisc project so far anyway

[ac3]

I've got the stereo and mono ld versions of exorcist but in 160k aac. I can upload if anyone wants them

[pipefan413]

Virtualdub has some sort of function that resamples the audio to maintain sync with the video, don't know about other capture software. I use the audio from a video capture to line up the PCM which is captured with separate software.

Yeah there have been plenty of YOLO purchases over the years although Braindead and Near Dark have eluded me so far. I hope you're enjoying your laserdisc project so far anyway

That's the thing though: capturing the audio with video was meant to keep sync, but it appears not to. Well, no, it does keep sync in terms of clock/rate, I think... but the alignment / latency / offset, whatever you want to call it, is off.

However, I'm wondering if this might be the trouble:

This is done using the Media Express software and software version 10.11.4 (Windows), a combination that produces perfect sync. (Later versions have issues with sync drift, loss of video sync, or both.)

https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?p=1...84#p109260

I'm using a Decklink Studio (very similar card but with more analogue connections) and the Blackmagic software version 11.6. Maybe the driver is the problem. About to try rolling back to 10.11.4 to see if that makes any discernible difference.

@ac3 That's kind of you but I think I'm good; I've got 2 copies of the LaserDisc here and I'm capturing both repeatedly to get as clean a total capture as possible (I think I'll most likely edit the two together into one master, unless one of them is extremely clean from the offset). I'm not arsed about the stereo track, just the original mono.