[Help] The Thing (1982) -> Best Mix?

[spoRv]

I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it. Just that an imperceptible improvement in lip sync doesn't automatically make it the best track.

Well, if the out-of-sync track was the best track before it, now it is automatically the best one... isn't it?

[Turisu]

If that is the only difference then, yes.

[lightsabre]

timing of sound effects is improved on Turbine BD when compared to Arrow BD.

so this should then be the best version for the 2.0 track?

[Scavenger]

timing of sound effects is improved on Turbine BD when compared to Arrow BD.

so this should then be the best version for the 2.0 track?

In terms of timing it should be. In terms of sound quality, I dunno. Turbine 2.0 track is maybe dynamic range compressed?

[Turisu]

Scavenger, I've taken a look at my Turbine 2.0 and it isn't clipped like that. Is that waveform the original track or is it your synced track?

[Scavenger]

It's from the original track, but first transcoded to FLAC in a recent version of ffmpeg (2021-07-11). Waveform is also like that when I directly load the DTS-HD MA track in Audacity.

[PDB]

I agree with Zoidberg's thoughts, that I don't want to alter anything that is inherent to the original film, so if Turbine modified the audio to be different then what was made in 1982 then I rather not use it. But I also agree that it sounds like marketing horses**t and every track has variations.

So I visually (aka frame) synced the two laserdisc (plus an additional track to fix superstition), the Universal BD, the Shout tracks, the Arrow 2.0, the Turbine tracks and kept the existing UHD BD tracks.

I then made a two channel mix down of the UHD's DTS for sync. I lined up all the 2.0s (LD, Sig LD, Shout, Arrow and Turbine) on the timeline versus the 2.0 downmix from the UHD. This was for waveform syncing. I expected there to be some variation in factions of seconds or realistically factions of milliseconds. And guess what? Every track is wildly different when compared to the UHD track. Ironically, the best sync to the the UHD was the Shout and the Arrow was way off requiring over a hundred edits to get into sync. The Turbine was very much the same. It might be more in sync but in practice, watching the film, you will never notice. When I looked at dialogue sections on the 1080p-SDR copy I made, frankly couldn't tell a difference between many of the syncs.

It was at that point I just decided to let the syncs remain the way they are visually (frame) synced and let people get out of it what they will.

I'm still leaning towards the letterbox LD track being my default. It sounds pretty clear and background sounds aren't dulled down as in some later tracks. But that is splitting hairs. The UHD soundtracks, the DTS and DTS X, are absolute garbage. They are highly remixed, dulled down, noise reduced to nothing and I even saw one or two instances of missing effects and that was without looking. I can't stress enough this should be your last choice for sound. I kept the Universal BD's 5.1 since it had two instances of higher frequency that looked different compared to the all similar looking 5.1s (DVDs, Shout, Arrow, Turbine). I dumped the Arrow 4.1 and 5.1 since I had the others (Shout and Turbine) and the Shout's matched up better since the BD wasn't missing the frames after the blood test. I still haven't decided on the HD DVD. It is similar to the Universal BD so it might go. I'd like to include a DVD 5.1 but I'm just over 25 GB of audio (close to 50 GB with my 1080p) so its becoming an issue. I still need to sync the unedited commentary since it seems to drop sync with the unedited. That's going to take some work.

So here is what I have so far:

[bronan]

Nice work PDB. I have choice paralysis just looking at that.

[spoRv]

Thanks for the effort, PDB!

I don't want to alter anything that is inherent to the original film, so if Turbine modified the audio to be different then what was made in 1982 then I rather not use it.

Even if I do not agree, I can't understand but... following your idea, what's the point to include track without "Superstitious", and even more, to add one that is corrected? Isn't it even worse?

Again, we should start a thread about "restoration ethics: do's and don'ts"!

[zoidberg]

Incredible work PDB, hope you're not sick of the film by now!

It may be worth releasing this as an MKV with a default track, for example the WS LD PCM, then collecting the other tracks into a folder for optional muxing. Then folks can pick their poison so to speak