Léon: The Professional 5.1

[spoRv]

Haha true! Now we get to buy movies at 1/4 of the price, but they come with crappy remixes hmph

Do you remember how much you spend for laserdiscs?

Luckily I came late, in 1995; in Italy at the time there were few titles (up to 300) usually in three price tiers (converted in Euro for simplicity):

• 15€ - old titles, usually bad transfers, by Philips
  
• 25/30€ - new titles, usually by Pioneer
  
• 35€ - new titles, usually by Columbia
  

without talking about import titles from US; they were usually 50€ - of that time... now think more or less at double, and you get an idea of how dear were laserdiscs! Now we can understand why it was always a niche format... Star Wars Definitive Collection was around 300€, and the US$ was very weak, mind you!

OK - I stop off topic now!

[dvdmike]

Is there a best way to do a bit perfect capture?

[spoRv]

Is there a best way to do a bit perfect capture?

Referred to? Laserdisc? If so, yes there is - for PCM, AC-3, DTS.

[dvdmike]

Yes for LD, despite it require specific hardware

[spoRv]

We have talked about bit-perfect capture previusly; just take a look into the technical forum, you should find something for sure there!

[little-endian]

Writing about captures - I recently provided "alleycat" with one of my Japanese Léon LaserDisc and with kind support from "AC3", we now have a synced version of the (Dolby) Stereo mix matching the UHDs of Sony and in principle the StudioCanal* one.

*here, one has to reflag the video tracks (2nd one for the Dolby Vision Layer) from 24fps to 24/1.001fps because the LaserDisc audio is based on the NTSC timing of 60/1.001Hz of course (eac3to will be of help). Other than that, at least upon a quick check, a simple offset compared to the Sony suffices which can quickly be done in e.g. Audacity.

Whether the Sony master or the StudioCanal one is now better is
under debate; the latter seems to have better film grain preservation and looks brighter overall whereas the Sony might have a little more highlight detail** and the even higher video bitrate (if that makes any difference at those ranges is questionable though).

** with a big condition which is "potentially flawed HDR->SDR conversion". The
captures on caps-a-holic most probably look worse than they actually are at 150 nits so someone would have to confirm with decent native HDR equipment.

I'd compare them again myself as we could also synchronise the 5.1 mix of the early Integral Version Japanese DVD where however the question is still unanswered which one is closer to the cinema production - "is the Dolby Stereo one the original and the 5.1 an upmix or vice versa the Dolby Stereo a downmix or none of them?".

[ac3]

I also got the 96k 5.1 but it crashes davinci every time I import it. It worked when I tried using separate tracks but it got too confusing for me. Imo the LD sounds best

[Turisu]

I've never seen any evidence that the extended version was released in anything other than Stereo. Considering it was just thrown together for the benefit of French office workers stuck in the city it would make sense. The theatrical cut seems more of of an uncertainty.

[little-endian]

@ac3:

I won't mind being proven wrong at all, but to me that 96 kHz release rather appears to be some upsampling to make the audiophiles happy as I highly doubt that this movie was originally recorded at such a high sample rate (even if, the rational consensus is that it effectively doesn't make much sense anyway).

When I watched this movie after a long time, I was underwhelmed at first in regards to any "boom" (especially in the "ring trick" scene), but I think one is somewhat biased by nowadays productions heavily roaring on the LFE an other channels all the time. Also when I think about the early (allegedly CDS) mix of "Terminator 2" or also Mission Impossible, they are much "finer" and not the "in your face" kinda style.

Also I agree, I take the LD's clean acoustics any day compared to the metallic/roary remixes of Léon so thanks a lot for your great work and contribution!

@Turisu:

Interesting detail. Do I understand you correctly that there might be a native 5.1 mix of all the scenes contained in the original cinema release, but not for that ~ 25 minutes or so additional footage? In theory, one could create a custom version switching that while preserving the original tracks, if it is really worth it, that is.

[ac3]

Yeah and it eats up 5gb of space . Probably about the same for the Atmos .The only track I'm using on Leon now is the LD and it keeps the movie around 60gb .

The right stuff also has a 96k but it's a near field mix.