Frankenstein (1931) Audio Preservation

[SilverWook]

I have a working Beta Hi Fi deck if you wanted to capture the audio from that tape. Is the cassette in good shape?

[jerryshadoe]

I was just going to ask, on matter of Hi-Fi, whether the audio captured from the VHS is Hi-Fi because that will make a BIG difference.

[crissrudd4554]

@SilverWook I'm not sure. I never played it. I just got it off eBay about a decade ago for the hell of it haha. I have Dracula and Son of Frankenstein Betas too.

@jerryshadoe It is Hi-Fi D: At least that's what the cover says. Well I'll sent it and have you look at it

[jerryshadoe]

What's up with the two removed posts? LOL

I am now asking if the source VHS tape was Hi-Fi, but whether it was captured from a Hi-Fi VCR?

[crissrudd4554]

I was trying to fix my last post but ended posting the same post two more times and the site wouldn't let me delete them. That's the price I pay to doing this on an iPhone hehe

Also I'm not sure to be exact since it wasn't my VCR that it was captured on. A friend of the families had burnt my tape to DVD some 7 or 8 years ago.

[jerryshadoe]

Got the audio, will look at it after TWD

[jerryshadoe]

SIDE-NOTE: TWD looks like it is leading to another season finale cliffhanger

Back-on-topic: Ok, so I looked at your VHS audio and other than the "missing" audio on the LD between the side 1 and side 2 change, it looks to be identical. It is a Hi-Fi capture so I think that capturing the Betamax tape is pointless.

Due to the fact that it's the same transfer, I can't use it for the line that was restored in the BD audio (about God, etc.) which sounds relatively decent with what I did (at least best that can be done with available materials) BUT the missing audio on the side change of the LD will be replaced with the VHS instead of the BD because it's a MUCH closer match than the BD. Thanx for sharing that... hoping I will need to use it only for that segment, because it might be better than the BD audio - true, but the LD audio is still the superior audio source here

EDIT: I see why someone could give up on this... I'm barely in the middle of 36th minute (took me almost hour to do the last two minutes of audio syncing) because I've had to make an a**load of re-cuts to keep the sync. You're lucky I'm a man of my word and that I really like this film

EDIT2: Well, it's pretty late and I'm calling it a night. I got 65 of 70 minutes synced. Stuck at a weird spot and too tired to work on it. Don't want to because my mind is at that point where mistakes creep in.... So yeah, I'll resume fresh tomorrow and will have it finished shortly.

[Lil Brutto]

What dedication!

[crissrudd4554]

Thanks very much jerryshadoe. Good to see that my theory about the VHS track was correct. I also have some other ideas on how we might restore the 'In the name of God' line. I have three examples I'll send you. One is from the commentary track by Rudy Behlmer, the other two are from the documentary The Frankenstein Files. Quality wise these examples appear to match a little closer to the LD track than the BD track does. The only things to consider are that half through the line in each instance theres a noticeable jump cut (on the commentary track you can still hear a brief snippet of the thunder from the censored track) and also some work may have to be done to blend it in with the audio of the rest of the scene since they cut out early. I'll send them your way and you can tell me what you think. Worse comes to worse we'll just stick with the BD for that particular scene.

[jerryshadoe]

Ok, so now I understand why even on the BD audio, part of this line (the censored part in earlier releases) drops slightly in quality, especially after hearing those three samples. Well, actually two samples. The two from the documentary are identical and there is a much bigger quality dip on those versus the commentary track. (it's least noticeable on the BD due to the filtration of the entire track that they did for the release. Unfortunately, it was done incorrectly and I will post a detailed write up on that when I'm done syncing, but YES the BD audio is INFERIOR)

It seems to me (keep in mind that this is speculation based on my observations of the audio sources) that this line was "restored" from a completely different source, possibly a 16mm/8mm dupe or something of lower fidelity than the rest. The difference is quality, fidelity, dynamic range is staggering compared to the rest of the line. It's like they spliced in audio from a 3rd-4th generation VHS copy to a 1st gen VHS recording (no, I'm not saying that the audio is sourced from VHS on the BD, just illustrating the difference in quality; you could also say it's like comparing a 24bit Vinyl rip to a 56kbps mp3 - the difference is THAT obvious)

Anyway, because of the way there is a ton of bleed of the thunder crack during the dialog (in all samples) and I can't use it. I tried to mess around with it, but separating it here is impossible. Furthermore, I tried to splice in the audio after the thunder crack for the rest of the line (since the commentary track does sound slightly better than the original BD audio) but it made the small snippet from the BD audio stand out WAY too much and was not the way to go either. I was still unsatisfied with the transition (it was not completely seamless) and I refiltered the BD audio that I was splicing in. It's now a nearly perfect match (in fact, I'm considering running the entire BD track through the series of filters I used for this to see if it can be salvaged, but that would be a separate thing from the LD sync)

Now, I'm off to cook my daughters some dinner and later tonight I'll finish working on this