Frankenstein (1931) Audio Preservation

[jerryshadoe]

Exhausted and still busy as hell...

Will post more later tonight when I finally get a chance to catch my breath for a moment

[jerryshadoe]

As I stated earlier:

- MixB was English BD audio processed to match LD as much as possible

- MixC was the CD audio

- MixS was the Spanish Dub from the BD.

Those are the only three that contain the line about "God" in English, however those are NOT the only ones I will be using for the reconstruction of the entire track.

I am using the actual, retail BD as video/audio reference and the video part is extremely important in helping determine whether things sound/look right and whether everything matches and whether it is an original sound effect or one that was inserted later (as in, not originally there)

As I look at the video, while listening to the various sources and comparing them to a processed LD track, certain things start becoming obvious:

- some of the foley/ambiance (the chirping crickets for example) WERE actually in the original English audio and I have found traces of it here and there on the LD track

- I have found that where some of the music cues are on the dubs, at the same time there is a spike of noise on the LD track, like there was a splice and it was going from source to source - indicating to me that perhaps the music was there originally (although when it was removed or lost is pure speculation)

- the English audio has noise "like right after when you put a needle on a vinyl record, before a song starts playing," inserted for a lot of parts where they "lost" (this part is speculation) frames of audio here and there (for example, there are numerous places where you will see someone walking and will hear footsteps that end half-way through [a shot/scene] where they are complete on the dubs) Certain other sound effects are incomplete on the English audio

- NOT all of the English audio is the ORIGINAL audio!!! Yes, soak that one in for a second. There are places where I can clearly tell on the processed LD track, that stuff was inserted way after the original audio (has different fidelity, degradation-factor, noise-plain, everything) and the sound effects do not match what's on-screen (there is one instance where Fritz is clearly stepping on just dirt, but his footsteps sound like someone hitting wood) and in the scene right before Fritz peeps through the window where the two brains are, there is a shot of a classroom full of students all laughing. This laughter is NOT the original audio here and if you look really close, it's clearly out-of-sync. The Spanish dub, contains the original audio here which is very obvious to the way you can see a couple of the laughing people move their chests as they breath and the way it all syncs with the audio. It really f***ed me up when I heard/saw this part and I went over it at least a dozen times to be sure I was seeing/hearing this right

- It appears that the original English track was actually a sensational, active, well put together soundtrack that got butchered/lost/whatever over the years, but it looks like it can be saved



I am making VERY, VERY detailed notes about ALL the differences between the English LDPCM (synced to BD, of course) and all other sources, with timecodes specific to frame number to make sure things stay in sync visually, BEFORE I edit anything. I am re-checking the list as I'm making it to make sure everything is itemized.

I have been going over the audio for a total of 11 hours (between 3 different nights within the last week - been busy and tired from moving) and, so far, have a list of over 60 differences in the first SEVEN and a half minutes(!!) I will NOT be listing them all here, until I have the track assembled, so please don't ask. I will continue to post updates as I make progress, but I want you to realize that this is a MASSIVE project now. (the LD sync was easy) I have a couple of other projects going on, a TON of sh*t in my personal life, still need to unpack and organize everything after the move and I'm a little short on time. Does NOT mean I am not working on this or am not making progress, but it's going a little slower than I'd like

Interestingly, I have been contacted about and supplied with a new alternate source of English audio that is not commercially available anywhere by a person that wishes to remain anonymous, but that wanted to help contribute to a better reconstruction effort. The source contains some of the same "extra" sound effects that are missing on the LDPCM track but present on the dubs and has slightly better audio quality for some parts. DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT THE SOURCE!!! This is ALL I can say for now...more details will follow in the coming days/weeks/months... well, hopefully this won't take months

Now, I'm off to bed because my back is killing me

Peace

EDIT: Well, this is freakin expensive: http://www.ebay.com/itm/FRANKENSTEIN-193...236386273b

EDIT2: DAMN!!! Anybody got a spare million?! At least the delivery is free, LOL
http://www.ebay.com/itm/FRANKENSTEIN-193...234c931175

[crissrudd4554]

It doesn't surprise me that some things may have been added and/or lost in subsequent reissues. That leads me to this question. Do you think the missing bits I had noted from the beginning are original or were added later (missing 'Henry! Frankenstein!''s, echo to growl)?? Just the same I think they fit the film better but I'm also a purist. But I guess thats why we're doing three tracks, right?? Also this is another thing I want your take on. In the scene in the dungeon, the closer shots of the Monster waving his arms and growling the closeups of Fritz waving the torch and smiling maniacally were cut sometime in the 1930's and restored in the 1980's. Listening closely it almost sounds like the audio during this portion of the scene was spliced together with audio from other scenes which wouldnt surprise me since the audio for those bits may have been lost or damaged. I have some videos below. For example compare the growls at 0:31-0:32 and 0:35 of the first video to 0:13-0:14 and 0:26-0:27 of the second video. Then compare 0:33-0:34 of the first video to 0:42-0:43 of the third video. How does this register on your dub tracks???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr0poacTxp8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96sUPxlIfx4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbZMFMSKQ2s

Also I assume this is still all to be part of the reconstructed track and not the unfiltered and filtered LD synced tracks????

That's neat about the anonymous contributor. Hopefully that leads us to something. I'm sorry if times have been rough lately for you jerry. As I said before there is no rush with this sort of thing. Personal commitments like family and work always comes first. You've proven very helpful and we're grateful to you but there's always time to find balance in one's life and we all respect that. Good luck my friend!

[jerryshadoe]

POST-WRITING this warning (LOL) : This may be a long read

I see what you are saying about the monster's "growl" and the fact that it does kinda seem like the same sound effect was used in a few places and how there is an issue with whether it was added later or not and it's a tough call. There is also a scene where as Frankenstein raises the monster up to the opening in the roof, it cuts to him and we only hear the crackling of the electricity; but, you can clearly see his lips moving and this happens in two shots (BD timecodes: 23min 59sec-24min 01.5sec right before shot of Fritz and 24min 07-08sec [this one is a shot of Victor and Elizabeth, where you can see her lips moving and on the French dub this is dialog here spoken by her] 24min 12.6sec-24min 14.7sec) and his lines are dubbed in the German and French versions, additionally the shot of where Victor and Elizabeth are onscreen and you can see her lips moving, the French dub has spoken dialog here too. Interestingly, subtitles for these parts do not exist for either language on any source, so I can't figure out what they are saying. Would be cool if we had any French and/or German speakers that could at least translate the lines (it's only like three or four lines) because maybe I could re-construct that too from dialog spoken elsewhere in the film by those voices (assuming that the dialog is not unique to those parts)



Yes, there will be multiple versions:

- "raw" LDPCM synced to BD

- "filtered and cleaned" LDPCM synced to BD

- "raw" (it's processed due to matching the audio tracks, but NO noise reduction yet - in fact, the noise plain is a little higher than on the "raw" LDPCM) hybrid-cut reconstruction track (multi-sourced)

- "filtered and cleaned" hybrid-cut reconstruction track



Ok, so I have been exhausted after the move, while still having to take care of a lot of stuff and I guess I ran myself into the ground because yesterday I woke up with a fever and stuffy nose and feel even worse today; my back is f***ing killing me now too

However, the project still moved forward, albeit just a little bit since I had to restart the reconstruction process from scratch...

I usually use Audacity when doing sync jobs, because I like the level of precision that the program has when it comes to being able to move stuff at increments of 1ms (yup, 1/40th of a frame at 23.976fps, LOL) and this makes stuff pretty easy. The times that I need a video reference, have been very few and in those cases I would throw the project into Sony Vegas. The details of the waveforms the way they are displayed in Vegas is sh*t and does not show enough detail (foley and background sfx are usually a flat line) and it's not a matter of incorrect settings on my part (been using Sony Vegas for the last decade) This makes it nearly impossible to insert snippets as short as 25ms (to fill in audio drop-out that I couldn't correct before, due to the nature of the English track) because I can't tell where they are exactly and the precision of moving the audio around to sync properly with what's on-screen becomes a freakin nightmare. Can it still be done? Sure. Am I doing it this way? HELL NO!

There's a paid audio editing app (although they offer a 60-day free trial and the app is only like seven bucks) called Reaper. I've had it on my computer for a while, but have only used it on a couple of occasions. It's kinda like Audacity on steroids (very much expanded version of it, with TONS of precision of every aspect involved in audio editing; but involves a much higher learning curve and takes some getting used to) AND an option to load ANY VIDEO track onto the timeline to have as video reference (done via a VLC plugin - which isn't mentioned anywhere, but I noticed it when I looked at the properties of a video dropped onto the timeline) which on this project is an ABSOLUTE necessity.

Ok, so the audio tracks that I have (although this doesn't mean I'm using all for reconstruction, but the more the better for reference - more on that in a moment) right now are as follows:

- the 1993 JPN LDPCM, of course

- 1986/87/91 VHS tape (English)

- 2004 R1 DVD (English) and the R5 (Russian) counter-part

- 2012 BD (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish)

- 20?? Polish TV broadcast (Polish voice-over, sounds like the 1991 VHS tape/LD audio)

- R2 DVD -unsure of year- (Italian, different master than BD, also censored version)

- R2 DVD -unsure of year- (Spanish, different disc than Italian, different master than BD, also censored version)

- 2007 German TV broadcast (German, different than BD, also censored version)

- the "OST" CD audio ripped "raw" directly into WAV

and the following TWO sources (originally was just one) that I'm now allowed to use for the small portions that may be and am allowed to mention now (came from private collectors and I am NOT ALLOWED to USE and/or SHARE THESE in their entirety, so PLEASE do NOT ask - thank you kindly)

- 8mm audio capture (German, this is the censored version, prior to restoration and it's missing a few bits, different master than the other German sources I have, very low fidelity and is more of a reference than anything else)

- 16mm audio capture (English, also the censored version prior to restoration like the German print. Different master than the other English sources I have, good chance this is the audio that was on the 1980 VHS tape, considering the fact that it's missing a few bits. However, it does contain a few sound effects that are missing on other English transfers [although just a few, but still it helps me verify more and more as I go] but are present on some of the foreign dubs. The quality is not the best and will only be used if can't be sourced from the Spanish dub [looks like three instances where there is dialog on the Spanish track and this will be easier to splice in then trying to clean the Spanish dub] which is the best quality of the "non-LD" sources, LOL)


I have been able to do a rough match (sync-wise) of all the tracks to each other and compared them all, so I know what needs to be used where. I have over 60 pages (double-sided) of handwritten notes that I'll be using to do the re-construction of the audio track. There is a TON of stuff missing on the English track. It becomes very obvious when comparing the various audio sources waveforms, seeing only one second at a time on-screen. It literally looks like the English audio track was put together from various sources and audio stems (some of them sound like very rough snippets and look obviously spliced in too late at beginning or too early at the end of an audio stem) that were found at random and I can tell which ones were inserted at a later time as they do NOT match the sound of what's on screen and are usually out-of-sync [i.e. footsteps on nothing but dirt, sounding like footsteps on wooden floor and vice-versa] I have had to spend a lot of time syncing various sfx to what's on-screen and then trying to accurately judge which ones are the correct ones. As far as I'm concerned, the two factors in my decision every time are whether it accurately represents what's onscreen AND if it syncs properly without me having to resync the sound effect once I found it's "starting point." It's how I have been able to determine that some of the sound effects are correct and incorrect on ALL audio transfers and I have been able to identify what I think are all the right ones between all the transfers [and it appears that they are actually nearly all there] and this really is a case of Frankenstein'ing the audio for Frankenstein, which I think is poetic justice


While working on matching the audio tracks to each other, I realized something I have to do when splicing them together... So, I have been able to match the fidelity and clarity, "warmth"/"depth" of all the sources being used pretty damn close to each other making for pretty seamless transitions EXCEPT for ONE HUGE thing: the background noise plain is very different between the transfers I'm using... SH*T! So I thought about it for a moment and decided that since I have everything mapped out, I can figure out where to insert noise.... "WHAT?!!" - I hear some of you saying...

So, to make this easy (and since most of the audio is coming from the LD, Spanish dub BD and Italian dub DVD) let's just use those three as the example...

So, for most of the audio, the LD is still the base, so on the "extra" audio track above it in my project timeline (where I'm inserting all the missing elements) I insert a track consisting of nothing but a few second loop, looped for entire film, of the noise plain from the Spanish dub except where I'm inserting audio from Spanish dub (believe it or not, the Spanish and Italian dubs are nearly identical in terms of the background noise, which makes this all easier) and on portions where I'm fixing the LD audio and have to splice it out, I have a different track consisting of nothing but a few second loop of the LD noise plain. What this does is keeps the noise plain of both tracks playing throughout the entire film, making for seamless transitions between sources. Yes, at times, the noise level is a little higher than desirable, (I will be the first to admit it) BUT there are is a benefit to this in a lot of the background stuff that's usually muffled being brought "back out" AND the noise can be cleaned up to a large extent in the post-processing part of this project. (I have already conducted some tests to see how well this can be done and while not perfect, can be done successfully)


I might have everything mapped out, but now I have to make all of the actual splices in all the sources and make sure I have everything synced down to the millisecond (I am also having to cover the dialog between the Spanish and Italian versions, with each other, when there are unique parts that are not present anywhere else and SHOULD be there) It is A LOT of work, but I'm feeling a lot more confident about it now that I have figured everything out that I need to know first.

With the amount of splices and everything involved in putting this together, I will NOT be keeping a changelog because I feel that it will take way too much time as it would contain hundreds of entries (I stopped counting after about 300 around the 20th minute of the film when I was making my handwritten notes) that would span for numerous pages. I'll be able to do this in about half the time if I'm not constantly stopping to log each change...

As far as status updates, I guess for now I will just mention how far in I am in regards to rough timecode. For now, I have just over three minutes finished. I know that doesn't seem like much, but I haven't had a lot of time to work on the actual editing yet... first had to figure out what I'm editing and now gotta find the time to do it all:victory:

[crissrudd4554]

Wow thats a load. Haha I can see youre a man who does his homework so cudos to you my friend. Sadly Im not as knowledgeable about this stuff so I definitely wouldnt be putting enough effort into this as I should. The best I woulda done is use the 'raw' track and also create a somewhat slowed down track with either Audacity or VLC and then just combine the two in either Nero or Garageband. Likely Nero since I'll be able to match it to the video and then burn straight to a DVD. Youve definitely shown that perfection requires a lot of blood sweat and tears but its the final product that counts. This will arguably be the best this film has sounded I can feel it.

Anyways to the sources. Yep definitely a big list. If you want the specifics, the VHS audio I supplied you was from the 1991 US tape. Also just for clarification the LD is the 1993 LD from Japan. I also have the 1980 and 1999 US VHS' if you by any chance need me to send you the audio from those. The 1980 VHS I already have saved on a DVD so I can just record that with VLC and covert the audio to .wav with Wondershare. The 1999 VHS I dont have captured but I will if you need it. I also have an AMC airing on a DVD somewhere. A friend of my dads burnt that for me about a decade ago.

[jerryshadoe]

I am hoping that my results will be proper and I will definitely test numerous options to get the best possible result. (My temp folder for this has already exploded to over 23GB so far, because I keep all the various stages of processing of all the various sources so I can easily go back if I went overboard at some stage with the processing)

I have been doing my homework, that's for sure. Have even tracked down supposed shooting scripts and such to compare everything to, but those are more out of curiosity than reference because I'm not completely sure as to the authenticity of the scans and opinions are very mixed in various forums that focus on that era's "pre-horror" genre of films. Still, some interesting reading there.

As far as sources are concerned, I appreciate the offer, but I feel I have enough over-lap now that covers all available sources out there and the VHS and AMC stuff would just be more of the same transfers that I already have. That and I honestly feel that I have everything I need to do as full of a reconstruction as possible (with the exception of the dialog I mentioned that is missing in English but present on the French and German dubs) and if anything were to be missing, it's not due to lack of sources, but because the audio there is permanently lost. However, it appears that most of the audio is recoverable, although there are a couple of instances where I know there is a sound effect missing (it's obvious to what's onscreen at the time) and is not present in any of the transfers and I will try to see if any of them can be duplicated from different parts of the film.

[crissrudd4554]

Ok this is probably the wrong place to ask this and likely the wrong site as well but this is my thread anyways and Ive turned to a couple movie sites about this. Anyways below is a link to a bunch of Universal Horror artworks that were used for the video releases in the early 1990s. Some foreign DVDs have them as the covers as well. Anyways Im on the look out for more of them since theres about 15 more Im desperately seeking. These include:

Dracula
Dracula (Spanish)
Frankenstein
The Mummy
The Bride of Frankenstein
Son of Frankenstein (with Karloff reflection)
Tower of London
The Mummy's Hand
The Monster and the Girl
Man Made Monster
The Wolf Man
Captive Wild Woman
Phantom of the Opera ('43)
The Mad Ghoul
House of Horrors
Creature from the Black Lagoon

Anyways I know this is really out of the blue but this has been a tough search for me. Most of the ones I have found are from a site called customaniacs and I believe they were all posted by the same user. I asked him if he had the others and he didnt. I asked how he found the others since maybe itd give me a lead on how to find the others. He said if he had the others theyd be posted. I tried Classic Horror sites and no luck. At one point I even messaged universalclips.com about the Frankenstein artwork and they wanted $500 for a license fee. Screw that! Anyways I doubt anyone here to be much help but I figured Id throw it out there anyways.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=E6...E58E%21109

Lemme if the link doesnt work incase I gotta replace it

[IcePrick]

There is also a scene where as Frankenstein raises the monster up to the opening in the roof, it cuts to him and we only hear the crackling of the electricity; but, you can clearly see his lips moving and this happens in two shots (BD timecodes: 23min 59sec-24min 01.5sec right before shot of Fritz and 24min 07-08sec [this one is a shot of Victor and Elizabeth, where you can see her lips moving and on the French dub this is dialog here spoken by her] 24min 12.6sec-24min 14.7sec) and his lines are dubbed in the German and French versions, additionally the shot of where Victor and Elizabeth are onscreen and you can see her lips moving, the French dub has spoken dialog here too. Interestingly, subtitles for these parts do not exist for either language on any source, so I can't figure out what they are saying. Would be cool if we had any French and/or German speakers that could at least translate the lines (it's only like three or four lines) because maybe I could re-construct that too from dialog spoken elsewhere in the film by those voices (assuming that the dialog is not unique to those parts)

In the German dub, Frankenstein is saying: "I know it. He will live." The second line is: "I know it!"

[jerryshadoe]

Thanx for that...

Wonder how literal the translation is and whether the French dub contains the same translation, but in French.

If two dubs were to have the same dialog, then it could be deduced that the original English is that or something very similar. I'm pretty sure that Frankenstein uses those words somewhere in the film and I will try to layer them onto those shots and see if the lips sync. If they do, then it's just a matter of reconstructing those lines without sounding like it was "cut and pasted" together (so he would have to have the same intonation for all the words needed)

For now, I haven't gotten that far yet and I'm just working on each spot, one at a time as fast as I can. There is a lot of work ahead of me before this is finished. I gotta be honest... I have done a lot of audio work over the years, fixing stuff, filtering, syncing, etc.; but this is the first time I am doing this kind of an extensive reconstruction from this many different sources and it's proving to be a challenge. Not impossible, but mostly definitely a test of my abilities:victory:

[crissrudd4554]

Is this the same German dub youre using Jerry????

http://www.veoh.com/m/watch.php?v=v19967214rsDQSZ7p