35mm Kill Bill The Whole Bloody Affair

[Michael Zarits]

... I guess if you have access to a lot of dubbed prints, that had DTS in their original language, this is worth it.

What I find most fascinating is presenting older optical-only prints in 5.1. I'm already excited to show a 1987 mono print of "Full Metal Jacket" with the 2006 remixed 5.1 soundtrack in a few weeks.

So do you also have a way to do Austrian/German subtitles digitally on top of such a print? Seems like a stretch, but not after what you've just shared.

At the moment, I do not have a subtitler (or CSS) installed. I prefer to use the soundtrack in the language version I want instead of dealing with subtitles.

[Marco Giustini]

how do you ascertain whether a track on a blu ray is far field or near field?

[Ryan Gallagher]

how do you ascertain whether a track on a blu ray is far field or near field?

just look at the levels, if you drop it in DCPomatic for example, it will complain to high heaven about it being too loud when it is near field, also the histogram will reveal.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Not just for dubbed prints with an already existing English DTS. If there is no disc in the language version I want, I just encode it myself (assuming the soundtrack is available somewhere). From what I know of German/European Blurays, the majority include the theatrical mix, so I almost always run my shows using DTS. There are a few titles that only have a nearfield mix, and in those cases I just stick to SRD or the next best available sound format.

If my foreign print does not match the domestic DTS disc due to a different cut, I can re-edit the original DTS to match my print, or, if available, encode a new DTS disc from Bluray if it has that foreign version on it matching my print.

What I find most fascinating is presenting older optical-only prints in 5.1. Last week I ran an original 1981 print of "Das Boot" with the upmixed 5.1 track from the Anniversary Bluray:

I'm already excited to show a 1987 mono print of "Full Metal Jacket" with the 2006 remixed 5.1 soundtrack in a few weeks.

At the moment, I do not have a subtitler (or CSS) installed. I prefer to use the soundtrack in the language version I want instead of dealing with subtitles.

I guess your venue audience is fine with original language all the time. The modern ST with classic print angle is interesting for the rest of us in the native language regions. How do you find the visual quality of most dub prints? I understand that they might be a transfer or two away from original theatrical prints. The idea of being able to handle dubbed prints with theatrical soundtracks really would open up the international print exchange and maybe make a bunch more titles available.

[Michael Zarits]

how do you ascertain whether a track on a blu ray is far field or near field?

As Ryan already pointed out, you can clearly see this if you look at the levels. I’m fairly sure that on almost all Blurays with a DTS soundtrack (consumer DTS, not cine-DTS!), as well as on most AC3 640k tracks I’ve encountered, these are theatrical mixes, whereas AC3 tracks at 448k and below are usually nearfield mixes.

This is just my impression over the years. If there’s any Bluray authoring professional here, please feel free to correct me.

I guess your venue audience is fine with original language all the time.

If by “original language” you mean the domestic language: it’s not restricted to the original language of a movie. In theory I can run prints in whatever language version is available (original or dub), depending on what is available on Blurays or what already exists as a DTS disc.

The idea of being able to handle dubbed prints with theatrical soundtracks really would open up the international print exchange and maybe make a bunch more titles available.

Absolutely. And also vice-versa if a domestic non-DTS print is required to run in a dubbed language. E.g. I have a Danish domestic SRD print in my archive for years, and since I finally got the tach, it was the first time I could watch this print (well, and actually understand the dialogs). I could only get hold of the German dubbed DVD’s nearfield track, but I was just happy to be able to run it in a language I actually understand. In this case, I would have even taken a stereo or mono track just to run it in my language. Btw, when I compared the 5.1 DVD nearfield track to the SRD from the print, there was - apart from the language - no noticeable difference in sound. I’m pretty sure there was just this one mix for this movie, and the original SRD track also contains this nearfield mix. It was not a major movie btw.

[Marco Giustini]

the was a "bluray authoring professional" on this forums before and he seemed to confirm that tracks for consumer media were "adjusted" to make them sound "better" - there was quite some backslash (rightfully so!).

I've also personally chatted with someone involved with the process, basically begging them to stop for the sake of those with high quality Home Theatres

I am not an expert on the subject but I doubt that to make a track "near field" is just changing the levels. It should involve a different level of high/low frequencies and surround levels should be different too. I believe you when you say that a "massively manipulated track" can be identified by looking at levels but I'm not sure that means that if a track has "cinema" levels, then it's surely far field.

I've played blu rays in my home theatre where the track was incredibly soft and dynamic was basically absent. I cannot be sure but I doubt those were theatrical tracks.