A Few Words About A few words about...™ Vertigo -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Spencer Draper]

There's nothing to "restore" the original mono with. The Blu-ray's mono track originates from the beat-up optical track of 1958 theatrical prints. Lossless audio of this would result in an extremely marginal, perhaps unnoticeable difference. As Mr. Harris has explained over the years, the original magnetic elements were destroyed in 1967. Even the optical soundtrack negative was useless by 1983. Fortunately the music recordings largely fared much better.

That's true. I guess I should have rephrased it that I would hope a better source materializes someday-that being said ever since the first appearance of it on the 2005 Masterpiece Collection DVD I was quite pleased that it sounded as good as it does. It certainly fares better than the old analog track on the pan n scan LD.

As for encoding, lossless can't hurt and there certainly would be the disk space available. I do get tired of seeing original tracks being shunted aside in favor of remixes (Case in point the last Vertigo DVD nixed the mono altogether)-and there are many instances where I have found lossless mono tracks trouncing lossy renderings, though admittedly that can often be more of a case of some overzealous noise reduction and other issues. Thus I now have so many Laserdiscs. (Something I never intended to do when I started collecting certain titles a few years ago. You start with one and then have a few hundred. )

I'd like to just mention again in case it gets noticed by someone-if there is ever a new release of North by Northwest in the cards, please do include the original mono mix. The Criterion release was one of the first Laserdiscs I ever found and I was immediately bowled over at how much more appropriate the mono mix felt. While I adore the quality of Herrmann's scoring in full stereo it really detracts from the film mix when you do direct comparison of the mono and 5.1.

I'm beyond excited over this and it would certainly be a treat to see the rest of the Universal held titles receive similar treatment.

 

[Burns581]

if there is ever a new release of North by Northwest in the cards, please do include the original mono mix.

I'll second that. The DVD and Blu-ray mixes sound overall very faithful to the original, but a few things oddly disappeared in it. I recall offhand that an airport PA announcement ("American Airlines, Flight..."), Thornhill's disgusted sound when he finds the hospital door locked, and perhaps the sound of him opening his hospital window all have vanished. I haven't done an A/B comparison of the whole film; those examples just jumped out at me after I heard the original mix for so long.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

film has way more resolution than digital and I can definitely be wrong but maybe it's not enough for 4k? I don't know.

Meaningless statement without specifying what film and what digital.

 

[LetThemEatCake]

Meaningless statement without specifying what film and what digital.

well you can go ahead and fill out the details.

 

[Synnove]

Ramon: http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/ <- Watch the entirety of parts one and two. They will fill in the details for you.

 

[LetThemEatCake]

Ramon: http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/ <- Watch the entirety of parts one and two. They will fill in the details for you.

thank you.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

well you can go ahead and fill out the details.

The digital equivalent of a well shot for cinema 16mm negative film is roughly 2K, 35mm 4K and 65mm 8K provided the films is scanned with modern scanners and enough oversampling to avoid aliasing and loss of sharpness and sufficient bit depth per sample (12 or more bits linear).

 

[Spencer Draper]

I'll second that. The DVD and Blu-ray mixes sound overall very faithful to the original, but a few things oddly disappeared in it. I recall offhand that an airport PA announcement ("American Airlines, Flight..."), Thornhill's disgusted sound when he finds the hospital door locked, and perhaps the sound of him opening his hospital window all have vanished. I haven't done an A/B comparison of the whole film; those examples just jumped out at me after I heard the original mix for so long.

Absolutely! I too haven't done a full detailed comparison but even just comparing the mix balance between original and remix shows the remix as far too overwhelming and at times can swallow up things. I'm not at all surprised that a few things went missing. That seems to happen quite often during remixing processes.
I just was reminded though of the error in the Criterion release where after a side change the audio suddenly gets super loud for a few minutes before dropping back down. The MGM later release is a better version technically though it follows their odd thought process of slipping in the stereo master for the opening titles and leaving the rest of the film mono.

And someone correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I have been able to tell N by NW was always mono and didn't receive a Perspecta release anywhere.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Yes North by Northwest was always non-Perspecta encoded mono (its unclear how many of Hitchcock's VistaVision productions made use of that system). However there hasn't been a home video release of the film with a mono soundtrack since 1988.

 

[Spencer Draper]

Yes North by Northwest was always mono. However there hasn't been a home video release of the film with a mono soundtrack since 1988.

This 1991 MGM release is a better transfer than the Criterion and is mono save for the opening titles. It is the last release to have the mono.
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/03508/ML102228/North-by-Northwest-(1959)

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Paramount used Perspecta on all VV productions from 1954 to sometime in 1957. I've heard TROUBLE WITH HARRY in the process and - sadly - like all Paramount Perspecta tracks, is rather anemic.