A Few Words About A few words about...™ "Bullitt" -- in HD & Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

I really dig Bullitt but even after having seen it 4 or 5 times over the years I still don't know what the heck is going on in the story.

What do you mean you don't know what the heck is going on with the story? Please, use spoilers to explain so we don't spoiled it for those that are thinking of buying this release, but have never watched the film beforehand.

 

[Matt Hough]

Finally got around to BULLITT on BD last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had the original SD release (silver cover) which had a soft, muddy look. As Robert Harris mentioned above, now the film on BD looks just as I remembered it at the theater.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Warner should be ashamed. ASHAMED, I tell you. The audio is 192 kilobits/sec Dolby Digital stereo!!! They didn't even both to re-encode the soundtrack to at least 640 kilobits/sec (like most of their other Blu-ray discs) or even do lossless or PCM to get the original sound quality (even if it's not the best at least a lossy codec isn't getting in the way). They used the DVD audio encoding instead.
HD on the video and lo-fi on the audio. Kind of half assed to me.
Dan

 

[Rachael B]

Dan, I think it's mono sound. I didn't have a problem hearing the dialog well. Maybe that's enough for its for one channel sound? It seemed sufficent to me.

I'm glad I looked at this thread. I didn't even look at the special features.

 

[Ray_R]

I can't wait to finally purchase Bullitt on HD DVD! Too bad I won't have anything to watch it on until I buy the HD DVD add-on for my eventual XBox 360 purchase. The film just flowed with a sheer and utter aura of "coolness".
I was going to purchase the Two-Disc Special Edition DVD but I wouldn't mind having the HD DVD release for now. Of course for the reasons stated above.

 

[Member 323668]

Warner should be ashamed. ASHAMED, I tell you. The audio is 192 kilobits/sec Dolby Digital stereo!!! ....HD on the video and lo-fi on the audio. Kind of half assed to me.Dan

Whether Dolby Digital 192 Kbps or Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby True HD or DTS Master or LPCM.....
....you wouldn't hear any difference with an ordinary 60's monaural soundtrack....

 

[Dan Hitchman]

You sure about that? 192 kilobits/sec has long been considered pretty crappy for mono or stereo recordings, especially if you can compare it to a laserdisc with at least a 16 bit PCM track. Lossy compression, is lossy compression... you lose data that was in the original master source. By at least giving us an actual copy of the master, you are eliminating the codec from the equation.
That should be (and must be) a general rule of thumb for HD discs.

 

[Rachael B]

Dan, let me correct myself, Bullet had 2-channel sound. I don't know if it's real stereo, for sure though. Have you watched Bullet in either format? Just curious...? ....The Getaway was the one with 1.0 that I got on the same day.

Maybe Warner found that giving the ole soundtrack more bits didn't help? They proably had some bits to give....?

 

[Douglas Monce]

Warner should be ashamed. ASHAMED, I tell you. The audio is 192 kilobits/sec Dolby Digital stereo!!! They didn't even both to re-encode the soundtrack to at least 640 kilobits/sec (like most of their other Blu-ray discs) or even do lossless or PCM to get the original sound quality (even if it's not the best at least a lossy codec isn't getting in the way). They used the DVD audio encoding instead.
HD on the video and lo-fi on the audio. Kind of half assed to me.
Dan

192 kbps is the standard bit rate for a 2 channel Dolby Digital track. Being that the source is a mono optical soundtrack, a 192 kbps Dolby Digital track is going to have more than enough head room reproduce everything that track could possibly contain.
Frankly I would have preferred that they encode the audio as a mono DD track.
By the way a 192 kbps stereo Dolby Digital track is considered to be "transparent" by most audio engineers.
Doug

 

[Robert Harris]

Why would one believe that "Bullitt" audio was derived from an optical source?
RAH

 

[Douglas Monce]

Why would one believe that "Bullitt" audio was derived from an optical source?
RAH

Thats a very good point. I guess I was thinking of much older films that used optical sound for the whole process.
This brings up an interesting thought in my mind. Would the EQ curve be applied to the sound at the magnetic master stage or in the transfer to optical sound?
Doug

 

[Darren Gross]

By the way a 192 kbps stereo Dolby Digital track is considered to be "transparent" by most audio engineers.
Doug

Doug, can you elaborate on this, particularly, what would "transparent" mean regarding audio...
- An optical track would be very rarely be used to master the sound for DVD or HD, and only if there are no existing original MAG tracks. Budget and PD labels that use 16mm and film prints as sources, definitely, but not for big studio releases except when there are no alternatives.
The original mag would sound much better than the optical track, and for the most part, the home theater enthusiast will be hearing a much richer soundtrack with a greater dynamic range than was present on the mono optical prints.
As far as I'm aware, the Academy roll-off and EQ would occur during the production of the optical track, and the original mag should not have it. Whether they made a dupe of the original, with roll-off prior to making the optical track negative, is something I'm not 100% on.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Doug, can you elaborate on this, particularly, what would "transparent" mean regarding audio...
- An optical track would be very rarely be used to master the sound for DVD or HD, and only if there are no existing original MAG tracks. Budget and PD labels that use 16mm and film prints as sources, definitely, but not for big studio releases except when there are no alternatives.
The original mag would sound much better than the optical track, and for the most part, the home theater enthusiast will be hearing a much richer soundtrack with a greater dynamic range than was present on the mono optical prints.
As far as I'm aware, the Academy roll-off and EQ would occur during the production of the optical track, and the original mag should not have it. Whether they made a dupe of the original, with roll-off prior to making the optical track negative, is something I'm not 100% on.

Interesting info on the EQ of optical sound. I knew the Academy roll-off was applied somewhere in the pipeline but I wasn't sure where.
Of course a mag track would be used for most films after about 1952 or so. For some reason I had my head back a bit farther. I was thinking about films from the 30s and 40s before the development of magnetic tape, where all the sound was recorded optically. But even in the late 60s film sound wasn't considered state of the art by any stretch of the imagination. By comparison with recording studios of the day film sound was down right primitive.
Transparent means that at a particular bit rate, compressed lossy audio is indistinguishable from the source material to most people on most samples. This doesn't mean that no one can tell the difference, just a significant majority of people. And of course some source material is more difficult than others to compress. I've read somewhere that less than 10% of the population can tell the difference between the source material and a 2 channel Dolby Digital track compressed at 192 kbps.
Doug

 

[Robin9]

Really enjoyed watching Bullitt tonight . . . . Jacqueline Bisset.

...Whew. A real knockout back in 1968. I think the first film I remember seeing her in was in The Deep. Looked good then but looked fabulous in Bullitt.

She looked even better in The Sweet Ride. Why is this movie still not available on DVD?

 

[Edwin-S]

Bullit is available on DVD. There is a version that was released quite a few years ago. It came in a snapper case and had a silver cover with a picture of McQueen as Bullit on it. I heard that there is also a SE of Bullit. I'm not sure if it is still in print, but it was released.
Edit: Forget everything posted above. I realized, right after posting, that you were referring to The Sweet Ride not being on DVD. My mistake.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

I watched some minutes of Bullit (looks like some EE was applied) and all of the editing documentary. That one was also interesting because of all the clips in HD which were of varying quality, from Star Wars (looked mint) to pretty bad (Vertigo with ugly EE). I hope Vertigo will not look like this in HD when it's released.

 

[WinstonCely]

Am I the only one that hates that they got rid of the frames of the impact of the Charger in the big chase? It irks me to no end that the car just suddenly vanishes.

 

[Stephen PI]

Originally Posted by DellaStMedia
Am I the only one that hates that they got rid of the frames of the impact of the Charger in the big chase? It irks me to no end that the car just suddenly vanishes.

No you're not, that's why I mentioned it earlier in the thread.

 

[Robert Harris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen PI
No you're not, that's why I mentioned it earlier in the thread.

You're quite correct, and I have re-evaluated the rating of the Blu-ray, giving it a new Fail.

As I recall, there were 2-3 frames of color clear cut into the negative at the impact, as there are at the final shot and explosion, which
reads as black on screen.

Whether someone thought the clear frames were in place to cover damage, I have no idea, but it would have been easy enough to
check against an original print.

Bullitt is one of the great films of the '60s, and deserves a recall and re-issue.

This is silly.

RAH

 

[Kriztoffer Swank]

Huh. So I take it this isn't worth the $9, even with the few missing frames? Was just about to buy it.