Twin Peaks Pilot DVD notes (1 Viewer)

[Chris Bardon]

Finally got this in the mail the other week, and thought that I'd post some thoughts on it as someone requested in my other thread. I got this off Ebay from the seller tojenny222 for $11.99 US (much less than the $30 Amazon charges...) on the 2nd of January. I was a little worried when I didn't hear from the guy to confirm my payment, but last Friday a package (a little beaten up, but still OK) from Hong Kong arrived.

The disc itself looks almost like a CDR, since the screening was obviously very low cost. I was a little worried about the "3" on the back, but it is indeed a R0 disc, since it loaded up on my player without a problem. All good so far...

Now we get to the bad news. Comparing this to the Artisan box set is like night and day. Don't get me wrong-it's definitely watchable, and better than VHS or TV-but not much. I actually didn't notice the audio sync problems that I've read about, but what I did notice was that the color was off in places-some scenes (such as the opening credits) looked a little too red for example. Finally, some of the dark scenes are swimming with pixels-which is really noticable near the end of the episode.

So the verdict-hey, it's the only way you're getting the pilot for now, and that's a good thing. I've never seen the series before, and after this and the first disc of the box set I'm hooked. Of course, there'll probably be a legit R1 version of this now that I've bought this one, but it's all we've got right now.

 

[Derek Miner]

I finally got my hands on one of these DVDs myself and I observed something interesting that I wanted to throw out to the HTF.

I read quite a bit about how crazy the audio was on this DVD, and I think I figured out why. The source for this disc is supposed to be a PAL broadcast master, right? Well, for an audio mix, all they would likely have available to them are a 2-channel English mix and a 2-channel music & effects track (for foreign language dubbing).

Now, what would have been best, IMHO is to skip any multi-channel mixing at all and present a straight 2.0 stereo mix. But someone seems to have gotten the bright idea that they could use a mono mix of the program in the center channel and then put the music and effects in the stereo channels and surrounds. How I came to this conclusion was that ALL the sound effects were coming from my left and right channels.

Then I noticed that some of the sound effects were slightly different. Take, for example the scene where Bobby is being questioned in the library, if you listen to the left and right (or surrounds), you can hear sounds of his hands tapping the table, but they are slightly off in timing from the ones heard in the center channel. Those sounds, as heard in the center, would be part of the location sound. But for a music & effects track, they would be redone on a Foley stage. There are a number of other effects like this throughout the program. Another notable one is Audrey twisting the pencil in the styrofoam coffee cup. It's interesting to note, then, that this version of the pilot probably contains sound effects that were never heard in the original US broadcast.

This also explains the odd phasing you hear if you try to default to 2.0 stereo on your receiver. If the music & effects track is only slightly off from the mix in the center channel, then parts that match in both mixes are going to sound hollow or out of phase.

I noticed that the music and effects in the left/right and surrounds are also LOUDER than they should be. In a couple scenes, the dialogue was hard to hear under the music. This seems to have been done to draw attention away from the fact that the music is also in the center channel mix.