Varying sound quality in video for Paul McCartney's Silly Love Songs

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vahan, Nov 19, 2014.

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  1. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    Recently, McCartney has posted the original video for his hit song. It is not cropped (like it was on The McCartney Years DVD). However, the audio isn't exactly the best. How could this be? I heard there are two different types of audio track on film: A magnetic track, and an optical track. Could that be it?

    Original video, but muffled audio.



    Original video, but better audio.

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18b6xn_paul-mccartney-wings-silly-love-songs-1976_music
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2014
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  2. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    P.S. This posting of the original video proves that the source material was perfectly fine, and that there was no need to crop it on the DVD. The DVD also gave the videotaped videos a "film look" (again, for no reason), and made other unnecessary changes (the remix of Figure of Eight, and the pitching up of Off the Ground, which was already faster in tempo, compared to the original album).
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2014
  3. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

    Location:
    NYC
    Thank You - My favorite by Paul
     
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  4. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    So why is the audio different in the two videos I just posted? Could it be a case of optical track vs. magnetic track?
     
  5. Lance Hall

    Lance Hall Senior Member

    Location:
    Fort Worth, Texas
    The Youtube version is evidently the audio from the optical track. I guess whoever posted that video got their copy from a video dub of the film.

    The DailyMotion version someone thankfully took the time to dub in the actual CD track. Unfortunately most people posting old music videos on Youtube won't or can't take the extra step of upgrading the audio.

    These days anybody can upgrade the audio on videos with their home computer so there's not much excuse not to. I've done it a few times. The only issue is that you have to speed correct the new audio to the old video soundtrack.

    I upgraded a few Beatles videos with nice new stereo mixes and then when I posted them the audio got flagged by the group that now handles the Beatles music and also the video content was flagged by Apple.
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2014
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  6. Scotsman

    Scotsman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Jedburgh Scotland
    It would have been better if it was mute
     
  7. heatherly

    heatherly Well-Known Member

    Location:
    USA
    :buttkick:
     
  8. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    There are a bunch of things that could have happened to (and thus could be the source of) the soundtrack on the film. On the original film print there is surely a soundtrack. But at any point over the years when they transferred the film to videotape for any number of purposes, they may have overlaid the stock stereo mix (or a folded down version of it) from the album.

    When they've gone back and pulled out the video clip in later years, they could be turning to any number of old video transfers of the film, or the original film itself.

    As is evidenced by what has been serviced to outlets over the years my MPL, in addition to what appeared on "The McCartney Years", as well as what he has put out on the "Archive Collection" boxed sets, they have gone to varying lengths to dig out this old stuff.
     
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  9. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    There are one, or perhaps two related reasons why we got cropped videos on that set. It was in the relatively earlier years of adoption of widescreen TVs, and there seemed to be a clear motivation to "fill up the screen." Secondly, related, the guy that put the thing together was, in my opinion, blatantly unqualified to do the job. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure he could have technically done the job of transferring everything without cropping it. I don't know if his "defense" of what he did on the set is still there, but I give him credit for having the b*lls to post a defense on Amazon in the reviews section. I thought that was a brave move. Unfortunately, his defense made no sense and made it him appear probably more inept than he actually is.

    He was also hampered by MPL providing him with what appeared to be all videotape masters. I don't know if it was a case of not having the budget or not having the extant source materials to do new film transfers (for the stuff shot on film), which would have at least helped with the 16x9 cropping.

    What was funny is that there were a small number of "bonus" clips in 4x3, not cropped, almost surely because they were already composed with such tight framing that doing any cropping would have cut heads off and whatnot.
     
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  10. beatlematt

    beatlematt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gadsden, Alabama
    Isn't the top clip in mono? That makes it it sound different, that's for sure!
     
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  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I worked on at least 200, maybe 250 music videos over the years and not a single one ever came from optical sound. It was generally from mag in the early years, and later on from 1/4" stereo. And my first music video was "Find Your Way Back" for Jefferson Starship from early 1981. All mag. I would say 99% of all music videos were all cut on tape, so they never made a print except in the very rare case of the music videos being played in theaters. Everything MTV played in the 1980s was generally from 1" C analogue composite videotape, and later from D2 digital composite and Digibeta digital component videotape.

    I agree. There's a lot of crap like this that happens that boils down to "bad decisions by non-technical people." It's possible somebody said, "oh, this has to look widescreen or else people will think it's old" -- never mind these are 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s hits -- and made the very bad decision to do a 16x9 crop or blow-up.

    Aspect ratios, scaling, and letterboxing are a huge problem in the post business, even with modern projects. Things have a habit of going horribly wrong unless there's people involved who check and double-check every stage of the transfers and editing.

    Audio laybacks (to improve sound quality) are trivial and easy to do, and take mere minutes. Why it wasn't done in this case is a very good question, but my guess is they didn't know any better and didn't care, and nobody checked.
     
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