THE BEATLES "Help!" movie to be released on DVD

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by john_frogg, Sep 4, 2007.

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  1. LesPaul666

    LesPaul666 Mr Markie - The Rock And Roll Snarkie

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I just got the new Help DVD set, and aside from not having the original mono mix of Help!, I was quite impressed overall. Another choice at least. It does sound like the speed of the songs were slowed down a bit, though. The film restoration, songs and soundtrack music have great clarity, even though it's all a bit on the non-purist side of things.:D
     
  2. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I finally got to watch the new Help! and I loved it. I thought it looked great & the sound was awesome! The surround mix for the title song was the best of the lot. Nice kick drum & bass.

    Very happy with this disc.
     
  3. therockman

    therockman Senior Member In Memoriam




    Me too. Why can't they do this kind of remastering for A HARD DAYS NIGHT? That DVD just sucks.
     
  4. davenav

    davenav High Plains Grifter

    Location:
    Louisville, KY USA
    I'm also impressed and happy with the new remaster.

    As a film, it cannot compete with A Hard Day's Night, but then again it's not trying to do that.
     
  5. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Is it just me (listening to the stereo, not the 5.1) or do the songs start out at like double the volume of the movie up to that point, requiring that the volume be adjusted downward every time a song starts? It gets annoying.....
     
  6. Raf

    Raf Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Yes, I find the songs very loud compared to the rest of the movie (including the incidental score). This is the 5.1 mix. I have to bump the volume down one or two notches every time a song comes on. Annoying and unnecessary. It's like one engineer mixed the Beatles songs and another did the rest of the soundtrack, and both did a good job, but when they joined the two elements together they didn't match the levels properly.
     
  7. therockman

    therockman Senior Member In Memoriam



    That is the way that it is suppose to be, it would be odd otherwise. Think about it, when human beings talk they should be talking at approximately 70 to 72 db/spl. When you bring in electric guitars and drums and bass guitars, the volume should rise to approximately 95 ro 105 db/spl. That is an increase in volume of more than just twice th volume but more like quadruple the volume. This is actually in line with nature.
     
  8. Quasimodo

    Quasimodo Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago
    I'm having a hard time getting past Eleanor Bron's moustache
     
  9. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Except we are talking about a motion picture, not nature. We shouldn't have to adjust the volume every time a song starts.

    Yet another reason to hang on to your 1997 MPI DVDs.......I sure am.
     
  10. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    That's the problem with having such a good transfer.

    Were I Austin Powers I might try & pull off her wig.
     
  11. Raf

    Raf Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Exactly what I thought, and for the same reason. My roommate wouldn't believe she wasn't a man in drag.
     
  12. Quasimodo

    Quasimodo Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago

    I had a hard time convincing my wife
     
  13. minerwerks

    minerwerks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    That may well be, but audio mixes for film don't always follow nature, they are almost always an enhanced or altered experience of some kind. When they mixed the film in mono originally, it didn't have that dynamic range, for whatever technical or artistic reason, so why change it so much if you're remixing for stereo? I didn't have that drastic a reaction to 'Help!' but I distinctly remember getting 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' redone in 5.1 and being surprised how much louder the songs were from the rest of the film.
     
  14. Drifter

    Drifter AAD survivor

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC, CA
    You guys are brutal. :shake:

    Well, I just went to see HELP! in high def and only got to see the first 25 minutes as it was presented by satellite and the satellite feed went down. :sigh:

    The part I saw looked and sounded pretty darn good - nice to see no dirt or spots on the film. The guy beside me kept laughing before the jokes though (and humming along, etc). :rolleyes: Disappointing that I wasn't able to see it all...I'm quite sure I'll be buying the DVD though.

    I didn't notice any jarring volume differences between the music and dialogue...sounded natural to me.
     
  15. Sorry to hear about that.

    What time did your movie start? Ours was 8pm MST. Must have been a different feed. The digital feed here did not go down. Only blipped once. I thought the whole feed was dark. With the theatre gf and I were in, there was quite a jarring difference between the regular dialogue and the songs. The songs were much louder. Hope this isnt't the case with the DVD, but I see others have mentioned the same with the new DVD release.

    There was a mini documentary at the beginning of the film. After the movie there was an interview with Richard Lester and Elizabeth Braun from some other movie theatre with a host and audience. It was OK.
     
  16. Drifter

    Drifter AAD survivor

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC, CA
    The movie started at 7:00pm PST (well, the mini documentary started then). The weather was pretty bad here (rain) & that was the issue. :sigh: I only got to hear "Help!" and "You're Going To Lose That Girl" but I honestly thought the volume levels sounded fine. It was a touch dark I suppose, but not that bad. Nice restoration work IMO.
     
  17. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    Another reason, in my experience, that a lot of movies on DVD tend to have very soft, quiet bits and then super loud bits is that a lot of 5.1 mixes put all of the dialogue in the center channel, and then when non-dialogue bits come into the mix (whether it's a Beatles song or a big explosion in a movie or something), all of a sudden all five speakers are active. This is one of the reasons why, even though I have a 5.1 setup, I don't often listen to movies in 5.1, because I end up having to pump up the volume to hear the dialogue out of the center channel, only to be startled when something else comes into the mix across all the speakers. When there is something really interesting to hear in 5.1 (i.e. Beatles songs, or some action or sci-fi movie with a lot of interesting sound effects), I'll play it back in 5.1. Otherwise, I'll either listen to a stereo mix of a film or just collapse the 5.1 back into stereo.

    I'm having mixed results playing back "Help" in 5.1. My amp/reciever only decodes Dolby Digital. It has analog 5.1 channel inputs, so I can use my DVD's built-in decoder for DTS and then run the six cables into my receiver. But for some reason, when I run the analog 5.1 channels into my receiver, I'm getting almost nothing in the LFE/bass/subwoofer channel. It seems my receiver/amp plays back the LFE channel from a Dolby Digital track just fine, and for any sort of stereo signal, it sends the proper amount of bass to the subwoofer. But when running the DTS into the 5.1 analog inputs, it isn't giving me much bass. I thought at first perhaps I didn't have the sixth LFE channel analog cable hooked up, but it's hooked up and I am getting just a bit of bass in the subwoofer. I don't know if it's just that the DTS track doesn't have much going on in the LFE channel (in which case I'm not getting enough bass since the speakers are not full-range speakers and rely on the subwoofer for bass), or if I have something set wrong on my receiver/amp.

    I am getting the discrete 5.1 channels on the "Help" DVD when playing back the DTS track, and it sounds great. It just doesn't have nearly enough bass, even when I crank the subwoofer all the way up. When I play back the film in stereo, it sounds much more bassy and full-sounding.
     
  18. paolo

    paolo Senior Member

    Try going into the setup menu on your DVD and make sure that its not downmixing the DTS into stereo and your receiver is then translating that into Pro Logic. Also, there is usually a speaker setup menu on DVD players as well. Make sure the DVD player knows that you have 5.1 speakers :)
     
  19. Taurus

    Taurus Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, Texas
    If anyone isn't hearing the DTS track via their DTS-capable receiver or processor, make sure the player has its DTS audio option enabled. This is found in most players' initial setup menu. And make sure it is set to "bitstream" or else it will be downmixed to stereo and then converted to PCM (same deal with Dolby Digital).

    As far as the DTS track goes, does anyone know the data rate for it?

    DTS starts around 740kbps all the way up to 1500kbps. I know that with most Yamaha receivers on the remote is a button (if I remember correctly it's labeled "display") where pushing it pulls up & scrolls through techno-nerd :) info on what the receiver is doing and one of the readouts is the data rate of whatever digital format is being received. I think Denons also have something similar - I think its the "status" button that handles this function.

    Also, waaaay back in the thread someone mentioned something about 1 channel Dolby Digital. That format exists, because my dvd of The Endless Summer (an awesome surf & travel film!!) uses this for its soundtrack - it's kind of strange to see only the center channel indicator light up on my receiver's channel display (I'm not using a center speaker so the receiver, programmed for "no center", redirects the signal to the front left & rights*).

    * you can also program a Dolby/DTS receiver for "no subwoofer", but make sure your front mains can handle bass decently, because these are the channels that will now receive that redirected LFE channel's bass information.
     
  20. vince

    vince Stan Ricker's son-in-law

    "Ouch, baby. Major ouch.":laugh:
     
  21. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I just saw the big fancy "deluxe edition" in the store yesterday.... with a hefty price tag of $99 :eek: I'd like to get that version, but I can't justify shelling out that kind of cash for one movie....
     
  22. Drifter

    Drifter AAD survivor

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC, CA
  23. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    The DVD of the Beach Boys' "Lost Concert" is also Dolby Digital 1.0 if I'm recalling correctly. Given how short the show is, I'm not sure why they didn't just put the mono signal on a DD 2.0 track or an uncompressed PCM two channel soundtrack.
     
  24. Ed Bishop

    Ed Bishop Incredibly, I'm still here

    Good question! I've come across a few DVD's that do the same thing, isolate the center channel for a mono source. Which is why some buffs like the better MC Marantz receivers, or any other that has a stereo/mono button that will allow you to take a center signal and, by pressing stereo, put it in both speakers. FWIW, I don't really mind mono in the center, but what one learns with stereo and even multichannel is that, if the music is well mixed and balanced, the center speaker is the only one that can be rendered unnecessary(as was done with the better quad mixes).

    :ed:
     
  25. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I'm still using my Sony Dolby Digital receiver that I bought in 1999, and it has a "2 channel" button that will collapse (or expand in the case of a 1.0 mix!) sources into stereo in the front left and right channels. I didn't know that was something that wasn't on all or most surround sound receivers.

    I would agree that the center channel can sometimes (depending on the mix and equipment setup of course) be either problematic or redundant when listening to something in 5.1, but I still like the discrete use of it in music mixes simply because it allows for more material to pick apart and isolate. So I tend to like music mixes where, say, the lead vocal is isolated in the center channel.
     
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