"A Hard Days Night" DVD - really bad 5.1!

I agree, this was debated here at the forum when the new HDN DVD was released...another fun thread.

 

Someone in the BTTF forums said:

"According to a reply by Universal, there is "approximately 2 minutes of misframed footage in BTTF II, and 4 minutes in BTTF III". However, at best, this is blissful ignorance of the facts, and at worse, it is a collection of deceitful lies. There are many, many examples of misframed shots that are coming to light almost weekly. Almost every scene throughout the whole of the movies is affected to some degree, most with around 15% of the picture being cropped off, but some have up to 18% error to the left and 25% at the bottom (38% total!). Obviously nobody is willing or able to check everything in slow motion, but of over 20 random scenes that have been checked, only one or two of them appear the same (assuming a tolerance of 5 pixels). That could be an average of anything up to 100 minutes!"

I waited for the green labelled, correctly framed version to arrive in stores so I don't have any way to compare the two versions other than screen caps from the BTTF website so that person might be nuts. Still, it's quite likely Universal downplayed it and only considered tallying the time for the scenes that were extremely obviously misframed.

Anyway, back to that 5.1 mix...pretty bad eh?

 

Ah, before I knew about the SH forums...I'll have to dig into the archives.

 

...very entertaining indeed!

 

Keep in mind the rlease of the Miramax DVD was about 2 years overdue.

That gave them plenty of time to screw it up royally.

 

Doug already mentioned the original MPI DVD release that is full frame and has fine sound (albeit stereo).

I picked mine up for a very reasonable price on ebay - I recommend anyone who wants the best available DVD edition of "A Hard Day's Night" to do so too .

 

Yes the only problem with it (other than the mono mixes are better than the stereo debate) is some missing sound effects and voiceovers - for instance "after them" by the cop who gets the carjacker to chase them (or was it the grandfather he was chasing, can't remember).

A couple of other audio points to mention...the mono version of the movie has a single trackd Paul vocal on "And I Love Her", just like the mono Capitol mix.

The other thing...does anyone know why so many of the Beatles' songs in the movie are at the wrong speed? Most are a semitone too slow. I think the first few are correct and then it's pretty much all too slow from then on. I've never found an answer to that one.

 

Well don't quote me, but...


I read somewhere, can't remember where, that the studio shots that showed close ups of the studio monitors were filmed at 25fps to avoid flickering (UK TV screens/PAL/25fps), so it might be that when it was shown at normal film rate (24fps) that would account for it.




It sounds logical, but.... it's The Beatles... who really knows!

 

Hey, that sounds like a good explanation - that seems quite likely since IIRC it is only the studio 'performances' and 'live' show at the end (which also uses TV monitors) that are at the wrong speed. It might also explain why a McCartney concert I saw on TV about ten years ago and the "Imagine" video (not the bio pic - the one that has videos for the entire "Imagine" album) were mastered at the wrong speed.

 

The whole film was shot at 25fps, which is the past and current British standard for motion picture cameras.

 

FYI: I bought a copy of theMPI DVD for $40.00 from Half.com. There's another one up there for sale for $30.00.

I figure $15 over list isn't bad for a BEatles 'collectable'

I also bought the CLV Criterion Laserdisc for $9.99 last time I went to Amobea.
-Tom

 

I got mine for $29.99 "buy it now" on ebay - not bad for a mint condition original considering the full price for the Miramax DVD in the UK is £19.99 (nearly $38!!).

To be fair the Miramax version is currently available on amazon for under £7 - but even that is too much for that pathetic excuse of a product .

 

Correct. The very first time AHDN was issued on VHS & Beta--don't have the tape anymore--they used the mono soundtrack. For some reason, I keep thinking a fake stereo soundtrack may also have been used before the Criterion 'stereo' LD came along.

That he would. I know Ron did discuss the new DVD a little bit, but don't believe we ever got into the effects track.

This is where offering the pure mono soundtrack as an option is so essential, if someone is hellbent on doing a faux 5.1. And you're right, Ken, when the music isn't being heard on the new edition, the sound is excellent. But then the music comes messily booming in and ruins everything. Shame of it is, including the original mono track would have been so easy to do...

 

I have this on a CD-Rom by Voyager, released in 1993. QuickTime for Windows. Advertises original movie, complete and uncut.

I don't think this will run on my DVD player. It's been quite a while since I played this, maybe two computers ago! Minimum requirements specify Windows 3.1, or 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions. I'll give it a spin soon in the computer.

I hope it doesn't try to install QuickTime on installation!

 

The original MPI laserdisc release had the sound in bass-left, treble-right reprocessed stereo for the entire film.

 

I read that the soundtrack for the 1980's UNIVERSAL re-release of the AHDN film was the source for all of the original dialouge in every restoration. This is said to have actually been better than the original film soundtrack was distorted in an effort to make everything as loud as possible.

 

I got this running on my computer yesterday. Mono, nice sound, even though I don't have the best computer speakers. But it's been so long, I forgot, the movie shows in a 2" x 2" window! It does have a larger view, maybe 4" x 4", but it's as jerky as streaming at 56K. And the video loses a lot of definition. Bad.

 

Yeah I have the cd-rom as well. I got a freebie at a PC trade show around the time it was introduced. It was one of the first full length movies on cd (this is before DVD) and to make it fit the frame rate was something like 15 fps, maybe even less. I haven't looked at that disc for many years. Did you have to jump thru many hoops to get it to work?

 

Ken, the CD-Rom "And I Love Her" has the double tracked vocal. There's only one line, "Bright are the stars that shine, Dark is the sky" that is single track vocal, the rest is all double.

So does that make it the the actual mono mix, or the fold down of the Criterion laserdisc track?

jkerr, the install was smooth. Two seconds, then done. It modified autoexec.bat or config.sys, I can't remember which, and needed a reboot to work. It did not install QuickTime 1.1

 

Arrgh!

Thanks for the clarification, though!

 

Here are some interesting notes on the Hard Day's Night DVD from Martin Lewis, the producer of the DVD:

http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/news/1222capvsahdn.html

 

Thanks, Steve-oh. Great link.

"Who were the big heroes of the British Invasion? Well we look back and talk about how it gave us the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, etc etc. Errr... wrong actually. America took quite a while to fully appreciate the Stones, Who and Yardbirds. After the Beatles - the British acts that most delighted American fans delighted in 1964 were: Herman's Hermits, Freddie & The Dreamers and The Dave Clark Five! Yup the truth!"