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Author Topic: "To Die For" - Dolby A? Joe Beres Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 606 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 02-20-2003 03:48 PM                     I am showing a print of Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995) this weekend. The print just arrived, and all of the orginal leaders are attached to the reels. All of the leaders are clearly marked Stereo "A". An SDDS track is also on the print. -Wouldn't this film have been mixed for Dolby SR? -Were studios still releaseing both A and SR prints in 1995? I am surprised to see a Dolby A print from 1995. Am I crazy? or is my timeline off? I thought SR was introduced in the mid 80s and became a standard by the early 90s.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-20-2003 04:05 PM                        Many of the earlier SDDS movies had a Dolby "A" backup track.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 02-20-2003 04:33 PM                        You don`t mix specifically for A or SR except when you really want to make use of SR`s greater dynamic range. Otherwise, you prepare the 4-channel master, have it encoded into Lt and Rt and then send those two channels through the A or SR encoder. I believe a lot of movies were still encoded in A after the introduction of SR for the reason that Joe stated - because the analogue channel was seen as mere backup. Also, I think there were less or no license fees for A-type encoding at that time.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 02-20-2003 05:07 PM                        quote: I believe a lot of movies were still encoded in A after the introduction of SR for the reason that Joe stated - because the analogue channel was seen as mere backup. Also, I think there were less or no license fees for A-type encoding at that time. This is interesting, but I'm lost on the above. Did you mean SR/D or SDDS? I didn't know you could put two analog schemes on one print!  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 02-20-2003 05:23 PM                        You can`t (except for MAGOP prints, but that is a completely different story). Joe meant that there was an A-type analogue optical and an SDDS track on the print. For instance the analogue backup on the SDDS logo trailers is A-type encoded. You could also put A-type analogue and Dolby Digital on the same print, but somewhere in the back of my head it says that Dolby doesn`t allow that. dts prints also used to have A-type analogue as backup for a while.  |  IP: Logged Thomas Procyk Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1842 From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-20-2003 10:22 PM                     Didn't MGM/UA use Dolby-A on their prints up until 1997 or 98? When I was trained in 1998, I was told to play all MGM/UA prints in Dolby-A unless it said otherwise. =TMP=  |  IP: Logged Michael Cunningham Expert Film Handler Posts: 186 From: Anchorage, AK Registered: Nov 1999 posted 02-20-2003 10:49 PM                     All Dolby Digital (SR-D) prints carry SR analog as their back-up track. This is required by Dolby. What you're seeing from that time period is the fact that SR encoding cost a lot more than A encoding then. So if a studio chose not to use SR-D, they would take the lower cost A option as their analog back-up. Now, apparently, costs for SR have come down or the studios don't mind paying the higher rate and A has gone the way of the dinosaur. - Mike  |  IP: Logged Richard Fowler Film God Posts: 2392 From: Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA Registered: Jun 2001 posted 02-20-2003 10:58 PM                     Generally if there is a Dolby Digital track, the analog track will be SR ( hence SRD tracks ) due to the Dolby license set up. On SDDS and DTS the producer / distributor can choose to have the A type analog track to save money or mastering time. Most sound elements in post production are generally encoded ( or recommended to be ) in SR. Richard Fowler Kinoton America Inc.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-21-2003 12:40 AM                     Almsot all printmasters are SR but have to be unencoded before the camera encoder that can be what one wishes a or sr unless a srd track is being recorded as well when the the license requires a sr analogue track  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-21-2003 03:09 AM                        I specifically remember now that "To Die For" was SDDS only with "A" analog. I do not know if there were any prints out there that did not have SDDS but an SR analog track.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 02-21-2003 10:06 AM                        Which distributor was that movie?  |  IP: Logged Ron Lacheur Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 650 From: British Columbia, Canada Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-21-2003 02:53 PM                     Columbia Pictures  |  IP: Logged Michael Brown Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1522 From: Bradford, England Registered: May 2001 posted 02-21-2003 03:42 PM                     Off topic question: I have a Dolby A System and regularly show Dolby SR films with it. (films like Triple X, Mr Deeds, new films etc..) It I get in an old movie that has a Dolby A track. Will it sound better that the Dolby SR films?  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 02-21-2003 05:47 PM                     Yes, the decoding will be superior. However "will it sound better?" That all depends on the quality of the mix. However to answer the question I think you are asking, if you had two prints of the identical movie and one was SR and the other A, playing both back in A...the A print would sound much better.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 02-21-2003 09:04 PM                        That explains a lot here. Columbia is owned by Sony. A lot of UIP films had just dts (I think there is a connection somehow because of Steven Spielberg) and no other digital soundtrack. In the first years after the introduction of digital sound, all manufactures thought that their system would be the only successful and therefore no other digital track was required and that the analogue soundtracks were there just for the extremely unlikely case that the practically perfect digital system ever failed.  |  IP: Logged

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