Old films released on Blu Ray with 5.1 - what happens?

Posted by: Consciousmess on 09 December 2011

Hi all,

 

I have just seen that Ben Hur has been released on Blu Ray and it has 5.1 sound.  So this therefore prompts me to ask, what have they done??  Surely the technology wasn't around to capture 5.1 when it was recorded, so do they add additional sounds afterwards?

 

Cheers

 

Jon

Posted on: 09 December 2011 by Kevin-W

As far as I'm aware, multi-channel sound goes back a surprisingly long way - at least 70 years.

 

Disney's "Fantasia" (1940) was released with a surround-sound (54 speakers IIRC) soundtrack.

 

It would surprise me if a huge big-budget late '50s epic like "Ben Hur" didn't have surround sound.

Posted on: 09 December 2011 by pjl2

My understanding is that often music, effects and dialogue are recorded onto discrete audio tracks on a reel of celluloid film. This is not to provide multi-channel sound but is simply the way that the whole post-production process works. This has allowed the music scores of a number of older films to be released on CD, even when the original session tapes have been long destroyed or lost. The music is lifted directly from the music track on the film itself. When an older film like this is released in 5.1 for domestic use, the engineers have simply tinkered with these tracks and assigned different portions of music, sound effects and dialogue to different channels. They will be using very sophisticated purpose-designed software to enable this to be done satisfactorily. The results are in my experience very variable and never entirely convincing. Such films are best viewed in old-fashioned mono IMHO.

 

Peter