Did anyone notice a degredation of the sound quality on Into the Fire on the DVD? Seemed to me the film and sound quality was signifigantly lower than the preceeding episodes.
Actually, that was the first episode I played. And it seems like its the dialog only, and the sound effects and music are fine.
I think it might be a problem in the episode itself, since I have a copy of Into the Fire on home video (it was released as part of a three-tape set that had the first six episodes of season 4), and during the first scene with Ivanova and Lorien, I always noticed that her voice sounded tinny, as if she was too far away from the microphone, or the sound was poorly compressed on a computer.
But it always stopped after that first scene. Everything from the raid of the Vorlon outpost on was fine. Or maybe the whole episode did indeed have odd-sounding dialog, and I just got used to it.
I guess I noticed it since my wife and I are watching 2-3 eps at a time. The sound was somewhat muffled and bassy, and it seemed like the video quality was lessened. I think it was especially notciable since the sound is presented in Dolby Digital.
I agree actually the dialoge is very low... my system is usually set to 42 (DB no. on the front of my Sony amp) which is loud enough to annoy the neighbours. On most stuff, action and speech is very clear. On Into the Fire, the action stuff was fine, lots of boom etc, but the speech was very quiet. So I had to crank it up to 45, which is bloody loud, so any of the fighting I have to quickly turn it down to avoid the floor boards rattling too much. Bit of an odd one really.
I know. That pisses me off so much. Of all episodes, why this one? Does anyone have a clue why it's like that? It's the only episode out of ALL the DVDs of this show to have this problem, and it's really annoying having the sound for the music and sound effects be fine while the dialog is so muffled. So then you have to turn it up and then blow your eardrums when the music gets loud.
The episode had problems in post-production which apparently caused all iterations of it to be god awful for a long stretch. I don't know if this was just the DVD releases, DVD/VHS, or DVD/VHS/Aired, but it sucks. I'm shocked WB didn't do anything to clean up the audio, given how easy it could have been and how much it would have pleased us. I guess they are just leaving the window open for a Super Uber HD Retransfer!
I seem to remember the sound being better on the syndicated episodes though. Whatever the case, I also don't get why they couldn't figure out some way to fix it, not that I actually know anything about how they'd do that.
Comments
I think it might be a problem in the episode itself, since I have a copy of Into the Fire on home video (it was released as part of a three-tape set that had the first six episodes of season 4), and during the first scene with Ivanova and Lorien, I always noticed that her voice sounded tinny, as if she was too far away from the microphone, or the sound was poorly compressed on a computer.
But it always stopped after that first scene. Everything from the raid of the Vorlon outpost on was fine. Or maybe the whole episode did indeed have odd-sounding dialog, and I just got used to it.
Jake