Is SLAAM NAMASTE just DIGITAL MONO??

It sure is a shocker if SN really is Dolby Digital Mono and not DD 5.1.

Caught SN at Silver City (Ottawa), where all theatres are THX certified, Yesterday.

As expected from this theatre, sound did have tons of bass. But, no activity from surround/ side/ rear speakers.

End credits had DD as well as DTS logos.

On exit, I did check it with the Manager and she investigated. (As theatres are THX certified, I assume relevant staff must have been through THX certification as well). Their investigation showed that the print was Dolby Digital MONO. (I did notice Left Right Centre separation though).

Now, that is ridicoulous. It's hard to imagine that a film with DD as well as DTS prints gets just single channel audio or just Front speaker audio.
Some one goofed for sure.

-May be YRF did make this film in Dolby Digital Mono although film scenes clearly show many scenes requiring sound from rear speakers.

-May be someone goofed at film duplication/ printing stage??

-May be Siver City THX certified staff made an error in discovering the DD 5.1 track??

Did anyone see this film in DD theatre or in a DTS theatre with DTS prints??

Was there any activity from side and/ or rear speakers??

Thanks.

I'm assuming the theater staff told you the truth, because:

I watched an Indian movie at an Indian theater (in los angeles) and my ears were bleeding from the horrid sound (all channels crammed into one high tone channel, either that or just one high tone channel at high volume). at half time interval, someone surely complained, and my ears were happy again with proper DD Surround!! what a huge difference!! I was so pissed and wanted to get my money back but I was too lazy

point is, it sounded really really bad without the DD switch?? source probably was DD Stereo. wasn't the overseas release of Virumaandi in Mono? I watched that at the LA Film Festival, in a THX certified theater. I wanted to die there too. But I sat through it this is horrible. there should be some theater policy where the staff checks to see that the film is playing properly!

BTW, I watched Mangal Pandey on the SAME screen as Veer-Zaara, in THX/DTS theater! Veer-Zaara had amazing sound, and I was expecting better from Mangal Pandey but shockingly Mangal Pandey was StereOo sound?????? Surrounds were DEAD. I should've walked out of Mangal Pandey and gotten my refund immediately since the theater isn't too far from my home. the other theaters were far. although that should be all the more reason to bitch (driving 3 hours for crappy theater).

Could be a cost factor to save on the budget of distribution?
Some Indian film companies do use this policy.

That does not make any sense. I am sure a print with DD Mono or DD 5.1 cost the exact same amount. It is not like there are actually 5.1 tracks laid out on the print. Dolby Digital is a compression format that is laid out as one single track on the print regardless of the number of channels actually encoded. Anyhow a print now a days does not cost a whole lot, even here in India a brand new print costs only around Rs 50000 which would be approx only $1150 so I am sure that there is no cost saving involved in the issue at hand. As for the issue at hand, whether 'Salaam Namaste' is in Dolby Digital Mono or Dolby Digital 5.1, I can confirm that it is the latter. When I saw the film it was certainly in Dolby Digital 5.1, although there is not much going on in the surround channel.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You say only Rs 50000!!!
Multiply that by the number of prints available and you will see what I mean by cost factors. Cinema is a very expensive business and compromises (and mistakes) can occur.

However I saw the film today and the mix was a little on the dull side. I would now just put it down to either bad sound mixing, or just budget retrains. Lately Bollywood's venture into recording live sound has taken a nose dive...they seem to be doing all wrong!!!

Do the Indian 35mm prints usually have both DD tracks and DTS timecode on them?

Is it true that the optical tracks on Indian films today are mono and not Dolby Stereo? The credits usually have someone listed for "mono mix."

all YRF films I saw in recent past, all sucked big time on sound! in theatre! BNB, VZ and HUM TUM!

MPKK, MSK, MP were great!!

Thanks for sharing your experiences on audio presentation in Indian films.

As mentioned in above posts, different screenings have had different audio presentation. Same film screened with back up audio in some screenings and same film with excellent discrete proper 5.1 sound in other screenings.

I saw Mangal Pandey with excellent 5.1. It was so directional that you looked back towards the projection room to see what exploded.

I saw No Entry on back up mono audio track in one theatre and with excellent DD 5.1 in another theatre. What a difference in audio experience. BTW, Dolby Digital 5.1 No Entry had lots of Rear Speaker sound from characters that were not on the screen (the way it's supposed to be).

I saw Chocolate (no comment on film content/ nonsensical film) with some kind of surround activity. Not too much, but there sure were many instances where sound did appear coming from side speakers. Theatre manager told me, Chocolate was presented in THX-DD5.1.

I saw Virudh, Sarkaar and DUS in Dolby Digital 5.1.

So, did any one see Salaam Namaste where side and rear speakers were active??

-----------------------

I have one speculative explanation:

English films with Dolby Digital sound get Dolby Digital lead film attached to the film. If this lead DD film is attached, perojectionist knows to play the film using DD equipment.
I have never seen DD lead film played at the start of the film. Most likely, Indian distributors don't attach lead DD film (perhaps they need to pay royalty if they do attach it??) and the projectionists just assume that film is reg back up linear audio format?? In many instances this audio is ends up mono and sometimes front speaker (LR or LCR) depending on projector's reader capability.

i saw SN which had dd5.1, there was seperation but not as much as mpkk, no entry etc... maybe movies such as khnh/vz/ht/bnb/sn dont have as much dd5.1 sound as kaal maybe because they were shot in sync sound? so they tried to use whatever background sound came in with the voices, and down here that dd logo film is always shown down here but at the start before the trailors even start

I say only Rs 50000, because it is substantially lower than the Rs 2 lakh it used to cost a few yrs ago.

Yes, most Indian film prints now a days have both DD tracks and the DTS timecode on them. But unfortunately very rarely do any of the distributors provide the DTS CDs to the theater, also very few theaters are equiped with DTS decoders. The saddest part being that even theaters that do have DTS don't bother to ask for the DTS CD.


Arsh bhai your observation is dead on. I too have noticed that all YRF films have had below average sound, you can infact add Saathiya to your list, which probably had the worst sound of the lot.

What a waste! If they don't have a DD decoder also, then what's the point of going to these theaters?

Saathiya didn't sound too good when I saw it theatrically, though the auditorium was bigger than what I'm used to (projector farther from screen than usual), and a few other films I saw there didn't sound great either. I saw Aayitha Ezhuthu (Yuva) there, and I believe AE, Yuva, and Saathiya were mixed by the same guy, Robert Taylor. I also saw the Tamil film Anniyan there, and the sound then was also bad, so I think its the theater. I doubt these guys are getting their sound regularly calibrated

Kaante, which I saw in a different theater, sounded great in DTS. Swades had a dull sound. I don't know if it was the mixing or the sound setup.

Actually the problem lies in the inherent weakness of the Dolby technology. Well the probem is not with the Dolby Digital codec but rather the way the DD track is put on the film itself unlike DTS which has the data on a seperate CD.

All DD prints have two audio tracks, one DD (digital) track and the other a backup 'analog' track, which is the same analog track that has always been there since before even Dolby existed. The analog track can be mono or it could have Dolby SR on it depending on the film producer. In the case of Hindi films it is more often in Mono rather than mutichannel. How it is supposed to work is that in case the decoder loses contact with the DD (digital) track or the DD track is damaged the sound reverts to the backup 'analog' track. Now, the problem is, that this happens quite commonly and way too often. This is specially so with Indian films due to the poorer quality of prints used. I have on many occassions noticed the sound flip flop between the two tracks in both Indian and even Hollywood films. I just wish everyone would just switch to DTS which not only sounds better but also does not suffer from this problem. Unfortunately DTS seems to have totally been ignored atleast as far as Hindi films and North Indian theaters are concerned. DTS has a much better penetration in SOuth Indian cinema and South Indian movie theaters, whereas in the North most new theaters don't even get DTS. Dolby unfortunately has become the defacto standard in Hindi films and North Indian theaters.

That's just plain bizarre. I saw Salaam Namaste at the Imaginasian in Manhattan and it had a FANTASTIC 5.1 sound mix. In fact, the ads touted that it was in DD-EX sound and it sure sounded like it (plenty of surrounds in the rear channel). I was very impressed with this sound mix...probably one of the better ones I've heard lately (very natural sync sound, perfect bass/treble response in the songs). That's really a shame that Bwood producers aren't consistent with generating sound prints...different prints have different sound. I saw No Entry last month, which was in DD at the AMC Empire 25, but the surround action was very lmited, with some of it being terrible (seemed to be coming from the left speaker). What a shame.

Thanks ajy1 for confirming that you did witness yourself Salaam Namaste with DD-EX 5.1.

As far as No Entry sound, I did see this film at Square One in Toronto and at that theatre sound was decidedly directional coming from Left, Right, Centre, Left Rear/Side, Right Rear/side speakers a lots of times. It was evident in the scenes where the character or surrounding was not in the scene. Thius directional DD sound does make a difference to the experience. I saw this film in two different theatres, one with back-up and the other with DD audio

As far as DD at AMC comment, AMC theatres state that they don't have Dolby Digital (5.1) in any of their theatres. Their standard is SDDS and DTS. Prints without SDDS or DTS are Dolby-SRD presentations that produce only Left Front, Right Front and Centre channel. And that too, only if the print has this.

That's interesting, rana. I'm glad that we've figured out that the film prints just aren't consistent. About that No Entry screening, I also noticed that the image was very "digitized," like it was done from a very bad digital intermediate. Did anyone see this with a better image? I think when they're trying to cut costs, both sound and picture can be jeopardized.

I'm pretty sure that the AMC here has some DD in at least the bigger auditoriums. I saw "Better Luck Tomorrow" once in DD there and that film only has DD on the soundtrack. That said, most of the other auditoriums are SDDS only, which really suffers for those indie movies with just one digital format (even if they adjust the levels to try and "emulate" a digital format more...I think usually the dialogue channel gives it away, it has that "hiss" when people say "s").