"Magic or Miracle?" Technical Problem?

[Mr. Scott]

I'm thrilled that these wonderful vintage clips of Randi are being made available online.

That being said, there seems to be some technical problems with the latest clip "Magic or Miracle?"

The audio sounds overmodulated (rerecorded at one time too loud) and is so distorted that I can't make out about 25% of what is being said, and even less of what Uri Geller says.

Also, the sound is out of sync with the picture, from the beginning, and gradually worsens towards the end. This is distracting and makes it even harder to enjoy.

Is it only my computer, or does everyone else experience these problems with the video?

Assuming everyone hears the problem -- is it feasible to remaster this clip and correct the sound problems?

[Bruno Putzeys]

It's pretty hard to remaster overmodulated audio. There are several mastering plugins around that can interpolate the signal during clip (=flattening of the waveform at the modulation maximum), but they only rely on the derivative of the signal before and after. What this will do is make it sound less objectionable, but in case of audio that's so heavily overmodulated as in this video (sometimes 50% of the time spent in clip) the reconstructed bits will not in any way resemble the original. You won't hear it rattle anymore, but neither will the sound become any more recognizable. The problem is compounded by the presence of audio compression which will incorrectly assign bits to high frequency subbands.

We'd really need the tapes to stand a chance, and redo it from there.

I did not have the sync problem though.