Surround on video vs audio only

[gvl_guy]

I'm curious about something. There are DVD videos (and I assume Blu-ray's, too) that are in surround sound, but no audio only versions of the music are available. For example, I have this George Michael DVD. His greatest hits, all videos.

https://www.discogs.com/release/1686749-George-Michael-Ladies-Gentlemen-The-Best-Of-George-Michael
The packaging clearly states it's in Dolby 5.1 surround on the back. But is it really? I find it hard to believe that they released the videos of his hit songs in surround, but never released the audio versions in surround. I honestly never really paid close attention to how "surround" it sounded when I listened to it. It didn't really notice anything special.

I've seen others, but they escape me at the moment. I think I saw a similar Michael Jackson one.

Your thoughts?

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I have this disc too.

When I backed the disc up I created two versions. One version has all the videos separated into their individual tracks, the other version is 'audio only' with a .cue sheet navigation file (I did the same with Peter Gabriel's, Play and The McCartney Years).

Anyway, I agree it seems like a lot of work to create surround sound versions of 23 of his songs (some live/some duets) back in 1999 (some 17 years before his death), if there wasn't some kind of future plan to expand the idea!

Most of the studio tracks sound like some effort went into mixing them, ie: they're not up-mixes. Somebody must know more. Maybe there's some info in the sleeve notes...

 

[Myro]

The one that stands out for me is “The McCartney Years”. While Band on The Run and Venus & Mars were both released on DTS CD 5.1, there is an excellent assortment of multichannel mixes on that video collection that have never been released outside of this DVD video collection. It would be great if they were released in lossless hi res along with the entire BOTR and V&M albums.

 

[kfbkfb]

https://www.discogs.com/release/3104886-Madonna-Celebration-The-Video-Collection
This video compilation is the same way - 5.1 DD (also stereo PCM) when the original videos were stereo (for MTV).


The DVD paper insert lists:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1219666/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_smas the person responsible for Audio Restoration.


There aren't any end credits on either DVD (that could help explain how the 5.1 soundtracks were created).


Kirk Bayne