Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 136

Thats was an awesome article, and great conversation. I didn’t know a lot about the dolby history, but definitely got me researching. Thanks!

CatBus said:

Revolution said:

Is there even a true source of the 70mm 6 channel audio?

We have an in-theatre recording, but those aren’t really good enough to turn into a real soundtrack. They make fine references though.

Err, and here’s my “wrong movie” original answer (about Star Wars, not Empire):

The track we have now is assembled from “true enough” sources for my tastes. As hairy_hen said earlier, the 70mm mix was based on a four-channel master, which can mostly be gotten back to via the 35mm matrixed stereo. Then, we have an in-theatre recording of the 70mm audio which allows us to know the timing and relative volume of the differences from the 35mm version, minus the channel info. And we have SE audio which contains these differences, which can be mixed in at the appropriate places, to achieve a pretty accurate reconstruction of at least the four main channels of the 70mm mix. I’m not sure how h_h handled the LFE audio, but that may have involved a little more guesswork, adjusting and modifying the equivalent SE channels to create something more faithful to the original.

It’s amazing the work that has been put into the despecialised trilogy.

Thank you for clarifying. i think the LFE sounded nice and crisp in big scenes. I may need to revise again as the last time I watched 2.0 was months ago. But definitely no complaints about the audio track. The 5.1 track is amazing.

Can’t wait for 2.5!

I’m not an audiophile, but I found the sound effects for the 5.1 to be amazing while the music cues and dialogue were sometimes too soft. Is that fair or am I crazy?

Edit: not talking about the work you guys are doing of course, just the original theatrical sound seems different to what I’m used to hearing for over 30+ years.

Has Harmy ever considered trying to recreate the original 70MM cut of Empire?

Harmy said:

I’m actually thinking about releasing the next version with english tracks only and then including links for all the different dubs and instructions on how to add them.

For 3.0 this I think would be a good choice going forward, if you’re considering it for ESB v2.5, I’d recommend keeping the usual vast array of audio and subtitle choices one last time so as to stay consistent with the final v2.x versions of the other films. If Star Wars v2.5/7 and Jedi v2.5 all have these audio options built in and only Empire doesn’t, it would really stick out. And you know how people can be, we’ll just end up with even MORE questions to answer about what version is correct and why, how do I put this track in, how do I listen to that, how do I mux/demux this or that, I want to watch Empire on my refrigerator’s LCD screen but listen to the Austrailan audio thru my USB phonograph setup and it worked on the other two movies, etc.

I think that confusion is inevitable, whether he makes the change now or for 3.0. I guess waiting until 3.0 would give the 2.x releases a bit of symmetry, but that’s fairly trivial as long as the audio is made easily available.

yoda-sama said:

Harmy said:

I’m actually thinking about releasing the next version with english tracks only and then including links for all the different dubs and instructions on how to add them.

For 3.0 this I think would be a good choice going forward, if you’re considering it for ESB v2.5, I’d recommend keeping the usual vast array of audio and subtitle choices one last time so as to stay consistent with the final v2.x versions of the other films. If Star Wars v2.5/7 and Jedi v2.5 all have these audio options built in and only Empire doesn’t, it would really stick out. And you know how people can be, we’ll just end up with even MORE questions to answer about what version is correct and why, how do I put this track in, how do I listen to that, how do I mux/demux this or that, I want to watch Empire on my refrigerator’s LCD screen but listen to the Austrailan audio thru my USB phonograph setup and it worked on the other two movies, etc.

I’ll be over the moon with ESB 2.5 whatever audio options are built in by default, but yoda-sama’s post makes a lot of sense. I agree that it would be more logical to keep the usual audio tracks in the final 2.x release.

Bluto

clutchins said:

He shall double his efforts!

19sban is most displeased with Harmy’s apparent lack of progress.

Go clean up your room.

(Jeez, Star Wars Holiday Special quotes, even from imperial officers, just never fit anywhere…)

Did anyone else feel like the dub was out of sync sometimes on 2.0? It could be from the original production, but it just feels inconsistent to me. Some scenes the audio sync seems spot on and other scenes it seems a frame or two off.

Maybe I just need more sleep though. I’ve seen this film probably a thousand times but I’m not used to scrutinizing it in HD.

CatBus said:

I’m guessing that’s the stereo mixdown h_h was warning about. 5.1 mixes mixed down to 2.0/2.1 get softer than if they’re played back on a native surround system. I think there’s even some cases where you could hear this on a surround system, if your TV doesn’t do 5.1 passthru on optical, so it mixes down to stereo, then your receiver mixes it back up again.

But basically, the advice holds: if you’ve got a stereo system, listen to the stereo mix. It’ll be clearer due to lack of mixdown.

Thanks, Cat. I’m working Premiere right now and I just went ahead and adjusted the levels where I felt like it was warranted.

Alderaan said:

Did anyone else feel like the dub was out of sync sometimes on 2.0? It could be from the original production, but it just feels inconsistent to me. Some scenes the audio sync seems spot on and other scenes it seems a frame or two off.

Maybe I just need more sleep though. I’ve seen this film probably a thousand times but I’m not used to scrutinizing it in HD.

I believe ESB was a frame off from GOUT sync (though someone may correct me about that). I never noticed an issue with sync, but then I would never be capable of noticing something being out of sync by one frame.

One another note about the czech dub. One member named pittrek replied to my original post and send me both czech dub versions for every Harmy’s mkv file and I must say that they fits perfectly, so far I didnt noticed any desync…however that’s not the case for the dub syncs included in the actual mkvs. Some parts are so horribly out of sync that it is practically unwatchable. Especially in ROTJ (Yoda closes his mouth, then you hear him talking…i noticed that one part of Endor battle is about 2 sec desync…etc).
So i would strongly recommend to ask pittrek if he would be willing to include his dub syncs to the mkvs or in some other way made them public, because it would be shame (for czech viewers) to not include them.

Thanks towne and Cat (and others) for putting up with our endless questions. And God bless people who do ADR work. That is the most painful job in filmmaking if you ask me.