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4K83 - Released — Page 4

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This is already discussed in the GOUT Sync thread. While I agree that I’m not particularly convinced of the need for a new video standard that’s only a couple frames off from the previous standard, the team is clearly all-in on this.

And for subtitles and typical dubs, I do not think there will be any noticeable sync issue. For voiceover-style dubs (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish), it will be noticeable, but just barely. Subtitles in particular often have larger than two-frame differences from audio all the time for other reasons. Don’t sweat the subtitles.

I am closely watching this development. If it turns out other major video projects start using this standard, I’ll make sure nobody’s left in a lurch. If it turns out this is just a quirk of this one project, then I’m less inclined to rush into things.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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theMaestro said:

4k77 not having enough frames can be solved by either using black frames or splicing Blu-ray frames in (I think they did the former). But that is very different from actively removing frames that are on the print just to conform to an inferior standard. I think it makes sense for 4k83 to be the new sync standard for ROTJ.

Sorry, I meant 4k77 IS GOUT-synced, even though it’s missing at least one frame from the end of Reel 5 that was on the BluRay, and I believe at least a couple more from a French PAL laserdisc if I remember correctly. And then they turn around and change tactics for 4K83, adding every frame and breaking sync with tons of audio and sub options?

But, having read the GOUT-sync thread that CatBus referred to, I can kind of see where Williarob and the team are coming from; NTSC-GOUT has two frames missing, PAL-GOUT has one missing, their print has all three, why not add them all? I guess I was just on the side of trimming the two frames so everything else doesn’t break, however minor. Maybe 4K83 will be the new sync standard for RotJ? idk

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calculon559 said:
Sorry, I meant 4k77 IS GOUT-synced, even though it’s missing at least one frame from the end of Reel 5 that was on the BluRay, and I believe at least a couple more from a French PAL laserdisc if I remember correctly. And then they turn around and change tactics for 4K83, adding every frame and breaking sync with tons of audio and sub options?

Is the GOUT audio for Star Wars 77 not entirely complete? Because my understanding was that they chose to add black frames in order to maintain sync with the GOUT audio, which is apparently the most complete audio out there. And doing so did not involve any removal of frames, so it was non-destructive.

With 4k83, their optical print audio is the most complete audio out there (and they discovered that some clunky audio edits had been made to the GOUT audio to keep it in sync with its video). So I think they’re just trying to keep their projects in sync with the most complete audio available. And it just seems counterintuitive to actively remove frames & audio, just so it syncs with the flawed GOUT audio. I get what the other side is saying about how this de-syncs all the other audio. But shouldn’t historical preservation be the top priority instead of convenience?

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theMaestro said:

But shouldn’t historical preservation be the top priority instead of convenience?

It all depends on how literal you want to be. Two frames is 83 milliseconds of a film. It’s also not unusual for a few frames to get skipped at a reel change, so it’s unclear how many theatrical audiences really saw those 83 milliseconds in the first place.

I get the argument both ways. But it’s 83 milliseconds that breaks stuff (but not as much stuff as people think), so it’s ultimately a matter of how much you really want them. Different people, different priorities.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

theMaestro said:

But shouldn’t historical preservation be the top priority instead of convenience?

It all depends on how literal you want to be. Two frames is 83 milliseconds of a film. It’s also not unusual for a few frames to get skipped at a reel change, so it’s unclear how many theatrical audiences really saw those 83 milliseconds in the first place.

I get the argument both ways. But it’s 83 milliseconds that breaks stuff (but not as much stuff as people think), so it’s ultimately a matter of how much you really want them. Different people, different priorities.

Those two frames are in the middle of reel 3 so I would guess 99% of screenings had those two frames. Other frames at reel changes were most certainly not always seen, but that’s the case for most 35mm films in theatres.

4k77 is missing one frame at the end of reel 5. The only available source was the BD so it was not used. If the 35mm prints were complete then it would have been used in 4k77 for historical accuracy and preservation. The BD frame should have been used anyway IMHO.

Why would anyone insist on maintaining an incomplete and low quality standard like the 2006 gout. The complete films as created and released originally in theatres should be the only acceptable standard and not the flawed 2006 DVDs that most people don’t even like because of their poor quality.

Everyone preaches for the original theatrical version but when they’re presented with it they insist on it being butchered to a non original and incomplete standard.

Fix the audio, don’t butcher the films.

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oohteedee said:

4k77 is missing one frame at the end of reel 5. The only available source was the BD so it was not used. If the 35mm prints were complete then it would have been used in 4k77 for historical accuracy and preservation. The BD frame should have been used anyway IMHO.

In hindsight, it absolutely would have been better if that one missing frame was reinserted into 4K77. That way, it would be clearer what the objective of the 4KXX project is (preserve the entire trilogy, GOUT-standards be damned) and if nothing else we could have had these arguments ages ago!

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For the record, no black frames were inserted into 4K77 to maintain sync. The missing frames were located in other prints (or on the bluray if they were missing from all available prints). We went back and forth about adding that final frame from reel 5, but as Oohteedee says, if we’d had that frame on 35mm film it would have been included without a second thought.

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And it really depends on which GOUT you are referring to. Typically it is the US GOUT. If you merge the two versions and use all the frames in both, there would be a different standard and these frames would be in there. All the frames missing from the US GOUT are in the UK GOUT.

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oohteedee said:

Fix the audio, don’t butcher the films.

Fix it for one project, and break it for the others? No thanks. I don’t have the time or disk space to maintain for more than one frame standard simultaneously. If other projects decide to join in this new standard, that changes the calculus, but we haven’t reached that point yet. I’m willing to wait. Right now, it’s just a matter of one odd man out, and it’s not even certain to be the last standard. Who knows, maybe someone will decide the Reel 1 leaders need to be preserved for posterity as well, and we’ll have to pad some extra time on the beginning of all our audio tracks to account for that.

That said, the original question was about dubs and subs, which aside from three specific languages, are a complete non-issue with a frame difference this small. So when it eventually comes time to change things, there’s not much to change.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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you realize 2 frames is less than 1/10th of a second, not enough to make a difference especially if the track is centered, that would make it within 1/20th. It’s fine. I don’t even notice track sync problems until it approaches 2/10ths out.

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I definitely notice the two-frame difference in Jedi, but only on English-language audio tracks or audio tracks that contain an English-language component like a voiceover. But it’s definitely something you can miss – it’s right on the edge.

It may be exaggerated by the fact that the GOUT audio was already nearly two frames out of sync at that point, as reported by hairy_hen in the other thread, so audio synced to match that would actually be nearly four frames off.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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theMaestro said:
And it just seems counterintuitive to actively remove frames & audio, just so it syncs with the flawed GOUT audio.

It’s got nothing to do with syncing to the GOUT audio. The GOUT standard was about which frames were to be included in any given release so that decent audio, subtitles, and foreign dubs could be easily muxed in. This was very important in the days when we were syncing LDs that had all sort of frame differences – those were the releases that sometimes had black frames inserted to maintain sync; it was also important when editions (notably Harmy’s) that were based on the SE DVDs (and later the BDs) were produced. The GOUT could have been released with a laugh track and still have served as the basis for a standard as to which frames to include.

oohteedee said:
Why would anyone insist on maintaining an incomplete and low quality standard like the 2006 gout.

Again, it’s got nothing to do with the quality of the GOUT. The GOUT could have been a film scan, the best DVD release in history, or the low-quality LB 4:3 DVD that it was and still have served as the basis for the standard. There are high-quality UHD BDs based on excellent modern remasters that drop frames that were found in earlier releases – they are not butchering films by doing so, because there’s nothing sacred about a frame or two. Competing modern restorations drop different ones.

If people want to push for a new standard, that’s fine. I’ve reluctantly come to accept that we’ll probably get one whether I like it or not, and I’m prepared to contribute (as far as I am able) to the effort to resync existing work. But I wish people would drop the misconception that the GOUT’s being a low-quality source has any inherent connection with its serving as a standard – it doesn’t.

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Chewtobacca said:

It’s got nothing to do with syncing to the GOUT audio. The GOUT standard was about which frames were to be included in any given release so that decent audio, subtitles, and foreign dubs could be easily muxed in. This was very important in the days when we were syncing LDs that had all sort of frame differences – those were the releases that sometimes had black frames inserted to maintain sync; it was also important when editions (notably Harmy’s) that were based on the SE DVDs (and later the BDs) were produced. The GOUT could have been released with a laugh track and still have served as the basis for a standard as to which frames to include.

Well my point isn’t so much about the quality of the GOUT or its audio, but rather about how complete it is. When I say it’s “flawed”, I mean that frames are missing and the audio (at least in ROTJ) had to be looped in a certain place to maintain sync with the video. Given that, I just feel that a better source (“better” in the sense that it’s more complete and free of those audio edits) shouldn’t be cut down simply to conform to an inferior (less complete) standard. And now we’ve learned that the missing GOUT frames in question were actually in the middle of a reel, rather than at the end, so that increases their significance in terms of what audiences originally saw in theaters.

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theMaestro said:
When I say it’s “flawed”, I mean that frames are missing and the audio (at least in ROTJ) had to be looped in a certain place to maintain sync with the video.

And I repeat that it doesn’t matter what the audio on the GOUT is like, because one can still use the GOUT as a standard for which frames to include in any given release. The fact that the missing frames for RotJ are in the middle of a reel makes adjusting the audio a little trickier, but it can still be done in high quality with software that can stretch small portions of an audio track to maintain sync but leave the rest untouched.

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Chewtobacca said:
And I repeat that it doesn’t matter what the audio on the GOUT is like, because one can still use the GOUT as a standard for which frames to include in any given release. The fact that the missing frames for RotJ are in the middle of a reel makes adjusting the audio a little trickier, but it can still be done in high quality with software that can stretch small portions of an audio track to maintain sync but leave the rest untouched.

Okay, but I also mentioned missing frames, not just audio. Why go through that trouble with cutting the audio and frames from a more complete source just to conform to a less complete source? If the answer is just that it’s convenient to stick with a known standard that already has other tracks synced to it, then I certainly understand that. I just personally value completeness and historical accuracy more. But I’m not the one doing all the syncing work so I guess it’s up to others whether to adopt a new standard or not.

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theMaestro said:
Okay, but I also mentioned missing frames, not just audio.

You did, and I addressed the frames issue as well.

Why go through that trouble with cutting the audio and frames from a more complete source just to conform to a less complete source? If the answer is just that it’s convenient to stick with a known standard that already has other tracks synced to it, then I certainly understand that. I just personally value completeness and historical accuracy more.

It’s convenience and a desire to uphold a consistent standard to avoid confusing people. Until now, people have known that they can swap tracks between GOUT-synced releases (which the vast majority of major projects were) and not worry about sync issues. Changing standards would bring considerable potential for confusion.

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Chewtobacca said:

Changing standards would bring considerable potential for confusion.

And to re-iterate a point from the same discussion in the GOUT-sync thread. Switching to a wildly different standard is one thing, and IMO a fairly tolerable thing. Users who inadvertently use a wrongly-synced audio or subtitle track will quickly realize the problem and be able to correct it. Switching to a standard that’s extremely similar to the previous standard can result in a situation where ten people watch a film with the same bad audio sync, and only one person kinda sorta notices something seems off. We already ran that experiment when Harmy’s Jedi 1.0 used PAL video frames and NTSC audio. Most users and Harmy himself didn’t notice a problem at all, but a few people thought they were going nuts.

I’m not saying the change shouldn’t happen. But multi-project coordination might have been a consideration. Now it’s just weird.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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How can multi-project coordination happen if there’s only one project going on? How many new theatrical ROTJ projects have to pop up for you guys to buy it as the new standard? You can bet Harmy will use it since Hairy-hen and Schorman have updated their audio tracks, so I don’t get where all these other projects are supposed to come from for it to be worth changing foreign audio.

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Dek Rollins said:

How can multi-project coordination happen if there’s only one project going on?

One project? Should I even read further? How long have you been on this forum exactly?

How many new theatrical ROTJ projects have to pop up for you guys to buy it as the new standard?

I think I’ve already said: Two major ones, including this one, is adequate. And they don’t both have to be new. One big project deciding to go off in a new direction is simply not enough reason to follow along. If a second project even gives the slightest whiff that they intend to go the same direction in future releases, that’s fine. But it simply hasn’t happened, not yet at least.

You can bet Harmy will use it since Hairy-hen and Schorman have updated their audio tracks, so I don’t get where all these other projects are supposed to come from for it to be worth changing foreign audio.

Harmy would be the biggest other project in my mind. And as far as I know, he hasn’t said a word on the matter, and I’m not doing anything off probabilities and guesswork. hairy_hen also made a new audio track for Harmy’s last release, so I’m not sure new audio means anything other than people have the time to make updated tracks for major new releases when they come out. IIRC the last time negative1 released a video project that wasn’t GOUT-synced (SSE 1.0), GOUT-synced versions popped up a while later to resolve the audio compatibility issues. So if you’re looking for historical precedents to predict the future, there are plenty on all sides. And the kicker is that the foreign audio in general is fine. We’re talking three audio tracks here.

But then there’s commentary tracks and descriptive audio and in-theatre recordings and a host of other things that might be floating around out there without any official maintainer. Changing standards breaks all of that. Heck, I’m not even an official maintainer of foreign audio tracks – I just have a nice personal collection that I like to share. And I’ll change it too – once it’s clear this actually is a new standard.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Maybe I missed it but what are the framenumbers of the 2 extra frames? And how many frames are there in total?

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Arnied said:

Maybe I missed it but what are the framenumbers of the 2 extra frames? And how many frames are there in total?

IIRC the frames in this release are basically a superset of the NTSC GOUT plus the PAL GOUT, so it has one more frame than the PAL GOUT and two more frames than the NTSC GOUT.

Chewtobacca posted this in the GOUT sync thread for converting PAL GOUT to NTSC GOUT.

Chewtobacca said:

RotJ

PAL GOUT

Mpeg2Source()
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)
DuplicateFrame(141781)
DeleteFrame(68664,68665)

The Star Wars title card appears on frame 689.

My Avisynth-fu has never been anything except rusty, but I think that means if you delete frames 68664 and 68665 from 4k83, you’ll get NTSC GOUT. Really worth a second opinion though 😉

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

Arnied said:

Maybe I missed it but what are the framenumbers of the 2 extra frames? And how many frames are there in total?

IIRC the frames in this release are basically a superset of the NTSC GOUT plus the PAL GOUT, so it has one more frame than the PAL GOUT and two more frames than the NTSC GOUT.

Chewtobacca posted this in the GOUT sync thread for converting PAL GOUT to NTSC GOUT.

Chewtobacca said:

RotJ

PAL GOUT

Mpeg2Source()
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)
DuplicateFrame(141781)
DeleteFrame(68664,68665)

The Star Wars title card appears on frame 689.

My Avisynth-fu has never been anything except rusty, but I think that means if you delete frames 68664 and 68665 from 4k83, you’ll get NTSC GOUT. Really worth a second opinion though 😉

EDIT: OK, thanks.

So to sync your favorite GOUT synced audio to 4k83 all you have to do is:

  1. insert as a wavesource of your favorite audio track of ROTJ (that is GOUT synced) in the script below and copy it to an .avs file.
  2. open the avs file in virtualdub.
  3. click file > save wav

Although I don’t see how there can be 2 extra frames after frame 68663.

video = BlankClip(length=200000)
audio = wavsource(“ROTJ - 1985 Stereo Home Video Mix.wav”)
AudioDub(video, audio)

DuplicateFrame(68663)
DuplicateFrame(68663)

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CatBus said:
My Avisynth-fu has never been anything except rusty, but I think that means if you delete frames 68664 and 68665 from 4k83, you’ll get NTSC GOUT.

That’s right. 😃

Arnied said:
Although I don’t see how there can be 2 extra frames after frame 68663.

It’s the two missing frames of the rebel fleet immediately after Luke’s conversation with Ben. Perhaps you are more used to the PAL GOUT.

What are you trying to re-sync, Arnied?

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Chewtobacca said:

CatBus said:
My Avisynth-fu has never been anything except rusty, but I think that means if you delete frames 68664 and 68665 from 4k83, you’ll get NTSC GOUT.

That’s right. 😃

Arnied said:
Although I don’t see how there can be 2 extra frames after frame 68663.

It’s the two missing frames of the rebel fleet immediately after Luke’s conversation with Ben. Perhaps you are more used to the PAL GOUT.

What are you trying to re-sync, Arnied?

I want to be able to sync any of schorman’s GOUT synced laserdisc tracks to 4k83. So as I understood it somewhere 2 frames need to be inserted. So I want to duplicate the frame before the 2 extra frames 2 times to get an audio file of the correct length, like in the script above.

However, frame 68663 is already past the wipe, so I don’t think it’s the correct position.

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Arnied said:
I want to be able to sync any of schorman’s GOUT synced laserdisc tracks to 4k83. So as I understood it somewhere 2 frames need to be inserted. So I want to duplicate the frame before the 2 extra frames 2 times to get an audio file of the correct length, like in the script above.

The result wouldn’t sound very smooth, but you could do that. If you take that approach, duplicate the frame before once and the frame after once: it will be less noticeable.

However, frame 68663 is already past the wipe, so I don’t think it’s the correct position.

It is though – I’ve checked. The missing frames occur before the cut to the briefing room. After the wipe, watch the first fighter that clears the nose of the Mon Calamari vessel.

If you want to continue this discussion, perhaps we should be move it to the GOUT-sync thread. 😃

EDIT: By the way, the frame-count of the NTSC GOUT post-IVTC is 190799.