Having said all that, isn’t theatrical sync the same as GOUT sync for Star Wars anyway?
No, Star Wars GOUT sync isn’t the same as theatrical. 4K77 isn’t theatrical sync, they decided to GOUT sync that one. It’s only one frame different. 4K83 was the first project that decided to test the non-GOUT-synced waters.
So yeah, if we go with theatrical, we’re breaking sync for 4K77 and all of Harmy’s projects (and countless minor/derived projects). And we could even opt to break sync for everything if anyone entertains my crazy ideas about how to implement the theatrical frame standard. Which is kinda why I want the project leads to get together and hammer out some sort of agreement, because it has the makings of a giant cluster if each project just decides to just do its own thing.
This illustrates why the GOUT standard had such staying power – it’s been used since 1993 (a decade before the GOUT it’s currently named for existed), so all kinds of projects gravitated to it for mutual compatibility. You could take an audio track from a 20-year-old Laserdisc preservation project and drop it onto Despecialized released yesterday and it would sync perfectly. Changes to this frame standard should be done in a careful, considered, coordinated manner.