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Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon - German Version (RELEASED)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

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An acquaintance has asked me to check the possibility of restoration of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. As with all of Kubrick’s movies prior to Full Metal Jacket, the German theatrical version featured fully localized titles and intertitles. The goal of this project was:

  • Take the best picture master (Criterion Blu-Ray) in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio;
  • Re-create the German localization for the movie: start and end credits as well as intertitles.
  • Re-synchronize German mono audio
  • Provide English mono audio (Criterion)
  • Provide English and German subtitles.

All of these goals could be achieved. Some of the progress can be seen in the WIP thread below.

The English DTS-HDMA and German 5.1 Dolby Digital audio has also been synchronized for it (separate files).

Samples:

Opening credits:

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Intertitles:

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End Credits:

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Media Info:

General
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Complete name                            : BarryLyndon_Ger.mkv
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File size                                : 31.5 GiB
Duration                                 : 3 h 5 min
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Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-12-24 11:29:02
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Codec ID                                 : A_FLAC
Duration                                 : 3 h 5 min
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Title                                    : Deutsch (Mono)
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Language                                 : German
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Title                                    : English (Mono)
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Author
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Well, for the start, the amount of work to be done.

Sources:

  • The VHS rip done by that very acquaintance. Alas, Kubrick movies were never released in Germany on LD (at least, this one)
  • Warner BluRay - source for German 5.1 audio. Alas, the VHS mono is of suboptimal quality.
  • Criterion BluRay (image and 5.1 audio - would murder for a copy of the 1.0 mono!)

The Warner copy checked earlier has the wrong WB logo. The Criterion indeed has the Warner Communications logo. Also, it has a better, more filmic picture quality.

The German VHS rip is too low-quality to be able to be used as a source. Any attempts to get those darnded German titles to look like anything but smeary blotches have failed. On the other hand, it will be a helpful guidance for the placement, the look and the timing of the German titles…

…which are to be recreated from scratch.

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Here are the examples of the German tape:

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 (Edited)

Anyway, here is for my intended approach.

I am doing a (as far it’s possible) faithful recreation of the titles used:

  • Intro credits
  • Part 1 & 2 intertitles (Intermission was absent in the German version, it will be blacked out)
  • Epilogue
  • End credits

For the End credits, I already identified the font used, so it will be not a problem.

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Anyhow, here be the first recreated title:

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And the second one (different font).

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Well, Mr. Hutt, once again it seems I’m one of the only people posting in your threads (even though I’m not German, don’t know German), but I’ll say good job and cool stuff! 😃 I’ve done some reworking fonts, but not to the extent you have here ala dealing with the two designs of R’s, N’s, K’s (and your spending so much time on just the kerning) so thumbs up for putting so much effort into it! The CO quote looks great!

To mention something more specific about your last posted images, your “TEIL 1” title looks awesome, but on the second one that opening “ST” on Stanley is kind of distracting with the different sizes of the letters. Seeing your meticulous work, what you have is surely a good reproduction of the original reference, but maybe something about an HD version needs tweaking over what your VHS reference seems to convey? Just a casual two-cents observation for kicks; if you’re seeing that what you have is correct then don’t mind me 😃

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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 (Edited)

but on the second one that opening “ST” on Stanley is kind of distracting with the different sizes of the letters.

The funny thing about it: the names are actually from the original English HD footage. They were not touched at all. (with the exception of added umlauts to be conform to the German names / end titles).

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The funny thing about it: the names are actually from the original English HD footage. They were not touched at all.

Ah, wow! I think subconsciously I figured something like that was going to be the case, hence all my "chotto"ing/softening. Still, consciously it’s a bit shocking to learn that! That “ST” just looks so off 😃

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I am quite eager not to cut any corners

…despite you doing all this for free, just out of the love of the project…! Kudos to your attitude, and hopefully you have all positives come your way as results of these versions you’re doing.

I’ll toss out while here, please keep throwing us these images/examples. Even if people aren’t replying much I’m pretty sure a lot of people are interested seeing what you’re doing, are taking peeks. 😃

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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 (Edited)

I’ll toss out while here, please keep throwing us these images/examples.

I’ll try! Right now I am at a rather tedious task of the end credits.

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More of the end credits.

Just to clarify: they are not reset entirely, but only the parts that need to be translated. Looks rather seamless to me.

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 (Edited)

The fascinating thing about the credits is, that back then, all those nifty movie job titles, “Gaffer”, “Grip” and so on, actually had German translations.
It’s been lost by approximately the beginning of the 80s (when they stopped translating the entire credits in Germany, and just stuck to the title). Even Kubrick didn’t bother translating the credits for FMJ, if I remember correctly.

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The VHS mono audio was in a better quality than expected (though far from hifi). However, there are several serious asynchronization on the track. Also, it has some audio dropouts which are most notable during narration (pieces of audio are just missing).

After some tweaking, I seem to have found the parameters for dynamic compression and equalization in order to fill those things with a fold-down of the German BluRay dub so that the difference in quality is not very notable.

Here is an example.
https://sndup.net/7xt5

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With my CG software I can put an image as a backdrop and “trace” over it to create polygons. I assume you can, will do, similar with your font/typeface software? (<- which is what by the way?) Are you going to lay a close font over and drags its points to match are create a “new” font ala tracing your new scans?

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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What’s the name of the font-making software you’re using? I guess I’m rambling on about this as I fear that in the future I might need to do real font customization again and wonder what’s at the top of people’s picks.

\ Edit: Big blab about font work here (and CG software), a bit tangenty perhaps, IGNORE IF NOT INTERESTED 😃 /

I’ve done similar, a long time ago — '90s-early '00s — with FontCreator (I think that’s what it was called).

Since then all my “font customizing work” has been a little off the beaten path: in my CG software…which can’t use a font rather directly like Photoshop, Word, and many many other programs. With my CG software you use a “Create text” tool; you type into its field the text you want and select the font, then the software creates a (flat) CG object/mesh of that text. You use — can fully manipulate — that CG object from then on in (extrude, texture, jitter points, on and on and on, really neat!) but it now has zero connection with the TTF file that created it. I.e., if you decide you want what it says to be different then you need to go back to square one to re-create OR alter the CG object you’ve created using object editing techniques if that happens to be easier (<-ala if you need to change “STACEY” to “STACY” you can just change/edit the CG object by hand in a few seconds…but if you find you now need “STACY” instead of “NORUL” then you have no choice but to go back to square one to re-create/re-type…)

If I decide I’m going to make a custom “font” (for use only in my CG software/scenes) I would get the closest existing font, then type a line with every letter, numeral, punc, and have the tool generate my new alphabet object, then I’d go to town modding (dragging around, adding, deleting points that define the shape), perhaps only a few letters if that’s all the end-result required…and of course if I’ve perfectly cleaned up the “I” I can often copy much of that work over to the vertical stalks of the “H” to save some work/time, then leapfrog that work to the “U” then “V”, etc. if needed.

The usage method of the end result is crude though: When I want to “type” something out with my new lettering I copy the CG-object letters I need and place them by hand (but am very careful to lock their horizontal position, I never allow them to shift up or down). If I’m lucky, my needed text will fall in line with alphabetical arrangement in spots, such as “AB” “DE” “GH” “LM”, to give me strong/definitive suggestions for kerning in at least a few spots. A cool thing about CG software is that all kinds of manipulation is very fast, so if I need two letters on the alphabetical line that are reverse of how I need them — e.g. I need “PO” instead of “OP” — I can still grab “OP” and flip the whole of the pair then flip the “P” (to keep their original kerning); in two seconds my “OP” is now a perfect “PO”.

This all is really only for titles and short bits of text though, no paragraphs. Luckily I have yet to do a project where I needed paragraphs of (custom design) text; I was always able to just straight use a font already out there for that and let the tool do (almost) all the placing/kerning.

Based on what you said, Hutt, I guess I’m kind of lucky with this custom (CG) alphabet approach in a big respect because my kerning is just done by hand, sliding letters horizontally until they’re right, which is fast and always looks great (unlike Arial’s kerning with “rt” always being too close, at least IMO, needing a tiny space inserted).

Outside of my CG software I’ve also been lucky I guess in that I’ve either been able to find a font good enough for my needs, or any mods I needed were so minor they were easily doable (in Photoshop) without editing a TTF file. But I would like to know if there’s something good, perhaps free, out there I could have on hand just in case.

If you made it this far I hope it was of enough interest 😃

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃