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Preserving the "German" Original Trilogy (Released)

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 (Edited)

Hi guys!

I am from Austria (Schwarzenegger,Mozart,…) and I would love to help preserving the Original Trilogy in German Language. I have little to none hope, that the Official OUT DVD release will satisfy any real “Star Wars” Fan.

As a sidenote, the Trilogy was once called “Krieg der Sterne” in german.

Until now, no Preservation Project (non-SE) features german audio. I want to change that.

I will concentrate on the audio-track, title-crawl, alien-subtitles and german subtitles. I would like to use the Video from another PAL Project or the OUT-DVD or the X0-Project (NTSC2PAL maybe?). But that step is still far far away from now.

At the moment I have a TBC-1000, a really good capture device called PMS PDI Deluxe (same used by X0-Project), and high quality a/v cables.
A well equipped PC with every software, a student can dream off (CCE SP, DVDMaestro,…).

Still need to get a laserdisc player, borrow or buy a soundcard with digital in, and need to collect all the german laserdisc releases. I know a heavy (private) laserdisc-collector here in vienna, which could be of help here, otherwise I will have to use ebay.

I want to do a clean digital pcm audio capture (not analog) from all the releases. When only analogue audio is avaiable, I want to do a real good analog capture (maybe with 96khz pcm digitizing). I will capture the video as a guidetrack (for syncing) and of course to get the original crawl and alien-subtitles of each release. The alien-subtitles changed from release to release. There were errors in the title-crawl as well, even in the title itsself.
 

During the project I want to learn a lot about the audio-differences between each laserdisc-release. Seek out the Changes due to the Different-Mixes. Maybe I even find a pitch-preserved version. That would be cool!
 

The finished project should feature:
*dual layer dvd-r
*widescreen pal video with german title-crawl
*pcm german audio track
*selectable alien-subtitles
*selectable german-subtitle (maybe english also)

If I find different audio-mixes, all will be featured off course, maybe on seperated discs.

It should become the preferable disc if you want to watch Starwars in German!

Laserdisc THX - 1995 CAV German Edition:
Digital PCM Surround Audio, Letterboxed 2.35:1, CAV, THX
http://japanld.free.fr/cover/36701-36800/36798.jpg
http://japanld.free.fr/cover/36701-36800/36799.jpg
http://japanld.free.fr/cover/35101-35200/35197.jpg
http://japanld.free.fr/laserdisc.php?id=36798
http://japanld.free.fr/laserdisc.php?id=36799
http://japanld.free.fr/laserdisc.php?id=35197

 

Laserdisc - 1993 CLV Silverscreen Edition:
Digital PCM Surround Audio, Letterboxed 2.35:1, CLV, non-THX!
http://japanld.free.fr/cover/33801-33900/33866.jpg
http://japanld.free.fr/cover/34901-35000/34926.jpg
http://japanld.free.fr/cover/34801-34900/34893.jpg
http://japanld.free.fr/laserdisc.php?id=33866
http://japanld.free.fr/laserdisc.php?id=34926
http://japanld.free.fr/laserdisc.php?id=34893

 

Laserdisc - 1982 - Only “Episode 4” got released:

Analog Stereo Audio, Fullscreen, CLV, CBS-Fox
http://laserdisc.holin.de/laserdisc_deutsch.pdf (5 MB catalog pdf-file)
Video 2000 Tape - ANH Broadcast - 15.3.1990 on channel Sat1
Video 2000 Tape - ESB Broadcast - 1990 on channel Sat1 - Longplay Recording
Video 2000 Tape - ROTJ Broadcast - 1990 on channel Sat1
from the german free-tv broadcast premiere, complete with Intro, broadcast was cropped to 1:85:1 Widescreen, maybe it was even recorded in stereo. i still have the original PAL-V2000 tapes but my “new” v2000-recorder has only fbas out, no longplay, and no stereo.

 

Are there any more good sources, I forgot about? Of course there are plenty of vhs-releases to check through.

Has anyone here any info on the several releases? In terms of infos about audio mix used, audio quality,…
Does time-compression has any consequense on the length of the film? Does time compressed mean, i can’t sync it to a non-time compressed video-track?

many thanks, r2d2

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The Blam1 Star Wars site currently only lists the 1982 German release but are adding more all the time.

I have had a quick look at ebay.de and the VHS sets look to be very reasonable to buy. For audio comparison, you could look at some of those and get the audio only onto your PC to work with. Just a thought.

4 - 5 - 3 - 1 - 6 - 2

Discuss…

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This sound like a realy cool roject. I'm excited to see the results
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there were three german releases not released in a set but individualy. They were widescreen and were labeled as silver screen collection. Don't know the quality of the master used. According to some site I read somewhere can't remember where. probalbly internet movie database , they use the same master as the 1994 french release and earlier french pal releases, which is been told to me are crap because the used an ntsc source and transfered it to pal. The 1995 widescreen German Faces releases are probalbly the best version of the original trilogy in german, they never got the definitive collection in germany, france or the u.k. Oddly enough though most of europe got the ISD Executor box set taken from the same source as the laserdisc in lower quality obviously.

two of the more rare sets are the french coffret collector from 1994 (I own this one)

and of course the krieg der sterne trilogie silver screen collection. someone was selling all three on ebay as a one shot deal too bad i'm broke because I really wanted this set.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Video 2000 rocks!

If something is time-compressed you can't sync it up directly, you'd have to un-time-compress it first. As far as I know they didn't tamper with the pitch on the time-compressed releases, so you could probably just stretch it up. And don't you think you should include an English track too? It's nice to preserve the audio tracks you grew up with, but you prefer the original audio too right? I think changing all the voices and making them German would be much worse then any of the SE changes...

That's no moon. It's a LaserDisc.

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russs15 wrote:

I have had a quick look at ebay.de and the VHS sets look to be very reasonable to buy. For audio comparison, you could look at some of those and get the audio only onto your PC to work with. Just a thought.
Yeah, thought about that, too. I got the very first Star Wars [Krieg der Sterne] on Original VHS-Tape, when I was a kid. It is the Full Screen, Silverscreen Edition from ~1990, and has Dolby Stereo Surround. To your all surprise, there is no Episode 4 in the Title, and no "A new Hope" oder "Eine neue Hoffnung", just:

Krieg der Sterne {Star Wars}

Es herrscht Bürgerkrieg... {It is a period of civil war...}

So besides, its Full Screen and maybe Time-compressed (still have to figure out, what that really means), its seams to be the original cinema version in german. Even the very first tv-broadcast in 1990 was without "Episode 4" in the title. Yesterday I read in some german forum, that the subtitle "Episode IV - Eine neue Hoffnung" was not added until 1995 in german. Seems cool to me!

I Just wrote a mail to the private laserdisc collector I talked about. I am sure he has several of those laserdiscs, maybe even all of them.

Grinder wrote:
And don't you think you should include an English track too? It's nice to preserve the audio tracks you grew up with, but you prefer the original audio too right?
There will be at least an DD2.0 English Track onboard. Of course, I prefer the original audio but it seems that it was a long time ago, I watched the unaltered trilogy in german.

Thanks for the many responses.

Update as soon as the laserdisc collector replies.
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I also cant wait!
Since im from germany!
Ich habe auch mir schon imperium mit einer deutschen spur gesyncec
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5543/yodabg2.png
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Originally posted by: R2D2Yeah, thought about that, too. I got the very first Star Wars [Krieg der Sterne] on Original VHS-Tape, when I was a kid. It is the Full Screen, Silverscreen Edition from ~1990, and has Dolby Stereo Surround. To your all surprise, there is no Episode 4 in the Title, and no "A new Hope" oder "Eine neue Hoffnung", just:

Krieg der Sterne {Star Wars}

Es herrscht Bürgerkrieg... {It is a period of civil war...}

So besides, its Full Screen and maybe Time-compressed (still have to figure out, what that really means), its seams to be the original cinema version in german. Even the very first tv-broadcast in 1990 was without "Episode 4" in the title.


Yep, the version running on Sat.1 in 1990 was the first time I saw Star Wars (Krieg der Sterne). Up until the 1995 THX laserdisc/VHS release, every Krieg der Sterne release had the 1978 German textcrawl without Episode IV, like the 1977 original release. They added it using a cheap video titler on the 1995 THX release, where the whole textcrawl was replaced that way. In the 1997 SE, they included it properly, still called "Krieg der Sterne". For the 2004 SE, they omitted "Krieg der Sterne" and made a German "Star Wars" textcrawl.

Also the German audio is quite interesting. It has always been based on the english mono mix, and includes all lines and soundeffects from this mix, including the 2004 SE. They messed it up quite badly for the DD 5.1 remix. They did not have the seperate dialogue tracks anymore, so they had to extract the german voices using some propritary software, which adding a very annoying lisping in some scenes.

So in order to recreate the "original" German version, one would have to find the 1978 textcrawl in widescreen, and insert it in front of a better video source (1995 PAL THX edition). Were the 1990 German laserdiscs in widescreen?


Yesterday I read in some german forum, that the subtitle "Episode IV - Eine neue Hoffnung" was not added until 1995 in german. Seems cool to me!


Yes, this is correct. My 1995 german THX laserdisc set has it, edited in quite badly.


There will be at least an DD2.0 English Track onboard. Of course, I prefer the original audio but it seems that it was a long time ago, I watched the unaltered trilogy in german.


I think it´s a worthy effort to preserve the german ( or any other foreign) language version, since these are almost as old as the movies themselves. The German dub was done in late 1977, and they put a lot of effort into it, since it is a really good dub which captures the spirit of the movies really well. And of course the original localized textcrawl made by Lucasfilm themselves.
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I have the german VHS Cassetes transvered to DVD with my Sony HDD Recorder.
I could give you the Intro. (Krieg der Sterne ETC). Or somebody can build on there self with the PC and After Effects ?
I know that people in the Board can do that!
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5543/yodabg2.png
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Here are some comparison shots between the crawl of the German THX version and the German 1997SE:

http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/3810/thx10ps.jpg

http://img464.imageshack.us/img464/2026/se19nw.jpg

As the THX-release was only released on Video and LD, and being years before 16:9-TVs, I guess the misplacement of the intro-text wasn't this obvious on 4:3 screens.

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5052/thx22zs.jpg

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/9653/se25yk.jpg

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/4813/thx33gl.jpg

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/9217/se34rx.jpg

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3082/thx47ih.jpg

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/7724/se43hw.jpg

http://img466.imageshack.us/img466/130/thx53yi.jpg

http://img332.imageshack.us/img332/660/se58rq.jpg

The quality of the THX-crawl is really horrible... the perspective of the text isn't right, compared to the perspective of the complete crawl, and there's still a typo ("nach Haus" instead of "nach Hause" as in the SE-crawl). Also, the crawl has been created interlaced, since those versions were only released on TV-media (VHS and LD), and progressive TV-sets or beamers didn't exist back then.



Coming to "Das Imperium schlägt zurück" and "Die Rückkehr der Jedi-Ritter", their THX-crawls look just as crappy as the ANH one:

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/4221/esbthx7as.jpg

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/935/rotjthx7os.jpg

The SE titles though show something interesting... here are all three:

ANH
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/9653/se25yk.jpg

TESB
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/3205/esblogo3ma.jpg

ROTJ
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/9278/rotjlogo8bn.jpg

Obviously the title-cards for both "Imperium" and "Jedi" weren't created with as much care as the one for ANH (and it looks like the same one has been used for TESB and ROTJ, with just some color variation). The same applies to the crawls:

http://img282.imageshack.us/img282/8931/esbcrawl4mz.jpg

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/4740/rotjcrawl5ma.jpg

Though this time the chapter name "Das Imperium schlägt zurück" isn't mispelled as in the original crawl from 1980 as "züruck", it says "Tattuin" instead of "Tatooine" in the "Jedi"-crawl, though I am not sure how it was spelled in the 1983 crawl.
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Thanks for all the infos and many thanks for the screenshot comparison laserschwert.

What about the ESB & ROTJ title-crawls of the 1995 THX Set? Are those fucked up, too?

Ideas for Extras for a Bonus Disc:

* Trailers:
I've got the german ESB, ROTJ and the Ewoks Trailer on my Silverscreen VHS Release.
(As a sidenote, not a single german trailer has been released on any official SW-DVD.)

* Broadcast premiere Intros:
from 1990 of ANH and ROTJ. ESB is still unplayable cause it's recorded in Longplay.

* Making Of:
I once downloaded from emule "Die Story vom Krieg der Sterne", ~400 MB, which is a german dubbed vhs-capture of "Making of Star Wars". I think, I am able to mix the audio with the videotrack from one of the laserdisc captures.

* Other German SW-Stuff:
I also got a VHS-Tape with lots of stuff from the SE (Making Of SE, TV-Spots, News-Reports,...).
Maybe some TPM-Stuff from 1999 as well (I think there was once a german TPM trailer shown on VOX in a program called Starwars-Nacht).

I also recorded last year with my previous TV-Capture card:

Empire of Dreams - german Broadcast from PRO7
- the 2004 Bonus DVD only features english audio with german subtitles
- featuring many original actor synchron voices for the interviews
Mythologies of SW - german
Story of ILM - german
Story of SW - german

And I already compiled 2 DVDs with german SW-Ep3 TV-Reports (TV-Berichte) with a super cool menu: 90min+60min

It's also interesting that Ewoks got newly synchronized here, when officially released on DVD. I might catch the original synchronization on the next broadcast.

Tell me, what you think of the different opportunities.
If anyone has found any german SW-trailer, please post some info here. It would be cool to have a nice collection on DVD.
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are the dvd shots! fromt the premiere World Edition ?
on my 1995 vhs casetes are interviews with George Lucas before Every Film Concerning each Film and Also the to come Special Editon and the Prequel Trilogy.
Very Funny he says that they will bring all films in one year!
All Interviews are synced in German
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5543/yodabg2.png
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Originally posted by: R2D2
Thanks for all the infos and many thanks for the screenshot comparison laserschwert.


* Making Of:
I once downloaded from emule "Die Story vom Krieg der Sterne", ~400 MB, which is a german dubbed vhs-capture of "Making of Star Wars". I think, I am able to mix the audio with the videotrack from one of the laserdisc captures.
.


this one i also watched as a kid! its really nice!

Here some Pictures from the Interview:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6915/swinterview25ut.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8968/swinterview33mk.jpg
http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/1295/swinterview42uh.jpg
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4979/swinterview59tn.jpg
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/7941/swinterview18ry.jpg
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5543/yodabg2.png
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Originally posted by: Grinder
As far as I know they didn't tamper with the pitch on the time-compressed releases, so you could probably just stretch it up.
I'm off-topic since they're neither German nor PAL, but for comparison
the time-compressed '82 NTSC LDs preserved by dark_jedi & The Starkiller aren't pitch-corrected.
They're slightly high-pitched, sort of like spinning a record or analog audio tape too fast.

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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I wanted to update you all on the progress of the project.

The Laserdisc Collector, I was talking about in the first post, has given up his collection and players several years ago. So he can't help me on my project.

I was able to buy the German THX Krieg der Sterne Laserdisc Set from 1995.
I also bought ESB and ROTJ - 1993 German Laserdiscs (Silverscreen Collection Cover).
What I am still missing is the ANH - 1993 Laserdisc!
And I haven't found the ANH - 1982 Laserdisc (Bildplatte) yet.

Does anyone here have one of the 2 missing laserdiscs?

Furthermore I bought several different Orignal Trilogies VHS Sets to check the Audio for differences etc...
Within is the very first VHS Release of "Krieg der Sterne" from 1982.
Also got a German VHS of "Making of Starwars" called "Die Story vom Krieg der Sterne".
The "Making of" will be definately captured for the bonus disc!

I will receive all items I bought on ebay in the next two weeks, so the real project will begin after that.

I am still searching for a good enough Laserdisc Player.
Do you think, there are quality differences on the PCM-Output between several players?
As I said before, there is a great chance, I will not use my videotrack but X0/OUT/Other PAL-Projects.
Of course I will capture video also as a guidetrack but it will later be exchanged by another mpeg2-track.
I won't need to invest that much in the player. Am I right?

Any suggestions?
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Update on project-status:

I've now received the following Laserdisc Titles:

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/4150/ldep41995smallgp9.jpg
ANH [Krieg der Sterne], Laserdisc, THX Edition, 1995, Widescreen, CAV

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/4418/ldep51995smalllm2.jpg
ESB [Das Imperium schlägt zurück], Laserdisc, THX Edition, 1995, Widescreen, CAV

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/9288/ldep61995smalluv3.jpg
ROTJ [Die Rückkehr der Jedi-Ritter], Laserdisc, THX Edition, 1995, Widescreen, CAV

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/9785/ldep51993smallbg5.jpg
ESB [Das Imperium schlägt zurück], Laserdisc, Silver Screen Collection, 1993, Widescreen

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/1964/ldep61993smallej6.jpg
ROTJ [Die Rückkehr der Jedi-Ritter], Laserdisc, Silver Screen Collection, 1993, Widescreen


Still missing the very first LD of the Silver Screen Collection. Can anyone help out?

I bought four French Laserdiscs out of curiosity: ESB 1990, ESB 1995 THX, ROTJ 1995 THX, ANH SE 1997 THX.

I have also bought a Laserdisc Player on ebay. It's a Sony MDP-333 and it features PCM out. Now I am waiting for its arrival.

My JVC SVHS HR-S6600EU is @ service (repair) at the moment in order to get clean transfers from it.

I've taken the vhs tape of ANH [WS, 1993] and made a test capture with my equipement. I've done it to play with, until my vhs comes back and my ld-player finally arrives. I am comparing the capture to the X0-TC Print and of course I will compare the audio to the official 2004 DVD.

S-Video In -- PDI-Deluxe
Line In -- Onboard Soundcard
Datavideo TBC-1000

Huffyuv 2.1.1 Lossless Codec
PCM 48khz, Stereo, 16bit
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By far the weakest link in your proposed plan is the most critical component: the LD player. Your Sony is not nearly as well-regarded as just about any Pioneer machine. You've got almost everything else right, but the player's going to be the thing that limits how good your captures are.

The other thing that's going to hurt you is noise from the discs. I have all of the discs you show, and I can tell you right now they will benefit from TooT. That's why I got at least three copies of each movie (well, the 1995 THX ones, anyway).

If you really want to do this right, you've still got a bit of work to do!
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Why is it even necessary to capture a new video-track? Aside from a German crawl there are several great transfers out there to be used for this, spearheaded (imho) by Moth3r's version and the X0 (when it's done). So, shouldn't this project focus more on getting a decent German crawl in front of those already existing transfers, plus hi-quality German audio?
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Originally posted by: Laserschwert
Why is it even necessary to capture a new video-track? Aside from a German crawl there are several great transfers out there to be used for this, spearheaded (imho) by Moth3r's version and the X0 (when it's done). So, shouldn't this project focus more on getting a decent German crawl in front of those already existing transfers, plus hi-quality German audio?


What might be a good idea is along this line of thought, is to capture some of the other alternate-language dub tracks into a release, such as French and Spanish, and have alternate crawls depending on which language was selected. Don't forget the subtitles for Greedo and Jabba would also need redone.
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Originally posted by: Number20
What might be a good idea is [...] to capture some of the other alternate-language dub tracks [...], such as [...] Spanish.


You get me a Spanish trilogy, and I'll cap the audio, no problem. I've bid on several Spanish discs and box sets, and they always go for stupidly higher sums than I think is rational. I think LFL must have sold about 12 copies of the THX discs in Spain; these puppies are extremely rare, even on eBay.es. It was easier for me to get a Hong Kong THX disc than any of the Spanish ones.
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Just to remind you all, the main purpose of this project is to preserve the uncompressed pcm sound of the german starwars trilogy. The project will also feature the german title crawl from 77,80,83, the alien-subtitles in german, and the german crawl at the end of the movie (we call it: "Abspann").

Special Features will be a german version of "Making of Starwars" (PAL VHS tape), the interviews from 1995 release and all the trailers, I got in german language.

The videotrack will be taken (if I get an ok from the author) from another PAL project or from X0 or from the OUT DVDs. If that is the case, my videotrack will only be used for the crawl etc.

To all, who don't know: lucasfilm has done an awful job, when remastering the german audio for the special edition 1997. The German trilogy is since known for "lispering" (the "s" got heavily filtered). Everybody sounds like he can't speak.

The project will feature both, the THX 1995 audio, and the pre THX audio from the two laserdisc releases. VHS-tapes will be used, if I find any differences in sound/picture.

Here are some screenshots from my raw-capture I was talking about earlier, it's already got a timecode (avs-script):

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/9605/widescreen199300lg7.jpg

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/619/widescreen199301xs4.jpg

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/9698/widescreen199302ox2.jpg

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/2032/widescreen199303nm6.jpg

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3372/widescreen199304ls6.jpg

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/1492/widescreen199305ny0.jpg

This avs-script I have done to compare my test capture with the x0-tc-print for different cuts, missing frames:
http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/7567/widescreen1993syncx0cs5.jpg
(could it be, that the x0 has lost some detail on this r2-unit?)

The [Pre-THX] PAL VHS (and i guess also the laserdisc) misses several frames. In order to get the pre-thx-audio sync you just have to delete those frames from the videotrack, you want to use. It's that simple. So maybe I'll do two releases for each movie (THX, Non-THX).

And now some bad news: my laserdisc player arrived, but it's not working. the tray always ejects the laserdiscs. Either it says "no disc" or it jumps from "LD" to "CD". I have not seen a single picture, just the menu of the player. I bought it on ebay as functional and have paid for "versichert" shipping. If anyone could be of help (ebay) or knows this problem with the Sony MDP-333, please reply.
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Update:

- Laserdisc Player not working. Seems like it will take some time (1month+), until I can make captures of my laserdiscs.
- SVHS still @ service.

I've done another two test captures of the first movie with another vhs-recorder. The "CBS/FOX Silver Screen Collection 1990" and the "Widescreen 1993 Release" were captured.

At the moment I am discovering a lot of things about all the little differences between the several german releases.

The biggest thing I have encoutered, The 1995 THX German Audio Track is not the best way to experience the old trilogy. There has been inserted some awful cheap "echo effect" on all the deathstar-indoor-scenes. Those "echoes" aren't on any previous release and are not on the Special Edition either. Of course they haven't been in the cinema this way. There will be some audio examples very soon. Now I am more curious, which audio track the OUT-DVDs will feature. As there will be only one german audio-track on the OUT-DVDs, one is not preserved properly. My project will feature both audio tracks, of course!

Some details about the first movie:

### "Alien language" of Greedo:

I have encoutered four different Greedo-translations. Simply every release has it's own. Does anyone remember, what colour did the subtitles originally had in germany? The video releases all have big yellow letters while the broadcast premiere features small white letters.

1) CBS/FOX Silverscreen Collection 1990 Release (4:3)
2) Widescreen 1993 Release (2:35:1)
3) THX Widescreen 1995 Release (2:35:1)
4) Broadcast Premiere on "Sat.1" (cropped to 1.85:1)

The project will feature all of them, at least as a bonus feature. Maybe I can even make a menu selection.

### Title crawl - "Krieg der Sterne":

You can forget the THX Widescreen Release, it only features cheap CGI-made in germany-letters. Those aren't the original crawls!
The Widescreen 1993 Release seems to feature the title-crawl exactly how it was in the cinemas, but as everybody knows: a letterboxed VHS only features limited resolution.

The Fullframe CBS/FOX Silverscreen Collection features the complete title-crawl, nothing is cropped to my surprise, because the original 2:35:1 picture was stretched to 720x576. This stretching is kept until the first cut [TCR+01:02:38:13]. The end titles are featured the same way. As a result, I get a lot more resolution if using this one!

The following pictures will show you, what I mean:

[left = Full Frame of the Silver Screen Collection - VHS]
[right = Letterboxed Frame of the first Widescreen VHS Release]

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/7316/comparetitlecrawlsilverscreen06ne8.th.jpg
Full Size

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7919/comparetitlecrawlsilverscreen01rn8.th.jpg
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http://img468.imageshack.us/img468/9063/comparetitlecrawlsilverscreen02kz0.th.jpg
Full Size

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7281/comparetitlecrawlsilverscreen03fi4.th.jpg
Full Size

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/8/comparetitlecrawlsilverscreen04gn1.th.jpg
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If I use the full frame title crawl and resize it to it's original aspect ratio (or anamorphic), it will look a lot better than just using the crawl from the letterboxed tape. Same goes with the german end titles, which were exchanged by the english ones since THX1995.

I don't know how the 1993 Laserdiscs look like. Can anyone, who has them, compare the crawl from "Krieg der Stern" to my screenshots. Do they look the same? How is the quality of them on Laserdisc? If they are of better quality, I will use them of course.

It's funny that the famous four dots on "A long time ago" and at the end of the title crawl were not inserted here in germany til the 2004-DVD-Release.

### Awful Audio Cut

There is some awful audio-cut in the pre-thx releases. The frames from 01:26:33:02 to 01:26:34:04 are simply cut away. It's in the scene where Luke is searching for R2D2 with his binoculars. C-3PO is talking about R2D2. Wondering, if I can fix this.

Is there some program, which let me compare two audio-files for offsets/starting of voices in order to "visually" sync them etc?
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you should capture those pre thx silver screen laserdiscs which are in widescreen. Why? well for one thing nobody else on these boards has of yet. that could be another little project even though you are gonna use somebody else release as a videotrack.

The other two trilogy sets I'd like to see captured are the spainish set and the 1994 pre faces coffret collector french set.

I would settle for screen caps of all of these as well to judge the quality.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.