This projects source was moth3r's pal laserdisc project. Not the 1997 special edition.
Like he said he used the vhs audio from 1995 in the uk for the english audio, and the video came from a french laserdisc which has a french dub he did not use. There were subtitles in the lower black area but he removed them i suppose.
The speed up and pitch is actually worse on the pre thx pan and scan uk release because the master was an ntsc same as the us laserdiscs. no to mention the discs were major rotters. They never got a definitive edition in the uk on laserdisc, the closest thing they got was the pal executor vhs boxset.
In 1995 Lucasfilm i believe had a seperate pal Master created to fix said issues, yet that was not used in 2006 for the euro pal dvd releases,lol.
And Also as Moth3r stated Dr.M used the lossless PCM from the us definitive collection laserdisc. The mix was created in 1993 specifically for The THX laserdisc program and was not any of the theatrical mixes of the trilogy. The only theatrical original release of the old trilogy that had a digital mix was Return of the Jedi in 1983 and few theaters had the equipment. Star Wars mix was redone in 1985 in digital and therefore was a new mix not just digitizing of the analog mix. Empire Strikes back as far as i know is the same 35mm mix up until the 1993 redo but was digitized to be played back digitally in later laserdisc releases.
The Gout had the 1993 mix crappily mixedown to dolby 2.0 for space considerations. Had this been an anamorphic release as of now on blu ray there would be plenty of space for the Full PCM track. Though i would imagine Lucas would have burtt cook up a new mix DolbyTrueHD instead. Which is probably what will happen when the Crap 2004 edit is released on Blu Ray. Unless Lucas is as lazy as he was with the gout and just re-uses the same dolby digital 5.1 EX tracks from the dvd. On which a new hope's mix was messed up, the music was dialed down during the trench battle to it almost being inaudible and the surround channels were improperly swapped. So much for a deliberate creative decision.
The 1997 mix had none of these issues, and is well done for a late nineties job. But Still Tom Christopher and Burtt even though the new mix was sonically improved . All they did was get a better frequency to noise ratio response. and Of course audio technology could now reproduce the mix the same way it would have been heard by the mixers. Therefore things that had been hidden before or were not perfect had to be redone from original master tapes.
1997 mix is almost crazy the work that was involved going all the way back to the 6 track master that the 4 track master was created from, and all the original sound effects library reels had to be tracked down. We are talking about a brand new mix from scratch including going back to the studio master tapes for the lso music. Unlike the 1993 which was a sweatening and blending of the first three theatrical mixes for star wars form the four track masters. a generation removed from the orginal six track master.
There are so many different mixes for these films a book could be written about the changes and the differences, and creation of new mixes. Star wars alone had what 3 original mixes, plus the 1985, the 1993, and the 1997 and 2004. Wow that makes seven frickin mixes. ouch,lol.
