Backstroke said:- How come the sound quality vary so much?
I know that you (Adywan) used several bits of audio from other sources. But has anyone noted exactly how vayring the dialogue is? Try listening in at the scenes shot in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon. There major differences to the room sound from dialogue to dialogue. I suppose its on-set audio vs. ADR. I'm just wondering if this contributed to a lesser mix of one source or if this is present on all versions of ANH.
You can blame Ben Burtt for this. The 5.1 mix on the DVD's screwed up the dialogue track. Just listen to the DVD 5.1 audio and you'll see what i men. It was as if he used several sources for the dialogue. I was actually able to improve this a bit though. Just check the scene with Tarkin as they are about to destroy Alderaan, especially the part where Tarkin says "then name the system". The official DVD's sound quality changes dramatically and i was able to smooth that out a bit. But the problem was that trying to fix the dialogue caused problems with other sound FX on the centre channel so it was impossible for the most part. I did try using the laserdisc SE 5.1 track for the dialogue but there are differences in the two mixes which didn't gel together very well.
Backstroke said:- Why use our system of numbers in the movie when all lettering have been replaced with aurabesh?
It's just a consideration that so much time goes in to converting all references to english writting and replacing it with aurabesh (which is extremely effectfull) but when we get to the Death Star coming in on Yavin there is a, sorry to say it, generic timer counting down? This is by the way the only thing I reacted to. Sure I wish there'd been even more ships in the Death Star battle but I can fully understand how heavy such a effect sequence might be.
Sometimes we need a visual reference that we recognise to enhance the dramatic element of a scene. Changing the number system to Aurabesh for the countdown clock just didn't work. You need that "our world" visual reference for the clock. I did try changing the numbering to Aurabesh but, when watching it back, it lost something. This is the problem with some SCI-FI in that they change everything to look other worldly and it fails. Any lettering wasn't the focus in a scene but the numbering was and this needed to stay recognisable