Star Wars OT & 1997 Special Edition - Various Projects Info (Released) — Page 11

dark_jedi said:

Ripplin said:

dark_jedi said:

apparently this audio is not as important as I once thought, only 2 people to check it out for me,hmmm.

Um, it's more like a lot of people just don't know about that stuff. Don't worry about it. The ones that do check it out would likely give you far more useful feedback than if, say, someone like me tried. ;)

Actually I think you are wrong there, you would be surprised at what people can find, the more the merrier, because I really want to get this as right as I can, is that asking to much? I think not.

 Reminds me a bit someone's state of mind... A guy called ABC or so... He would surely concur.

I've just finished downloading it.  I'll sync it up and watch the whole thing tonight and take detailed notes for you tomorrow.

ABC, I am with you all the way.

ChainsawAsh said:

I've just finished downloading it.  I'll sync it up and watch the whole thing tonight and take detailed notes for you tomorrow.

there should be no syncing at all, I mean you should not have to put any delay at all, Thanks for checking it out.

A lot of people simply don't know audio, at least not well enough to fix an advanced problem. Video, yeah, everyone knows video, finding audio experts is a tough thing from my experience so I wouldn't take it too personally.

yes please, need more ears.

On a quick skim-through, it seems to be perfect in some places, and close-but-not-quite-there in others.

Have you been syncing to the video, or to the GOUT audio?  I feel it'd be easier to sync to the audio instead of the video, myself - you can tell when audio's out of phase by listening to both simultaneously much more easily than guessing if the audio is drifting or not from watching it with the video.

Can you just sync it the way editors do when there is no slate clap or time-code-slate? You basically just find something in the scene that substitutes for a slate clap. So if something gets banged, something drops, something explodes, any sort of clear picture-sound correspondance that you can pin down to a frame or two. It'd be a lot of work, but if you basically do a check like this every five or ten minutes it could be a way to make sure nothing is out of sync.

ChainsawAsh said:

On a quick skim-through, it seems to be perfect in some places, and close-but-not-quite-there in others.

Have you been syncing to the video, or to the GOUT audio?  I feel it'd be easier to sync to the audio instead of the video, myself - you can tell when audio's out of phase by listening to both simultaneously much more easily than guessing if the audio is drifting or not from watching it with the video.

 If you can get waveforms of both, you could probably match them up. Obviously the levels will be different (the original theatrical audio I'm sure is quieter because of the volume competition of the 90s) but the sound itself should be the same so that you could match up the waveforms visually.

zombie84 said:

Can you just sync it the way editors do when there is no slate clap or time-code-slate? You basically just find something in the scene that substitutes for a slate clap. So if something gets banged, something drops, something explodes, any sort of clear picture-sound correspondance that you can pin down to a frame or two. It'd be a lot of work, but if you basically do a check like this every five or ten minutes it could be a way to make sure nothing is out of sync.

This is how you pretty much have to do it if you're syncing to video and not the GOUT audio.  Don't try to sync voices to lips, that's too damn hard.

msycamore said:

Well, I take my last comment back. It's actually gettin worse all the way in to the asteroid field. I'll continue to check, is there any particular editing points in the audio I can check, if I understand it correctly there is side switches on the LD right?

holy crap you are right, I have NO idea how I missed that, I think that is side 2, I must have been asleep at the wheel on that side, time to fire back up Vegas, 1 thing is for sure this is going to give me a lot of great experience, I WILL get this right, and the stereo mixes WILL be on Empire and Jedi.

also per Ady, I am syncing to the audio, I am not using the video at all any more.

My input, if it can help...

If you are melting sources and looks you can't have a perfect match, just make sure the waveform is not inverted from a source to another.

Another thought, concerning the kind of mixes you're all using around here, is that the wide stereo surely means to make a nice experience for all people who have special equipment... However I remixed (and downmixed) myself the "Asteroid Field" stereo and mono tracks from Star Wars Musical Journey and I can tell you Shawn Murhy's mix sounded awful next to the final 2-track version I finally made - only Msycamore here has heard the result, though I didn't let him compare with the downmixed untouched version. What I had recovered showed the overall sonority of the RSO track, with a lower dynamic range and with compression artifacts they made for the DVD unfortunately obvious in the highest peaks.

What I'd like to point out anyway is that the stereo widening for 5.1 experience sounds totally unatural to me as a 2-track stereo shape. To obtain the best version I could, close to any musical experience for Hi-Fi ect..., I had to narrow the stereo with a stereo widening filter: about 30% for the rear stereo, 70% for the front stereo channels (100% beeing no change) + of course re-equalised the two pairs of tracks + the main center channel. The main consequence that really stroke me listening to the result is how much you can restore the dynamic range when you give back a more natural stereo by narrowing it.

Now, if I had to remix such a material I would try to give the wideness feeling through equalizations, and would perhaps even try to give the more relief as possible through two complementary EQ's, more bass-oriented for the front stereo, and highs for the rear... Don't know, but I guess

I strongly suspect this way of feeling and thinking the sound can make you reconsider the 5.1 phenomenon.

I'm not an audio "expert" though ;)... Just use the Force !

I finally got it running.  I'm not an expert sadly, but I thought it sounded great and I really enjoyed it.

hairy_hen said:

Jedi: ... music-edited 5.1 (already available).

I just saw this.  I was under the impression that Jedi was finished, but not available.  If I'm wrong, could you PM me with a link to the AC3 file?

Damn it, I just made a whole big post and then my internet rubbish'd out and I lost it.

Anyway, in brief, the 5.1 mix of Jedi will be the same one from the encodes made last year.  I'll see about that being made available around the same time I finish with the music edits for Empire.  All changes to the music for both films will be 5.1 only, so edits and content as presented in the 35mm mixes can be heard in the stereo versions.

I'm going to check the stereo mix of Empire and see what I can find.  Can someone tell me exactly where the side breaks took place for the laserdisc release that is being used?  Also locations of reel changes if those are known--anywhere a definite jump in synch is most likely to occur.  Those should be taken care of first so that things like analogue playback speed discrepancy can be ruled out or otherwise accounted for.  Don't forget I'm available to take a crack at fixing the synch if need be.  ;)

I just checked my copy of Dark_Jedi's GOUT, and it turns out I have your music-edited Jedi mix!  So disregard my last post.

It sure makes the Luke/Obi-Wan scene feel quite different!

Gotcha.  ;)  I was away for a few days so this is the first chance I've had to listen to it.  Haven't even checked the synch, I was just listening to it on its own first.  As I suspected, it sounds very similar to the '93 mix most of the time, but there are some definite differences.  The snowspeeder crash sound is one we already knew about, but there are a few others also: when the Imperial walkers first open fire on the rebels in their trenches, the explosive sounds from the laser impacts are different in the '80 mix than in the '93; and about a minute or so later there is a snowspeeder laser blast and flyby that is significantly louder in the '80 (it's there in the '93, but much lower in volume).  Not especially important, I guess, but worth mentioning.  There may also be others I haven't found.

Since the '93 version comes from a source that is at least a generation older than the theatrical stereo mix, it isn't much of a stretch to imagine that a few more sound effects were added to their final mix that had not been there previously.  To me, this suggests that the elusive 70mm mix of Empire quite possibly did not contain these sound effects either, since it would have been done first.  If true, the mystery of the missing snowspeeder effect may at last be solved.  :)

I did notice a few distracting jump cuts here and there, but I couldn't tell whether they were actually part of the sound or if they came from synching issues.  Unfortunately, I didn't make any notes of the times, because at first I thought it was just my computer being funky.  I'll reiterate that care must be taken to blend the tracks together, particularly around the side breaks.