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Preserving the "German" Original Trilogy (Released) — Page 4

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AFAIK the vast majority of PAL movies are not pitch-corrected. Especially in the VHS/LD era this was really uncommon. I guess I need to gather more information about this and make a sound comparison first.

 

@msycamore

Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware of that.

 

@R2D2

It would be great if you could find your VHS-capture of the opening crawl and end credits. The sceenshots of these looked really nice.

Of course any preservation of the Laserdiscs I want to make will also include all the Logos etc.

 

 

 

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I have checked the starwars hdd today. it's all still there. i will upload it to a.b.starwars. will take some time to sort it first.

r2d2

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grisan said:

AFAIK the vast majority of PAL movies are not pitch-corrected. Especially in the VHS/LD era this was really uncommon. I guess I need to gather more information about this and make a sound comparison first.

It is true that the vast majority of films released in PAL format have audio that is simply sped up. However, the 1995 UK VHS releases were pitch corrected (ie the film runs 4% faster, but the audio retains the original pitch).

These are the tapes I'm talking about:

(Wow, coincidence - second result from a Google Image Search was from a site called http://www.haku.co.uk - turns out this belongs to Citizen (see this thread) who hasn't been here since 2006...)

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Cool, I've got those too. So was it only the VHS that was pitch corrected and not the LD? That's weird since it's basically the same edition.

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There was no LD release in the UK. I've not checked if the French discs are pitch corrected or not.

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The UK had 2 VHS releases ( Pan&Scan and Widescreen) of the 1995 THX versions and also the Superclass ISD Executor Collectors Box. It is very likely all of these had the same audio.

In germany there was no Collectors Box but the also a Pan&Scan and Widescreen release. I watched these tapes all the time but I can't really tell if the pitch was different to the other tapes I previously had. It would make sense that these are pitch corrected like UK versions because the production process should have been the same.

I still have the german 1995 THX tapes, the Executor edition and a german VHS Box from 1992, so I will try to compare the audio.

Does anyone know a good tool for pitch comparision? 

 

 

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Just use your ears; if you listen to the first few bars of the Star Wars theme music from each release it will be obvious if they are at different pitches. 

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I wonder if the German GOUT DVD set DD 2.0 soundtrack has been simply sped up, or pitch-corrected?

Also, even if a PAL soundtrack is pitch-corrected, it's still running at PAL speed, right? Meaning, the sound effects and voices are being spoken faster than the NTSC video would be playing, right?

If that's the case, that means the PAL soundtrack would still have to be slowed down to match the NTSC video frame rate. And if the soundtrack were pitch-corrected already at the studio, wouldn't slowing down the playing speed of the PAL soundtrack then mess up the pitch by making it too low?

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Dunedain said:

Also, even if a PAL soundtrack is pitch-corrected, it's still running at PAL speed, right? Meaning, the sound effects and voices are being spoken faster than the NTSC video would be playing, right?

If that's the case, that means the PAL soundtrack would still have to be slowed down to match the NTSC video frame rate. And if the soundtrack were pitch-corrected already at the studio, wouldn't slowing down the playing speed of the PAL soundtrack then mess up the pitch by making it too low?

That's where stretching comes to our aid. It does exactly what we need: alters the time, leaves the pitch untouched. Any audio editing program has it nowadays.

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Ah, that would be very convenient. As long as the end result is that the voices and overall soundtrack sounds exactly as it did in theaters in Germany, in terms of pitch and timing, and it sync's up perfectly with the NTSC GOUT video, then that's great. :)

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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This is getting complicated :-).

BTW the german untouched GOUT DVDs will be available on a.b.starwars soon.

 

 

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Moth3r said:

Just use your ears; if you listen to the first few bars of the Star Wars theme music from each release it will be obvious if they are at different pitches. 

Hi Moth3r! I don't agree here. It's not about the music.

I think you have to distinguish between the music/effects audio track and the dialogue track, that is mixed together later for the end product.

When synchronizing a movie only the dialogue track gets replaced.

The dialogue track can be thought of a bunch of voices, piece for piece, played at a specific timestamp.

The 24fps version plays the music/effects audio track at original speed, while the 25fps version plays the music/effects audio track with 104% speed.

Both of them get the dialogs mixed in at the specified timestamps, but the dialog track is always played at original speed!

Compare the german audio of any movie dvd with its bluray edition. Music/effects play faster but the voices are at the same frequencies!

The actors of Star Wars on DVD sound the same as on the upcoming Blurays.

We can compare the english voices on the UK DVD and the US DVD to see if I am right.

What does that all mean us?

As we only have the end product of the audio track the solution can't be slowing down the audio. My experience is the voices are correct as they are now on all PAL releases. If you want to fix the speed of the music/effects, you would have to have access to the production audio tracks.

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The GOUT english track is definitely just sped up for the PAL release (voices, SFX, music, everything).

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R2D2 said:

Moth3r said:

Just use your ears; if you listen to the first few bars of the Star Wars theme music from each release it will be obvious if they are at different pitches. 

The 24fps version plays the music/effects audio track at original speed, while the 25fps version plays the music/effects audio track with 104% speed.

Both of them get the dialogs mixed in at the specified timestamps, but the dialog track is always played at original speed!

Compare the german audio of any movie dvd with its bluray edition. Music/effects play faster but the voices are at the same frequencies!

This would only make sense if a new dubbed audio track is created specificly for a new PAL-based home video release (such as the 1995 THX release).

The normal case was to create a german dubbed audio track for a cinematic release that plays at 24fps. A few month/years later this track is used for a PAL video/DVD release and is usually just sped up to 25fps.

At least that is the way it used to be.

Nowadays, creating a pitch corrected audio track for a bluray or DVD release would be very easy, so this might actually be the case.

There also seems to be a lot of disagreement about the number of pitch corrected PAL DVDs. I found an older thread were people discuss this:

http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archive/index.php/t-525742.html

 

 

 

 

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 (Edited)

Another comment on pitch correction:

http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/Interviews/ShrekTech.html

AK: Is the transfer pitch corrected?

MA: We typically try not to do that only because pitch correction can add some digital stepping. So unless a director specifically asks us to do it we avoid it, as do most studios.

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The german Star Wars PAL DVDs are not pitch-corrected. Means, the sound is faster and the voices higher.

I know exactly, because I added the german GOUT soundfile to Harmys Despecialized Empire and had to slow it down for 24p. After that it had the right pitch and I probably heard the german voices the way they were heard at the cinemas for the first time.. (well, ok.. I watched the special editions in the cinema in 1997, so let's say for the second time ;)

 

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In the last few days I tried to clean up the german theatrical opening crawl and sync it with the GOUT DVDs.

I made 5 captures of the opening from the 1993 Laserdisc and another 5 from a 1990 fullscreen VHS tape that has the crawl in squeezed format.

I used a great median filter by G-Force to eliminate all random dropouts from the different captures and resized and aligned the VHS and LD picture.

Then I averaged the VHS and LD picture into one clip, adjusted the brightness and overlayed the opening crawl over a starfield still taken from the GOUT.

Here is my current result. This is the german opening crawl edited into the GOUT and upscaled to anamorphic for PAL DVD.

http://www.multiupload.com/4LF6LUITTS

Comparison pictures:

http://i.imgur.com/GbBtOs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GiOsds.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/qa3cos.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7OisNs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xMH0ys.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pY0oSs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/eklq9s.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/CbEKRs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/y49pms.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/b5LCWs.jpg

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So, the 1993 German LD had the crawl without the episode title? That's interesting.

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 (Edited)

All german star wars  releases prior to the 1995 THX versions had the theatrical crawl without the "Episode IV" headline as far as I know.

I remember that I was very confused about the episode number when I watched ESB for the first time on VHS. That was in 1989. Also the title "Neue Hoffnung" (translation of "A new hope") was never mentioned anywhere before 1995.

I just checked the 1995 THX LD of ANH. These contain the english Lucasfilm Logo, a good quality german opening text (a long long time ago ..), a horribly recreated opening crawl in german with the episode number and the title "Neue Hoffnung" and the english end credits.

The 1993 LD contains all of this in german, probably just like it was in the theatre (I was born in 1979 so I never watched the originals in a theatre until the special editions came out).

 

 

 

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Wow the silver collection on LD is crap quality at least in that cap.

“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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Hard to tell from those screenshots, but I don't think it's that bad. Does seem very dark, but that might just be the capture settings.

It would be interesting to compare shots with those from the smeared THX versions. I'll post some from the French LDs for comparison.

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The captures may be a lttle too dark, but skyjedi2005 is right. It really looks like crap. The transfer is blurry and noisy as hell, there are scratches and dirt marks, the colors are washed out and some scenes have a blue-ish or red-ish tint.

These LDs also have lot of missing frames compared to the GOUT or even THX LDs.

The THX LDs also a few missing frames, but this version is really bad. It already amounts to about 2 seconds and the end of the first LD side.

Here is a 25 second comparison clip from the very beginning of the movie. The LD is in sync with GOUT when it starts but differs 4 frames at the end of the clip.

http://www.multiupload.com/H3F877O9W9

Honestly I don't know if this is really worth preserving at all. Quality is a lot worse than all the other Laserdisc transfers and because of the missing frames the audio is out of sync to the GOUT.

The only interesting parts are the opening crawl and the end credit.

 

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Well, the good news is that we can have the German soundtrack sync'ed up with dark_jedi's new restored Star Wars trilogy Blu-ray set, for maximum picture quality with the correct 24 fps original German theatrical soundtrack. That will be so cool. :)

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Random request to those who have any Krieg der Sterne preservations, could you check the credits for John Williams.  There's a confusing variation; earlier versions have 'John Williams' and 'London Symphony' with no space between them and sometime later (78-81?) a gap was added.  Curious how these Krieg der Sterne's match the english versions.  As shown in the early posts of the thread, they modified the logo and crawls in significant ways.

Pics of an english 16mm and 2006 dvd are here if my description is unclear:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Complete-Comparison-of-Special-Edition-Visual-Changes/post/508723/#TopicPost508723

Danke