Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 84

I was more like a bit dissapointed that it is not the original one, that's all. :-)

The Hun dub on Harmy's Star Wars 2.5 is definitely the original one, not from '93.

Yep, I have it, it is synced to 25fps though...

Harmy said:

Great, thanks! I'll need that information when writing the NFOs.

Uh oh. Are getting all these dubs together going to hold up the release? ;)

Is there any reason to believe it WON'T be true to the 6-track mix (given its similarity to the Dolby Stereo, and your access to the in-theatre reference recording)?

If it's a best guess scenario, I'd keep the naming convention for consistency.

sorry if this was mentioned before, but how did you determine the color timing of ESB? Is there a source that has the correct colors?

Took me a minute to process what CatBus was getting at.  It sounds like the 70mm version that was originally released wasn't as complete as the 35mm version that followed shortly after for the wider release (which most people would have seen).  There are different takes of some scenes (audio, video or both in some cases), different transitions, some different effects...  Making a faithful 70mm reconstruction would be a whole other effort than this project (and all for a version that only got put out because of financial implications of recalling and reprinting).  Making a bastardized version of the current mix with some sounds removed or changed to at least sound more like that mix would be pointless on this release, since the rest of the project wouldn't be faithful to the 70mm look.  So, it does bring into question what to call the best quality 5.1 mix h_h will put out, I can't say "purist" is a term I'm fond of, but 70mm wouldn't be accurate.  So, if not "purist", the only other thing I could suggest is dropping what type film the audio was associated with and just list the original tracks along the lines of 1980 5.1 surround and 1980 2.0 stereo, which especially would make sense since every other track is defined mostly by date ('85, '93, etc.).  Something about "purist" just gives the vibe that it has been altered more to a personal preference than with the intent of being faithful (that is, the name probably only makes full sense to those that know the audio was sourced from the '93 mix but altered to revert some changes from the original).

70mm differences:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/70-mm-print-of-the-Empire-Strikes-Back-Differences/topic/2321/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Hopefully-the-last-70mm-vs-35mm-ESB-audio-differences-thread/topic/14128/

I never called them 'purist'.  That was a term someone else came up with (I don't remember who), and for some reason it stuck.

The main source of the '93 mix for ESB was not the 70mm version, since that contained various editing differences, but instead a 4-track master that conformed to the 35mm version in length and content (with the exception of the missing snowspeeder crash sound, which was likely unintentionally omitted due to being an early generation copy that didn't have it; I've put it back in since all released versions of the film contained this sound effect).

Aside from small differences here and there, the 70mm mix of ESB did sound very similar to my 5.1 overall.  Since it is not an exact replica, however, I gave myself a little more leeway in terms of whether the added bass was always 100% authentic or not, relying on my best judgement of what sounded good.  In general, I would say that my version is what the 35mm version would sound like if unrestricted by the technical limitations of stereo optical format.  So even though it doesn't duplicate a theatrical version in the strictest sense, it 'feels' quite authentic.

I'm not sure exactly how to describe it in less words than that.  It may be best just to call it '1980 5.1' and leave it at that, I suppose.

As an update on status, I just realized I made a slight mistake in settings while I rendered it, so the 5.1 came out 3 dB quieter than I wanted it to.  I must therefore correct this mistake and re-encode with the levels adjusted.  It won't take long, since it's an easy fix.  The actual work on it is all done at this point.  "Almost there . . ."

The main audio tracks are all lossless again?

The masters for my tracks are 24-bit, 48 khz .wav files, with sample rate conversion from the laserdisc 16/44.1 performed by Weiss Saracon.  The 35mm mix's gain has been adjusted so that the dialog level matches the 1993 version, to ensure there is no distracting change in volume when switching audio tracks, and a slightly modified form of Dolby Prologic II in Movie Mode created the main channels for the 5.1 mix.  The LFE channel is a heavily edited version of what is on the Bluray release, with a few additional bass effects created by me through the use of a subharmonic synthesizer.

In order to reduce the file size for distribution while maintaining quality, the main tracks of the MKV will be dithered to 16/48 and encoded with DTS lossless compression, while the AVCHD will contain high bitrate AC3 encoded from the 24-bit masters.  Since the source tracks were all 16-bit to begin with, there is no real quality loss by downconverting in the end—processing at higher bit depths simply allows for greater precision when changes are made to the files, keeping more of the original quality.  Both the 5.1 and the stereo mix sound really good, so I think you'll all be very happy with them.  :)

AC3 audio now uploaded!  2.0 AVCHD should be out soon . . . really looking forward to it.

It will probably take a few days to get those out there since I'm currently out of town and don't have as good a connection as I normally do.  It's up to you if you want to wait for that, or have the AVCHD come out right away with the MKV slightly later . . .