Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 523

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 9-Feb-2015 11:00 PM
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I deleted all subtitle tracks that are listed as "unverified" in the OP of this thread (and ONLY those) and recompiled the disc and it was a success, so unless there are some specific ones you would like me to try to add back in, we are now good to go.

Author: analog
Time: 9-Feb-2015 11:05 PM (Edited)
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Dig the yellow..

My line of thinking for the menus is a little different, but not far from where you are. Fully transparent would be nice, for sure.

I guess in my mind, it's more like

-floating transparent texts on main/audio menus. For the main, there will be a motion menu.

As for popups, I think the ideas there are all good, but with 30+ subtitles, it'd be interesting to see how that works with just a bar or two above the main navigation.

In my head, I picture it being separate audio/subs menus with several rows, likely across 2. ..would prefer navigation to more choices across as few screens as possible.

The additional rows layout just seems possibly limiting for the # of tracks. I guess I picture more of a set of screens full of choices if that makes sense. With a set of psd's, I can show this better, I believe. Will post my draft capture of audio screen to give better idea. It is quite full, with all 21 tracks on one screen. I'm also aware of the graphic limits, which I ran into initially when using secondary background, but I think we'll be fine with just motion menu background(s).

Catbus - thank you for that info. It is as I feared ;) the audio is also vbr, at least the main lossless track is for sure. Guess we'll have to give it a try, to see what ends up working.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 9-Feb-2015 11:17 PM
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when i say transparent i mean not much more than this:

Full size

Highlighted buttons will be darker obviously but I'm still not at that point yet.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 10-Feb-2015 2:16 AM (Edited)
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This is what I suggest for the audio/subtitle menu (the arrows are placeholders until I can find something that looks nicer):

Click for full size

This will preserve the clean aesthetic and maximize readability.

You're speaking of having separate "motion menus", remember that Blu-Ray doesn't make any distinction between the two. The only difference between this:

and this

(Full size)

is the video that is currently playing when you press the menu button.

Author: CatBus
Time: 10-Feb-2015 2:35 AM (Edited)
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Nanner Split said:

I deleted all subtitle tracks that are listed as "unverified" in the OP of this thread (and ONLY those) and recompiled the disc and it was a success, so unless there are some specific ones you would like me to try to add back in, we are now good to go.

Well, assuming you go with the most recent Project Threepio, the unverified languages have dropped to just Estonian, Farsi, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese (and I don't even list them like that anymore, because the quality issues aren't nearly as bad). If pressed for space, you could also drop dialects (one of the Spanish or Portuguese dialects, for example).

The next version will also have Malay, and for God's sake use the 720p graphical subs instead of trying to render the things yourself.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 10-Feb-2015 3:07 AM (Edited)
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CatBus said:

Well, assuming you go with the most recent Project Threepio, the unverified languages have dropped to just Estonian, Farsi, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese (and I don't even list them like that anymore, because the quality issues aren't nearly as bad). If pressed for space, you could also drop dialects (one of the Spanish or Portuguese dialects, for example).

Okay so I restored the ones I had deleted before and removed the ones you suggested above and it was too many. Here's what I do know now:

*39 tracks is too many to fit.
*33 tracks DID fit.

So somewhere in between those two numbers is the magic number that will fit. So if you absolutely HAD to, could you list the subtitle tracks you would suggest leaving off? I can subtract and remux one at a time until everything fits successfully.

The current subtitle tracks that are NOT included are:
-Estonian
-Farsi
-Ukrainian
-Vietnamese

I also noticed that there were "DeEd v1" and "DeEd v2" matching subtitles. Do the "DeEd v2" subs correspond to the current v2.5? If so I can include them as well but the numbers above will need to be adjusted by 1.

CatBus said:
The next version will also have Malay, and for God's sake use the 720p graphical subs instead of trying to render the things yourself.

Oh I definitely used the ones that were already there and I'm REALLY glad they were, I've already dealt with converting srt's to graphical subs before on a different project and it is not an experience I am eager to repeat :P

Author: analog
Time: 10-Feb-2015 10:55 AM
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Good finds on the subtitles.

I can see your aim w/the design better now, thanks. The bar with audio text may have to be "thicker" though, as some of those track titles are a little wordy. They can be trimmed a bit, though, from the basic description in the nfo file.

In any case, this was my (very much "1.0") audio menu screen.
http://imgur.com/5v8FMoM
The lower part was cropped out, as it wasn't very good. I do prefer the "first row" of yours, and understand your ideas about the selection.

The other nice thing about this menu structure you have here: Ease of "re-use" in the other 2 movies, and the consistency factor. Would be nice to see all 3 have something similar, for "familiar" navigation.

Am still curious - did you verify that all tracks are selectable via the menu elements, even though there was mention of the 9 track limitation in the documentation?

Obviously, "all of them on one screen" is ...well... lots of words come to mind. Jarring. Overload. Insane. WTF. ... Again, I did it this way for 2 reasons - one, I was just getting started, and trying to see if it'd even fully function with all 21 tracks (which it does), as well as wanting to start out with "lots of choice" on one screen. More than anything, it was done as a first run to see if it'd work at all with all the tracks. Layout/design was "secondary" to my goal of testing functionality at the time.

All that being said - I'd still be down with helping on the graphics front if you'd like. I could work with the layout ideas you have, as well as the font. It's certainly more readable than the one I was working with (which required layers of various things to "stand out" properly).

There are also a few other things "in the works" which I'll let Harmy speak to...
I can say, that with any luck, these things may be done within about a week, but obviously that depends. Will be very much worth the wait, however.

Author: DominicCobb
Time: 10-Feb-2015 11:49 AM
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I'm a little late, but congrats on the new job Harmy. It is very much deserved.

Author: CatBus
Time: 10-Feb-2015 12:22 PM (Edited)
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Regarding which subtitles to drop, here's my advice:

Drop the matching subs. I'll admit it--it's a gimmick, just use the regular English subs. But in answer to your question, the v2 subs match the whole v2.x series, including 2.5.

Drop dialects. Drop Castilian Spanish (keeping American Spanish), drop European Portuguese (keeping Brazilian Portuguese), and drop Malay (keeping Indonesian). I'd also say for combined quality/language overlap reasons you could drop Ukrainian.

Keep in mind that by including a dub (i.e. the Thai dub), you'll also need to include the forced subs that go with it. Did I mention we have some dub updates too? ;)

For the rest, just follow the order listed in the Project Threepio README, which roughly follows number of speakers. Get as far down the list as you can and cut the rest. Yes, that will mean you will cut high-quality awesome subtitles like our Icelandic subtitles, and it kinda pains me to see that, but the cut has to be somewhere, and that seems a reasonable way to do it.

Also, when you get ready for a final run, PM me for a more current link. There are some minor fixes that the most recent version doesn't have, and I'd like the Blu-ray to have them.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 10-Feb-2015 12:38 PM (Edited)
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Awesome, PM sent.

Actually, that raises a question that I had for Harmy. For the audio tracks that are dubs and have those forced subs, do you want those sub tracks to be in the menu along with the rest of the sub tracks, or would you rather them be hidden from the menu and just toggled on by default whenever the audio track is selected?

analog said:

Am still curious - did you verify that all tracks are selectable via the menu elements, even though there was mention of the 9 track limitation in the documentation?

Any kind of track limitation would only pertain to the muxing of the disc itself and not the menu (as long as its size doesn't exceed the total image buffer it can have as many things on it as we want, and it's not even close to maxing out the buffer)

analog said:
All that being said - I'd still be down with helping on the graphics front if you'd like. I could work with the layout ideas you have, as well as the font. It's certainly more readable than the one I was working with (which required layers of various things to "stand out" properly).

I'm currently putting together more or less a "template" that just needs to be filled in and tinkered with, i'll let you know when it's ready. :)

The only thing I can see being annoying is putting in thumbnails for the chapters since there are so many of them, but only because it's time consuming, not because it's difficult.

By the way, I haven't verified yet, but are the chapter markers in the mkv verified or were they put in automatically?

Author: Erik Pancakes
Time: 10-Feb-2015 12:45 PM
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I wouldn't include the forced ones on the menu. Let them be toggled when you pick the dub track.

Author: CatBus
Time: 10-Feb-2015 12:47 PM
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Yeah, have it handled in the audio selection logic. You choose Thai audio, you get Thai forced subs whether you like it or not. The trick is that they should also be UN-selected when you select any other audio option.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 10-Feb-2015 12:54 PM
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CatBus said:

Yeah, have it handled in the audio selection logic. You choose Thai audio, you get Thai forced subs whether you like it or not. The trick is that they should also be UN-selected when you select any other audio option.

That shouldn't be too difficult, I can set a condition on the main feature to the tune of:

If
Current Audio Track = Thai
Then
Set Subtitle Track = Thai forced
Turn Subtitles On

Author: yoda-sama
Time: 10-Feb-2015 12:56 PM
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Analog: while considering all you said about not worrying about aesthetics, and just seeing if everything would fit on one screen, etc. I'd still like to comment on your example as-is (to an extent "ignoring" that you know there are problems and you don't intend to go with this exact layout), if that is all right by you.

If going with selectable text on screen, two pages might work better than one. To decrease the overwhelming wordiness on display here, I'd suggest not writing out "Track" every time, and just have the number; likewise, "Dolby Digital" could be shortened to just "DD" across the board, to tidy things up considerably. And, if there were to be a static image as the background, something that doesn't have text ending up underneath the selectable text would help legibility immensely.

Again, I know it was just a concept, but I think those are useful notes if we end up having to go that direction. So, now treating this example seriously, are you saying you actually got this 21 audio options on a screen method to work in a proper Blu-ray menu structure?

Author: Harmy
Time: 10-Feb-2015 1:23 PM
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Yes, I'd prefer the forced subs be auto-selected with the audio track.

Also, I prefer the white text over the yellow for the buttons.

I have no preference either way on the track selection screens.

Another thing - I think it would be OK to lower the bitrate of some of the audio tracks instead of leaving out subtitle options - for example the commentary tracks are prime candidates for using a very low bitrate on them. And maybe we could even slightly lower the bitrate of some of the dub tracks.
Worst case scenario, I could also encode the video with a slightly lower bitrate - the difference should be absolutely minimal.

Thanks for doing this guys - I'm glad someone stepped up because I don't like this kind of work much.

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Author: CatBus
Time: 10-Feb-2015 1:34 PM
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Video bitrate won't change anything--the 8Mbps is reserved for non-video streams, so it can only be adjusted via audio and subtitle changes.

192k audio streams (most dubs and alternate tracks) are already pretty dang tiny--if audio is where we want to make cuts, we need to cut down the big ones, the lossless tracks. Even encoding with a slightly smaller lossy core isn't going to save much space--switching from lossless to lossy on one or two tracks will free up a world of space. The question is: which tracks? I think hairy_hen's 5.1 track should be sacred, but that's about it.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 10-Feb-2015 1:39 PM (Edited)
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From what I can tell using MediaInfo, all the lossy audio tracks appear to be constant bit rate rather than variable, for what that's worth; although I'm not sure how much of a difference re-encoding them as vbr would make

edit: unless ac-3 is cbr by design, i'm afraid i'm not familiar enough with it one way or the other

Author: analog
Time: 10-Feb-2015 1:44 PM
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Nanner Split said:

analog said:

Am still curious - did you verify that all tracks are selectable via the menu elements, even though there was mention of the 9 track limitation in the documentation?

Any kind of track limitation would only pertain to the muxing of the disc itself and not the menu (as long as its size doesn't exceed the total image buffer it can have as many things on it as we want, and it's not even close to maxing out the buffer)

analog said:
All that being said - I'd still be down with helping on the graphics front if you'd like. I could work with the layout ideas you have, as well as the font. It's certainly more readable than the one I was working with (which required layers of various things to "stand out" properly).

I'm currently putting together more or less a "template" that just needs to be filled in and tinkered with, i'll let you know when it's ready. :)

The only thing I can see being annoying is putting in thumbnails for the chapters since there are so many of them, but only because it's time consuming, not because it's difficult.

By the way, I haven't verified yet, but are the chapter markers in the mkv verified or were they put in automatically?

Nice! Hopeful that there are zero issues there.

yoda-sama - Haha, yes, it did work. It was a straight copy/paste from the .nfo text regarding the tracks - absolutely agree it could be shored up quite a bit, and leave out a lot of the "detail" present, as long as type/language is there, it should be enough to tell which track you're on, which is the main point.

Honestly, I don't mind the approach of a scrolling menu at all.
If Nanner Split's method works, it's "6 of one, 1/2 dozen of another" kind of thing to me. The only major thing is knowing "ok, which 'English' track is this?!?!" or other language, while playing back from a disc.

Keeping it "cleaner" than 1-3 screens full of options also has several benefits. It cuts down a lot of design challenges, keeps organization easier, etc.
Again, it was my *very* first run to see if the number of audio tracks would work. I would most definitely have cut down the text (which, I'd already done for a "1.01" draft, prior to even posting here).

Looking fwd. to seeing a template, and if there's anything I can help with on that, I'd be glad to.

You're welcome, Harmy! - it's awesome to have Nanner Split appear here and jump in with Do Studio (arguably a better program than what I was using anyway, for a variety of reasons), and, already having started on some ideas is a "good thing" for all!

As for chapter markers, they were not muxed in w/the original .mkv. Many have added them by remuxing for their own "basic" discs...
Scene selection - yeah, that'll be tedious. I almost wonder if it's worth nixing the "chapters" menu, and just having the "marker points" so you can skip with them during playback? Perhaps we go with fewer than the ~50 of them (which is based on the Laserdisc anyway...).

As to bitrate of the audio, I can see that being an option, but would it be "enough" to lower the commentary track's bitrate? ...I can re-encode some of them if anyone wants...

Author: CatBus
Time: 10-Feb-2015 1:46 PM (Edited)
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Even if VBR would work, I wouldn't do it for this particular purpose. It'd just make it harder to find out where the bitrate peaks are across all tracks, and you'd have to test the whole movie, rather than just a little bit. At least with CBR you know every second is getting the same bits from each track, and you only have to worry about bitrate spikes coming from the subtitles.

Author: jadec712
Time: 10-Feb-2015 4:03 PM
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Nanner Split and analog is the purpose of the menu discussion here that once it is working with all the desired options that it will be made available to anyone who would like to download it? Would that be in an iso format that can be burned to a Bluray using something like Nero or any other burning software? I love the idea of having a menu with all the options mentioned in the last few posts, but I do not have any experience trying to do it myself.

I have started looking into the software mentioned to do this, but Sony DoStudio 4.0 is outside my price range. Is the trial of the software sufficient to do what is needed? I assume it's not, but figured I'd ask. Do you have any recommendations on other BluRay authoring software that can use chapters/subtitles/custom menus? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Author: analog
Time: 10-Feb-2015 4:23 PM
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Yes, the plan is a "release" once it's ready. I'd think .iso would be best/simplest. It's something we've all been kind of waiting to do, and I happened upon some software I though would work well, but it's looking like Nanner Split's got some better options with his.

There are also a few other things we're waiting on, which will probably be done soon, so with any luck, we're talking maybe about a month, but as with anything, there are no guarantees, and we're not in any huge rush that I know of.

Author: Nanner Split
Time: 10-Feb-2015 4:26 PM (Edited)
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Ideally, yes, this would be uploaded as a .iso for anyone to burn.

As for authoring Blu-Rays yourself, here's the predicament: there is a lot of **DVD authoring** software (Adobe Encore, DVD Architect Pro, etc) that also includes Blu Ray capabilities, but pretty much all of them are essentially dressed-up DVD authoring tools and aren't capable of handling tasks as complex as Blu Ray is capable of (or in some cases, requires). Now doing simple blu rays at home, that's fine, although none of them can handle as many audio/subtitle options as this beast has, so there's that.

Basically right now your only options for pro-level BR authoring software are:
-DoStudio Indie ($3,000)
-DoStudio EX ($5,000)
-Sony Blu Print (~$50,000) (yes you read that right)
-Scenarist BD $????? (I have yet to figure out where the hell you're supposed to be able to buy this)

Additionally, I think I'm still sensing a little confusion here and there on the last couple pages, and going back and reading previous Blu Ray discussions I think I understand why. People using other freeware BR authoring software were saying things like "it only allows x amount of tracks on an audio menu" or "it won't let you make more than one of x kind of menu".

DoStudio doesn't work that way. It doesn't make any distinction between menu types, it doesn't have a limit on onscreen buttons, none of that shit. I can put a thousand buttons on the screen if I want. There are no pre-defined templates, it ALL has to be custom-made. ALL of it. The examples I posted above weren't made on a pop-up menu template, I made them in Photoshop from scratch and imported them in. As far as DoStudio is concerned, there is no "audio menu" or "subtitle menu", there is only "squares with buttons on it", whether it's one square or a thousand. So it's VERY different from authoring a DVD. As Yoda says, "You must unlearn what you have learned." :P

So it's not a question of "CAN we fit all these things on one screen?", it's "SHOULD we?" and my opinion is no, we shouldn't. It fills the screen with clutter and buries that beautiful restored footage under a mountain of language options.

Author: DVD-BOY
Time: 10-Feb-2015 4:45 PM
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Out of interest, what are you doing about subtitles for the dialogue discrepancies between mixes:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Definitive-tractor-beam-Close-the-blast-doors-Blast-it-Biggs-Wedge-you-dont-taste-very-good-Noooooo-Preservation-Guide/topic/13428/

Does it just affect English? Do you need a subtitle track for each audio mix?

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Author: CatBus
Time: 10-Feb-2015 5:02 PM (Edited)
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Project Threepio is based on the original stereo/surround mixes. It does not make any attempt to accommodate later audio revisions (85 mix, 93 mix), it does not attempt to match the dialogue on foreign dubs (i.e. the translations can be different), nor does it include alternate crawl translations for the 81 video revision.

The mono mixes are a bit special, since they are original, so Project Threepio includes subtitles for the mono mixes of Star Wars and Empire (16mm), but only in English, and only in SRT format. I don't plan to do subtitles for the 70mm/8mm audio for Empire, even though that's also a unique original mix.

Future versions of Project Threepio will include a way to align foreign subtitles to the timing of the mono mixes, although it still will not include translations of the different lines.

Anyone who wants to use Project Threepio with a mono mix can do it, but there's some manual work involved. It's doable, but it doesn't work out of the box.

Direct other questions to the Project Threepio thread. This little question can go way down the rabbit hole in so many directions.

Author: analog
Time: 10-Feb-2015 5:14 PM (Edited)
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Yes, Nanner Split - that is exactly it... this has been an ongoing desire for a long time (over a year, possibly 2+, I don't recall..), with a lot of people having tried other (very basic) software which is why I was excited to find software that seemed to do what was needed, that didn't cost an arm and a leg (as noted above). It's also nice of you to jump in with something a little more pro than the software I found, which supports chapters properly (still no idea why mine won't).