Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles) — Page 52

Project files have been updated to version 10.0 (codename: “Pango’s not a man, it’s a system”), first post has been updated, please PM me for temporary download links until the files are available at some more permanent locations.

Rough summary of changes from 9.2 to 10.0:

• Created a new subtitle rendering script, using ImageMagick+Pango, which fixes a lot of the shortcomings and kludges inherent in the previous process. Also removed a load of scripts and utilities (the aforementioned kludges) that are no longer necessary. The results are designed to closely resemble subtitles created with the old process, so the end result is not much different.
• Fixed Hungarian typos and character-substitution issues (thanks to B2D2)
• Improved French translation for Star Wars (thanks to MalàStrana)
• On Windows, the subtitle rendering script requires ImageMagick 7, so I ported over all scripts to ImageMagick 7 and made that a requirement.
• The remaining Perl utility scripts have been migrated to Python, fixing some minor bugs in the process. Python scripts have been pre-compiled into Windows executables, to remove the Python runtime requirement on Windows. This change was not intended as an editorial comment on the relative merits of Perl vs Python – I’ve simply never really been that good with Perl, that’s all. Also, I found out Python was named after Monty Python, so that pretty much settled it as far as I was concerned.
• Native subtitles are now provided for German, French, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish, to accompany preservations of the international theatrical versions with translated title/crawl/alien subtitles, although some of these preservations may not yet exist.
• Reconstructed 35mm alien subtitles are now provided in French, for both Star Wars and Jedi (thanks to marvins and Yotsuba)
• I am no longer attempting to create a single unified “international” matching font, even though all of the fonts for Jedi seem to be derived from the same Lucasfilm-provided font. There are just too many minor differences. Star Wars appears to have used a subtitle font chosen at the whim of the international distributor, so the differences from country to country are obvious.
• BiDi subtitles (e.g. Arabic) used to exist in a dual environment, where subtitles were edited in one SRT format, but then those subtitles were converted to another “compat” SRT format using a somewhat dubious conversion script, and those converted SRT subtitles were the ones actually used for rendering and playback. This dual environment still exists, but graphical subtitles are now generated directly from the edited subtitles (hooray for Pango!), so they are free of potential conversion-related errors. The conversion utility has also been rewritten to be a bit more coherent, so that the “compat” SRT files are also less likely to have conversion-related errors than before, although that’s still a risk.
• Added a few more troubleshooting-type entries in the README file. For example, “What to do if the SRT files aren’t working properly” offers more advice than just “use the SUP files instead”, although that advice is still offered 😉

The new rendering script is a very big deal, albeit pretty much entirely behind the scenes. The old system was based on a utility called easySUP and a customized version of DirectVobSub/VSFilter, both of which are discontinued and had lots of problems, including really bad BiDi support, reported bugs with Indic scripts, limited formatting options, no OpenType font support, and no cross-platform support. Some of these things I was able to work around using scripts and hacks (I was quite proud of my customized VSFilter DLL, but I’m happy to see it go), some I couldn’t, and for some I didn’t know enough about Arabic or Indic scripts to even be sure how I could know if it was working correctly. On top of this, I’d never scripted this part at all before, so it was a manual process–I had to babysit every single subtitle file I rendered.

Now we’re using Pango, a modern text renderer without any known limitations that would hamper Project Threepio’s further language expansion – and it’s scripted, so I can render subtitles while I sleep (and wake, and sleep again… it’s a very slow process). That’s not to say there might not still be bugs, but it should now be much more possible to fix them properly, and to have a bit more confidence in the results.

What are all those scripts for?

yhwx said:

What are all those scripts for?

Well, some are mostly internal use unless you want to edit or add subtitle files yourself. The most commonly-used ones would be to resync the subtitles against a non-GOUT-synced source (i.e. Puggo or Negative1), or to alter the existing subtitles to go with a preservation without burnt-in alien subs, resize them if you have a big projector screen and the default size is too big, etc. It’s all in the README.

EDIT: Although it’s not frequently used as such, this is designed as a “supply-side” project–the idea being that the people who make preservations use this project to ensure their preservations have global reach–and for everyone else, the “consumer-side”, it just works out of the box. So it tends to have lots of fiddly technical options, for the preservation-makers. I don’t really expect your average person to make much use of them.

CatBus said:

yhwx said:

What are all those scripts for?

Well, some are mostly internal use unless you want to edit or add subtitle files yourself. The most commonly-used ones would be to resync the subtitles against a non-GOUT-synced source (i.e. Puggo or Negative1), or to alter the existing subtitles to go with a preservation without burnt-in alien subs, resize them if you have a big projector screen and the default size is too big, etc. It’s all in the README.

EDIT: Although it’s not frequently used as such, this is designed as a “supply-side” project–the idea being that the people who make preservations use this project to ensure their preservations have global reach–and for everyone else, the “consumer-side”, it just works out of the box. So it tends to have lots of fiddly technical options, for the preservation-makers. I don’t really expect your average person to make much use of them.

Ah, OK. I’m by no means a programmer, though I do have an intense interest in adjacent topics.

Thanks very much for the update, especially the new native subtitles 😃

dahmage said:

So what new things are you going to tackle with all this new free time 😉

A serious answer is that most of my work requires some work from others before I can start. For Project Threepio, that means native speakers correcting translations or creating entirely new ones (there’s a few of these supposedly in the works, but I don’t have a timeframe).

However, I do have a few projects unrelated to Project Threepio, also waiting for victimsvolunteers. Are you fluent in Japanese? Does translating a couple hours of strange Japanese audio dialogue into English text sound like a fun time? Contact me. Or maybe you have an awesome radio voice, experience in radio or audio recording, and have an ability to talk for several hours without getting crazy dry mouth, or making any mistakes? (i.e. are you Sarah Vowell?) Ditto.

What is the font for the Greedo/Jabba subtitles, and the way it looks.

It’s not any existing digital font, although it’s certainly in the News Gothic/Franklin Gothic/Trade Gothic family, demibold or thereabouts. My own re-creation of the fonts is included with the project files, although it’s a reconstruction and not a perfect match.

Can I download a tff file of it? Or just convert the files?

If you have Project Threepio, you’ve already got the fonts. In version 10, there’s a file in the resources folder called fonts.zip, and inside that there’s a file called P3POSWMatching.ttf and another called P3POROTJMatching.ttf. Some earlier versions of Project Threepio had these files too, maybe not in inside the zip file.

Yes! Finally! Now I can subtitle Sandpeople so its a big misunderstanding!

If you want the best results, you’ll want to do a black drop shadow on almost-white text, and then blur the results a very tiny amount, and it’ll look just like the real thing. Good luck!

PM sent.

My calibration settings for the subtitles (via Drop Shadow plugin, getpaint.net)

Offset X=3
Offset Y=1

Widening=0
Blur Radius=0

Example:

Thank you, that’s great news and I will.

I know some friends from the Philippines and they told me that Star Wars I - VI have all just been shown on TV dubbed in Tagalog around the same time The Force Awakens was released in theaters.

They are most likely based on the 2011 Blu-ray versions.

Unfortunately, none of my friends got them recorded and I can’t find them on the Internet.

Does anyone have those versions?

And can a Filipino Star Wars fan edit them to sync with the GOUT or Despecialized Edition?

I really want to show this to said Filipino friends.

I don’t know of any Tagalog resources for Star Wars – subtitles or dubs. If you find anything at all, please let me know!

I suspect the dub was created by the local TV broadcaster, and so would only be available if someone recorded them. I haven’t seen Tagalog dubs on any Lucasfilm home video releases. Editing SE audio to match the GOUT is possible, but not easy. I’ve done it before (and might do it again).

If you’re interested, Project Threepio has English “template” subtitle files, which anyone could translate into their language of choice. That would probably be the easiest way to make it Tagalog-accessible, and I’d love to add Tagalog to our supported language list.

PM sent (font-only link doesn’t exist, so it’s the whole project)

My friends are Filipino, and I myself is half-Filipino. But also knows Tagalog. I think I can help you with that.

Absolutely would love that. Just use the English template files, and you might be able to use Tagalog Wikipedia to find the “official” Tagalog translations for various Star Wars characters, etc.