International Audio (including Voice-Over Translations) — Page 6

I now have a temporary archive of the files I've been working on--feel free to PM me for a link.  The include French and Italian audio (GOUT+extra score), and Castilian (corrected GOUT with and without the extra score).  Lossy and lossless for all tracks.

As for the extra score, I still don't know what exactly I've created.  A theatrical reconstruction, or a nice-sounding THX mix.  Who knows?

I'll have these up for a while, and will eventually take them down because they're big.  For myself, I've concluded that I really don't like that extra music, and will only replace my personal copies with them if I am more convinced than I am right now that these are truly the theatrical mixes.

The Castilian audio was still a bit weird to work with.  The two GOUT sources I had did not have matching dynamics, so I used the old weird mix with Latino audio for most of the audio, because of its greater dynamics, and included only the fixed compactor section from the 100% Castilian mix, because it was more compressed. IMO they still blend way better than my previous fixed audio using the Blu-ray mix.

On another note--does anyone have the uncorrected German GOUT audio?  That might be a useful reference for me in trying to sort this out.

Yeah, I got the levels matched as you said, and to be honest it sounds good, but it just looks wrong when you see all the peaks disappear for that segment (yeah, don't judge audio by its visualization, but still...).  I think the fact that it's a complete scene being replaced also helps.  I got word from Laserschwert about another missing sound effect from the German audio, so I'll listen to the other tracks and see what that tells me, and maybe I'll have updated files depending on what I find.

Just checked, and all of the GOUT dubs in question are missing a "clunking" sound effect when Ben takes the blast helmet off the wall in the Falcon, just like the unfixed German track.  AFAIK it's present in every English mix, so that's more evidence supporting a common international master used for all of these tracks.

But was the clunk theatrical?  Was the extra score theatrical?  Well, that's the question, isn't it?

Re-reading the posts in the German thread, it's clear that people definitely know the missing dialogue was present on the 35mm theatrical audio, but it's less clear about the other changes they made to the GOUT audio.  Was anyone able to verify all of these were theatrical, or just some of them?

Everything------->Out the window

Oh well, thanks. I read some fairly certain statements about those missing lines in the elevator, but you know communicating in text sometimes goes.

At least the Castilian dub is all Castilian now ;)

The next versions of our major ROTJ preservations will be a few frames different than the current batch (they will use NTSC frames instead of PAL), so for all of the ROTJ dubs that I synced to the PAL frames, I have created new dubs synced to the NTSC frames.

This includes Polish, Russian (voiceover), Ukrainian, and Thai.

There are, of course, lots of others dubs out there that I did not personally sync, but at least the ones I did a preliminary check on are actually close enough to the NTSC frames (~20ms difference, even on audio from the PAL GOUT!) to not require any modification for this change.

Since the difference is, at maximum, only two frames, in my opinion it's only noticeable for audio with English dialogue anyway due to visible lip sync issues (English audio and voiceover dubs), so I probably didn't even need to modify the Thai dub.

Anyway, at the moment, these new dubs don't actually perfectly sync with any major preservation, but that will hopefully change soon.

In addition to the Star Wars-only Navajo dub I’m finishing up despecializing, thanks to Harmy I have a trilogy-complete Hindi SE dub, and a Tamil dub that’s frustratingly missing only Star Wars. I guess those are next, although I usually only really bother with trilogy-complete dubs and may decide to wait on Tamil until I can get a whole set, which may not be an option (but that would be strange). No subtitles for Hindi or Tamil, just the crawl and alien subs for Navajo.

Hm, the Hindi trilogy audio isn’t as complete as I thought. The Star Wars dub at least has been edited already (haven’t worked on the others yet), and while most of the issues so far have been things I could work around, one hasn’t been.

Han’s lines: Looks like an Imperial cruiser. Our passengers must be hotter than I thought. Try and hold ’em off.

…are in English. It’s pretty clear that the person who synced this did it over an existing English track, because there’s a couple instances of fixable English bleeding over where it shouldn’t be. It’s clear to me they just missed this line entirely. If anyone finds a Hindi dub without this problem, let me know. I’ll go ahead and sync the rest, just in case the missing lines turn up, but it’s a bit of a letdown.

Is it like that in both the 64 and 128 files?

Yes (for Star Wars, it’s 192 and 64, but yes). And they have other identical quirks (dropouts, etc), so they’re just the exact same audio re-encoded.

I’ll go ahead and do what I can with what I have. At the very least with a mostly-synced track, it’ll be easier to get a complete track if we get new source material down the road.

I’ve started working my way through Hindi and Tamil again, and it seems the problems aren’t limited to Star Wars, or to Hindi.

In Hindi, Star Wars had about eight instances of English still showing up in the audio, Jedi so far has four. They clearly pasted the Hindi audio over an English template of some sort, and in addition to the missed lines, there are sudden volume changes, rough transitions, dropouts, all sorts of fun stuff to try and repair. It’s unclear if Jabba and Greedo aren’t dubbed over because that’s how the Hindi dub is, or that’s how the people who edited this audio decided it should be. The good news if that the Hindi dub is from a good-quality source, probably DVD.

Tamil’s is much lower quality, probably VHS/OTA recording. So far, I haven’t seen any signs of English in the files, but there’s some real head-scratchers in there. The end of the sail barge fight has all of the audio chopped up and pasted together in seemingly random order, which is fun to try to reassemble in another language. Luke and Leia’s conversation ends with a half-second of techno music, and there’s a 14-second patch of static, which I’ve opted to replace with English until we get a better source. So I’m responsible for the English in this one. Also, they dub everything. Wicket is dubbed in Tamil (or in a nonsense language by a Tamil voice actor, I can’t tell).

I thought working with the two languages together would be easier since, if they came with the same video, they should sync with each other, right? Yeah, maybe not so much. Anyway, I’ll put together what I can for these, but they’re really going to be incomplete until better sources turn up. Like a lot of our international language options, a pretty flawed version is still good enough to attract the interest necessary to get a better version.

Okay, the Hindi dubs are now as done as I’ll be able to get them without access to better sources.

This whole project has been like a cautionary tale about why we should always start with good-quality sources, but I hope that even in their current incomplete state, they can serve some function:

• They are mostly complete, so for someone who needs a Hindi dub and doesn’t mind a few lines in untranslated English, they should work.
• They may serve as a big “Help Wanted” sign, that we are interested in making Star Wars available in Hindi, but need help. That could be in the form of people with access to better audio sources, or willing to transcribe the dubs into subtitles–Hindi or Urdu.
• You should have heard what they sounded like before. They’ll be the best Hindi dubs available on the Internet, regardless.

The same story will apply to the Tamil dubs (for Empire and Jedi only), which are nearing completion.

I should add for Tamil, that in addition to the “dub everything with a voice, and then some” I already remarked on, there’s also the breathing, gasping, humming, and grunting added to every character. It used to be Vader and Admiral Ackbar were the only heavy breathers in the Star Wars universe, now everyone gets a chance. Also, while both the Hindi and Tamil dubs use recognizably English phrases in their dubs (that’s separate from the lines that didn’t get translated, it’s the Hindi/Tamil voice actor saying an English phrase), the Tamil dub definitely amuses me with the sort of flippant rudeness that I’d use with friends. When Luke’s pissed that he crashed in a swamp, and R2 keeps chattering at him afterward, he tells R2 to “shut up”. When Leia kisses Luke in the sick bay, Han doesn’t tell Luke “Take it easy”, he says “I hate you.” Had to listen a few times to make sure, but there it was. And really, it works.

Tamil dubs are available now, similar issues to Hindi, except Tamil dubs are for Empire and Jedi only.

I’ve despecialized the Slovak dubs (1997 VHS source) that have been included with various versions of the Despecialized Editions. The initial sync was already done thanks to pittrek, so I just handled pitch adjustment (PAL source), and despecialization (and Jedi was mostly despecialized anyway). They’re available at the usual places.

This is a general appeal for help. I’m working on Turkish dubs for the trilogy, and the only major problem is that the (1997SE?) sources I’m using have been re-edited to match the 2011SE. This isn’t a big deal except for the Emperor scene in ESB, which is significantly different between the 1997SE and the 2011SE. Of the three sources I’ve found, two just use English audio for that scene, and one uses a not-very-seamlessly edited mix of Turkish and English, and it’s in lower quality than the others too.

So, if anyone knows where I can find an unedited and complete version of the Emperor scene in Turkish, that would be really helpful. Just that scene, I’ve got everything else covered. I’m pretty crap at searching some of the darker recesses of the Internet, but also I’d be happy with YouTube at this point.

CatBus said:

They’re available at the usual places.

Which places? LOL!
I’ve been browsing one site where all of Harmys projects reside and
can’t find a thing, I was interested in foreign language dubs that
have been improved or added since the latest versions on the DEs
have been released. Would it be best just to wait for the next Harmy
release that contains all the tracks? Am I looking in the wrong place
or looking for the wrong thing? LOL!

Check the first post of Project Threepio, for a link to tehParadox. That’ll get you pointed in the right direction.

CatBus said:

Check the first post of Project Threepio, for a link to tehParadox. That’ll get you pointed in the right direction.

Thanks, already have that bookmarked, been a loooong time since I visited though!
Found your thread thanks!

Okay I’ve given up (for now) on getting improved sources for the Turkish dubs, so I’m uploading them in their current state now. Links will be posted at the usual places within a few days.

Similar to the situation with the Hindi dubs, I was working with audio that had already been edited. However, the quality of the editing was much better this time, and I was able to get complete dubs for both Star Wars and Jedi. Empire, however, still has the Emperor scene in English, presumably because the Turkish dub originally went with the 1997SE, but had been edited in my sources to go with the 2011SE, and the editors couldn’t make it fit. (actually, I found a version that did translate some of those lines into Turkish, but the quality was poor, and it was still incomplete, so I didn’t incorporate that audio)

The next version of Project Threepio will include Turkish “titles” subs, which subtitle only the parts not translated by the dub–just the crawls in this case, plus the Emperor scene.

Thanks to ccfilms for helping me shop around for sources, and putting out an appeal for the missing audio on a Turkish-language Star Wars fan site.