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Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- 1975 theatrical (on hiatus - lots of info) — Page 3

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CatBus said:

Thanks SilverWook.  By the way, the "progress bar" on the video end shows more time remaining than when I started, so it's slow-going.  I suppose this is why people buy real computers, but that's too late for me!

Build real PC's, not buy, building yourself is a lot cheaper and your PC will be a lot stronger.

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Hey Catbus, if you're still looking for Superman theatrical on DVD, the "Big Lots" chain of discount stores has it in the bargain bin for three bucks.

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Where were you in '77?

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Sounds good for the source material if a bit soft. Dynamic Range of 11 (out of 20, I'm obsessed with this meter), but why is it PCM at 1536 kbp/s instead of 1441?

VADER!? WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOCHA LATTE? -Palpy on a very bad day.
“George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.”-Harrison Ford
YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DamnFoolIdealisticCrusader

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That should do quite nicely.  However, unless something changes soon I think I'm going to report bad news on the video front and start another approach, which may also take a long time.  VideoRedo doesn't seem to be cutting it (no pun intended).

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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captainsolo said:

Sounds good for the source material if a bit soft. Dynamic Range of 11 (out of 20, I'm obsessed with this meter), but why is it PCM at 1536 kbp/s instead of 1441?

My DVD recorder does not have a optical input, so I have to use the analog audio connections. I'm pretty sure DVD audio extractor isn't doing anything funny with it.

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

Status update: as expected, my current video encode failed.  I'm pretty sure I simply lack the hardware to do a re-encode (and maintain a usable PC for other family members), so I'm looking at solutions that do not involve re-encoding (on the upside, the resulting video quality would be better if I avoided this anyway)

The downside is that I can cut without re-encoding only on i-frames, which means a frame-perfect cut is impossible.  The actual, theatrical, cut is here:

"...evil zoot! oh, sh[CUT]e is a bad..."

...and I can get an i-frame cut positioned on either side of that:

"...evil zoot! oh[CUT], she is a bad..." (early)

"...evil zoot! oh, she is a b[CUT]ad..." (late)

The cut at the end is right on an i-frame, so everything will be frame-perfect on that end.

I will keep marching forward with this for my own amusement, but I'm no longer even trying to be perfect so I won't blame anyone for losing interest at this point.  I will try to use the "early" cut point because it seems more natural and it also doesn't include any frames from the non-theatrical insertion, so you could convince yourself that a real cut-and-spliced projection print may have looked just like this ;)  However, the early cut may not give me as much headroom for splicing in the audio, so I may have to settle for the late cut depending on how that works out.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this.

On a Python related note, I've found out Universal finally released "Fierce Creatures" in widescreen on DVD last year, and apparently didn't bother to tell anybody. Going down to Fry's tomorrow and try to find a copy. One less Laserdisc to preserve is always a good thing.

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

The early cut doesn't have enough room for the audio, so I'm going with the late cut, the question being how best to handle the extra half-second.  Low-level brown noise actually seems like a good match in this scene.

EDIT: Wow, I actually got great results by mixing in the "chattering women" background noise and other tweaks.  It now flows really smoothly.

Watching this, the only really noticeable problem is that Dingo is clearly about to say "bad" and instead it cuts to her saying "naughty".  Pretty much unavoidable considering the late cut.  Other than that, I'm a bit shocked how well it works.  Not theatrical, but close.

That said, I think this means alternate soundtracks are going to be a real bear if they're even possible at all.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Good news on the video front.  I realized I was an idiot and found a better way to handle the cutting.  Basically I do the early cut, a middle cut, and the end cut.  The middle cut is just from the "oh" to the "bad", and all I need to do is trim and re-encode that one-second segment, which my hardware can handle just fine.  The beginning and end cuts are untouched.  All in all only eleven frames will have any quality loss, and I doubt it will be noticeable.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Glad to hear. Do you think you can post video of the clip when you're done?

I'm still waiting on the 1983 LD to show up. The seller has gone quiet, so I'm slightly worried.

That four movie pack with Fierce Creatures in it was a bummer. I can't believe Universal would put out a non-anamorphic letterbox transfer in this decade. To further confuse people, the packaging says full frame, yet the disc label says anamorphic, go figure.

I actually think the old LD looks better. (So it goes back into the preservation pile I'm trying to slog through.) The only saving grace of the DVD is the Dolby 5.1 track, although it was DTS theatrically. I'm only out five bucks, but someone at Universal needs a visit from the killer rabbit for this deception! ;)

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Yeah, I'll see what I can do.  I'm not of the YouTube Generation so seemingly simple things sometimes baffle me.

I'm running into some technical difficulties but I'm not sure they're insurmountable.  Basically I can get a perfect cut, but when I play it back, every player plays the inserted section too slow (even though the framecount is correct).  I think it's because the original video has a certain cadence of keyframes and the edited section interrupts that cadence in a bad way.  I think I can work around that by fiddling with keyframe settings, but I don't have anything working yet.  I'm not sure how long this will take me.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Since the rise of Blu-ray, Universal has given less of a shit about DVD. When they released Metalstorm a couple years ago, it was a pan-and-scan transfer made for pay cable in the 90s (when they started letterboxing the credits instead of squeezing them). Yes, a P&S-only disc of a 2.35:1 film, in 2010. Sickening.

Anyway, as far as Python, glad to see the project is coming along.

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Found and fixed the last video issue (I think).  FFmpeg and software based on it creates open-gop video by default.  Due to how the cuts worked, I needed to make it closed-gop, and now it plays back fine.

Now on to the audio again!

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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 (Edited)

Okay, status update:

Video and English mono audio: DONE.  I had to trim a few frames at the scene transition to get audio sync just perfect, but the audio splices in absolutely seamlessly, no adjustments other than volume required, and it's exactly how I remember it now!  I'm coming up on a busy week so I may not be able to show a clip for a while, but it's in the bag.

I am currently experimenting with trying to port over the Blu Ray commentary tracks (basically I just need to cover the splice, and remove things like "and here we restored a scene that had originally been cu--").  And maybe I'll try to port over the subtitles, similarly just covering the transition gracefully while probably losing a line of dialog at the transition, which actually isn't a very big deal at this point in the scene.

For foreign dubs, if you want one, you'll have to send it my way.  All I have is the Blu Ray dubs, which appear to be based on the new mix (actually I think the commentaries are stereo-downmixed from the new mix but I'm not as concerned with that--can anyone verify this anyway?).  No guarantees that sync with other languages will be as easy/possible as with the English, but I'm willing to try, and I suppose I'll have a little more wiggle room because I won't have to match lip movements...

EDIT: Dang, that was fast.  Both commentaries converted over, so that's what I'll use unless I can use sources based on the mono mix (right now, it just sounds like people stop commenting for a few seconds during the transition and then they continue as before--the soundtrack is still quietly playing the whole time).  Now it's just subtitles and foreign dubs!

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Well, the Gilliam/Jones track was done by Criterion in the early 90's, but they may have given Sony an unmixed master to blend with the new sound mix. I'll have to give it a listen at the points where there's new music added.

The Japanese dub (what's left of it) definitely was married to the new mix.

If you want the all the mono LD tracks, let me know.

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Which tracks are on the LD?  I'd love to try to work with the mono tracks.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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The Criterion has the theatrical mono, the complete mono Japanese dub, and the Gilliam/Jones commentary.

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Complete Japanese mono would be fantastic.  I'm not sure I'll use the Gilliam/Jones track, but it's worth a try.  I don't need the complete English mono track, the bit you provided earlier is fine.

I believe one of the early DVD releases (before the 5.1 mix) also has a French dub, maybe others are out there?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and chapter stops.  I need to remember to convert the chapter stops.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Minor update:

I've discovered that video playback quality varies depending on the playback software (decent-but-not-perfect in MPC, poor in VLC), right at the edit point, which seems to indicate a problematic encode.  So I'm back to trying to re-encode everything, this time using the x264 command-line, rather than a GUI tool, and things seem to be going a lot more quickly this time around.  Hopefully this will get rid of the video hiccup without losing too much quality.

Other than video, the following have been converted over:

- Original English mono

- French, Portuguese, and Japanese dubs (just the BD versions mixed down to stereo and chopped at the edit point, I'm hoping to replace some of these, e.g. with the mono Japanese and maybe mono French dub)

- Commentary tracks (BD versions mixed down to stereo and blended with the English mono at the edit point, I'm hoping for a better mono version of the Gilliam/Jones commentary)

- Subtitles for English, English SDH, Chinese (Traditional), French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, and English for People Who Don't Like the Film (and not a single line of dialog lost, but a few seconds of dialog don't get displayed properly at the moment in any software I've tested, I'm assuming because of the video glitch)

- Chapter stops

I'm assuming my troubles merging the h.264 video files were due to the fact that they were encoded using different encoders/settings and then spliced together, and that re-encoding everything with the exact same settings will work much better.  If anyone has any experience in the matter, feel free to chime in with advice.  I'm trying my very best to preserve video quality--I'm currently using vbv-maxrate=25000, crf=1, tune=grain, and preset=veryslow (among others) for my first complete re-encode, and may adjust things if I don't like the results.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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The re-encode went smoothly and I am very impressed with the results. It now plays without so much as a stutter in all media players I throw at it, which I take as a good sign. I haven't burned it to BD-R yet and tried that, but BD compatibility is definitely a goal. I will verify this before I'm finished.

I'm in the process of uploading a clip, please PM me for the link. It is a BIG file for such a short clip, because it's a full-resolution M2TS, with all audio and sub streams too. That way, you can see the actual video quality, and also how I handled the cut on alternate tracks and subs. MPC is able to switch audio and video streams through the "filter" menu, FWIW.

As far as things left to do, there's a better Japanese and commentary track I'd like to have (in fact, the current Japanese track is so bad I probably will not include it in the final unless I get a mono replacement), and I'm toying with the idea of adding a German subtitle track because that's something I feel I can manage. A Japanese-back-to-English track would be great too, and I may just know a couple of people who can fill in any gaps.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Thanks for uploading the file, it took a long time to download though. I need to rewatch it again, but it looks like you nailed it.

Are you saying you know people who could translate Japanese?

I'm falling behind on some other things, but I think I can get back to capturing the LD's  this week. Are you sure you don't want the original mono track uncompressed as well?

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SilverWook said:

Thanks for uploading the file, it took a long time to download though. I need to rewatch it again, but it looks like you nailed it.

Are you saying you know people who could translate Japanese?

I'm falling behind on some other things, but I think I can get back to capturing the LD's  this week. Are you sure you don't want the original mono track uncompressed as well?

Yes, I indirectly know two people who did Japanese translation for a living, and have weird senses of humor.  I could probably rope one or both into this.

As for the original mono, I just don't feel the need.  I'm sure you don't need to bother.  Even if it's slightly better, the amount of improvement is likely much less than the risk of sync drift (and my occasional failure to completely correct for it) I'll be contending with when trying to sync an entire LD audio track to the BD video.  The audio quality wasn't very good to begin with and I don't see much indication they mangled anything on the BD release.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Okay, we now have a German subtitle track for this project.  Because the Blu Ray just didn't have enough language options!  I tried to match the font/size/position/style of the existing subs, and they look great.  I don't follow my own guidelines from Project Threepio, so they flash by a little fast for my tastes, but they use the exact same timing as the official subs, and that's what I want to go with in this case.

I also learned a bit about how to easily move single subtitles up to the top of the screen to avoid onscreen text, which I may be able to incorporate into my other project as an "all languages are now CIH-safe" update someday.

EDIT TO ADD:

I just verified BD-compatibility, so unless someone spots a problem on the clip, I'm going with this encode.  The complete x264 encoding options I used were: --preset=veryslow --tune=grain --bluray-compat --fps=23.976 --force-cfr --vbv-maxrate=25000 --vbv-bufsize=30000 --crf=1 --level=4.1 --open-gop --slices=4

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Well now I'm starting to have second thoughts about the lossless mono track.  I suppose if you're going to be grabbing the others anyway...

However, I'm only going to replace the existing mono track if I can get a perfect sync without too much screwing around.  I'm skeptical that this will happen, but you never know.  A great sounding track with drifting sync may be fine for commentary or a dub, but I don't want imperfect sync on the primary English track.

If it works, I'd probably encode it as 448kbps Dolby Digital.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)