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Star Wars OT ANH - PAL Laserdisc transfer (Released) — Page 2

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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
"I was thinking for people with projection units, or those who simply prefer it on the picture."

How many of them do you think will set their curtains for a ratio other than (or smaller than) 16x9? Hell, most of them probably have the curtains set at 4x3 just to save some hastle.

And it doesn't make much sense to preserve the video, just to slap subtitles on it - not to mention the fact that it can make them harder to read.
I said it would be nice to have both subtitle tracks, not that you have to force people into seeing the subtitles over the picture.

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I realized I came off as rather rude and critical in my post, and I'm sorry...

What I meant to say was that it looks really good, much better than some other bootlegs, but I think you need to go shot-by-shot if you haven't, because some shots look amazing while others don't. The loss of detail in those shots is tremendous and you need to be a little more careful about that.

Having said that, I think you're doing a great job. Keep it up. But I'm not going to get this release - I live in the US so it won't do much good for me.

Might I suggest not using a German language track - use German subtitles instead? I think it's idiotic to not watch a film in its original language. Examples that I always watch in their original language with English subtitles are Das Boot and Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in English). So I say nix the German dub and subtitle it.
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Hi.

@ChainsawAsh
Don't worry, I never thought your post was rude, just (constructive critism).
The good thing about this forum is that I can get feedback from people that will notice details others (or myself) overlook.
Besides, your were right about the darkness and blue shift. The shot is fairly dark because I tried to make my test clip look similar to the original 2004 DVD.
These DVDs are also dark and have very vivid colors (decrypt it to hd, and load a vob in VirtualDubMod to see yourself, don't use a player such as PowerDVD because it will alter the image.)

I will probably cancel my attempts to use color correction because parameters that work well on one scene look terrible on another. It would be too much work. I will just change the saturation and brightness/contrast settings slightly.

The german audio track is very important part of my DVD-concept, because I want to to share this DVD with some friends who prefer german language in movies. Of course I can always author different DVDs once I have all video, audio and subtitle tracks ready.

My "dream Star Wars DVD" would be a good quality version with at least german and english audio, plus 1 or 2 commentary tracks, subtitles and the possibility to choose between original cut, special edition and 2004 DVD edition via multiangle. This of course is way too much for a single DVD-5, but could theoretically be done for DVD-9.

I also understand that you have no need for a PAL version.
Btw, what is the standard way of playing PAL discs on NTSC equipment?
If you play a NTSC disc on a PAL player it outputs PAL60 (or NTSC if you have multi-standard TV) or it drops frames (which looks horrible).

Greetings
Grisan


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Originally posted by: ChainsawAsh
Examples that I always watch in their original language with English subtitles are Das Boot and Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in English).


Are U saying Clint Eastwood spoke another language in an origianl version of that movie? I know they were made in Italy, because my Mum calls them Spaghetti Westerns, but was it made in the Italian language?

E Chu Ta!

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Everyone spoke their own native language on set as most of Leone's films were post dubbed. Because of this it's difficult to say if there is an official language for his westerns as he often cast Americans in the lead roles, but everyone else in the movie might be speaking Italian. My preference then is that the language where the actors dubbed themeselves can equally be called 'official' versions.
The original Star Wars trilogy: Our cultural history deserves to be preserved and should be available to the public like all great works of art!
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Originally posted by: grisan

I know for sure that the 1995 THX LDs of SW OT were released in Germany and France


I've bought the french 1995 THX LDs off eBay in the past weeks. Two different releases exists: one with the french soundtrack, and a box set with the original english soundtrack and french subtitles. (I've bought both of them!)

I've bought a fairly decent player too (Pioneer CLD-D925), that I have just received this morning. So I checked the french subtilted english LDs... (drum roll) They have the english text crawl (and end credits), and the subtiltes are (always) in the bottom black bar!!! So there is an english PAL LD of the Star Wars Trilogy.

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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Originally posted by: Z6PO
Originally posted by: grisan

I know for sure that the 1995 THX LDs of SW OT were released in Germany and France


I've bought the french 1995 THX LDs off eBay in the past weeks. Two different releases exists: one with the french soundtrack, and a box set with the original english soundtrack and french subtitles. (I've bought both of them!)

I've bought a fairly decent player too (Pioneer CLD-D925), that I have just received this morning. So I checked the french subtilted english LDs... (drum roll) They have the english text crawl (and end credits), and the subtiltes are (always) in the bottom black bar!!! So there is an english PAL LD of the Star Wars Trilogy.
Impressive, most impressive. Are you going to attempt it yourself, or loan your LD's to someone with powers far greater than the average man?
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Originally posted by: Z6PO
Originally posted by: grisan

I know for sure that the 1995 THX LDs of SW OT were released in Germany and France


I've bought the french 1995 THX LDs off eBay in the past weeks. Two different releases exists: one with the french soundtrack, and a box set with the original english soundtrack and french subtitles. (I've bought both of them!)

I've bought a fairly decent player too (Pioneer CLD-D925), that I have just received this morning. So I checked the french subtilted english LDs... (drum roll) They have the english text crawl (and end credits), and the subtiltes are (always) in the bottom black bar!!! So there is an english PAL LD of the Star Wars Trilogy.


Good news for us PAL people, I have been looking for a german/french set also, could you do me a favour and mail me some package shots of the french version with english soundtrack if possible so I know what to look for superfly74_uk AT Yahoo DOT com


The cld-925 was the flagship pal player you should get a good output from that.

Egon "Don't Cross the streams it would be very bad"

Peter "i'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing"

Egon "lmagine the 97 Star Wars Special Editions"
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Originally posted by: Z6PO
Originally posted by: grisan

I know for sure that the 1995 THX LDs of SW OT were released in Germany and France


I've bought the french 1995 THX LDs off eBay in the past weeks. Two different releases exists: one with the french soundtrack, and a box set with the original english soundtrack and french subtitles. (I've bought both of them!)

I've bought a fairly decent player too (Pioneer CLD-D925), that I have just received this morning. So I checked the french subtilted english LDs... (drum roll) They have the english text crawl (and end credits), and the subtiltes are (always) in the bottom black bar!!! So there is an english PAL LD of the Star Wars Trilogy.


Thanks for the information. It seems I have to buy these french LDs too.
The CLD-925 is a really good player. My Sony LD player is only average, but I think the results I got with it are quite good.

Greetings
Grisan

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I don't have a digital camera, but you can see the french LD box set at this eBay auction

And, yes, it's the one I won (it was a second chance offer!). These are pretty rare, and fairly expensive...

I plan on doing my own transfer, but I don't have the video acquisition hardware yet. I'll let you know when I start this project.

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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Where are you located Z6PO? Do you have NTSC LD's you can compare to?
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Hi,

In the last few days I have been trying to sync the audio track from TR47s DVD to my PAL video track. This was not very succesful, because the audio desyncs at several places during the movie. I found out that this happens because my german LDs seem to miss some frames in some scenes. I compared these scenes with footage from other SW versions.
My german OT LDs really miss frames that exist in every other OT version I checked (including older german LDs). Some of these scenes are frame-identical to the SE versions, but others not.
The Leia / Darth vader mindprobe scene is one example I found.
You can watch a sample clip here:

sample
in the beginning the german PAL LDs and NTSC LDs are in sync, but the hallway scene is 5 frames shorter than the NTSC version.
In the SEversion this scene has exactly the same number of frames, but the scene with the tie fighters flying to the death star is about a second longer.

There are other places in the movie with similar "frame loss" but this is the worst I found so far.
All this makes synching the audio to my video track very troublesome.

Greetings
Grisan
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Originally posted by: Z6PO
I don't have a digital camera, but you can see the french LD box set at this eBay auction

And, yes, it's the one I won (it was a second chance offer!). These are pretty rare, and fairly expensive...

I plan on doing my own transfer, but I don't have the video acquisition hardware yet. I'll let you know when I start this project.



Thanks for the link, I could only find the separate set like this here

its the french soundtrack version I think


At the moment for capture I'm using a Canopus ADVC 300 which does a superb job although its a little expensive .


Egon "Don't Cross the streams it would be very bad"

Peter "i'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing"

Egon "lmagine the 97 Star Wars Special Editions"
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Z6PO, If at all possible, could I get you to send me a PCM copy of the french soundtrack? I'm also expecting a copy of the german soundtrack, and would like to have as many different versions as possible. Let me know.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
Z6PO, If at all possible, could I get you to send me a PCM copy of the french soundtrack? I'm also expecting a copy of the german soundtrack, and would like to have as many different versions as possible. Let me know.


What is the source of your german PCM track? I don't now if you read my previous post, but the audio track of the 1995 german THX LDs will cause some desynching problems because these LDs miss some frames compared with other OT releases (e.g. the definitive collection) . This might also be the case with these french LDs. I just checked several PAL vhs tapes of the 1995 THX release (german, UK, australian) and noticed that all versions are missing frames. Probably because all of them came from the same master. Maybe all 1995 THX PAL releases have this problem. Unfortunately I don't have an US Faces LD version or DVD-transfer available to check if there are missing frames too.
A good possibility to check this is at the Lia mindprobe scene. In the definitive edition (and 2004 DVD) Vader and the two other guys walking through the hallway and opening the door is 164 (after IVTC) frames long. In my PAL rip it has only 160 frames (and no, it is not because of dropped frames during capturing).
At other points in movie, there are also one or two frames missing.

Greetings
Grisan

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"I don't now if you read my previous post, but the audio track of the 1995 german THX LDs will cause some desynching problems because these LDs miss some frames compared with other OT releases (e.g. the definitive collection) . This might also be the case with these french LDs"

Don't worry. I can easily fix this in Vegas.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
"I don't now if you read my previous post, but the audio track of the 1995 german THX LDs will cause some desynching problems because these LDs miss some frames compared with other OT releases (e.g. the definitive collection) . This might also be the case with these french LDs"

Don't worry. I can easily fix this in Vegas.


How exactly?

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Vegas change change the speed of the soundtrack, and I can splice sounds in and out. Believe me, I've had to do it to some extent with my english THX set. Suffice to say, it's possible.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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I have no doubt it is possible. I am doing this myself, although I only use an audio editor for this work, which makes it quite difficult.
Maybe I should try Vegas too.

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Vegas will let you align various audio and video tracks - much easier to sync up the two.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: DanielB
Where are you located Z6PO? Do you have NTSC LD's you can compare to?

I'm in the south of France. Why? And, no, I don't have any NTSC LDs to compare to.


Originally posted by: norinradd
Thanks for the link, I could only find the separate set like this here

its the french soundtrack version I think


Yes, it's the french version. As far as I know, the english version is only available in the box set.


Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
Z6PO, If at all possible, could I get you to send me a PCM copy of the french soundtrack?


Sorry, I don't have access to digitial audio in hardware. My computer doesn't have any audio in, actually. (damn Apple G4 Cube!) I plan on doing my own transfer, so I will buy the acquisition hardware, but for the moment, you know... money...

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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"My computer doesn't have any audio in, actually. (damn Apple G4 Cube!)"

Not even a stereo audio in....?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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MeBejedi I am bidding on some french LD's now if I win i'll send you a copy of the PCM.
Egon "Don't Cross the streams it would be very bad"

Peter "i'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing"

Egon "lmagine the 97 Star Wars Special Editions"
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You da bomb!

BTW, SW sounds pretty cool in German. They did a nice job.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Hi folks!

Having just found this thread, I'm kicking myself for not having found it sooner.

But I was also quite thrilled to find out that there other people who are thinking exactly the same as me!

You see, although I have DrGonzo's versions, I too want to have the original trilogy in PAL format (I live in the UK) for 2 reasons:
- better picture definition (because PAL has an increased resolution)
- no "motion judder" from 3:2 pulldown (see the scene in Jedi where the rebel fleet is preparing for the attack on the Death Star; some of the fast horizontal movement looks awful to my eyes)

I decided a while ago that my VHS versions wouldn't give me the quality I wanted, so I bought a 2nd hand CLD-D925, and I've also managed to get LDs of Empire and Jedi (in French - the versions with the original soundtrack on eBay go way too expensive for me). I've probably been bidding against one of you lot for A New Hope! The VHS versions I have are the THX ones (from 1995?) and have the same artwork as the LDs, so I would think that the audio will be compatible.

I know a fair bit about analogue capture (I actually contributed in a very small part to the guide you will find at Doom9.org) so I'm looking forward to doing this.

Here's my "plan of action":
- Set up correct contrast and brightness on the PC monitor using screengrabs from the THX optimiser included on my Indiana Jones DVDs.
- Now run the same disc on a DVD player connected via s-video to the capture card - use the options in the drivers to make sure that the analogue capture is optimal quality.
- Make a capture of my VHS tapes, for the analogue Dolby Surround English audio only, but keeping the video for frame-by-frame reference for synching later on.
- Cap the laserdiscs - I have a digital input that could record the digital stereo French soundtrack.
- Process the video with AVISynth, clean with minimal temporal/spatial noise filtering (probably PixieDust), then do a Lanczos resize to make it anamorphic without blurring the edges too much.
- Encode the video using CCE 3 or 4-pass VBR (this will tie up my poor old XP2700+ for some time!)
- Encode the audio streams to AC-3 (making sure the Dolby Surround flag is set for the English track - unlike DrGonzo's version). Also for A New Hope I may be able to find the original mono soundtrack off a VHS tape somewhere - this would be an interesting addition if I can manage to sync it, for those who have never heard the "close the blast door" line and other differences.
- Do the subtitles in English (for Jabba/Greedo) and French (Jabba/Greedo and the opening scrawl)
- I wasn't going to bother with menus or extras because those sorts of thing are not IMO as important.

So, a hell of a lot to do and I need to do some further reading on audio encoding, subtitles and DVD authoring (was going to make the chapter points the same as the LDs).

I'd be interested to hear any comments on my plan!

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