CapableMetal

Jetrell Fo said:

CapableMetal said:

Darth Mallwalker said:

I've been using SoX for SRC. By many accounts it's the best freeware solution, and second only to iZotope in the non-free category.

I've gone 44100 --> 48048 with SoX. Then using a hex editor, change 48048 to 48000 into the WAV header so it plays at the right speed.

[My reasoning 48048 is an integer, while "44056" is rounded from 44055.9440559...]

I'll be interested to hear your results. The difference may only be marginal, but if it provides a perfect sync then its certainly worth a go.

Last night I did change the sample rate to 44056 with a SRC to 48000 using iZotope, and it did sync up to the source video nicely (provided the first frame of the "Star Wars" title card is at frame 711, as has been mentioned in the standards thread). Listening back I've heard what sounded at first like artifacts resulting from part of the processing, but actually turned out to be in the original files, which makes me wonder whether they are a result of the Winamp plugin, the Apt-X compression or something else.

Anyway, my sync is done. I ended up with a 24-bit FLAC file (I was against bit depth conversion at first, but Audition forces anything that has been processed to 32-bit. Trimming and cropping is fine, but mixing the overlap counts as processing...). I'll upload the results to MySpleen later, as its now a 1.4GB Flac file ;)

Capable, what is you first impression of this soundtrack as a whole, so far?  Does the DTS offer any improvements or is it average?  As for the artifacts...what is it that you're noticing?  More drop-outs?        

Very occasional things, but I figure it was because I was hearing it through my headphones last night, and stupidly forgot to set my sound output back to 5.1 today. That said I think I was rather hasty in calling them 'artifacts'. It only ever happens on 1 track at a time, so I think its just the way its mixed in places, as most of the original sounds were recorded in the 70's. The one actually error I found, I repaired by mixing a few milliseconds of the opposite track to patch it and its now unnoticeable. After putting it through the 5.1 speakers properly this afternoon it actually sounds really quite good and its even amazing at times.

I've uploaded the torrent to the Spleen now for those who want to hear it. I don't have a very fast upload speed, so you may have to exercise some patience with download time. ;)

satanika said:

CapableMetal said:

Interesting point, and certainly worth a try. The stretching is certainly done at 0.1% to match 23.976fps but seems to need very fine tuning as it (thus far) hasn't quite seemed to line up properly.

There could be small frame differences from the theatrical compared to the source you're using.

The quality of the rendered stretch in audition is actually very high, I haven't heard any artifacts on my test mixdown, and it preserves exact pitch too, although thats probably a silly thing to be worrying about as it'll only be 0.2 semitones out.

I'm sure it's fine :) -- 'possible artifacts'
However, less processing is usually better & I believe the standard way of dealing with this is simply slowing the audio down.

I agree with you completely satanika, less processing is better. I used your suggestion and it works very well, syncs almost perfectly with the source I've used and was actually less hassle in the end. Whether it sounds better is subjective and whilst doing this I've come to the conclusion that source audio is less than perfect, but still very good. I'm hopeful that ROTJ will be better (I've yet to try it).

To make the source I layered and compared 5 or 6 different 1997 SE sources to find that all were missing a frame or two (or 15ish in the Reivax!) here and there, but in different places in the film and that together they added up to the exact number of frames in the 2004 release I matched it against, so I'm fairly confident its accurate now. My early attempts were against my NTSC laserdisc capture, but after IVTC a few frames were missing that shouldn't have been so that quickly came to end ;)

The reel changes were perfectly in line with the reel change points Darth Mallwalker posted in the standards thread which means it should should sync to the 2004 NTSC release and the 1997 video source msycamore has uploaded (which I haven't actually seen yet, but numbers correlate so should work).

Darth Mallwalker said:

I've been using SoX for SRC. By many accounts it's the best freeware solution, and second only to iZotope in the non-free category.

I've gone 44100 --> 48048 with SoX. Then using a hex editor, change 48048 to 48000 into the WAV header so it plays at the right speed.

[My reasoning 48048 is an integer, while "44056" is rounded from 44055.9440559...]

I'll be interested to hear your results. The difference may only be marginal, but if it provides a perfect sync then its certainly worth a go.

Last night I did change the sample rate to 44056 with a SRC to 48000 using iZotope, and it did sync up to the source video nicely (provided the first frame of the "Star Wars" title card is at frame 711, as has been mentioned in the standards thread). Listening back I've heard what sounded at first like artifacts resulting from part of the processing, but actually turned out to be in the original files, which makes me wonder whether they are a result of the Winamp plugin, the Apt-X compression or something else.

Anyway, my sync is done. I ended up with a 24-bit FLAC file (I was against bit depth conversion at first, but Audition forces anything that has been processed to 32-bit. Trimming and cropping is fine, but mixing the overlap counts as processing...). I'll upload the results to MySpleen later, as its now a 1.4GB Flac file ;)

satanika said:

Thank you CapableMetal for all that info, especially confirming the plugin marks the channels wrong.

However, one point in your methodology I disagree with -- the stretching part. I believe the more elegant solution would be to first change the samplerate to 44056 without resampling (= playing the soundtrack 0.1% slower), and THEN resample to 48000 with your favorite SRC (iZotope probably). The difference might be negligible, but should avoid any possible artifacts resulting from stretching.

Interesting point, and certainly worth a try. The stretching is certainly done at 0.1% to match 23.976fps but seems to need very fine tuning as it (thus far) hasn't quite seemed to line up properly. I'm unsure whether this is due to the fact that the time code from the film print is missing for 'perfect sync' or whether its just a case of me being too fussy (probably the latter). The quality of the rendered stretch in audition is actually very high, I haven't heard any artifacts on my test mixdown, and it preserves exact pitch too, although thats probably a silly thing to be worrying about as it'll only be 0.2 semitones out.

I'll give your suggestion a go now and see how it lines up with the video, although there now seems to be a more glaring problem in that there is one point where the sound in the front-right channel cuts out noticeably (twice) during the Tantive explosion. Re-ripping the channel makes no difference (even in RAW) so it might need some patching up.

I'm still here for the moment, I'm not off on holiday until next Wednesday so I'm working on this still. I'm trying to compile a frame-perfect 97se video source to sync the DTS discs to, and have re-synced ANH several times; starting from scratch each time so it doesn't ruin the quality from constant stretching of the audio. The good news is that its taking such a short amount of time that I hope to have made myself a sync source and, hopefully, sync'd it before I go to sleep tonight! I'll then see what I can do about getting it uploaded ASAP for people to have a listen, and give some feedback on the mix.

Jetrell Fo said:

I have the ESB discs but my internet connection isn't solid at this point so uploading them would be hit and miss.  I am working on a solution so that it can be.  Would you share your 5.1 conversions of ANH & ROTJ with us?  I'm sure some folks here would love to have at least those to start with until borisanddoris and Eldonante are able to complete their processing of the audio for DTS-MA.

As for the channel mixing...there is a DTS whitepaper on the matter which could help you sort out things a bit if you feel your mix is missing a bit.

The channels are all left to the levels I ripped them at, its just knowing that frequency the DTS hardware in the theatres performed the low pass filter on. The DTS discs seem to be 16-bit, 44KHz, so converting them to DTS-MA might be overkill (upsampled sound will never sound better, only increase in file size and potentially sound worse; I'm kind of hoping I'm wrong about the actual bit depth and sample rate to feel free to correct me, but considering the rip speed I don't think any conversions were taking place!). I may have discovered a few glitches within a couple of the channels in reel 1 and will investigate further and I'll post any findings I have in the appropriate DTS thread :)

I sync'ed the DTS to my LD capture last night, took less than an hour to do! then it took 4 hours or so rendering the reels as I had to time stretch them by 0.1%, which is unsurprising seeing as they originally had a 24-bit time code to keep them in check! I have, at this point, only done ANH. I'm just about to listen back and see how it sounds ;)

It would be nice if we had a video standard to sync it to, perhaps a perfect LD capture would be best (I don't think mine is quite frame-perfect, I think it dropped a couple when capturing)?

As for uploading, I don't have regular Usenet access and am reluctant to use a MegaUpload-esque service because I just don't trust them. Perhaps a torrent would be best should enough people want to listen?

I have a question about your 5.1'd DTS experience....how did they compare to the U.S. LD 5.1?  Did you hear any difference with DTS as the source?

Hi Jetrell,

I haven't actually heard the 5.1 AC3 from the LaserDisc set as my CLD-2950 doesn't have an AC3 circuit and the only LaserDisc preservation I could find on Usenet was the Jedi/Feta, which only had the 2.0 track I have in my own captures. I have compared the mixing from the DTS to the mixing from the Blu-Ray DTS-HD track I used to make a 'modern' 5.1 mix for the OUT a while ago, and I have to say I prefer the 97 DTS mix levels, it seems more balanced, the clarity is excellent with that nice treble that makes it sound just like you're sat in the theatre, and the LFE channel was toned down (As the DTS theatre CD's are only 5 channel, I made from doing a low-pass on the surround channels; I read online thats how they produced the LFE in theaters), although that could just be due to the levels I applied to it when I processed it from the surround channels.

Either way, it is a far better mix and not as bass-heavy as seems to be the trend with modern mixes, clarity seems similar on my THX-certified 5.1 setup and it will certainly add much to any preservations made of the Special Editions, even if we can't get a perfect HD picture just yet! I just wish I had the images for the Empire discs so I could compare them to the 5.1 LD track in Adywan's Empire 97SE AVCHD edit!

Hey guys, I'm fairly new so feel free to tell me off if I rant too much or am posting in the wrong place. :)

I've just started working on an HD special edition project for my projector, in the same vein as Harmy's outstanding work with his Despecialized Editions (which provided the inspiration for a personal 1080p OUT I made for watching with my girlfriend earlier this year, so I am experienced with this sort of work).

I've also had a play with the ANH and ROTJ DTS sound tracks which I've downloaded from usenet and 5.1'd up for a test listen, and they sound great, I must say!

Are there any of the sources previously mentioned available anywhere? I've got the Reivax and Flunk-Reivax hybrid, and I own and have captured the NTSC and PAL laserdisc sets at a reasonable quality; I figure a properly IVTC'ed capture of the NTSC laserdiscs with no dropped frames is probably the best standard to use as a sync source, what do guys you think?

-CM

fortress said:

Hello,

I've been able to get A New Hope and ROTJ off of usenet, but unfortunately Empire on usenet doesn't work (it's missing file parts and won't assemble).

Could someone please send me a myspleen invite or re-upload Empire to usenet?

Thank you kindly! I really appreciate the work that's gone into this.

Empire v3 on usenet seems to have an incomplete part (123) that is only 30MB, there is another copy of the file within the same collection of files that must have been reuploaded at the time (part 123, 5048MB), although I can't say if it works for certain as I haven't finished all of it yet!

That said, I too would appreciate a myspleen invite should any be going right now. I've been trying to clean up the GOUT since I decided my girlfriend should see the same versions I did when I was a kid and have had mixed results trying to clear the awful temporal filtering. I'd love to see some of the (undoubtedly better) results of others.

Dethryl said:

I heard through the grapevine that if people don't go see Phantom Menace 3D that he won't bother releasing the rest. WE CAN ONLY PRAY!!

Agreed, I wasn't planning on giving away more cash. In the mean time I'm sticking with the GOUT, after seeing the changes on the Blu-ray release I've avoided getting it and have no interest in it because any edition post-1995 just doesn't have the same effect on me. I cannot watch any SE version for more than 10 minutes without thinking that something is wrong and turning it off.

Paying for the latest versions can only drive Mr. Lucas to make even more changes in future editions, and I can't help feel that won't change when kids who have only seen the SE's keep buying the latest format and paying to see them in theatres.