CatBus

PM sent.

IMO the 6-channel reconstruction folds down to stereo just fine, so it’s quite listenable with two speakers – it’s just not terribly different from the stereo track at that point. So, you know, anything beyond two speakers will get you slightly more than the stereo mix, even if just a bit. But the more the merrier.

Servii said:

I hope Harmy is aware of this, since he’s using the 2019 version as one of his main sources for Despecialized 3.0. I’m sure he’s already accounted for it in some way, though.

I brought it up in his thread. He did not seem inclined to uncrop anything unless it was really egregious, simply because what would be required to blend a 4K80 (or whatever) border around a 19SE frame would be prohibitively difficult & time-consuming for more than a few shots.

That said, I intend to keep tabs on this to ensure that the scene where Leia’s cropped out of a scene where she’s speaking should be considered egregious enough to be worth that effort, even if none of the others are.

JadedSkywalker said:

The 93 is pretty good sonically i just cannot stand it because of the smashing glass in the detention block shootout. I never listened to it again for that reason like nails on a chalkboard it is awful.

Agreed. In terms of sound quality, 93 is the best mix, but it’s one of the two pre-97 revisions containing distinctly non-theatrical elements, and I just can’t bring myself to listen to it.

All the 1977 mixes are authentic-enough original mixes IMO. Although the six-channel mix is a reconstruction, is is very tastefully and expertly done using in-theater recordings as references, and the difference between the original 4.2 mix and the current 5.1 reconstruction should be pretty minor.

“Definitive” really depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for what most 1977 theater-goers heard, that’s the mono mix. If you’re looking for a technology showcase/what the fanciest best-equipped theaters showed, that’s the six-channel mix. The stereo mix is sadly the odd man out – no matter what I consider “definitive”, it never ranks.

In a lot of ways, Star Wars fans fall into two camps – those who want to see the movies exactly as they were in the theater, and those who want to see the movies as if they’d gotten as respectful a Blu-ray release as any other classic film. The former camp tends to favor the 4Kxx releases and the mono mix. The latter camp tends to favor Despecialized and the six-channel mix. Full disclosure: I’m in the latter camp.

PM sent.

PM sent.

Nick66 said:

CatBus said:

Nick66 said:

Anyone know if there any Engish subtitles synced to the original “Renegade” ESB Grindhouse release (not the Dreammaster GOUT version)? Cheers!

Yes indeed! The regular Project Threepio subtitles can be run through the “resync-subs” script using the NEG1 frame reference. See the section of the readme titled “How to synchronize subtitles to a different video frame reference”. You can do this for both SUP and SRT format.

PM me if you need a link.

👍

You have no idea how satisfying it is when I discover someone actually using one of the obscure little utilities I spend my time tinkering with!

Looking good, Dre. Harmy indicated in his latest video that he’s working on Empire (instead?/also?). Are you planning any correction on that front?

Update on the BDSup2Sub issue: this may not be a bug at all, but a side-effect of colorspace conversion. Specifically, the PNG/RGB colorspace getting converted to the BD-SUP/YCrCb colorspace and back again. Nevertheless, because a lot of my instructions involve roundtripping images through this process, this presents a problem for color accuracy, and I’ll need to work to mitigate it.

By the way, if anyone knows Java and has experience with image manipulation, I have something I need help with. I recently discovered a bug in BDSup2Sub, and I’m keen to get it fixed, even in an unofficial custom build. In a nutshell, converting BDN+XML to BD-SUP causes a very subtle color shift (slight desaturation), which becomes more pronounced with repeated conversions. Since I’ve been using BD-SUP as a sort of lossless archival format for this project… that’s no good.

Anyway, send me a PM if you’re interested. The BDSup2Sub4k.jar used in this project already appears to be an unofficial branch of the project, but it decompiles very cleanly into Java source code, which could then be modified and recompiled.

Nick66 said:

Anyone know if there any Engish subtitles synced to the original “Renegade” ESB Grindhouse release (not the Dreammaster GOUT version)? Cheers!

Yes indeed! The regular Project Threepio subtitles can be run through the “resync-subs” script using the NEG1 frame reference. See the section of the readme titled “How to synchronize subtitles to a different video frame reference”. You can do this for both SUP and SRT format.

PM me if you need a link.

Tragic! I thought I found some Welsh subtitles to include, but it appears from what I can see that they’ve just been run through Google translate without many/any corrections. Same story with Urdu. Oh well, I’m still on the lookout for good-quality subtitles in other languages, if you find any.

PM sent.

@resolution: I’m not surprised hardware media players have strange/arbitrary limits on MKV containers. If it helps, I know Blu-ray discs can have up to 32 audio streams, and it’s possible an M2TS container may work better even without being burned to disc. Careful with your counting, though – some authoring tools (tsMuxer) allow you to add more than 32 without any warnings, and disc behavior with too many streams is bad.

resolution said:

I have a tech question. I muxed a few of the 720p SUP files (e.g. English, English SDH) into the 720p despecialized editions. When I play the resulting MKVs on my PC, the subtitles look like they are the correct size in relation to the image.

However, when I play the same MKVs on my Oppo UDP-203, the subtitles appear quite a bit smaller. I tried changing the Oppo from its usual 2160p output to 720p and 1080p, and the results were the same.

Has anyone else encountered this? Is this a quirk of the Oppo? If I want proper size subtitles on the Oppo, maybe I need to mux in the 1080p SUP files instead?

I’ve got that exact player, so I could give it a whirl (might not have time for a while, though). I do know that when you mux the 720p subs into an M2TS/Blu-ray folder structure (and burn it to disc), everything looks fine on the 203.

One quirk of hardware players that I know about is that while 720p/24 is a valid resolution for Blu-rays and a valid resolution for displays, it is NOT a valid resolution for the HDMI spec. So players either have to telecine the stream to 720i/30 or upscale it to 1080p/2160p/24 before they can send it over the cable – and the latter is the better choice. I also know that while the M2TS behavior of hardware players is generally very solid in order for it to work properly with discs, the MKV behavior is often a little quirky. It’s possible the 720p upscale is working well for the image, but not the subtitle stream. You could certainly try the 1080p subs and see if that improves things.

In general, resolution-matching isn’t required for anything but Blu-ray disc compatible streams. For non-disc formats, or even software playback of Blu-ray folder structures, you can mix 1080p subs with 720p video, without any issues.

oojason said:

‘Disney+ Finally Adds Navajo Translation for Star Wars: A New Hope’:-

https://www.cbr.com/disney-finally-adds-navajo-translation-for-star-wars-a-new-hope

The Navajo language dubbed version of Star Wars: A New Hope is now available to stream on the Disney+ platform for the first time since its 2013 debut.
 

And it is available in 1080p HD too. 👍
 

Thanks for the link!

The limited edition DVD didn’t translate the “STAR WARS” title, only “Episode IV: A New Hope” – but your link shows the Navajo translation for STAR WARS: SǪ’TAH ANAA’. Now the Navajo subtitles will be just a little more complete (next Project Threepio release).

Open request: Anyone who wants to transcribe the Navajo dub into text would allow me to make complete Navajo subtitles for Star Wars, rather than just translations of the onscreen text. It would be much appreciated!

PM sent. Couldn’t have done all of these variations for various languages without your help, schorman13!

We’ve come a long way since the original rontoscoping.

Project files have been updated to version 12.0 (codename: “Time of Your Life”), and the 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 11.0 to 12.0:

• New languages: Catalan, Basque (both thanks to laozi), and Slovak
• New Japanese translation (thanks to schorman13)
• New Korean translation for Star Wars (thanks to Kaz47)
• Included titles-only subtitles to go with the Galician dub (again, thanks to laozi)
• Improvements to the Castilian Spanish subtitles (yet again, thanks to laozi!)
• Improved Finnish translations (thanks to LexX)
• Improved Swedish translations (thanks to Rondan)
• Finally adding this much-requested feature, every official pre-1997 version of the trilogy is now fully supported in all supported languages. This includes four subtitle variations for Star Wars, and two for Empire. Multiply that by a lot of languages, and that’s just a ton of subtitles. I was able to do this without driving myself crazy by making the whole process automated, using “fragment files”, which are a sort of multi-target subtitle diff file I created for this purpose. The fragment files include translations for all of the subtitle-worthy differences for all of the pre-1997 versions of the films. Using a script, you can quickly assemble subtitles (in SUP or SRT format) for any pre-1997 version of the films using the original stereo/surround subtitles as a baseline, then adding the appropriate portions of the fragment file, and making various timing adjustments. Any new languages added to the project will need to include fragment files in addition to the regular stereo/surround SRT files. Script-generated SRT files are included in all supported languages for every pre-1997 mix, but to conserve space, only the original stereo/surround versions are provided in SUP format. You can, however, easily assemble SUP files for any version you prefer. To avoid the confusion of so many different versions, each subtitle variation has its own subfolder (thanks to laozi, RashadShehadeh, Feallan, ccfilms, LexX, ZIPC, Leoj, Rondan, Harmy, daboka, Mavimao, Kaz47, and schorman13).
• Created a new subtitle rendering script, no longer relying on ImageMagick+Pango, and instead simply rendering subtitles in a Chromium-based web browser. The advantage of the new script is that it no longer relies on running outdated versions of ImageMagick and Pango, and its cross-platform behavior is also much improved (there are no longer any scripts that can’t be rendered on Windows, for example). ImageMagick is still heavily used, just without the Pango integration. Many minor bugs in the old script were fixed during the rewrite, and it’s quite likely some new ones were also created! One known issue is that Chromium-based browsers tend to create stray processes that over time bog down a machine, so if you do run this script, I recommend rebooting your computer afterward, just to be safe.
• Bulgarian and Macedonian got better localized Cyrillic text than the current released versions of the Noto Sans fonts can provide out-of-the-box.
• Most languages got some very minor changes, typically just timing improvements
• Pre-rendered graphical NTSC DVD subtitles are no longer included with the project files. DVD subtitles are still supported and can be created using the provided instructions.
• The cyrl-compat script was removed. It turns out it was not really necessary after all.
• Pre-built Windows utilities are now 64-bit executables
• Python scripts now require Python 3.4 or later
• As part of some general language code housekeeping, the language codes for Mandarin and Cantonese have been changed for consistency with the rest of the project. The “zho-” prefix has been dropped, and now these languages use the plain ISO-639-3 language code (cmn and yue, respectively).
• Most files that are not actually usable subtitles have been moved into the resources folder, and the resources folder is now better-organized
• Most folder names have been lowercased, to make things a little easier on people working with case-sensitive filesystems
• Some dubs currently have missing sections (due to damaged tapes or other factors). “Titles” subtitles for those languages now also subtitle those missing lines, whenever a text translation is available (currently only for Cantonese and Galician). If the missing sections in those dubs are ever restored, Project Threepio will update the “titles” subtitles to remove the redundant translations.
• Project Threepio’s extensive readme.html file has been given a visual overhaul to be less overwhelming to newcomers. It now uses expanding sections to display only the information you choose to see, rather than jumping to sections in one huge wall of text. It also now includes some command-builder scripts, so that you don’t have to hand-edit the commands to customize them for your needs. Displaying the file also now does not rely on any files from Project Threepio’s resources folder (i.e. images). This should help when Project Threepio is distributed in an incomplete form, which is a fairly common scenario – although you may still need some of those resource files to actually perform the tasks described in the documentation.
• The bidi-compat script has been improved to no longer require any text-specific workarounds for any existing Project Threepio subtitles. This increases the chances that it will produce good results out of the box with any future BiDi text.
• Potentially slow bulk image manipulation scripts now include progress indicators and spinner animations
• The project now includes a changelog (changes.html), including changes for every past release (thanks to pmc3)

PM sent.

Thank you Rondan!

Check your PM’s.

IIRC some degraining and regraining is necessary, not for meeting in the middle per se, but so that the grain characteristics of the various sources blend. i.e. you can’t just add fake grain to a degrained shot and necessarily expect it to blend with the natural grain of surrounding shots, not to mention how many shots contain multiple sources in a single frame.

Good to hear from you! Yes, I’m not knocking on every door/window just yet, but I’m still willing and able to put work into it as soon as we get the voice talent lined up.

I’m honestly seriously kinda hoping somebody named Hark Mamill or something like that stumbles across this thread and decides to give it a go. But I’m not gonna be picky.

PM sent.