CatBus

I’ve thought about that. I’m inclined not to, but could probably be convinced–I’d certainly be happy to help the maintainers of the internationalized versions create such files, if they’re interested. I do make “full” versions of the English subs for that purpose, and none of the others need changing.

Reasons against: subtitle file proliferation (which leads to overwhelmed/confused people), and at least in the case of German matching subs, lack of a theatrical reference for Star Wars, which I also use for the matching style in Empire. I’d hate to make matching subtitles that don’t actually match once a reference is found. Also, the German version is typically watched with the German dub, and I make no promises that my subs match dubs.

CatBus said:

Well, I’ve gotten further in this particular stab at rewriting the subtitle rendering routine than I ever have before. The main sticking point seems to be that there’s a Windows-specific bug in ImageMagick+Pango, which means even if everything else is perfect (and we’re not quite there yet either), we’ll need to maintain two different rendering engines, which produce slightly different results, which is relevant in the sense that the SRT timings are optimized for the Windows method (the new method can occasionally be one frame off), etc, etc.

And, well, the script is slow as molasses. But it’s slow across all platforms, so there’s that.

Two steps forward, one step back. The newest ImageMagick fixes the ImageMagick+Pango text rendering bug, so we now have cross-platform parity. Unfortunately the newest ImageMagick also completely changes a few critical functions so all the scripts that worked previously are now broken to some degree. But equally broken across all platforms… I guess this will be good practice for the Perl 6 apocalypse.

I’d say that’s a safe assumption (as long as you don’t specify which year).

TV’s Frink said:

We’re not all the same.

Though we are like-minded, and shockingly handsome to boot.

PM sent.

With SD to HD, the biggest difference to me was the reduction in compression artifacts (many of the initial HD sources were just recycled SD masters, so the difference in detail wasn’t as big as it could have been on a lot of titles, yet they were still distinctly better). From what I’ve seen of 4K (streaming demos), the difference in the demos seems almost entirely due to a better-quality 4K stream–possibly due to better compression, fewer artifacts, etc, but also quite likely due to higher bitrates too. Maybe there’s something perceptible in the resolution itself, but there’s so much apples-to-oranges in the comparisons I’ve seen (e.g. their 2K stream absolutely never has the same bitrate and encoding as their 4K stream) that I’m not sure I’ll ever know if I can see the difference on the resolution alone, under normal viewing circumstances.

yotsuya said:

all you need is CCCP.

We all live in an octopus’s garden.

This film uses the original vision, which makes it easy to add alterations like effects, dialogue, and characters:

• CGI Jabba
• Anakin’s Ghost
• Jar Jar

Buy the Blu-ray to see the results.

For more details, see our apologist collective.

I only heard discussions about the “Nooo” but never actually heard the change itself. I was completely baffled by the outrage–I really couldn’t understand what was so objectionable about making a change to an already thoroughly ruined film. It’s like Lucas took a dump on everyone’s kitchen tables, and then 14 years later people were suddenly outraged, but only because he didn’t wash his hands afterward. I still don’t see what the big deal about the “Nooo” is. Vader could’ve yelled “Put the bunny back in the box” in an awful fake southern drawl and it’s not like the previous two hours of the Special Edition would’ve suddenly gotten any more watchable.

It wasn’t until I was working on the Thai dub that I heard the Thai version. It was really weird–they had a different actor doing the voice, it had a different tone like it was spliced in from a totally different audio source, and it just made no sense at all in context. So having heard the Thai version (where I removed that line, of course, so nobody else ever has to hear it), I think they captured the essence of the English version perfectly, and now I have even less need to hear the English version.

PM sent.

Transcribing the dub into Project Threepio-style subtitles would have to be up to someone else familiar with the language (similar to the current situation with Slovak, Hindi, Tamil, and Navajo, where we have dubs without subs). However, if the complete audio happened to find its way over here, despecialized GOUT-synced audio would have quite a lot of value in its own right, and that task could be done by someone unfamiliar with the language…

EDIT: And depending on your definition of minority language, I think Cantonese probably qualifies as our first, not that I wouldn’t want more.

PM sent.

If he has a commission from the Queen to do so, then technically he’s a privateer.

PM sent.

ZaneFlare92 said:

Defiantly gonna have a Star Wars marathon

Fight the power.

As for the initial question asked – no, these subtitles don’t line up with the dubs timing-wise, and also they are different translations, so they don’t match even though they’re the same language.

Project Threepio subtitles try to use the best translations of the spoken English lines, without many other considerations. Dubs try to choose words that match lip movements, and other stylistic things that aren’t purely translation–what you really end up with is an entirely different performance, maybe good, maybe not. Star Wars is even more complicated than many movies, because so many lines are spoken by people wearing masks that dubbers often can choose to time their lines however they like. And some dubs, like the Thai dub for example, time the dubbed lines very haphazardly even when there are lip movements they could line them up with.

But, back to the flamewar-worthy part of this, here’s something I actually like that most people hate: Soviet bloc-style voiceover dubs. Never heard one? Try the Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian voiceovers. Basically the original performance is kept intact, and a translator who tries to stay very neutral just speaks over them. It sounds a lot like a speech at the UN or a radio interview in another language. Okay, it’s weird, I admit, but the original performance is left alone, and the voiceover style likely gives very little temptation for embellishment or alteration, which are both significant advantages over regular dubs in my book.

EDIT: Not to mention that the dubs that voice over the crawl use the 1981 text, while the subtitles use the 1977 text, and despecialized dubs have altered SE lines, while the subs use the original lines.

Someone left the cake out in the rain.

Don’t blame it all on Lucasfilm. Plenty of people don’t see any significant visual difference between DVD and Blu-ray, and assume all content on a DVD is more-or-less “DVD quality” and by extension not significantly different than Blu-ray. Therefore, because the GOUT is on a DVD, it has essentially the same visual quality as the Blu-rays. QED, or something like that. You see this all the time, it’s just particularly galling because the GOUT is so awful (which you can blame on Lucasfilm).

Well, you know, it’s the Wall Street Journal. Now even people on dialup know about Harmy. Word spreads slower there.

Well, I’ve gotten further in this particular stab at rewriting the subtitle rendering routine than I ever have before. The main sticking point seems to be that there’s a Windows-specific bug in ImageMagick+Pango, which means even if everything else is perfect (and we’re not quite there yet either), we’ll need to maintain two different rendering engines, which produce slightly different results, which is relevant in the sense that the SRT timings are optimized for the Windows method (the new method can occasionally be one frame off), etc, etc.

And, well, the script is slow as molasses. But it’s slow across all platforms, so there’s that.

Feallan said:

CatBus said:

Keep in mind, bulb matching is a thing. This is a great way to get the color on the print, but the color on the screen is the color on the print combined with whatever color bias the projector bulb has. So for a seventies bulb, we’re probably talking a little yellower. Not to diminish the importance of this in any way–this will be extraordinarily helpful, but maybe not the final word.

From what I understand, this could relatively easily be incorporated into DrDre’s algorithm. You would need to describe the light used to scan a particular print and the light emitted by a bulb what was in common use when said print had its run in theaters. Of course the accuracy of the final result would depend on how accurate data you fed to the algorithm.

It’s not that it can’t be done, but then you lose the “objectivity” which is part of the draw of DrDre’s method. Choosing the bulb LUT is both subjective (which bulb to choose?) and prone to error. I like what he’s doing, but I see this as more of an initial color correction than a final one, which is really where my comment was headed. You need the objective color correction as a base correction – in fact it’s critical for it to be as objective as possible, and this seems to be doing that – but that doesn’t eliminate the need for subjective corrections afterward.

Keep in mind, bulb matching is a thing. This is a great way to get the color on the print, but the color on the screen is the color on the print combined with whatever color bias the projector bulb has. So for a seventies bulb, we’re probably talking a little yellower. Not to diminish the importance of this in any way–this will be extraordinarily helpful, but maybe not the final word.

Mono has it. They just went nuts with it on the SE track. You’re not going to find anything that sounds like the SE track until the SE. The original mono track effect was much subtler.

Darth Lucas said:

Yes, contrary to popular belief, size does matter.

“Matters size does”?

There should be a DVD downscale which fits on a DVD5. It’s not HD, but HD with that much compression would just be trading resolution for compression artifacts.