CatBus

Hiss!

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

TV’s Frink said:

What the heck is film zero?

Star Wars. It doesn’t have an episode number. I guess (null) would have been better.

I get your point, and the point you’ll probably make in response to what I’m about to say, but it’s a little weird to not assign a number to one movie in a list full of movies with numbers.

Naw, you won’t see my next point coming. It’s like a panther. Rrrowwr.

When you assign an episode number to Star Wars, you assign it a chronology with respect to the other films. When Empire came out as Episode V, it was obvious to much of the Star Wars loving world that the previous movie had been Episode I, and that there were many exciting adventures that had passed in the intervening time between the films, some of which were alluded to in Empire (Ord Mantell). The next year, Star Wars was assigned the episode number IV, which dashed the hopes of those missing episodes ever coming into being.

So while I’d personally call Star Wars Episode I, because that’s what it really was until 1981, that would confuse matters even more, because it conflicts with the episode number of a later movie that would be horrible to confuse with or even associate with Star Wars. So if you assign it IV, you lose some of the magic and wonder of the pre-1981 film, if you assign it I, you confuse young people who think there’s a Star Wars film that already has that number. So the solution is not to assign it a number at all, because it doesn’t have one.

The essential problem with including it in a list of movies with numbers is that it simply doesn’t have a number, not that you must give it a number to make it fit.

Well, you’re still sticking with (adjusted) Technicolor timing so I’d say don’t mix-and-match.

Using the same font for Technicolor and Eastman isn’t going to do anyone any favors, it’ll either look really off for one or kinda off for both, so it looks like we’re making a new font.

I’ve gone [0] days without needing to modify the fonts.

I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the subs on Tech prints were different than typical prints, probably due to the fact that typical prints are one or two generations down the duplication chain from Technicolor, and each step on the way makes the letters look thicker.

So, in my opinion, you should first decide, am I aiming for Technicolor or Eastman? If Technicolor, use the subs Harmy already made for 2.5. If Eastman, use the subs I provided. I won’t be making any adjustments to those subs, aside from color, any time soon.

Well, it appears due to blind luck, the same font that works for the SSE when bolded works reasonably well for Mike’s Technicolor scan at a normal weight. So maybe this will work out after all.

It’s definitely not the same print, however this was handled. Mike may have provided -1 with a non-Technicolor source. But also this is weird because although -1’s print was Spanish, the particular section had been spliced out and replaced with the scene from an English language print. I know because I synced the Spanish soundtrack and this part was English. So whatever -1 had was good enough to use audio-wise, and must have had pretty bad visual damage if he sought other sources – the Spanish had nothing to do with it.

I can’t see how it would be de-warping, since the subtitles are the only thing distorted in this manner, nothing else.

Well, I know the -1 scan has some light leakage, which couldn’t really do a lot more than blur the edges but might effectively give you an extra pixel all around. And SSE is based on a dupe print, which is two generations of duplication after Verta’s print. So I’m thinking it’s the duplication, which means the thickness of the subtitles depends on when and where you saw it… ugh. Like the soundtrack! 😉

Yes (Blu-ray) – and while the image registration may not have been perfect (it’s hard and I’m new to it), it certainly wasn’t bad enough to cause that sort of distortion. In fact, I don’t think any sort of image registration problem could result in subtitles that are significantly thicker but have more or less the same placement and take up more or less the same amount of room.

But yes, all of my subtitle scans were stretched out horizontally to match the Blu-ray proportions.

There’s also the issue that apparently the subtitles in Mike Verta’s scan look totally different than the subtitles in -1’s Silver Screen Edition, and I’m not entirely sure why at the moment. Verta’s looks like the subtitles in SW DeEd v2.5, -1’s look more like the subtitles in ROTJ DeEd v2.5, in that they’re thicker/chunkier. I’ve been basing my Star Wars fonts on -1’s scans.

That looks TOTALLY different than the Silver Screen Edition! SSE has some light bleed issues, sure, but I really don’t feel like that could account for all of it. Weeeird.

EDIT: If we’re going off Verta’s scan, I think the 2.5 subs are worth keeping. I think the issue of how these scans look so different (in the chunkiness/thickness of the subtitles) needs to be resolved before we start replacing the subtitles. The SEE scan more closely resembles the 35mm scan used for Jedi. Maybe the subtitles get thicker which each duplication step?

Still tweaking (dammit!). Last preview is that Jabba sample I linked to a couple posts above. I’m now dimming/yellowing my matching font render per some other discussions, but so far I’ve gone [1] day without needing to modify the fonts themselves.

Sorry, I was going off the image in this page, which was pretty blurry.

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-V25-MKV-IS-OUT-NOW/id/12713/page/75

RGB values from Faithwyn’s screencaps:

2.5: 255,255,234
2.6: 252,255,253
2.65a: 255,251,249
2.65b: 254,254,254

Looks like it just boils down to how much you bring down the blue.

TV’s Frink said:

What the heck is film zero?

Star Wars. It doesn’t have an episode number. I guess (null) would have been better.

I’d like to say that I never, ever ever understood the appeal of Machete Order. I mean, you start out with the situation where you’re out of screwdrivers to jam into your eyeballs and therefore have to watch the prequels – okay, fine, I’m with you so far. But then you decide… hey, I’m no masochist, I’m going to skip some of the prequels, but then you go ahead and choose the two most painful prequels to watch! I can’t see the appeal of that at all.

0,5,6: for the complete saga, adding 7 when available
0,5: for the highlights
0,5,6,1: to see how everything went wrong, without having to wallow in it for two more films

Yeah, they appear and disappear on the correct frames, AFAICT.

EDIT: Yeah, they were based on 16mm reductions, so the timing should be perfect. The only reason there’s much of a problem with the appearance at all is that Harmy interpreted the blurry edges on the 16mm subtitles too conservatively.

Okay, last thread spam regarding fonts I haven’t even released yet. But seriously, they’re coming.

The final deal is that I did a separate font for Star Wars and Jedi, as I felt the small differences were better handled that way. The Jedi font produces results that are extremely close to the actual theatrical subs. Star Wars theatrical subs, on the other hand, have inconsistent letter-forms and inconsistent spacing (the size of the hole in the lowercase “e” seems all over the map, as does the width of the character itself, for example), so I just had to pick what I felt looks nice and run with it. I did use the Private Use Area of the fonts to handle characters that were variable based on some predictable factor (different spacing around punctuation depending on neighboring characters), but I didn’t do anything to handle characters that changed unpredictably, and the default characters that aren’t in the Private Use Area use sane values that still look nice under any circumstances, just not always theatrically accurate. I didn’t use kerning tables at all because my subtitling software, like lots of software, ignores them.

Also, the references I’m using for Star Wars aren’t quite as nice as the ones I used for Jedi (they were 35mm scans registered over the Blu-ray frames for placement and proportions, but the Jedi reference was made by Harmy, and the Star Wars one by me). As such, letter and spacing proportions on my Star Wars reference were likely a little off, so I was very conservative with changes for that font. I might go back and try to do a better match once I get a better reference.

Either way, the Star Wars font produces results that are easily distinguished from the theatrical subs in a side-by-side comparison, but seem pretty plausible for my purposes, where side-by-side isn’t an issue. The Jedi font looks great for any purpose though, IMO.

towne32 said:

Yeah, I was thinking they’re a bit too bright. Might pull the color value from Jedi.

They’re likely to seem a bit too bright regardless–a side-effect of having all the letters be a little thicker than we’ve gotten used to. You get the same effect when you color-correct SSE to match DeEd, the subs just look brighter at the same value.

towne32 said:

edited link: slightly reduced the blue from the final shot (Harmy’s).

https://mega.nz/#!DJAgTZwR!AUmZKP7sB8q2zl1N6EhrsT0wAJtqDBbQfapg749T5kE

If I do anything with the grain and weave, it should probably be whatever Harmy does, since I have no idea what I’m doing there. 😃

One thing I noticed about the subs in Jedi DeEd 2.5 is that the subtitles aren’t quite a pure white. If you’re looking to match, you should probably do that, unless Harmy says he did it for a reason that’s specific to Jedi, or if it was an accident/side-effect of some other adjustment. Still no help with the grain or weave though.

PM sent. You came to the right place.

Oh, and I may as well post this here since I did it for Harmy earlier. Let me know when you’re a few days from needing subtitles, and I’ll release a new version of Project Threepio with some fixes your project will benefit from.

All the Star Wars shots have been updated to be from your previous 2.6 release, even the opening crawl shot.

Makes sense. BTW I threw out my 35mm screencap in my first post gallery already, in favor of yours.

Looks good to me as-is, so if the grain/weave options don’t pan out, I still think it’s a net improvement. And… woo-hoo! The “u” is damaged in “He may only take your ship” – just the way it ought to be. Typography nitpickers rejoice! Still think Harmy would have gotten it a little smoother looking than me (and he probably will), but it works as far as I’m concerned.