CatBus

This may not be related, but there’s a special version of an ArcSoft DLL you need to use to correctly decode mono DTS-MA tracks. If you use the wrong version, you can either get an error, or – coincidentally – audio that’s stretched out exactly three times as long as it should be. I’m thinking if a software bug happened once, it could happen again. It may even be shared or licensed code, you never know. If the mastering software for some reason uses a buggy decoder to extract the length of the audio, that could explain it.

No, we’re in an awkward phase where people may prefer 8.3 until ROTJ Despecialized 2.x is released, due to the differences in subtitle timing. After 2.x is released, I can’t see any reason anyone would prefer 8.3.

Oh, good Lord, 6.2 is still around? Yes, nearly all subtitles have gotten some improvements since then!

Ah, degrain/regrain. So goes the rest of the Blu-ray industry, though…

Fortunately, the Lowry process seems to have had a harder time scrubbing away grain than it did scrubbing away starfields. Or maybe that’s unfortunately.

Now that we have high-quality film references for theatrical alien subtitles, I’m going to start using them as the standard for matching subtitles (as of the next release), rather than particular preservations’ efforts to emulate them. What that means in practical terms is that this project’s matching subtitles may temporarily blend less well than they did before, if the preservation doesn’t emulate the theatrical appearance well enough. With the fast pace of improvements around here, I don’t anticipate that awkward period will last long. I’ve updated my first post using a 35mm frame, and now my old matching subtitle looks even less impressive than it did before. Not to worry, that will change too 😉

Just used this tool for the first time today. Wow! Thanks, DrDre!

For anyone using a test version of my Star Wars matching subtitle font, I wanted to let you know that now that we have a high-resolution scan of the Star Wars subtitles (the aforementioned Silver Screen Edition), it looks like you should use bold weight, not normal weight, for all films. The subtitles in Star Wars DeEd v2.5 are too thin, but I think those were using a 16mm scan as reference and were just conservative on dimensions when scaling the blurry image up.

If your friend wants to translate them himself, I’d be interested…

No, I’m afraid not – that’s my biggest regret for this project. But apparently it’s common in India to watch English-language movies with English subtitles – assuming the audience understands English, but providing some assistance if they have trouble with the accents. As far as I know there has never been a subtitled or dubbed release of Star Wars in the subcontinent.

Jay said:

Note that since this notice of strict enforcement was just posted, you get a break for any transgressions that occur today. Starting tomorrow, we will be counting the number of violations and banning accordingly.

Thanks. That brings my strike count back to 0.

Kinda related to this, is a method to ignore entire threads in the works for the next version of the web forum software? I believe the easiest way to avoid posting offtopic in team threads, for a chronically offtopic person such as myself, is to avoid the team threads like they were kryptonite, and an ignore function would make that much easier.

For those looking to watch -1’s Silver Screen Edition of Star Wars with subtitles, here are the instructions:

• Get a relatively recent version of Project Threepio

• Edit the resync_subs.pl file in the perl folder (it’s a text file, Notepad will do)

• Find the line that starts with $adjhash{‘NEG1-SW’} and replace it with the block of text below (no linebreaks)

• Follow the instructions in the README.html under the section “How to synchronize subtitles to a different video frame reference” (you will need to install a Perl runtime at the very least, and possibly a Java runtime)

• Be sure to replace the FRAME_REF placefolder with NEG1 to indicate which new frame reference you’re using

    $adjhash{'NEG1-SW'}='0=+42.099#29:36.485=-.501#31:23.258=-.167#38:45.075=-.209#38:59.214=-.042#39:34.291=-.042#40:38.939=-.167#42:09.655=-.042#45:01.493=-.042#49:00.691=-.083#54:40.948=-.042#58:00.48=-.167#1:00:14.364=-2.419#1:19:00.115=-.083#1:19:00.24=-.167#1:40:08.133=-.083#1:40:08.258=-.125';
  

This modified script will be included in the next Project Threepio release, but the default subtitles will always be GOUT-synced and require adjustment for non-GOUT-synced video.

Special thanks to Chewtobacca and Darth Mallwalker for providing the list of missing GOUT frames that made creating this script a piece of cake.

Wow, did I get stealth moderated? A notification would be nice, if forum rules were violated – i.e. if making fun of banned users who haven’t been active on the forum for years qualifies. If FatherSkywalker and his ilk are off-limits now, it’s best to spell it out for everyone – long-gone banned users are considered fair game by many here.

PM sent.

Despecialized 3.x is a ways off. For Star Wars, pretty much everything needs to be despecialized again, since 3.x will be 1080p and Star Wars 2.x was an all-720p project. So don’t hold your breath 😉

Harmy uses a 540-pixel tall frame for both DeEd and ReEd, but matted onto a 720p frame for Blu-ray compatibility. For Star Wars DeEd, Harmy got a his video de-purpled and re-encoded by another user, and he did his corrections based on that. For ReEd, I imagine he worked directly from the original sources. So the DeEd is re-encoded more times than the ReEd. Also, there have been some problems pointed out with that original de-purpled encode, so I’m guessing it wasn’t as good as it could have been. The 2.x DeEd versions of the other two films aren’t based on a de-purpled re-encode like Star Wars, and look better IMO. He won’t be able to use that for 3.x, so I imagine all re-encode-related sharpness issues will be resolved then. This of course doesn’t consider that the mismatched sources may need to be sharpened or blurred, fake grain added, etc, to blend better with each other.

As for greenish, Harmy’s Technicolor reference had a greenish cast, so the film was made greenish on purpose to match the color reference. Since then, he has learned that the reference isn’t as greenish once fully corrected, so he won’t go that far in the next version. ReEd didn’t have as authoritative a color reference as DeEd, so Harmy felt freer to do what simply looked good.

Hope that helps.

Harmy said:

DavidMerrick said:

More information = facial pores, really. Maybe some edges are softer, but otherwise it’s just pores for days.

For me seeing the facial pores and textures has always been the most important and impressive things about HD.
When I get a movie and am trying to asses the quality/resolution, I always look for a medium close-up shot and look at how well-defined the skin-pores are.

Hmm. “Asses” seems a strangely appropriate typo… we know the movies you watch, Harmy…

Okay, first pass of the entire film is done. Still need to do some QA passes. For those unfamiliar with despecialized audio, not everything can be fully despecialized, particularly any SE audio changes that overlap dialogue (unlike Harmy, I can’t always drop down to a lower-quality source for the pre-SE version). Star Wars has a few rough patches – stormtroopers in the desert, hoverdroid sounds in Mos Eisley – but it isn’t too bad. The most egregious SE changes can be removed pretty seamlessly, although of course you do still have to deal with the 04 audio mastering. Also, I always downmix dubs to stereo for despecialization, and use the 93 mix to patch over, since it’s the best match EQ-wise. I’m thinking sometime next week we’ll have something.

Well, two of the ones you mentioned are “fan preservations”, not fan edits. i.e. they are not an attempt to create a new edit of the film at all, but to exactly re-create a previous official version of the film. Despecialized attempts to be exactly the 1977 version of Star Wars, and Respecialized attempts to be exactly the 1997 version of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: Special Edition. In that sense, Despecialized is generally considered the best of those you mentioned, simply because it recreates an “edit” everyone already loved to begin with. Revisited is the only true fan edit of the ones you mention, in the sense that a fan decided to make his own edit, exercise some creative input over the process, etc.

I’m not really sure it’s possible to salvage The Phantom Menace. You can only do so much, even with the best of the prequels.

Ths has been stated before, but the Technicolor prints of the time had a green bias, which is pretty easy to compensate for, but the reference Harmy used had not been fully corrected, and he didn’t know how much liberty he could take with that reference (considering that having the reference at all was such a huge improvement over winging it). Now that he knows he can do some correction without angering the Star Wars Gods, I’m sure he’ll use that freedom to make the next Star Wars release much better… that and he’ll also have some great color correction tools at his disposal he didn’t before.

sonicdivine said:

I prefer to call it STAR WARS, being the original title and all. My friends and I dislike the New Hope title and have just resorted to referring to each film by episode number. So, I guess it’s just 4 to me…although 5 is definitely my favorite!

Shouldn’t you call it 0 then, or maybe null?

CatBus said:

REPORT-ESB-v2.0

02:00:26
credits are a reconstruction, contain numerous typos

Presumably they wouldn’t be fixed, so much as outright replaced with 35mm sources. Also, bug reports only (yeah yeah, breaking the rule myself)

If you like that totally unfamiliar language angle, try the Thai dub. It’s also about as far from English as you can go, and it uses even fewer recognizable words. And it’s a complete trilogy dub, and they dub Jabba in Thai, which is as awesomely wrong as it sounds. The downside is the sync varies between excellent and poor, sometimes in the same shot. Not 80’s Hong Kong bad, but not good. Actually the real downside is they get Leia very, very wrong IMO.

PM sent.

TV’s Frink said:

abnog said:

yoda-sama said:

He only accepts submissions via horseback carrier.

I have a carrierback horse. Is it valid?

Picture please.

Okay.