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.
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.
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?
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.
He only accepts submissions via horseback carrier.
I have a carrierback horse. Is it valid?
Picture please.
Okay.
I’m not the best person to ask, because I don’t like dubs all that much in general (but I recognize their value, so here I am). However, as for the performances, I feel like they really got Leia, which is actually pretty unusual, so that kinda stands out as good. I’m having a hard time adjusting to C-3PO, maybe he’ll grow on me. The lip sync is much better than I thought it would be, given how dissimilar the languages are – I expected something more like the Thai dub, which is very loosey-goosey on the whole lip sync thing.
And actually I’ve only listened to it up to the cantina, because that’s where I am on the sync. And I’m mostly trying to ignore the voices and focus on the SE changes that can be undone.
Yeah, actually, at DVD resolution, GOUT V3 is probably your easiest option. Still, send me a PM if you have questions on the subtitle side.
I’ve got something better than a lousy font. I’ll need to upload it first, then I’ll send a PM.
Well, for the old versions, 1.0 and the 2.x workprint, I believe it’s Franklin Gothic Demi Condensed, which is close but no cigar. 2.0 won’t use a font, but a scan of 35mm elements.
If you’re interested, I’ve made a customized Franklin Gothic Demi Cond that addresses some of the shortcomings.
Out-of-the-box, no. Project Threepio has a conversion script that can sync the subs against different video sources, but we don’t have a conversion string for SW Silver Screen yet. I’m hoping some kind soul posts one that works here (it’s not too hard to make one via trial and error, subtitle timing is very forgiving), and then everyone could just plug the string into the existing script and convert the subtitles. I also might get around to making a conversion string, but it’ll be a while, as I’ve got other things going on right now.
Okay, audio sync officially started, but it may still be a while, I’ve got a lot of other things going on.
PM sent.
PM sent. The main subtitles are in PGS format, but there are also SRT files for those who need a text format. I didn’t find any of the text subtitle formats were really adequate for this project*, so I’m not going to provide anything beyond SRT, not that you couldn’t make them if you wanted them badly enough. PGS can be used directly with software players like MPC-HC, you just add it as an external subtitle, just as you would an external text file–it’s not just for Blu-rays.
* My main complaint about text formats is that I like to keep content and formatting as separate as possible, as it makes managing huge projects like this a lot easier (think CSS). That’s why I actually prefer a “dumb” format like SRT, and manage layout through various external scripts. But there’s some other more corner cases where I just don’t like text formats too.
PM sent.
Subtitles are being created as we speak for the crawl and Greedo dialogue. Audio is the next step, but I’ve got a few non-Navajo subtitle-related things I may want to get out of the way first.
I’ve just received word that version 9.0 can also be found on MySpleen.
Look up a few posts, althor1138 is planning to GOUT-sync the video, which means all other GOUT-synced resources will then work with it.
PM sent.
Unfortunately, I’ve heard it’s a one-off. Luckily, since this is so recent, there’s a good chance these same voice actors will be able to perform again should they change their minds. But I somehow think if there’s any new dubbing projects at all under Disney, it’ll be Mandarin.