any idea on foreign language tracks for v2.0?
Czech, German, American Spanish, Castilian Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian. Not sure if Harmy’s going for the Russian dub, voiceover, or both.
For those having trouble searching at the paradoxical location, you can search for the thread title beginning with “Star Wars OOT Language Options”, or you can search for “Project Threepio”, but uncheck the box for “Search titles only”, and that should get you there too.
PM sent.
A direct download link to version 9.0 (and more) can be found at our favorite paradoxical location. I’ll let you know about other locations (and update the first post) as they become available.
PM’s sent.
Project files have been updated to version 9.0 (codename: “Aaand We’re Done!”), first post has been updated, please PM me for temporary download links until the files are available at a more permanent location (and yes, I’m planning on more than just MySpleen and PM’s this time).
The change in subtitle timing is a bigger deal than it might seem. Particularly in Return of the Jedi, the timing of the alien subtitles varies widely between theatrical prints and various home video releases. This means that Project Threepio’s subtitles, without manual adjustment, may look out of sync during the sequences in ROTJ with alien dialogue, if there are burnt-in English subtitles using timing from a non-theatrical source. More specifically, this means Project Threepio’s alien subtitles no longer line up quite so neatly with the burnt-in alien subtitles in ROTJ Despecialized 1.0 or the first 2.0 workprint, but will sync with the final version 2.0 when it’s released. So if you’re just looking for subtitles for ROTJ Despecialized, 8.3 may look better for now.
As the codename suggests, the end of Project Threepio may well be in sight. I doubt this will be the very last version, but in its current state, it now meets all of my original goals for this project, in addition to all of the other goals I’ve added along the way. I honestly can’t think of very much more that can be done without venturing into areas I’ve already definitively ruled out for the sake of my sanity (mono mixes, 70mm Empire, 85/93 audio, 81 crawl, matching foreign dubs, and so on). So – absent language contributions from outside sources – no major updates are really even possible at this point. Minor corrections and refinements can, of course, potentially continue indefinitely, so that’s where I can still see a minor release or two down the line.
Project Threepio is now in a state where any Star Wars trilogy preservation can pretty easily have extensive subtitle support, regardless of whether it syncs to the GOUT, includes burnt-in alien subtitles, what sort of framing is uses, or if it includes translated crawl and alien subtitle text. And I have to say, even if this project never goes any further than this latest release, I’ll still be quite satisfied with what we’ve accomplished.
That’s not to say that this project thread won’t stay active, with, if nothing else, enough “PM sent” posts to keep everyone satisfied for a long time to come!
PM sent.
The fact that we’ve received no comment rejecting the idea of releasing the unaltered films also makes me wonder if they’re potentially waiting to announce a release.
That right there. Optimism. 😉
Re: fan projects, it’s often been supposed (and I agree) that the whole reason the GOUT was even released was to shut down the burgeoning trade in bootleg Laserdisc rips. Based on a higher-generation source, it basically was simultaneously (at least arguably) better than any of the bootlegs, and as close to a zero-cost, zero-effort release Lucasfilm could muster. And it worked.
The quality of the fan projects today ensure the GOUT won’t happen again. To be at least arguably better than the current batch of fan projects would require a significant investment, and a great final product. And if that’s the case, hooray for Disney if they effectively shut down the fan projects by making a product worth buying. And with their access to archives, they could easily beat the best we’ve got, if they tried.
But my money’s on them not trying. Not in five years, not in ten. That money’s staying right there on the table, where it’s been sitting for the last twenty years waiting for someone to take it.
AFAIK, no such beast exists, you’d have to make it yourself from the MKV.
Re: audio, most Blu-ray remotes have an AUDIO button that lets you switch between audio sources. The default 5.1 track mixed down to stereo would get a little muddied, so it’s safest to recommend one of the stereo tracks for best clarity. Some players don’t understand DTS-MA under some/all circumstances, so won’t play the default track (either silence or they’ll pick another track).
Re: subtitles, Project Threepio has a huge, detailed README that should answer all questions. PM me if you need a link to the complete project. In short, the best thing to do is to unpack the contents of the ISO, and make a new ISO with subs embedded.
Great news - these new mixes will be awesome additions to v2.5.
Wait a minute, is this to say that 2.0 will have the same DD tracks from 1.0 instead of the DTS-HD of the other 2.X releases? If so, and if indeed the new audio will be ready in a matter of weeks, I think I’d prefer to wait. Though I may be biased, since I finally got a receiver that can handle 5.1 DTS-HD for Christmas. I guess I can hold off on burning the MKV and mux in the new audio if hairy-hen makes it available on its own.
I’ve provided Harmy with DTS-HD lossless versions of the old 5.1 mix… not that hairy_hen’s new mix won’t be better.
“Because it makes good business sense” has been a valid argument since 1997. If anything, that argument is actually becoming less valid as time goes on, as the proportion of the Star Wars fanbase that has actually seen the Star Wars trilogy that started it all decreases.
It will always make good business sense. There always has been and always will be a market for the unaltered films. Things we infinitely smaller followings have received releases in the past. The producer’s cut of Halloween 6 was released on bluray recently as the selling point for the Halloween box set, and in 2013 the original mixes of ZZ Top’s studio albums were released on CD for the first time since before they had been altered with new percussion in the late 1980s. There really is a market for almost everything, but especially Star Wars. Despecialized Edition has proven that there is a market for the OT. Whether the fact that there is money to be made will motivate Lucasfilm to them releasing the films is yet to be seen, however.
Not sure we’re in disagreement. The original ZZ Top mixes may still have a market now, but it would have made more business sense to do it twenty years ago. If they held out another fifty years, would it have still made business sense then? I think our different attitudes come from our differing expectations of an official OOT release. If I’m reading you correctly, you seem to think it could happen in 5-10 years, while I tend to think the most likely official OOT release scenario is for the OOT copyrights to expire (still a hundred years out or more), so that some public domain media outfit like Laserlight will release it as a cheapo vintage classics collection. The length of the wait does impact the size of the audience, if the wait is long enough. I’m not saying an OOT release won’t make business sense even then, just that it’ll make considerably less sense than it would have a century earlier.
I’m sure all of us would love for Mike to clear some things up himself.
I prefer the enigmatic Mike.
PM sent.
PM’s sent. Yes, the plan is that the next version will be available through channels other than MySpleen and PM’s. However, there will still be no direct link in the first post, as that could run afoul of forum rules here.
35mm is no good for what I’m doing, sorry. Slight cropping differences change the relative size and position of the font I use from preservation to preservation, so I need a DeEd 2.0 screencap. No worries, though. Once I have the image, it’ll take all of a few minutes to make the match.
If he’s done in the next few weeks, and that’s still not early enough for 2.0, are you at a point yet where you can get that screencap of the subtitles? That’s all I’m waiting for for Project Threepio 9.0.
PM sent.
No, all of the Despecialized Editions have been 720p, and will continue to be until the 3.x series.
Oh, thank goodness you’re still with us and working on things. A shiny new fully patched-up 83 stereo mix and a new 5.1 mix, sounds great!
WTF
I had no plans to see the film either, but I’ll likely end up going with my kid sometime, assuming it’s still in theatres by the time we get around to it. I’m probably a little more enthusiastic than Mike, though.
Just got confirmation that the Hebrew subtitles are good, my first confirmation of an RTL script. This probably means the Arabic subtitles are also good, since they are also from an official source and presented me with similar RTL difficulties. Farsi is based on a fansub, so that could be good or bad.
FWIW, VLC currently has a problem displaying certain character sequences in SRT files for RTL languages. This will be fixed in VLC 3.0, but can be worked around using SUP files and/or MPC-HC, which don’t have the issue.
EDIT: I guess I should also mention I also got confirmation that the Simplified Mandarin subtitles are good, which is another sign that Operation Eyestrain yielded good results.
REPORT-SW-v2.5
00:04:54
Reflection of red lights on R2 is clipped
00:04:58
Large red light to left of C-3PO is clipped
00:05:10
Red lights at end of corridor are clipped, reflections on R2 are, too, to a lesser degree
00:05:18
Large red light to left of C-3PO is clipped
00:40:35
Noticeable color shift during wipe
01:16:42-01:22:27
The red highlights (faces, hair) in the trash compactor seem really odd, like they were pushed past clipping and then scaled back again. Possibly due to clipped source, You_Too’s de-purpling correction, then re-purpling to match the reference
01:40:08
144053
PAL/NTSC sync issue: contains extra frame not in NTSC GOUT
Then, around the Special Editions, people started pushing the “A New Hope” name hard, and also episode numbers.
I thought the use of episode numbers only really started catching on when TPM was released, becoming firmly entrenched once AOTC arrived.
You’re probably right. So, my timeline looks a little like this:
“Star Wars” near-exclusive: 1977-1995 (~18 years)
“Star Wars” or “A New Hope”: 1995-2000 (~5 years)
“Star Wars”, “A New Hope”, or “Episode IV”: 2000-present (~15 years)
If this is more-or-less accurate, we’ve only really recently hit the milestone where people have been calling Star Wars something other than “Star Wars” longer than they were calling it simply “Star Wars”.