CatBus

Jim said:

I’m about to watch the trilogy with my Japanese buddy who has never seen any of the films.

I got my hands on a copy of Harmy’s version, and it has Japanese audio, but he would prefer Japanese subtitles. When I checked out the Japanese sub file, there was very little text in there. Doesn’t look like the complete movie. Could anyone help me find a complete Japanese sub file for A New Hope? Or even the whole trilogy? (Don’t know if this issue pervades through the other two films or not.)

I sent you a link to an updated version of Project Threepio. At the time SW DeEd 2.5 was released, complete Japanese subtitles were only available in graphical form. Now there’s text files for Star Wars and Empire–Jedi is still being worked on. However, the best format is graphical (it’s just large, that’s all), so you should be all set for the complete trilogy.

IIRC, Harmy’s already made a 1981 crawl/flyover in 720p, as bonus material for a not-yet-created Blu-ray. You could probably just ask him for a link, and save yourself some trouble.

PM sent.

LexX said:

Just wondering out loud… Can any of you guys think about a situation where there comes a new SW movie that is actually better than any of the OT?

Sure. In the seventies and eighties, sci-fi/fantasy was a niche market nobody was much interested in capitalizing on. Nowadays every other damn movie is sci-fi or fantasy. Sturgeon’s Law still applies, naturally – 90% of everything is crap – and with a much larger raw number of films, you’ve certainly got more crap today, but I feel you’ve also still got a better chance of great sci-fi/fantasy too, just from the increased numbers.

Heck, the prequels came out in the midst of a very good run of creative, well-written films that were groundbreaking in many ways. They just weren’t among them.

I love the OT in a sentimental sort of way, and maybe nothing will surpass it in that regard. But I’ve never considered any of them among my top ten favorite films. I find sci-fi/fantasy works that surpass the OT all the time. Firefly, for example, IMO. Could something that good end up in a new Star Wars film? Well, Sturgeon’s Law again says it’s unlikely, but not impossible.

Of course we do! PM sent.

PM sent.

PM sent.

RonSolo, you have a PM.

I think we’re going to give this a shot. The only criticisms I had of the sample were low recording level (-12dB peaks) and slow pacing. This sort of voiceover is generally pretty brisk, not a leisurely storytelling pace, probably so that it squeezes more easily between the dialogue and sound effects in the film itself. Even for the crawl, you want to get the words out quickly, because the John Williams score is the real attraction of the first few minutes.

Oh, I’m afraid it’s the whole damn movie. And to add to that, there’s this whole voiceover narrator business going on in the Japanese dub that makes it even wordier. Not to mention that the dubbing crew keep going straight through to the end of the credits, seemingly going out of character and just having a big party as far as I can tell (which is one of the main reasons I want to know what they’re saying…).

It’s a big job–I’d love the help, but I don’t want to mislead you.

EDIT: Actually there is a “small” job hidden in there. The Japanese track has a rough patch right where the Castle Anthrax extension happens. Two big pops as the soundtrack stops and restarts roughly at that point. What I don’t know is how safe it is to erase those pops–i.e. would totally muting them out be worse than leaving them as-is, or if there’s a middle ground. Heck, considering a lot of the dialogue is repeated in that scene, you may even be able to do a plausible-sounding paste-over job using the same words from a few seconds earlier. Not knowing Japanese, I’m leaving it alone until someone tells me it’s safe to mess with.

PM sent.

Leonardo said:

Hint: sometimes the soundcard makes all the difference. I’ve plugged the same mic into an onboard card and later into a Soundblaster live 5.1, the difference was night and day. The onboard Realteks and the like add disgusting amounts of noise. Apparently because there is such a thing as being too close to the motherboard or the cpu.

Yeah, actually I used to have a laptop where you could hear when somebody was scrolling text, because the sound card picked up EM interference from the video card. Crazy, but I think discrete is generally best if you can swing it. For laptops, USB audio may work for better EM isolation.

hairy_hen said:

The VHS clip does look too blue, but if that is compensated for, it looks very much like what I saw on the old print.

I wonder when the red tint was introduced, and for what reason. Most new versions seem to consistently have it (it’s only a matter of degree), so it must have been a deliberate change. But why? Is it to give the scene a feeling of heat, due to the presence of fire? That’s the only thing I can really think of.

Agreed it was likely to draw attention to the fire, maybe for the sense of warmth, but maybe also for a better time of day cue. Cool interior lighting could be any time, warm lighting is usually more of a late night cue. You never know, maybe it was a filter that they had intended for the scene and forgot for some reason. Either way, it’s good to have some examples of what it looked like before.

Oh, well thanks for looking into it. Some mics do a better job of this sort of thing than others, and I’m afraid I don’t know what mics to suggest more specifically other than try what you’ve got and see.

Yeah, I figured it was a longshot.

Regarding the WOWOW adjusted to match the VHS, I just wanted to mention that I ran that image through Photoshop’s auto color filter (to remove the blue) plus a saturation boost and then it looked like it fit right in with those WOWOW shots that didn’t have the red tint you posted on the previous page.

Yipe, scared him off. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned the Kardashians.

But seriously, I’m looking at this as the only way blind people are ever going to be able to experience the Star Wars trilogy, so I don’t want to half-ass it. I want it to sound as close to a professional job as we can get with our limited resources. It would be a little underwhelming to have some amazing A/V experience like the DeEd’s accompanied by a YouTube-quality voiceover, where you can hear the guy breathing into the way-too-close microphone.

FWIW, AnyDVD doesn’t know what to do with the new disc yet, so it’ll be a while before I can get the new audio. However, since the video is identical, I can still work on redoing the video encode. Now that I know my way around both AviSynth and x264 a little better than when I did my first attempt, I can work on that using the old disc.

To edit out the extraneous scene: Loop(0,58991,59801)
To resize to 720p: ResampleHQ(width=1280,height=720,kernel=“spline36”,chroma_kernel=“spline36”,dither=true)

This, plus a probably better set of x264 parameters, produces an image that looks to me exactly as good as my earlier 1080p encode, at just under 2/3 the size (old one averaged 24.159 Mbps, new one 15.625 Mbps). I’m pretty pleased. I’ll just resize the subs next, port all of the audio tracks over, and then wait until I can access the lossless BD-audio (and for a Japanese translator, of course).

So, I’m new to this particular discussion, but since you’ve got the Laserdisc… and chance of trying to work in a snake reflection?

Questo editor usa la sintassi Markdown, che lo rende facile aggiungere formattazione come corsivo, grassetto, e liste:

• https://duckduckgo.com
• https://google.com
• https://bing.com

Anteprima di questo post per vedere i risultati.

Per ulteriori dettagli, vedere questo Markdown demo.

Heh, it’s not really as much an “audition” scenario so much as a “short straw” scenario. Let me fill in some blanks, to see if you still want to volunteer.

I’ve got some scripts typed up, and basically all you need to do is read them into a microphone and send me some audio files. “Radio experience” is more of a catch-all term for a bunch of unrelated things: you may have access to, or know someone with, better recording equipment than your standard webcam microphone, you understand intuitively which rooms are best for making voice recordings (hint: don’t try this in your kitchen). You may have some experience adjusting recording levels to avoid clipping or overly quiet recordings. You know how far away your head should be from the microphone (for sibilants, etc). You can read in a very clearly enunciated, level, and unexcited manner for a long time without being monotone and dull. And you can read three two-hour long scripts, probably with multiple takes for some lines, without going hoarse or insane. It’s the whole trilogy or nothing. Now, you don’t actually need to have all of this experience right now, but you need to be willing to get some experience with it, make some mistakes and do-overs, etc.

Then comes the phase where I try to splice these bits into the actual soundtracks, and you might think you’re done, but I might need something re-recorded, maybe at a faster pace to fit into a small timeframe, that sort of thing.

Then and only then comes the phase where you become a huge Internet celebrity and regularly have scones with the Kardashians.

If that all sounds good (Kardashians notwithstanding), let me know. I’ve got some scripts for you.

It’s unclear to me what his plans are for the rest of the trilogy. He mentioned a few lines of Empire, so that’s probably on his radar, but I don’t know his timeframe for a completed translation (Star Wars took a long time, I’d imagine ESB would as well). I don’t know if he has any plans for ROTJ at all. If you’re interested in improving the Finnish subtitles overall, you might be able to coordinate with him either via PM or in this thread–something like you take ROTJ, he takes ESB, and you collaborate on consistent translations when you opt for different words, that sort of thing. All I can do is cheer you on.

Actually, I have an improved Finnish translation for Star Wars but haven’t made it available yet. Who’s the asshole now? 😉

Seriously, though, I’ve been waiting to see if I can get more improvements (like for Empire and/or Jedi) before I make a whole new release out of it.

A sampling of new translations for the lines you indicated are here:

Olen Imperiumin senaatin jäsen
diplomaattisella asialla Alderaaniin.

Miten jouduimme tähän sotkuun?

Luke, jos setäsi ostaa tulkin,
varmista, että se osaa boccea.

If you want the new files, I can make them available for you to look through. The new version is based on a translation from our member LexX, which not only corrects problems, but is a more complete translation overall–i.e. less summaries, more flavor of the actual original dialogue.

Dang, I hoped my thread would stay at 666 replies forever! Oh well, I suppose for good news, it was worth it.

Definitely mux in the new subtitles since you have them already. Every version fixes small typos and mistakes, so especially for the ancient Star Wars ones, I’d be embarrassed to have people using them 😉

There seems to be a very old discussion of problems with tsmuxer on a Mac here: https://instantitunes.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/use-tsmuxer-on-snow-leopard/

The only similarities are the error messages, which may not mean anything.

The checksum is a numerical thumbprint for the file, to see if it’s been corrupted. Harmy posts the checksums for his files in the first posts of his project threads. You just Google around for a program that will give you the right kind of checksum (MD5, SHA-1, CRC32), and see if the value from your file matches what Harmy posted.

Subtitles that flash for one frame (only in VLC) was a bug this project had a long time ago, apparently about the time the AVCHD for Star Wars was made–it was definitely fixed by the time ESB came out. The subs are at fault, but they did work on every other player I tried, including hardware players from multiple manufacturers, MPC-HC, etc. You could also fix them by muxing in SUP files from the current project, but again you need tsMuxerGUI working to do that. And I don’t think ROTJ had any subtitles at all at the time it was released.

EDIT: Also keep in mind that in addition to not using a Mac, I don’t use the AVCHD versions either. So if you’re following this thread and I’m missing something, please feel free to chime in. I also don’t use the SRT files, so if there’s a way to get them working with the AVCHD, that may be another option.

Yeah, absolutely feel free to ask around. After having listened to the full Japanese track a few times, and seeing how they replaced big chunks of it with English audio for the Blu-ray, I’m very curious about what was in it that was so objectionable.

EDIT: Oh, and I think it still qualifies as a pretty shameless double-dip. I wouldn’t re-buy just for listening to the lossless audio–only for working with it. I think there’s some other pretty minor differences too, none worth it IMO.