CatBus

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Here’s a question TheHutt might be able to help with: Does anyone know if there was a French or Portuguese dub of the theatrical version–and if so, is it different in any other way from the dub for the extended version? And finally, do you have a copy?

Similar for other languages too (e.g. German), I guess – the US Blu-ray only has French, Portuguese, and a badly butchered Japanese track. Japanese is the only non-English track I’ve re-created, the others I just chopped at the transition.

I’m sure he’ll jump right on it now that he knows we want to see it.

With apologies to Puggo, the first post is really more of a project mausoleum than a project index. If any thread needs unstickying, it’s this one.

Yeah, I think that’s been partially quoted in this thread before. It’s pretty clear from this and other sources that they see the extended cut as an improvement, and that we won’t be seeing any more official releases of the theatrical cut, so here we are.

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PM sent. Sorry about the new forum layout, it’s still got some usability kinks being worked out.

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꧅

ESB MKV is listed in the first post, down a bit:

CRC32: C4BF0283
MD5: 1E34878403B05924F71354E961016FCE
SHA-1: 66FD71200749FE96123888228868789ACDBF34C5

I don’t think he ever posted ones for the 1.x series, so you’d need to ask someone for the one for ROTJ. I’ve already demuxed and remuxed my copy, so mine’s pretty useless for that.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.