CatBus

There's a topic?

PM sent.  RE: the Japanese subs, I recommend always using the graphical subtitles regardless of whether or not text subtitles are available.  The graphical ones for ROTJ are from the Region 2 GOUT, while the partial ones are extracted from a lesser-quality SE fansub, no idea what its original encoding was--it was a long time ago.

Anyway, converting the official subtitles to text is a process that's already underway, but slow for reasons explained on the last page if you're curious.  Anyway, just use the graphical ones and you'll be fine.  Instructions are included in the README.html if you're not familiar with using graphical subs.

PM sent.

Yes, the bitrate is higher on the MKV, and there are lots of extra niceties in the form of alternate tracks.  That said, the AVCHD still looks and sounds very good.

Sounds pretty good, let me know how it works out.  For the Greedo scene, you'd end up with three sets of subtitles on the screen at the same time!  Good luck.

TV's Frink said:

If you really want your mind blown, come to FE.org and watch me moderate the forum.

Okay, now with the personal pronouns.  Where's Rod Serling?

TV's Frink said:

There's a whole subforum known as "off topic" for that sort of thing.

Okay, first Stinky-Dinkins posts completely helpful messages, and now Frink's telling people not to post offtopic in Harmy's thread of all places.

I can't decide if I want to stick around for team_negative1 to post an "I'm actually still here" message, or if I want to run away before I read a pollyanna-saccarine "don't worry be happy" post from generalfrevious.  Does this all mean I'm still Elaine?

joefavs said:

Assuming it was in fact an autocorrect flub, "Greedo" to "Gringo" is now my favorite autocorrect flub of all time.

 Not autocorrect.  It's an OT.com legend.

PM's sent.

Regarding two subtitles at the same time--adding two subtitles to one file is certainly easy, but watching the movie with two sets of subtitles simultaneously will not be easy (I've never done it).  Switching between the two--picking one or the other--is how it's typically done.

If you want to watch it in two alternate languages at the same time, you could use the Japanese or French dub, then use subtitles from the other language.  The subtitles don't 100% match up with the dub tracks, though, since they're designed to accompany the English tracks, but they work decently.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Well there it is finally-- it could be our slowest posting evar.

The SFV file was made by segaflip, and the alternative spelling folder name and all, all his.
All I done was preserve it for nine years.

For n00bs, there's 2 incredible shrinks to look for:

After Ben said You'll have to sell your speeder.
--- ratio shrink ---
Before Gringo asked Going somewhere, Solo?

The 2nd shrink is pictured above.
We can't recall the dialog in that shot off the top of our collective heads.
Is it before Solo asked Didn't we just leave this party? ?

Just in case you were wondering, I saw what you did there.

PM sent.

PM's sent (and re-sent to einari)

PM sent.

I didn't mean to throw shade on any particular methods, I was just trying to point out that this is a classic "you can't get there from here" problem.  Nothing you do to an SE source will make it look exactly like the originals, so it's a matter of prioritizing what matters most, shot-by-shot.  You can match colors and throw out detail, you can match detail and throw out color, you can match color in some areas but not others, and so on.  The only guarantee is that there's going to be something demonstrably wrong with the result.  The hard thing is trying to balance these tradeoffs to produce something that looks close enough, while not introducing new problems.  Any of these choices is "making another SE" in a sense because it's just not going to exactly match the originals.  Harmy chose one path, but there are thousands of others you can choose as well.

Again, using actual original source material, this all changes.

Just for the sake of completeness, I made a small change to the Operation Eyestrain logo, which is visible on the first post but not yet in the project.  It now includes a Star Wars element (it had none before, and I can't believe I never thought of it until now).  Anyway, now it fits a little better with the others, even though it's always going to be a bit of an inside joke with limited popular appeal.

EDIT: Thought of a slogan too, but it doesn't go with the image: "We stare because we care"

PM sent.

iamsometal said:

The color correction in 2.5 is honestly my only minor issue with this version.

With a "warts and all" restoration, you get warts.  Star Wars is the only film where Harmy was working with a pretty dead-on accurate theatrical color reference.  With the others (particularly Empire), he's a little freer to even out inconsistent skin tones, because he doesn't have a definitive color reference telling him he shouldn't.

There is also some level of suck that's always going to be left over from any Special Edition source material--to match colors better than what we have now, you'd need original film elements (IMO DrDre's example demonstrates that trying to exactly match the Blu-ray to theatrical colors can end up blowing out detail, so you may want to bump the gamma to compensate, but then you lose color accuracy, and so on).  Not that that isn't coming some day, but Harmy may not be the one to do it.  It's not "Despecialized" if it wasn't "Special" to begin with.

Just use tsMuxer to create your Blu-ray folder structure, and burn that to disc using ImgBurn.  Haven't messed with other software, but there's always a risk something may try to re-encode the video, and that would open the door to all sorts of problems.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I'm confused. Is Artoo a cyborg, now, or a muscle man with a trash can worn over his head?

Don't get duped by the clever editing.  That blast on C-3PO is an exit wound.  He's been shot in the chest before, so he'll live, as R2 is assessing in the second frame.  R2 is pulling out his muscle man accessories because his normal ones aren't sufficient to finish the job.  His little saw blade can't cut through metal, his zapper doesn't have the voltage, and his grabber arm can't beat the life out of a damaged robot.  And that stormtrooper?  Clearly just an action figure superimposed over the original images.

Not too surprising, Harmy's is (more or less) matched to a Technicolor reference print, which would likely not exactly match the colors on another 35mm medium, even on opening day.  Even less so for something this old, even if it is relatively well preserved.  Technicolors may have been dimmer and greenish from the start, but a slightly pink-shifted and faded print would also look brighter and less green.  I'm inclined to say it's the latter--home video has really colored our memories of how this film looks.

PM sent.

Hello new user titl... hrm, maybe not.

generalfrevious said:

 Well what changes could they make without George Lucas? Will Disney now put in bullshit changes of their own every seven years until the end of time? Then we have lost forever, straight into the dustbin of history. What a fucking horrible time to be a SW fan; we're drifting further and further away from the originals. Disney is now worse than Lucas.

The Reliance project was started before the Disney deal.  What they do with that project is yet to be seen--maybe they'll can it, maybe they'll let it go along whatever path it's already heading (simple corporate inertia will keep it on this track for a while), and maybe they'll intervene to change it into a proper 4K restoration of the OOT.  I think the evil is yet to be demonstrated, at least with these particular films.

towne32 said:

 I suppose I could go look at that thread again and not be lazy. But isn't the strong evidence just people who claimed to have seen it with no proof? (people who previously claimed it was the April 2015 digital release, until that came out and then "corrected" themselves)

No, it's based on a pretty fleeting but nevertheless concrete preview clip from Reliance Media.  Whether the 4K scan will ever amount to anything, be released as a consumer product, etc, is still an open question, but somebody's doing something, and that something oddly doesn't exactly match any previous release, at least in the preview clip (it would have been helpful if they included the Han/Jabba scene or something that helped nail down the clip's pedigree, but the clips are from scenes that weren't changed much, so it took our neighborhood lightsaber-glow-specialists and whatnot to sort out what it was).

generalfrevious said:

The only version that will exist are the 2011 versions

I'm surprised to be saying this to you, but you are not being nearly pessimistic enough.  The 4K thread contains some pretty strong evidence that we'll see yet another variation of the Special Editions, based on a 4K 97SE scan, but with changes piled on top of that.  The hydra still has a few heads left.