So say we all (except the carrot business)! Now don’t surprise me with a new theatrically-timed release next week because I’m not ready for that at all.
Thank you, Williarob, that makes things much easier. Harmy, in THAT case I think it’s fair to say that by the time you have something worth releasing, and certainly in the longer term, theatrical frames will be a standard worth pursuing for all three films.
If you commit to going with theatrical frames, I’ll commit to switching all of my sub and audio sources in time to be ready for your next release.
Hey You_Too, it’s good to hear from you. And I think you undervalue your own blanket tint adjustment. While not as good as this, it was still worlds better than the EE Blu-ray, and the best alternative version available for quite some time. Just, you know, Merry’s vest went all orange, that’s all 😉
I’m pretty sure 4K77 V2 will change to theatrically sync, but Williarob is probably the best person to to give a definitive answer.
I’ve sent him a PM. Hopefully we’ll know soon.
If 4K77 does indeed have plans to change, it would make this decision less convoluted. Who could we confirm this with?
So basically it’s currently still a cluster****. Unless we can coordinate a summit of project leads and get everyone to agree to a frame standard, it’s likely to continue to be a mess. Sorry. I know how much of a pain it was just finally arriving at NTSC GOUT after all those PAL GOUT battles.
IMO all of the frame standards under discussion make no difference at all for subtitles. Only the two-frame differences are detectable to me for audio, and I’ve even unfortunately seen evidence that this even matters for some dubs (i.e. German). I’m sure there’s someone out there who can detect a one-frame sync difference for audio, but that’s not me.
As for new tracks, hairy_hen made a new 4K83-synced 5.1 track, which doesn’t sync to DeEd. However, I’m sure he’d be willing to make a GOUT-synced track for a new DeEd. And even if he’s not available, I’ve made a GOUT-synced version of his new 5.1 track and it sounds seamless to me (although I would definitely rather get it from h_h!). So it’s pretty easy to take theatrically-synced audio and convert it, if and when new tracks come along.
4Kxx is a mix of theatrical and GOUT, unfortunately.
4K77 is GOUT-synced, not theatrical. It’s missing a frame at ~1:40:08.
4K83 is theatrical, and it’s different from GOUT by two additional frames at ~47:43.
From what I’ve heard, 4K80 will also be theatrical, which would be different from GOUT by two additional frames at ~1:44:24.
So while a lot of people may say the new frame standard is theatrical, AFAICT no preservation is actually using that standard for the whole trilogy, which is kinda confusing. You’d be the first, which means your tracks still won’t sync with anyone else’s, unless they also change theirs. I’d recommend trying to coordinate with the 4Kxx project – try to convince them of the benefits of using a single frame standard for everything, and if they’re willing to change 4K77, you can change your whole trilogy, and then everything’s happy.
EDIT: And if everyone’s going through the trouble of changing their sync anyway, I may as well plug my own opinion as well – if we’re switching to theatrical, add a 1/2-second padding to the beginning of each film, so that all the HDMI handshake business that happens on a home theater setup doesn’t potentially cut off the beginning of the Fox fanfare.
Yeah, it’s off by a factor of ten 😉
But it’s hard for me to look at 1 2 1 without thinking “gigawatts”, even if the decimal point is in the wrong place.
PM sent, and thanks again for the idea!
Already working on 12.1 – “Gigawatt”
PM sent.
PM sent.
IMO the 6-channel reconstruction folds down to stereo just fine, so it’s quite listenable with two speakers – it’s just not terribly different from the stereo track at that point. So, you know, anything beyond two speakers will get you slightly more than the stereo mix, even if just a bit. But the more the merrier.
I hope Harmy is aware of this, since he’s using the 2019 version as one of his main sources for Despecialized 3.0. I’m sure he’s already accounted for it in some way, though.
I brought it up in his thread. He did not seem inclined to uncrop anything unless it was really egregious, simply because what would be required to blend a 4K80 (or whatever) border around a 19SE frame would be prohibitively difficult & time-consuming for more than a few shots.
That said, I intend to keep tabs on this to ensure that the scene where Leia’s cropped out of a scene where she’s speaking should be considered egregious enough to be worth that effort, even if none of the others are.
The 93 is pretty good sonically i just cannot stand it because of the smashing glass in the detention block shootout. I never listened to it again for that reason like nails on a chalkboard it is awful.
Agreed. In terms of sound quality, 93 is the best mix, but it’s one of the two pre-97 revisions containing distinctly non-theatrical elements, and I just can’t bring myself to listen to it.
All the 1977 mixes are authentic-enough original mixes IMO. Although the six-channel mix is a reconstruction, is is very tastefully and expertly done using in-theater recordings as references, and the difference between the original 4.2 mix and the current 5.1 reconstruction should be pretty minor.
“Definitive” really depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for what most 1977 theater-goers heard, that’s the mono mix. If you’re looking for a technology showcase/what the fanciest best-equipped theaters showed, that’s the six-channel mix. The stereo mix is sadly the odd man out – no matter what I consider “definitive”, it never ranks.
In a lot of ways, Star Wars fans fall into two camps – those who want to see the movies exactly as they were in the theater, and those who want to see the movies as if they’d gotten as respectful a Blu-ray release as any other classic film. The former camp tends to favor the 4Kxx releases and the mono mix. The latter camp tends to favor Despecialized and the six-channel mix. Full disclosure: I’m in the latter camp.
PM sent.
PM sent.
Anyone know if there any Engish subtitles synced to the original “Renegade” ESB Grindhouse release (not the Dreammaster GOUT version)? Cheers!
Yes indeed! The regular Project Threepio subtitles can be run through the “resync-subs” script using the NEG1 frame reference. See the section of the readme titled “How to synchronize subtitles to a different video frame reference”. You can do this for both SUP and SRT format.
PM me if you need a link.
👍
You have no idea how satisfying it is when I discover someone actually using one of the obscure little utilities I spend my time tinkering with!
Looking good, Dre. Harmy indicated in his latest video that he’s working on Empire (instead?/also?). Are you planning any correction on that front?
Update on the BDSup2Sub issue: this may not be a bug at all, but a side-effect of colorspace conversion. Specifically, the PNG/RGB colorspace getting converted to the BD-SUP/YCrCb colorspace and back again. Nevertheless, because a lot of my instructions involve roundtripping images through this process, this presents a problem for color accuracy, and I’ll need to work to mitigate it.
By the way, if anyone knows Java and has experience with image manipulation, I have something I need help with. I recently discovered a bug in BDSup2Sub, and I’m keen to get it fixed, even in an unofficial custom build. In a nutshell, converting BDN+XML to BD-SUP causes a very subtle color shift (slight desaturation), which becomes more pronounced with repeated conversions. Since I’ve been using BD-SUP as a sort of lossless archival format for this project… that’s no good.
Anyway, send me a PM if you’re interested. The BDSup2Sub4k.jar used in this project already appears to be an unofficial branch of the project, but it decompiles very cleanly into Java source code, which could then be modified and recompiled.
Anyone know if there any Engish subtitles synced to the original “Renegade” ESB Grindhouse release (not the Dreammaster GOUT version)? Cheers!
Yes indeed! The regular Project Threepio subtitles can be run through the “resync-subs” script using the NEG1 frame reference. See the section of the readme titled “How to synchronize subtitles to a different video frame reference”. You can do this for both SUP and SRT format.
PM me if you need a link.
Tragic! I thought I found some Welsh subtitles to include, but it appears from what I can see that they’ve just been run through Google translate without many/any corrections. Same story with Urdu. Oh well, I’m still on the lookout for good-quality subtitles in other languages, if you find any.
PM sent.
@resolution: I’m not surprised hardware media players have strange/arbitrary limits on MKV containers. If it helps, I know Blu-ray discs can have up to 32 audio streams, and it’s possible an M2TS container may work better even without being burned to disc. Careful with your counting, though – some authoring tools (tsMuxer) allow you to add more than 32 without any warnings, and disc behavior with too many streams is bad.
I have a tech question. I muxed a few of the 720p SUP files (e.g. English, English SDH) into the 720p despecialized editions. When I play the resulting MKVs on my PC, the subtitles look like they are the correct size in relation to the image.
However, when I play the same MKVs on my Oppo UDP-203, the subtitles appear quite a bit smaller. I tried changing the Oppo from its usual 2160p output to 720p and 1080p, and the results were the same.
Has anyone else encountered this? Is this a quirk of the Oppo? If I want proper size subtitles on the Oppo, maybe I need to mux in the 1080p SUP files instead?
I’ve got that exact player, so I could give it a whirl (might not have time for a while, though). I do know that when you mux the 720p subs into an M2TS/Blu-ray folder structure (and burn it to disc), everything looks fine on the 203.
One quirk of hardware players that I know about is that while 720p/24 is a valid resolution for Blu-rays and a valid resolution for displays, it is NOT a valid resolution for the HDMI spec. So players either have to telecine the stream to 720i/30 or upscale it to 1080p/2160p/24 before they can send it over the cable – and the latter is the better choice. I also know that while the M2TS behavior of hardware players is generally very solid in order for it to work properly with discs, the MKV behavior is often a little quirky. It’s possible the 720p upscale is working well for the image, but not the subtitle stream. You could certainly try the 1080p subs and see if that improves things.
In general, resolution-matching isn’t required for anything but Blu-ray disc compatible streams. For non-disc formats, or even software playback of Blu-ray folder structures, you can mix 1080p subs with 720p video, without any issues.