CatBus

Now there are two of them!

TV's Frink said:

So am I understanding correctly that it's my fault for disliking the prequels, not George's?

No, it's your fault for watching the prequels. The ring theory might make a lot more sense if you didn't make that rookie mistake.

I suspect the next candidate will be ROTP.  At least for my purposes, I find it better to merge Puggo's reels into a single stream, and de-telecine it back to 23.976 fps before trying to sync.  YMMV.

Yeah, I already have subs synced (probably good enough) to the Grindhouse release, I was just wanting to know if it could be easily improved.  The next version of Project Threepio will include a Perl script for re-syncing to other frame references, but it requires 1) the timecode relative to the NTSC GOUT where the change happens, and 2) the amount of change, with millisecond precision supported but not required, because, after all, it's just subtitles.  Not sure this method will work for everyone, but it works for me.  I already synced Puggo Grande using this script, and am now working on PSB.

How my off-the-cuff adjustments may relate to actual frame differences...well, your guess is as good as mine, but subtitles are very forgiving.

So does that mean there is an extra frame at the beginning of some of the PAL versions?  If so, where?

EDIT: And for -1's Grindhouse Edition, can anyone convert that into English-ish?  i.e. delete 3 frames starting at NTSC GOUT frame X or timecode Y, etc.

The only audio sync issue on Star Wars v2.5 is toward the end of the film, and it's a one frame sync problem (~.042 ms), which most people find unnoticeable.

Any other sync issues are much more likely caused by either downloading a low-bitrate re-encode, or issues with the playback software.  I know some players find DTS-MA to be a little exotic.  You can test this by trying one of the Dolby Digital tracks (i.e. the commentary).  If it syncs fine, then it's the playback software that's the problem.  That's my guess.

Sooo, what does this mean in non-avisynth terms?  Compared to NTSC GOUT, where does PAL GOUT have added/deleted frames?  I'm sure if I understood avisynth better, I'd know you already told me...

AFAIK, PAL SW gets an extra frame in the Yavin hangar scene, ESB gets two extra frames as they're preparing to escape from Cloud City, and ROTJ gets two extra frames just after the last scene on Dagobah, and loses one frame during the battle on Endor.  Any others?  I think I may have missed title card shifts, due to the fact that Harmy fixed those in his PAL GOUT-based video.

Wow, that's a pretty fantastic improvement.  I guess we'll have nothing to worry about in the eyebrow department anymore, either.

PM sent.

FWIW, for the LOTR books, I liked them MORE as the series progressed--I merely tolerated FOTR, but enjoyed the trilogy.  For the movies, I liked them LESS as the series progressed--I merely tolerated ROTK, but enjoyed the trilogy.  Then there's the added complication of the Extended Editions, which I also found to work less well as the series progressed.

IMO:

BOOKS:

ROTK>TT=Hobbit>>FOTR

FILMS:

FOTR:EE>FOTR>>TT:EE=TT>ROTK>ROTK:EE>>>any of the hobbit films

I've always been a little team-curious, but I don't identify as such.

PM sent.

doubleofive said:

Amazon was trying to tell me that the OT Blu-ray set was on sale and it was like #1 on the Blu-ray deals list, so I think they may just be sold out because of Christmas.

Wow, that's a lot of coal.  People, try harder to be good next year.

PM sent.

Much as I'd like to entertain OOT Blu-ray fantasies, my guess is--if it's really going out of print and not merely out of stock--that it has something to do with the fact that the existing "complete saga" set won't be the "complete saga" anymore once Episode VII comes out, and will require new packaging to accommodate the change.

There seem to be a handful of experts here on the frame differences between, say, the PAL GOUT and the NTSC GOUT, or various Laserdisc releases (see this thread).

What I’d like to know is if there is any way, other than manually comparing a couple hundred thousand still images against each other, to do this frame comparison for any two given releases?

Specifically, I’m interested in which frames are missing/added in our film-based preservations, compared to the NTSC GOUT: Puggo’s releases and the new Grindhouse ESB release from -1, and ideally also a quick way to find differences in future -1 releases.  If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

This is for subtitles, so I can handle being off by a few frames, as long as it’s reasonably close.  For the Grindhouse release, I tested a bulk-conversion script with some quick-and-dirty approximations, but I wouldn’t mind learning how to get more accurate values for the future.

The instructions are in the README.html file.  Muxman is the software it references, and it works under WINE, but any DVD authoring software should be able to do it.  I'm afraid my only experience is with Muxman, though.

PM sent.

It looks like 8.2 is already on MySpleen, get it while it's hot!

Project files have been updated to version 8.2 (original post has been updated as well). Please PM me for the temporary download links until the files are available in a more permanent location.

In order to (possibly) accommodate the upcoming release of a major preservation, I'm releasing an updated version a little earlier than I'd originally planned.  I say "possibly" because this new project isn't exactly GOUT-timed so I'm not sure how well or badly these subtitles will work for it.  Nevertheless, I'd hate for them to needlessly include my old cruddy ones, so I released what I had in its current state.

Rough summary of changes:
- Added two new languages: Persian/Farsi and Estonian.
- RTL scripts (Arabic, Hebrew) now include special "compat" SRT files, which are optimized for software that does not fully conform to the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (i.e. media players)
- Improvements to Spanish translations (thanks to Hostmaster and Leoj)
- Changed font for Traditional Mandarin and Cantonese (previous font was missing a character, and the fallback substitution font looked sloppy)
- Improved subtitle positioning in some corner cases where the old system didn't work well, most noticeably improved with Thai subtitles
- Created new instructions and scripts to easily allow subtitles to be modified to accompany video that does not include burnt-in alien subtitles, or for seamless branching preservations with a subtitle-free branch

As you may have noticed, we're still missing some of our big-ticket items--notably Japanese SRT files for ROTJ, and subtitle re-timing to match the burnt-in subtitles for Despecialized ROTJ 2.x.  I'll add a third big-ticket item: a script to easily convert subtitles from NTSC GOUT to other frame references.  Those will be coming, I'm assuming, in version 8.3.

Thanks, hairy_hen, and looking forward to it.  To re-iterate a point from my first post, my altered mix was just a stopgap until the new mix and DeEd 2.0 came out, so for goodness' sake, everyone using my mix should upgrade to hairy_hen's new mix when it's available, and leave mine behind.  I certainly will.

Jeeze, I go away for a few hours and the whole thread goes to hell ;)

Anyone still needing a PM, let me know.

Also, I'd appreciate feedback/corrections on the Simplified Chinese subtitles if you have any--these were based on OCR of the official subtitles, so if the OCR worked well, they should be very good, and the OCR seemed to work really well, but that's to my non-Chinese-reading eyes.

I'll need to re-upload this, and might not be able to do it before the holidays, but I'll see what I can do.

TV's Frink said:

They'll contain the SE versions.

Again.

I'm afraid this is our most likely candidate.

Great work as always. Looks fantastic!