CatBus

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!

Hey Feallan, your PM limit has been reached ;)

PM sent, thread re-railed.

For now. ;)

It's blue!  Is it Blue Harvest?

The reason I avoid SE dubs are that there are lots of subtle effects, music, and mixing differences in the SE's, which really aren't possible to entirely undo. Also, if an original dub exists, it was likely the version that fans knew prior to the SE's, so there's a sentimental attachment for fans from that time.  My goal is to bring back a little of the world that existed before the Special Editions happened--so even if the SE dubs are superior in the dubbing department (and I'm sure some are), they don't quite fill that need, even with editing.

Anyway, enough of that--and I don't mean to be dismissive of your work either--despecializing audio is hard work and I'm sure it will make many fans happy.  I believe Harmy's preferred format for dubs is 192k stereo AAC.

FWIW, a new capture of the same 80's Brazil dub from better-quality VHS tapes is in the works, but not completed yet (still a VHS capture though, so don't expect miracles).  As for the quality of one dub versus the other, it's always a matter of personal preference, and mine is to never use an SE dub unless there are no alternatives available.

I've let Dennis know that I'm not planning to include the SE dub in my personal archive (which I share with Harmy), but if people want to provide additional dubs to Harmy outside my personal archive, that's fine with me.

EDIT: And, FWIW, we have good-quality Brazilian Portuguese subtitles in Project Threepio, for those interested.

Harmy said:

Contact CatBus, he's our chief foreign language archivist and he'll make sure, that it can be included in any future releases.

For what it's worth, what I aim for is more like "international accessibility" than a "language archive".  For my purposes, once I have one good-quality dub in a given language, there's no need for more.  I know there's some value to someone in every iteration of every dub out there, but not to me--one dub per language is plenty in nearly every case, as far as I'm concerned.

So if anyone wants a true language archive including multiple iterations of dubs in the same language over the years, that's not really what I have.

Jetrell Fo said:

Frink is the infamous king of off-topic

That's Grand Duke to you, mister ;)

I can't help it.  Frink has the other half of my amulet.

PM's sent.

AVCHD's don't work on DVD players, and they don't work on some Blu-ray players, either. They work on many Blu-ray players, though.  If you want something that plays in a standard DVD player, you'd need the DVD downscales, which of course don't have the same A/V quality, are missing alternate audio tracks, etc.

PM sent. The latest version of Despecialized Star Wars is 2.5, IIRC the MKV should be in the neighborhood of 16-17GB.  Empire MKV is 2.0, about 20GB.  Jedi AVCHD is 1.0, about 6-7GB.  Hope that helps.

Well, considering this is the Empire thread, let's say this is a trailer for another Star Wars film circa 1980?

Darth Id said:

CatBus said:

WAS just doesn't have the same ring, and W certainly doesn't.

 I usually just say "honkey".

I think, in this context, "goy" is probably better.

WAS just doesn't have the same ring, and W certainly doesn't.

Ooh, I like that idea.