CatBus

Chains successfully pulled. Moving on to next objective.

I don't post a lot in your threads, but I just wanted to say you've done some great work so far and made some fine choices for projects. I'm not deeply versed in Hong Kong cinema, but I know there's a lot of gold in there deserving of a proper restoration.

God of Cookery someday?  The improved subtitles alone would be worth it...

You're welcome--and remember, it's unlikely any of these translations are ever going to be absolutely perfect, even if they are based on the official sources--so if you spot a poor translation, typo, awkward phrase, or some other problem, just let me know.  I just got a small batch of improvements for the Spanish subtitles (thanks to Hostmaster and Leoj), for example, so now we're going to be better than the official translations for those as well!

EDIT: While I am interested in improving the translations, I am not interested in changing subtitles to match a particular foreign dub (except in cases where that dub simply provides a better translation for a given line).  I can understand why people may be interested in having subtitles that match their favorite dubs, but this project is for subtitles to accompany the English audio, not the dubs.

If you look at the versions and release dates, you'll see that ROTJ version 1.0 was released long ago, and 2.x is still in the works--so it hasn't yet gotten either the audio or video facelifts that the other films have.

You'll also see it has its own project thread.  This one is for Star Wars ;)

For what it's worth, I put together a German Krieg der Sterne mix for my own personal collection, which is a little different than any of the other mixes available here.  It's derived from the 1978 2.0 theatrical mix (contains all of the dialogue fixes), but it includes only audio that was present in both the 1993 Silver Screen audio AND the 1995 THX audio.  So the changes are: music during trash compactor scene removed, clunking sound when Ben picks up the blast helmet removed, background announcements in Death Star corridor added.  The announcements were difficult because there's a big glitch there in the 1995 audio, and the 1993 audio doesn't mix well with the GOUT, but I think it ended up OK.

Mostly, I made this because I just don't like the music during the trash compactor scene ;)

PM me if you're interested.

The sail barge transition I know was due to a few frames being trimmed for the new wipe.  Since taking frames from the GOUT resulted in a significant drop in quality, Harmy opted for the slowdown effect using HD frames only.  Even without access to better sources for those missing frames (which might be in the works), Harmy experimented with a better method for handling missing frames with the Han-Greedo conversation in SW 2.x (I think it was a "flow" something function in AviSynth, like frame interpolation on TVs, but not as artificial looking when you keep the framerate the same).  He eventually got better sources so didn't need to use the other method, but I think even under the worst-case scenario, there's still ways to make this transition more natural without new source material.

I know the first one was altered for the SE (Vader was brightened), so Harmy definitely darkened Vader back to match his theatrical references.  I'd say the others are correct too, because the GOUT, etc, were in general much brighter than the theatrical references he used.  30 years of home video gave us the wrong idea about how bright this film was...

EDIT: Two of these are featured in the comparison gallery.  Definitely the way it was supposed to look.

Vader in hallway

Falcon

pittrek said:

I thought this site is pro-quality

No, it's really kindof a mess of old ColdFusion code. That was clearer back when search was available, such as it was.

Everything------->Out the window

Oh well, thanks. I read some fairly certain statements about those missing lines in the elevator, but you know communicating in text sometimes goes.

At least the Castilian dub is all Castilian now ;)

Just checked, and all of the GOUT dubs in question are missing a "clunking" sound effect when Ben takes the blast helmet off the wall in the Falcon, just like the unfixed German track.  AFAIK it's present in every English mix, so that's more evidence supporting a common international master used for all of these tracks.

But was the clunk theatrical?  Was the extra score theatrical?  Well, that's the question, isn't it?

Re-reading the posts in the German thread, it's clear that people definitely know the missing dialogue was present on the 35mm theatrical audio, but it's less clear about the other changes they made to the GOUT audio.  Was anyone able to verify all of these were theatrical, or just some of them?

Yeah, I got the levels matched as you said, and to be honest it sounds good, but it just looks wrong when you see all the peaks disappear for that segment (yeah, don't judge audio by its visualization, but still...).  I think the fact that it's a complete scene being replaced also helps.  I got word from Laserschwert about another missing sound effect from the German audio, so I'll listen to the other tracks and see what that tells me, and maybe I'll have updated files depending on what I find.

Does anyone here have the original uncorrected German GOUT audio? (with missing dialogue, etc)  I'm trying to sort out a mystery with some of the other dubs and think it could maybe help.

EDIT: Thanks, got it.

On another note--does anyone have the uncorrected German GOUT audio?  That might be a useful reference for me in trying to sort this out.

Thank you Senator Moynihan.[/old guy dog whistle joke]

Well, Frink kinda sucked the magic out of the thread.  Now we know that the dude just likes CRTs.  Not the way I like CRTs (yeah, I'm one of those), but in an obsessive religious zealot sort of way.  All the mystery is gone.  The motivation behind bizarre statements about "there is only one true display on which you can watch the GOUT and all others are false displays", it's all sorted out.

Thanks Frink. Jerk.

Have to agree.  That is some entertaining fiction indeed!

TV's Frink said:

I'm starting to feel a familiar vaderisnothayden vibe ...

 Naw, can't be, two accounts is a bannable offense.

I now have a temporary archive of the files I've been working on--feel free to PM me for a link.  The include French and Italian audio (GOUT+extra score), and Castilian (corrected GOUT with and without the extra score).  Lossy and lossless for all tracks.

As for the extra score, I still don't know what exactly I've created.  A theatrical reconstruction, or a nice-sounding THX mix.  Who knows?

I'll have these up for a while, and will eventually take them down because they're big.  For myself, I've concluded that I really don't like that extra music, and will only replace my personal copies with them if I am more convinced than I am right now that these are truly the theatrical mixes.

The Castilian audio was still a bit weird to work with.  The two GOUT sources I had did not have matching dynamics, so I used the old weird mix with Latino audio for most of the audio, because of its greater dynamics, and included only the fixed compactor section from the 100% Castilian mix, because it was more compressed. IMO they still blend way better than my previous fixed audio using the Blu-ray mix.

AntcuFaalb said:

I think you're certainly smart enough to find the STFU hiding somewhere in my litany of non sequitur sentences.

When times get hard, I always think a Haiku contest lightens things up a bit.

Stubborn ignorance
Typing garbled messages
Finally giving
Up

Damn, I got an unnecessary linefeed in that third line. I've been hanging around with -1 too much. Sorry, that's supposed to be three lines.

A call has been made to point out the logical fallacies and misinformed parts of your post, the ones that made Harmy too nauseous to respond to.  Much as I think no actual person on earth could be so unaware of the world in which they live, I'm going to respond one more time as if you were not just trolling us.

MaximRecoil said:

Yes, there is a reason, and it has already been pointed out. In short, the masters they used were essentially glorified 4:3 DVDs to begin with. To go from a 4:3 DVD source to a 16:9 DVD, you have to upscale the vertical resolution of the picture area. Upscaling the master when authoring a DVD isn't normally done by professionals unless they absolutely have to.

The SE DVDs came from far superior masters (probably 4K scans) rather than 720x480 4:3 D1 tape, so they had way more resolution than they needed to properly make 16:9 DVDs.

So here's your first few.  Lucasfilm was sitting on some masters--a 4:3 Laserdisc master for the GOUT and a 16:9 DVD master for the SE.  For the release we're talking about, you say they shouldn't scale the existing 4:3 master (fallacy 1: strawman--nobody's suggested that they do this).  Of course, they could have created an entirely new master for the OOT. (misinformed 1: this happens all the time, especially for popular titles; misinformed 2: those were not 4k scans for chrissake! This is Lucasfilm, not Sony!)

Assigning the fault to a DVD because it doesn't work ideally on a TV it wasn't designed for, is absurd. It is not the DVD's fault, it is not the DVD player's fault, and it is not the TV's fault. The fault obviously lies with the person who is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak.

Fallacy 2: thinking that the person trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is someone other than the person releasing an anamorphic DVD in 2006.

Similar things happen when people connect old video game consoles to 16:9 digital TVs, and it is equally absurd to blame the video game console for the results being less than ideal.

Fallacy 3: false equivalence. A video game console released in 2006 that had troubles with HDTVs would and should be pilloried (this would be equivalent to the GOUT). Video game consoles released around the turn of the millennium or earlier would and should be given a pass (this is what you're talking about, and it's unlike the GOUT).

Yeah, I'm gonna retch now. Harmy was right, just let it go. Darwin will take care of this for us eventually.

I think he wants to make you listen to it ;)

Ugh, no, that's a whole new steaming pile. Sorry, I thought maybe foreign markets may have had OOT releases as late as 1997.

Of well, maybe we just won't know if it's on the Italian THX release.

Such is the state of A/V archaeology when all we have access to is consumer releases ;)

That German track is really what's making this all so tricky for me. Certainly there are explanations for why it would be on the German 35mm prints and not some of the other languages, and then show up again for all of them later on the THX remasters, but they all involve some unnecessary logistical contortions. I'm attracted to the simplest explanation because it's simplest, but that's no guarantee at all that it's the correct explanation...

And seriously, if you had that music in your movie, would you expend a lot of effort to try to remove it before it came out on video? I sure would! ;)

thxita said:

LOL I have the 1997 version. I don't know if it's the same as the thx release.

If it's not Special Edition, and it's 1993 or later, it might be THX.  May as well give it a listen.

Oh, I totally agree. Not only does the scene sound wrong with the music, but the music is LOUD on top of that.  I completely understand why someone went through the trouble of removing that music.  I'm just trying to put together if it was on all of the theatrical versions or just some of them.  It's about theatrical fidelity, even if I cringe a bit hearing the theatrical audio.

I'd still like someone to check the THX audio if they have it.