CatBus

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.

Leonardo said:

So if I get this straight, the "new" cue was introduced at some stage during mastering of the 1995 French and Spanish TXH LD&VHS ?

CatBus said:

I'm still waiting to hear back on two things:

- some level of certainty (probably not a lot, but more than I have now) about which of our other 1977 foreign dubs were like this theatrically (I'm sold on Spanish, likely sold on French, and on the fence with Italian)

Theatrically? I will put money on this that none of them had the music. Not the spanish, not the french, german or italian. The odds and evidence are against it.

I would agree, except Laserschwert has access to a 35mm German film print with that extra music present.  So it's there for German theatrically for sure, and it was scrubbed out for some German home video releases and the GOUT, which matches exactly what we've seen for the other languages so far.

I'm just trying to piece together an audio timeline that can explain all of this, and the most logical one says they've all got it, then they all got scrubbed for home video, then when they went back to do THX, they forgot to re-scrub it out.  I think the evidence is weak, sure, but it's in favor of it being a theatrical element.

Not really sure of anything, that just seems to be the pattern so far.  It's certainly worth checking non-THX releases too.

This search for audio variation is limited to languages that used a 1977 international audio master for theatrical releases in 1977/78.  Other languages would have used different audio masters, depending on when they were created.

Baronlando said:

MaximRecoil said:

It isn't the DVD's fault if people display it on the wrong type of TV. 

Uh, touché?

Yeah, much as I thought the argument was tedious and rambling, I do kinda want to issue some kind of award for that particular statement.  Talking nonsense is easy, but it takes a certain chutzpah to take it that far.

Seems the THX releases (THX VHS for Spanish, 1995 THX Laserdisc for French) are the ones with this music, at least for other languages, if that helps narrow down the search for Italian releases.

canofhumdingers said:

So, at what point in this argument of semantics do we get to debate what the definition of the word "is" is?

I'm pretty sure actual debate has left the building. Now it's just a matter of talking nonsense longer than anyone can put up with replying to, declaring yourself some sort of winner, and going away. Well, we can hope.

OK, using the French Laserdisc audio from marvins as a reference for volume levels, I generated Spanish, French, and Italian audio with this bit of music included.  It sounds... well, frankly it sounds really odd, because I'm just not used to that music being there, and I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it.  But it sounds like the Laserdisc reference, so there you are.

I'm still waiting to hear back on two things:

- some level of certainty (probably not a lot, but more than I have now) about which of our other 1977 foreign dubs were like this theatrically (I'm sold on Spanish, likely sold on French, and on the fence with Italian)  Presumably the original Japanese dub is affected too, but Japanese got completely new dubs for home video, and I understand most people prefer them to the originals, so I'm content to ignore the theatrical ones.

- some idea if there are other missing odd bits of audio to look for, while I'm in here editing--I think I recall something about some of Chewie's howls being missing on the German GOUT, for example, and I'd like to check these on the other tracks, if I knew where to look.

After that, I'll share something if anyone's interested.  If nothing else, we'll have eliminated the various weird issues with the Spanish track without adding SE audio.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and what about the other films? :-/

MaximRecoil said:

Just to clarify: by "some people", you mean that about 85% of the TVs in U.S. households in 2006 were 4:3 CRT SDTVs. "Current" doesn't necessarily mean "new" or "latest", by the way.

Oh goody. Well, the majority of the TV's still in service worldwide are 4:3 CRT SDTV's, so we can stop even talking about all this crazy newfangled HDTV crap, then.  I can minimize huge shifts in markets and consumer demand with irrelevant statistics, too!

I mean, sure, I had one then, but that's because I'm a cheap bastard and always a bit behind the times as a result.  Non-anamorphic DVDs may have passed critical muster in 1998, but not in 2006--not at all.

The GOUT was crap the day it was released, by the standards of the time. You couldn't even find a cheap porn title that was released in 2006 as a non-anamorphic DVD.

 Your text here has to do with disappointment, not with objective quality. 

Yeah, because non-anamorphic disks failing to scale decently on the new TV's people were buying in droves isn't objective. At least you didn't ask if I was on the rag. Buh bye, Mr. Objective.

TV's Frink said:

CatBus said:

Hey as long as this pissing match is going on, I can't believe nobody's challenged the idea that a 4:3 CRT SDTV was "current technology" in 2006 just because some people still had them.

I mean, sure, I had one then, but that's because I'm a cheap bastard and always a bit behind the times as a result.

 I had one then because I couldn't move it.  We had to move to a different house just to be rid of it.

Even the replacements weren't necessarily better.  There was this whole uncomfortable period around the turn of the millennium with EDTV and HDTV CRT's, which were just behemoths, and Plasmas that weren't exactly slim either.  But upscaling DVD players had been the hot thing for years by 2006, precisely because people had already moved on from SDTV's, or were actively looking to get rid of them.

Looks like several French releases were without the music, except one Laserdisc release with the music, so I'm not sure what we'd prove if we didn't find anything.  And I'm not entirely sure what we're proving by finding something either ;) I think film prints may be the only way to prove anything definitively, and we have that for German at least, which is what's swaying my opinion for everything else.

Hey as long as this pissing match is going on, I can't believe nobody's challenged the idea that a 4:3 CRT SDTV was "current technology" in 2006 just because some people still had them.

I mean, sure, I had one then, but that's because I'm a cheap bastard and always a bit behind the times as a result.  Non-anamorphic DVDs may have passed critical muster in 1998, but not in 2006--not at all.

The GOUT was crap the day it was released, by the standards of the time. You couldn't even find a cheap porn title that was released in 2006 as a non-anamorphic DVD.

marvins said:

Ok I have it for the french tracks :

1987 TV diffusion : No music

1989 1st LD Release : No music

1991 VHS release : No Music

1995 LD THX : Music

2004 DVD Mix : No music

2006 GOUT : No music

So only the LD THX release have the music in the trash compactor sequence. I know that the THX release have little more differences, some sentences are missing, but I never took the time to notice them all.

Here is the sequence : https://mega.co.nz/#!ONxyGRib!seIrfeiTYvMcuxOk2ONDYcnSghJl1s1a_XZMfYdpPe0

So I guess the question is: aside from the music, is the GOUT missing anything that's present in another mix?  That doesn't necessarily mean the extra stuff is theatrical, but using the GOUT as a starting point, what exactly is missing?  It's at least a point of reference.

Okay, last question-- assuming the "new international master" theory, what OTHER changes have the German team found?  I know there's missing dialogue that's German-specific, but what about sound effects, etc?

Anyone know if the theatrical Italian audio for Star Wars had the "extra" score during the trash compactor scene referred to in this thread?

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/International-Audio-including-Voice-Over-Translations/topic/14451/page/5/

Apparently at least the Spanish audio had this extra music on their VHS releases.  I'm not sure if any German home video releases had it, but it was on the German theatrical prints as well.  I suspect it was on the international master used by the French, Italian, and Japanese theatrical releases.  You can hear the music on Laserschwert's German theatrical audio reconstruction for Star Wars.  It had been removed on the German and Spanish GOUT audio.

Anyway, if someone can confirm this music was on the theatrical release (or at least on VHS releases, which strongly implies it was on the theatrical release), I should be able to merge the music into my copy of the GOUT audio, unless someone has a different suggestion.