CatBus

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.

Anyone know if the theatrical French 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.

My suggestion is to break your VHS audio into reels, then use audio from another source to bridge any gaps between reels.  Reel changes are where frames typically get dropped.

The reel changes are listed somewhere around here, but I remember Reel 1 ends at the transition to 3PO's oil bath, Reel 2 ends after Tarkin says "one swift stroke" (well, in English!), Reel 3 ends (I think) after the Falcon is captured, just before Tarkin says "Yes" to his intercom.  And there's one right in the middle of the compactor scene, just before Luke comes back out of the water.  My memory is pretty fuzzy beyond that.

Hrm, well... worst-case scenario, I suppose we'll just get my original goal, which is 100% Castilian dialogue w/ GOUT audio and no SE elements.  Certainly better than mixed dialects, and I hate that there are really audible SE sound effects in my original "fixed" track.  True theatrical fidelity may have to wait, if I can't get the score right.

My Castilian GOUT track is from the PAL GOUT posted on the newsgroups--that apparently had the weird switched-out Latino audio, but no score.  Not sure, but I think there was a GOUT reissue in Germany.  Maybe this was the original pre-reissue German GOUT?

So... if I get a copy of the GOUT audio from Hostmaster which is 100% correct (no Latino Spanish) except for the music during the compactor scene, I could use whatever magic was used with the German audio to bring it back.  Laserschwert, any advice?  Do you have something like an isolated score that you used?

RobotWalrus said:

I'd like to point out, though, a little problem I found in the Castillian Spanish audio track. From 1:16:45 to 1:19:46 (the first half of the trash compactor scene), the audio is in Latino Spanish instead of Castillian Spanish.

I swear this is the last time I'll mention this audio issue in this thread again, but the story of the Castilian audio for the compactor scene just took a very strange turn now that I have a VHS capture.

I'll post further information in the International audio thread, rather than clutter this one up more:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/International-Audio-including-Voice-Over-Translations/post/728981/#TopicPost728981

Whoah. So now I have a new theory for why they swapped out the Castilian audio for the compactor scene in the GOUT.

There is scored music in this scene, for the Castilian Spanish audio, that AFAICT isn't in any other version of Star Wars anywhere ever, and was removed on the Blu-ray release.  It sounds like part of the same piece that plays when R2 wakes up in the Sandcrawler and rolls through the menagerie of droids on the way to finding C-3PO.

I don't know exactly why this would make someone want to swap the audio out when they made the GOUT, but maybe they thought they had some sort of bastardized TV broadcast audio, and went back to their sources and found audio without this bit of the score.  Since the Latino dub has been out of circulation so long, maybe they didn't even know there was a second Spanish dub, and that's what they got by mistake.

Anyway, I sure hope I can incorporate this into the Castilian GOUT audio.  It's a little hissy, but the unique score definitely makes me want to try my best!

Then again, this VHS copy really is the sort of bastardized TV broadcast audio I mentioned.  It does have the made-for-TV voiceover on the crawl after all, so it's not theatrically accurate in that respect.  But would a TV version include such a slight alteration to the score?  Seems farfetched to me.

Any ideas?  Do you think this slightly different score was theatrical or not?

Version 8.1 is now on MySpleen.  Remaining to-do list for 8.2 (and really, this one should be timed to match Despecialized ROTJ 2.0):

- Completing Operation Eyestrain--getting full Japanese subtitles for ROTJ in text format.

- DeEdv2-specific "matching" subtitles for ROTJ.

- Some fairly minor problems with layout, involving subtitles shifted to the top of the screen.  The most noticeable issue is one subtitle at just over the one-hour mark in both SW and ESB which gets erroneously shifted (bad logic in my shifting script), and the other more minor issue is that top-shifted subtitles don't always line up along the bottom of the top line, making it look like the lines shift slightly up and down (they line up along the top of the top line, which is usually good enough for English, but often not good enough for other languages).

- There's always the possibility for more languages!  At the moment, I have leads on two more, and one more fansub I could maybe convert myself with some difficulty.

At this point, I should also mention that I don't plan to convert any more SE fansubs myself if they are mutually intelligible with another language I already have good-quality subtitles for.  Examples: Macedonian (because we have Bulgarian), Serbian (because we have Croatian), and Malay (because we have Indonesian).  Of the full-trilogy SE fansubs I have access to, this leaves only Farsi and Estonian--and I already have a lead on a Farsi-speaker willing to help us with a better translation.  Of course, I'd be happy to accept trilogy-complete GOUT-timed subtitles in any language at all, but since I can't verify the quality of the fansubs myself, and I can't tell how much I might be damaging them in the SE-to-GOUT conversion process, I'm leaving that job to people who actually know the language in question.  I certainly don't want to do anything that might unnecessarily dilute the already good quality we've worked so hard to achieve.

Danfun128 said:

...and CatBus, I have no intention of lying.

The best liars never do ;)

Great to hear!  Can't wait for details!

IANAL, but IMO all risk to yourself is directly proportional to the amount of risk your actions place the college in.

Transmitting it over their network, storing it on their machines, and displaying it on their A/V systems are all things that could get the college, and therefore you, in trouble.  Storing/watching it on your own personal equipment in private?  No risk to them, so low risk for you.

Also, if for whatever reason you do get your laptop searched, practice these words: "How'd that get on there?"  You can practice emphasizing different words, such as "How'd THAT get on there?" or "How that GET on there?", etc.  Also mention you frequently lend your laptop to your cousin Reggie who is just a shady character who always gets viruses on your machine.  In other words, your college isn't the cops: Lie.

Interesting about the voiceover on the crawl.  Do you know if that was theatrical, or if it was added later for things like TV broadcasts that may have been using video with the English crawl?  I always assumed that both versions of the Spanish Star Wars had translated text onscreen for the crawl in the theatres.

And yes, I'm interested in the Star Wars audio.  If it blends well enough with the GOUT audio, it may be better than the Blu-rays as a way to patch over the wrong audio in the trash compactor scene, due to no SE elements.