CatBus

Wasn't there a thread about Vader's floating glass of water in the original drafts for Star Wars, which made it into a comic adaptation?  Basically the guy can't even be bothered to hold his own cup--it's the very definition of frivolous use of the Force.

We'll never know exactly why that wasn't filmed, but I like to think part of it was that in the early days, Lucas accepted criticism and when people told him something was idiotic and unnecessary, he didn't do it.  Now we have three complete idiotic and unnecessary films, so yeah, frivolous use of the Force comes right along with that.

FWIW, I noticed this while doing my SDH subtitling.  Since I tried to match each sound to an emotional adverb (yeah, it's terribly subjective, but also a terribly important part of his "speech" for deaf viewers), ROTJ R2 seemed to have a bit of a different personality.  The R2 in SW and ESB was a rude wise-ass with good intentions.  R2 in ROTJ has a strong pollyanna vibe.  For ROTJ R2, it seemed everything was always going to turn out just fine, you'll see.  SW/ESB R2 had a lot more negative things to say.

Regarding the text of the credits themselves, could you or someone with access to the 35mm scans see if it's possible to tell if apostrophes used straight-down marks (as in the preview version) or not?  By 1980, it was increasingly likely for straight-down apostrophes to appear in commercial typefaces, but I think either curly marks or angled straight marks would still have been more common at the time.

They're in lots of places: Lando's aide, Luke's gunner, Wedge's gunner, JOANNE D'ANTONIO, KEVIN O'CONNELL.  May have missed one or two.  Especially in the larger sizes, they look a bit out of place.

I haven't found SFX or music to be noticeable until quite a bit more than 2 frames offset, YMMV.  I'd be interested in that German audio when you have it ready, BTW.

Oh, and I guess I should add that in my dub collection, most were synced to or derived from NTSC video, so trimming video would actually improve their sync too.

The only ones in my dub collection based on either PAL or some unknown frame reference are: Czech, Hungarian, German, Italian, and Russian non-voiceover.  Pretty manageable if we want to check/fix them, but I honestly don't think a fix is needed.  And we'd have to go back to original sources because all I have is lossy versions, and we'd lose more quality from lossy recompression than we'd be gaining in sync.

FWIW, in my opinion, a two-frame difference only makes a difference for English audio tracks.  Differences that small are only really noticeable with lip sync (and barely noticeable at that).  Since dubs don't really match lip sync 100% anyway, I'd say two frames is within the range of acceptable error for dubs, and two frames delayed is also more natural than two frames advanced.

We also need to remember to check the 16mm mono mix while we're checking English audio tracks.

Harmy--I thought your video was already based on the NTSC frames.  It uses PAL frames?  Yeah, trimming video seems the best choice if it's PAL frames.

I personally don't care if you call it 8.0, but there's always such newbie confusion about version numbering, especially when the version numbers don't match between films.

If 2.5 is the last of the 2.x Star Wars series, then I'd say aim for 2.5 being the end of the 2.x Empire series.  Whatever that ends up meaning to you ;)

Can't tell from the compression if it's any better than the current upscaled GOUT. I'm assuming it is, but who knows? I assume a little-to-no-compression still could be a quick way to determine the relative quality versus upscaled GOUT.

n00b said:

Is there really an occasion where someone needs subtitles and the overlay for rounded corners at the same time? TESB doesn't have any burnt-in subtitles, every existing GOUT-synched language track can be added to the file and everybody speaks English anyway.

A little offtopic, but I'll hopefully be able to take care of it in one post.  I don't know about this particular framing, but similar graphical frame overlays have been done for open-matte DVDs where the user could optionally apply black bars to achieve the original aspect ratio.  That scenario also presented issues for people who needed subtitles.

The best way to add subtitle tracks is via graphical files, not SRT files.  You are correct that the SRT files could be added without interfering with the rounded corners overlay.  There are lots of reasons this is a less than ideal way to manage subtitles, though--no black borders for SDH subtitles, no subtitle shift to avoid onscreen text, lots of client subtitle rendering bugs out there, etc, etc.  I imagine some subtitle files are completely unusable for most people in SRT format, and I really don't recommend using the SRT format unless you have no other choice.  And, although I'm working to address this, some languages, including those spoken by nearly half the population of Earth, are not yet available in SRT format, so graphical is the only way to go there anyway.

Lastly, not everyone speaks English.  Really.  I get PM'ed all day from people who have friends and family who can't watch English-only preservations without either a dub or subtitles.  Often, English-speakers need English subs--SDH subs, for example, and in South Asia, it's common to show English-language movies in English with English subtitles for people who have trouble with the various English accents.

AntcuFaalb said:

FWIW: It should still be possible to implement the rounded corners as a graphical subtitle track, as Laserschwert said.

Yeah, I could throw one of these together pretty trivially, I believe, if there's interest.  The problem, of course, is that you couldn't use this overlay and also use graphical subtitles at the same time.

EDIT: I vote C.

Now that's more like it. Mission accomplished, thread re-railed.

God, I was positive it was gonna be the color of the snow on Hoth this time around. Just shows how good I am at predicting things.

Our opinions are very much known.  No need for further pile-on IMO.  I agree with Harmy that whatever your position on the matter, it's essentially not a very big deal, and I also understand that is the shots are already despecialized in this manner, I am not going to ask him to do it all over again over this.

PM sent.

DavidMerrick said:

CatBus said:

I think of all the things I'll miss the least, it'll be that damned moire pattern.  Thanks Harmy.

 Oh, did that pattern just not show up in the 35mm scan?

It's just much brighter in that area, so if the pattern is there, it's not nearly as distracting.  Honestly not sure if it was on the original prints or if it was one of the weirder '97 Lowryization side-effects.

I think of all the things I'll miss the least, it'll be that damned moire pattern.  Thanks Harmy.

Gar!  Tricked again!  Not sure what I think about that, though.  If they were cropped out, then re-added, then you're actually adding black curved elements somewhere out in the middle of the 35mm frame, which is odd.

Beber said:

how come the framing angles of the whole movie are curved?

That's from the film elements.  Depending on how much the frame is cropped during the transfer, those would be trimmed out.  In other words, the presence of those rounded edges is an indicator to film geeks that we're not seeing very much cropping, that's all.

PM sent.

I believe it was Laserschwert that did a great job re-creating the credits for Star Wars (ended up not being used, but still great).  Might be worth sending him a PM.  All I can do is copy editing the result.

Those are fair criticisms, I think.  Part of the love for the '83 musical number is not because it was great at the time, but because it was made so much worse in '97.

C3PX said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

I suspect that if ROTJ was less triumphant and more downery it might get more respect.

You might be right about that. I can't even remember how many times I have heard people say the movie would have been better had Han (or Lando) died at the end. Really don't see how that would improve anything though.

Well, I don't think Han or Lando's death would improve things per se, it's just that Han has little-to-nothing left to do in Jedi, and Lando loses any ambiguity/complexity in Jedi that he once had, so killing them off (at the beginning, not the end!) is just a way to trim the dead-weight off the film and potentially refocus efforts on the stronger storyline of Luke and the Emperor.  It's not yay-face vs boo-face, in my opinion.  Not that I can speak for all Jedi critics, because I actually like the film.

As for random memories, my favorite nostalgia is in trying to figure out, sometime in 1980 or so, why they leapfrogged over three episode numbers and called Empire "Episode V".  Were they going to fill in the episodes that happened between Star Wars (the presumptive Episode I, of course) and Empire later?  Were the numbers being skipped just to give the impression of time passing?  Lots of fun childhood speculation just on that "missing material", and what it might contain.

Harmy said:

Well, I blended the edges together :-)

I'm getting closer to releasing the final workprint and boy, do I have a few surprises for you guys :-)

Please please please let the Mynock shoot first!

Also, FWIW, I have a ton of new subtitles whenever you're ready for them.  The longer you wait, the more subtitles you get.

Wow, you really matched those sources well.  Not even the tiniest nit to pick.

We have top men working on it.

Top men.

Has any decision been made as to whether this project will be GOUT-synced or not?  Wondering about support for subtitles and alternate audio...

FWIW, I've got 1080p BD-SUP subtitles just itching to be included (and an updated version in the works), but lack of GOUT sync could be a dealbreaker, depending on how far off it gets (subtitles are probably more forgiving than audio, which has issues if there's more than one frame of difference).