CatBus

To be fair, Harmy's ESB and ROTJ projects do have missing detail compared to the Blu-rays, but that's more due to the massive compression to fit on a DVD9 than the fact that they're 720p.  As Harmy explained in his Star Wars thread, the 720p HDTV source (used for the 1.0 projects) actually holds its own quite nicely when it's not compressed to hell.  The 2.0 versions won't be as heavily compressed (except, of course, the AVCHD DVD9 downscales...).

Still can't find a link to that Tarkin comparison shot, which is strange considering it's been posted so many times here.

kk650 said:

CatBus said:

I think the previously stated reason was that the Blu-ray doesn't really have more than 720p in detail (even though it's 1080p, the film transfer isn't so great), so there's not much point in 1080p until some source better than the Blu-ray becomes available.  Not that it couldn't be done--it's just a lot more time and a lot larger file sizes for something that, for the most part, won't be noticeably better even in the 100% BD-sourced scenes.  Cue shot of Tarkin at 720p and 1080p...

Hmm, while it is true that the Star Wars OT blu-ray transfers are not the most detailed transfers out there, they could definately use a 4k remastering, they still look noticably better in 1080p than they do in 720p IMHO, at least from my experience encoding to both 1080p and 720p.

I am certain that his Despecialised releases would look better in 1080p and now that he has the processing power to handle it, why not?

As I said, Harmy's done the evaluation already, and he's got the shot of Tarkin at 1080p and 720p to demonstrate the lack of any significant difference (a well-lit shot with no VFX, so probably among the most detailed shots in the OT) that he shows every time someone asks this question.  Is it possible your 720p encodes are losing detail and Harmy's aren't, due to some other differences (bitrate, encoding options, etc)?

That said, I get it.  Hey, 1080p is wonderful.  But it's about cost-benefit.  The cost is known.  The lack of benefit has been demonstrated with an actual visual comparison anyone can look at.  It will take at least another visual comparison anyone can look at to convince anyone otherwise.

I think the previously stated reason was that the Blu-ray doesn't really have more than 720p in detail (even though it's 1080p, the film transfer isn't so great), so there's not much point in 1080p until some source better than the Blu-ray becomes available.  Not that it couldn't be done--it's just a lot more time and a lot larger file sizes for something that, for the most part, won't be noticeably better even in the 100% BD-sourced scenes.  Cue shot of Tarkin at 720p and 1080p...

At least according to Google Translate, in Thai, C-3PO yells at the Mynock: "Go away, you crazy insect!"

...which, from what I've heard about the size of the insects in Thailand, is actually pretty accurate.

Yeah, I don't want to add any more languages unless they're trilogy-complete... so it's up to you, really.  I think lack of Slovak subtitles isn't a huge deal, considering our solid support for Czech, etc.  But if we want a Slovak option, I've got an English template file for Star Wars for you... and I'd want you to go through and check for any terrible errors in the other films too.

That's great.  Since you're in Slovakia, if you have another source for Slovak subtitles for the OT (such as good-quality fansubs), that would be fine too!

Hell yes! Check the subtitle options, and see if any match the languages listed above.  If any of them do, I'd like to see the BD-SUP files for these (the raw subtitle stream from the BD, no need to OCR).  PM me if you have questions.

The "interesting languages" breakdown seems to go like this (question marks indicate I got inconsistent search results):

Italian/Russian BD:
Bulgarian
Croatian
?Czech
Romanian
Russian
?Slovak
Slovenian

German/Spanish BD:
Hebrew
Icelandic
?Arabic
?Mandarin (Simplified)

Hong Kong BD:
Korean

I'll contact some people here to see if we can get anywhere with these.

Actually, it looks like there were multiple Region B releases of the Blu-rays for various language markets.

It looks like I'd be most interested in: the German, Russian, and Hong Kong Blu-ray releases, which would give us a nice range of additional languages to work with or improve.

Ah, too bad.  I'm assuming no other new & exciting languages? (yeah, I know, we've got the Region A market pretty much covered).  Thanks for looking.  Next question... anyone have the Region B Blu-rays?

Oh, if it deals with Arabic just as bad as Thai, then we're stuck with the fansubs we already have and can't use the graphical ones at all.  SE subs have to be retimed, and while that might be technically doable with graphical subs, I need text subs+Google translate to figure out where everything needs to go.  I'll hold onto them in case the situation changes, of course.

No, raw graphical files would be great--I have a great OCR system set up that works for lots of languages*--but if it's possible to label the languages, that would be helpful.

You can check the first post for the languages we don't have "verified" yet--but don't worry about Greek or European Portuguese, because those are already in the works.

* EDIT: except Thai :-\

I suppose now would be a good time to mention that if anyone has access to any graphical subtitles (such as would be found on a DVD or Blu-ray), even Special Edition subtitles, for any languages that this project either doesn't have or hasn't verified, I'd be extremely interested in seeing them.

For example, I believe the 2011 Blu-rays have Icelandic subtitles, and probably a few other interesting options too.

Feallan said:

Exactly, Blu-ray format means limitations. With MKV number of audio tracks is not an issue. Unless Harmy gets access to better software, I think MKV is the best bet for next release.

Well, Blu-ray with menus has limitations.  If he wants to make a menuless Blu-ray with tsmuxer, audio tracks are unlimited.

With MKV, he's been avoiding PGS subtitles and including SRT subtitles for player compatibility reasons.  I think there may also be compatibility issues with certain lossless audio formats on MKV too.  So, a menuless Blu-ray may still be effectively better than an MKV in a couple areas.

But it's worth waiting to see if there are other authoring options, of course.

Now those Osram lightbulb commercials featuring Triumph the Comic Insult Dog make so much more sense.

Just a little update for thread-watchers so they know what's happening after that last page of posts.

First off, we found official subtitles for Polish, Greek, Turkish, and European Portuguese.  This means improvements for Turkish (especially ROTJ), promoting Greek from unverified to verified, adding a long-absent Portuguese dialect, and possibly some minor improvement for Polish.  Some of this work is already done.

Then, there's the effort I have taken to calling "Operation Eyestrain".  The goal is to no longer have any graphical-only subtitles--using a mixture of our newfound OCR method, and a painfully slow phase of manual transcription and correction.  Japanese is furthest along, thanks to Sadako.  Mandarin/Traditional and Cantonese are probably in a very good state since our OCR software seemed to handle Chinese characters very well, but some manual correction is undoubtedly necessary, and I'm hoping I can lean on Sadako for that as well.  The surprise was with Thai, which I thought would be easy due to it being an alphabet with a much more manageable number of character permutations than Chinese, but the OCR fell down hard on this text, and it's hard to find a single line that doesn't require at least one manual correction, if not several.  Feallan is taking two films and I'm taking one.  I predict this will be the slowest of the jobs, since neither of us know the language at all.

PM sent.

Oh, it's not bad for a holiday variety show special of the era--in fact, it's pretty good by those standards.  It's just not so great on an absolute scale, but it's hardly the bottom of the barrel there either.  Think of the prequels, for example.

imperialscum said:

I am a common-sense type of fan. I don't limit my self to some area of SW (i.e. OT, PT, EU). If I find something enjoyable then it is part of my personal canon. If something sucks I ignore it.

Yup, me too. For me, though, that's a 100% overlap with OT purist, not a new category.

Although I do derive a morbid fascination that definitely isn't enjoyment from the Holiday Special.

Anyone with a Facebook account who can tell me what that link says?

The very best thing is the fact that, per episode numbering, they had to stop after making three of them.

Jerry, FWIW, I ran into a hardware player compatibility issue with your theatrical 5.1 DTS track (strange audio artifacting on an Oppo BDP-93)--I think possibly because it's 24-bit, but just standard DTS (not DTS-MA).  Anyway, I was able to re-encode it as DTS-MA and that worked around the compatibility issue for me.  In case anyone else runs into this or you're planning to re-encode it for 2.0.

FWIW, there was a Polish release of the GOUT with (as far as I can tell) English-only audio, but with European Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, and Greek subtitles.  I don't have anything but the subtitles (guess what's coming in Project Threepio v7.1?)

DrCrowTStarwars said:

CatBus said:

Harmy said:

Oh, well, it's true of most projectors, but it's possible that some projectors can actually do true 24fps but I've never seen one. I know that digital projectors in cinemas definitely have higher refresh rates then 24Hz, so it seems curious, that a home projector would do native 24fps.

But with a color wheel, the projector has to refresh 3 times for each full-color frame, so my guess would be, that its true refresh rate for 24fps sources is 72Hz, thus producing 24fps in full color and for higher frame-rate sources, it's capable of even higher refresh rates.

Yeah, and 120Hz+ displays should be able to do the same thing.  So if the player upscales 720p24 to 1080p24, the only conversion is the image upscale, no change to the frame cadence.  If it converts to 720p60, it's likely the display will need to upscale the image too, so you get both conversions.

Again, not so you'd notice for the most part. But you do need to hand in your videophile card if someone catches you watching film at 60Hz.  I hear they take your plasma away too ;-)

 What do they do to you if you only have an LCD that goes up to 60hz?

Not that I would know anything about that,or know anyone who would know anything about that.

Usually you can escape from them when they're facepalming, so you'll be fine.

Harmy said:

Oh, well, it's true of most projectors, but it's possible that some projectors can actually do true 24fps but I've never seen one. I know that digital projectors in cinemas definitely have higher refresh rates then 24Hz, so it seems curious, that a home projector would do native 24fps.

But with a color wheel, the projector has to refresh 3 times for each full-color frame, so my guess would be, that its true refresh rate for 24fps sources is 72Hz, thus producing 24fps in full color and for higher frame-rate sources, it's capable of even higher refresh rates.

Yeah, and 120Hz+ displays should be able to do the same thing.  So if the player upscales 720p24 to 1080p24, the only conversion is the image upscale, no change to the frame cadence.  If it converts to 720p60, it's likely the display will need to upscale the image too, so you get both conversions.

Again, not so you'd notice for the most part. But you do need to hand in your videophile card if someone catches you watching film at 60Hz.  I hear they take your plasma away too ;-)