CatBus

Interesting to note, many of the flaws on the Belbucus audio are also present here, but the flaws are more distinct, if that makes sense.  For example, there's a bit of a vague background hiss when Luke's talking to 3PO in the oil bath.  Well, on the 35mm capture, it's less vague--it's just an obnoxious background hiss when Luke's talking.  Similarly, other "blurred out" imperfections in other scenes seem to be more well-defined here.  I don't plan on trying to get rid of any flaw that's present across all sources, I just thought I'd point it out.  And reel 2 is synced and patched over with Belbucus in the damaged areas.

Looks like a little damage at either end of reel 2, but the middle part is solid.  No sync yet for R2, I've somehow gotten my hands into a few too many projects.

...and rounding out the Russian audio, we now have a voiceover-style dub for ESB.  Still no "regular" dub, but we have a complete set of good-quality Russian voiceovers for the whole trilogy now.  That should definitely improve the popularity of our preservations.

Actually, I hate to shred whatever geek cred I may have here, but I haven't seen (or heard) Puggo Grande.  However, I suspect if it were noticeably better than Belbucus, some of our audio heavy-hitters would have synced it by now and made it the default mono track for preservations.

I'm really not sure how a "best of breed" audio track will sound.  It may be more of a Frankentrack than anyone cares to listen to as more than a curiosity.  Especially with me doing the editing ;)  We'll see.

I'll also happily step aside if someone else wants to jump in and do this.  I've just always felt like I haven't given the mono mix the respect it deserves for a long time, and this might help change that.

PM sent.

If anyone's interested in hearing -1's latest capture GOUT-synced (so you can watch it with video), PM me.  At the moment it's just reel 1 and a bunch of empty space for the rest of the film (lossy for now).  I used the fanfare from the Spanish audio due to better quality, but otherwise it's all from this new capture, which is a lot cleaner-sounding.

Keep in mind I'm used to syncing dubs, which frankly are a lot more forgiving for bad sync work, and this might not be the best sync job out there.  Once I have all the reels -1 has to offer, I'll likely create a 35mm/Belbucus (and possibly Spanish for bits) hybrid.  Not sure how listenable it will be as a soundtrack, but it might at the very least be a way to highlight the quality improvements in the 35mm captures.

Sounds really good.  Appreciate the bitrate bump BTW.

Okay, we now also have a Russian voiceover-style dub for Star Wars, and the quality for this one is quite a bit better than the '89 dub mentioned in the last post.  So for Russian, that's a voiceover and non-voiceover for both SW and ROTJ.  Nothing for ESB yet, but that's likely to change.

Ah OK.  No rush at all (esp considering I'm not sure anyone will do anything useful with them but listen and drool over the possibilities), but if you post them, do it lossless ;)

PM sent.

yoda-sama said:

Now TV's Frink is Jeff Goldblum?  Did I miss something?

He was pretty good in the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai too. Plus, I always imagine Frink in wooly chaps anyway.

negative1 said:

and finally, we have to replace 'han shoots greedo'

scene, because that's in english. we are hoping

to get an original from the voice actor that played

c3p0.

Does anyone know if this particular lead is still being pursued?  'cause we're only about 55 seconds short of the hands-down best-sounding Star Wars dub ever.

(55 seconds of film sure sounds a lot shorter than 90 feet of film, doesn't it?)

Which ones? ;)

Reels 1 & 6 have big long stretches without dialogue which could be patched pretty easily with the Spanish audio.  The middle reels not so much.

Well it looks like we do have an alternate source, but it's partial.  If it overlaps with the bad areas and blends well, we may be able to do something.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and keep posting times if you find any more, even minor problems.  Not knowing Spanish, I rarely listen very closely to the dialogue itself, and would easily miss problems like this.

Okay, I PM'd roback214, maybe we'll get lucky.  What are the times for these problems in Empire?

I suppose we could ask roback214 about his upstream source for our Empire track.  Not sure if he synced it himself of if he got it roughly as-is.  I suppose it's possible there are raw unsynced sources somewhere.

Question: by "partially restored mono track", how much is partial?  The reason is, having now heard your Spanish track and compared it to our existing Belbucus track, it's a big improvement in many areas over what we have now.

Are we talking certain reels, etc?  Just curious.  Many missing non-dialogue areas could likely be patched from the Spanish track.

Interesting.  May have been an artifact of how those sources were synced.  Glad it's gone in the new version--no idea if something similar will ever be possible for Empire.

Oddly, another source I have for the Spanish audio has the Han-Greedo scene missing.  I wonder if that was swapped out more commonly than we thought.  No idea why anyone would want to do that, though, unless maybe Han calls Greedo a very dirty word in Spanish ;)

EDIT: Also, I believe -1 has more than one print, so if the Spanish print is too damaged at the beginning of reel 2 for example, he can swap in frames from another.  I actually don't know if the audio problem at the beginning of reel 2 was actually a print problem or a capture problem.  No big deal I'm sure.

It's all relative.  I also patched over a bit at the very beginning of reel 2 (the mechanical noises before C-3PO speaks in the oil bath), and THAT patch feels completely seamless, you don't even know anything was patched over.  That's what I wanted for Han-Greedo, but the sources were just too different.

Oh thank goodness.

It probably goes without saying, but if anyone is sitting on some great-quality even partial recordings of this Spanish dub that just happens to have the Han-Greedo exchange, let me know.  The version we have now is certainly good enough to get the job done, but it'd be nice if we had audio clarity in that scene that matched the rest of the dub.

Just wanted to add that I've put together a GOUT-synced American Spanish dub which also uses the mono mix.  It's from -1's 35mm film scan so the sound quality is fantastic.  For fans of the mono mix, it's worth a listen, even if you don't know any Spanish.  Like you don't have all the English dialogue memorized anyway ;)

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-original-Latin-American-Spanish-dubbings/topic/11112/page/2/

PM sent.

I've synced -1's audio files to the GOUT, and the result is FANTASTIC, thank you -1!

Due to missing sections, I had to patch over some bits with audio from Belbucus and roback214.  In the case of the Greedo/Han dialogue, the drop in audio quality is very noticeable.  I did some very minor pop/click cleanup but it's mostly as-captured.

I want to add that for mono mix lovers, this audio is quite a treat, even if you have no interest in a Spanish dub.  In many ways, this track blows away our best English version of the mono mix.  The dynamic range, in particular, is stunning.  Take a listen.

I'm uploading now.  Lossy tracks for the whole trilogy and lossless for Star Wars.  PM me for links.