CatBus

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.

When you distill film review down to a number of stars, it's not really a review anymore.  At that point, you're just answering "is the reader going to like this movie" which really means you're taking into account the likely reader just as much as the film.  If you think the reader is going to like anything with explosions and chase scenes, then you're going to give those films lots of stars.

Not saying there aren't critics out there who don't dislike the prequels, but if they didn't write a few paragraphs on the subject, you really have no idea what they actually thought.

Re: the subs.  The SRT file nomenclature is a bit arcane (they're not really designed to be used directly by end-users, but I understand why Harmy opted for them because of spotty support for PGS subtitles in MKV playback software).

Anyway, the -en-full subtitles are really just there for completeness.  The actual subs you want to use for a project with burnt-in English subs are named -en-native.  Hope that helps.  And thanks for the compliment!

No, it's not just that.  I like soap opera plenty, and that's not enough for me to stomach the PT.  You really have to be able to overlook bad writing, wooden acting, sterile uninteresting sets, and a bland score.  At least on General Hospital, the actors playing Luke and Laura were able to consistently make eye contact with one another...

I'm just now putting the finishing touches on the Russian dub for Star Wars, and boy must this thing have an interesting history.  The original dub was (probably) in mono for broadcast TV by Studio Gorky in 1989.  The existing bootlegs of this original broadcast, as far as I can tell, all have a severe echoing which make it pretty all-around unpleasant to listen to.

However, when putting together the Special Editions, apparently there was some better-quality tape to go back to, because the SE dubs sound much better--and by better, I really mean "less bad".  There's a constant wavering in the high frequencies throughout the whole thing, which you get used to over time, but which occasionally causes the London Symphony Orchestra's brass section to sound a bit like a mariachi band.

In addition to some audible tape damage in a few areas, there were also apparently some severely damaged sections of tape, because parts are dubbed over with what appears to be, at least in certain cases, completely different actors and not-very-well-blended background noise.  Not only that, but when patching them together, it looks like they forgot to take into account PAL speedup, so the pitch jumps 4% for these sections.

Anyway, there was a lot to compensate for, in addition to despecializing and removing 1993 audio effects, and resyncing.  I can't say the result sounds great, but at least it doesn't sound worse, and it's probably more impressive if you know any Russian.  It's not ready quite yet, but feel free to PM me if you're interested.

Bingowings said:

They are all space opera which has a dose of suds in it.

The difference between ANH and ESB and the rest is the earlier films look like they take place in a real war between real armed forces (albeit in a more technologically advanced realm) whereas starting with ROTJ and reaching it's zenith with the PT the later films look like cartoon battles between squid monsters and bathroom equipment.

As a fan of the space battle scenes in Return of the Jedi, I take umbr-- ...yeah, all right, you have a point.

Anchorhead said:

I saw only one of the prequels, 15 years ago... What little I remember about the pointless story, the terrible writing, the terrible acting, and the equally terrible presentation...

If it makes you feel any better, you saw the best of the three. Not that your observations on it aren't accurate.

I know Criterion is often contractually obligated to use the video the studio provides them, but sheesh... sometimes you should just say no thanks and work on that Criterion Blu-ray of Cabin Boy instead.

In the process of working on the Russian dub (still working on it), I got sidetracked by an interesting contribution.  Someone had taken the 5.1 Ukrainian 2011 Blu-ray dub for Star Wars and chopped it up so that it roughly synced with the GOUT.

I downmixed it to 2.0, improved the sync a bit, and despecialized the more egregious problems using the 93 mix (sound effects for things that aren't happening onscreen, such as the Mos Eisley additions), and I think the result is surprisingly good.

I am not planning on despecializing any more Blu-ray dubs.  This one just happened to be mostly already done, it's a voiceover dub so the sync was easier to figure out, and Ukrainian happens to be a language on my "Top 5 Most Wanted" subtitling languages, so I'm hoping it may attract the attention of people who can help me there.

Anyway, PM me for the link if you're interested.

No, I had two really good leads, but both were not as good as I had originally thought...

So basically this project is "parked" waiting for either a) a translator or b) me to give up on finding out what they are saying in Japanese during certain scenes. I'm pretty patient though, and it's not like I don't have other things to do.

Well, "happening" is a relative term ;)  If you know someone fluent in English and Japanese, this project could get out of neutral.  It's kinda been stuck there a while.

EDIT: Brian on Blu looks great next to the DVD, but don't look too carefully at it.  It's got some serious problems, but it's the best we have at the moment.

skyjedi2005 said:

But from a money standpoint its brilliant marketing keep changing the films so people continue to watch the product.

Hard to say if that's why people buy them again & again--"to see the fresh new stuff in each release".

It could just as easily have been:

- Bought the 1997 set because it's close enough to the movies I want and it's on DVD so it looks way better.

- Bought the 2006 set because it includes the films I actually want in DVD quality (dang! they fooled me!)

- Bought the 2011 set because it's close enough to the movies I want and it's on Blu-ray so it looks way better.

Probably a mix of reasons, but for all those who love the changes and eat them up with every release, I can't believe there aren't a lot more who simply grudgingly tolerate the changes.

Either way, I'd agree it's been a successful marketing strategy, except in 2006 when it was a clear bait-and-switch... which I suppose could also be considered a "successful" con job.

Nope, closed captions are output device generated, but subtitles are just bitmaps.  Looks kinda Trade Gothicky to me, which seems consistent.  The lowercase "f" isn't quite right though, but a perfect match may not be possible, especially considering how it's scaled down and probably stretched due to the DVD format.

PM sent.

These have been great, thanks a ton!

Thanks to Harmy, I now have a much clearer recording.  Still has a bit of the high frequency waver, but everything else is much better and no crazy echo effect on the music.  Starting over ;)

Okay, I have the Russian 1989 non-voiceover dub for Star Wars, and I need some advice from the OT.com hive mind.

The audio quality, at least by our typical standards, is awful.  The issues are: a persistent, significantly wavering volume on high frequencies throughout the entire film, a severe echoing effect that seems to come and go, and just general low quality.  The actual dubbed voices are usually good quality with no significant issues, which is why I think many of the problems are baked into the original dub's mix.

Out of the box, I have a hard time listening to it, or imagining someone else happily doing so.  Dialog tends to be fine, most sound effects tend to be tolerable, but the music is just utterly trashed. So I'm engaged in an effort to replace parts of the dub with a copy of the English 85 mix wherever the dramatic change in audio quality is less jarring than the wavering/echoing issue.

I've had reasonable success with:

- The Fox fanfare

- The victory ceremony music through the end credits

- The sunset scene

I have problems with any scene with dialogue, because obviously I can't replace that. Basically it seems to only work if I can swap out the whole scene, otherwise the mid-scene transition is too jarring.

The opening crawl was rough, because it sounded horrible but had dubbed-over narration.  I found that the echoing was less of a cacophony in the right channel than the left, so I duplicated the right channel on both channels, effectively making the crawl mono.  It still sounds terrible, but less so.

My question is: Does anyone have other ideas for large spans with no dialogue that might work for replacement with the 85 mix?