CatBus

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?

I don't see the shame in it, I enjoy the Holiday Special quite a bit more than the PT in a completely non-ironic way.  I can sometimes go entire minutes without wanting to turn it off.

Not to mention, one of the prevailing theories explaining "Why did they release the GOUT when they explicitly said they'd never release the originals again?" was that the GOUT was released to shut down the burgeoning industry in Star Wars Laserdisc rips (because, at least on the video side, the GOUT was marginally better quality than those rips).  And it more-or-less worked, simple competition.  Superior product at a fair price.

If that theory is true and the pattern holds, that means they may consider the best way to deal with us is to deliver a better-quality product at a fair price.  Although I have my doubts they can actually deliver on "better-quality", supposing for a moment that they actually did it, I think most people here would be happy to pack it in and call it a day, including myself.

Check the first post.  "native" means designed to accompany video with crawl text and alien subtitles in the same language (thus, these subs do not provide translations for those).  "match" means designed to match the onscreen appearance of burnt-in alien subtitles (which I'll be the first to admit is more of a novelty than something I'd want to use all the time, so it's safe to ignore these).

PM sent; no SRT-only download is available.  This project comes in one size: friggen' huge!

Well, for dubs, it's your only real hope for a surround mix at all.  But yeah, there's not much hope of even approximating anything original with it.

Yep.  Neither has ESB.

Back to the OP, it's just fairly unlikely anyone's going to do this other than yourself, Rebelscum, because the pairing is so odd.  The primary appeal (to me) of the DeEd is that it actually looks like a movie from the late 70's.  Having it sound like a movie from the 90's* while simultaneously looking like a movie from the 70's would seem, at least to me, pretty jarring.

* Except I don't actually think the Blu-ray mix sounds like a movie from the 90's--it sounds like a movie from the 70's that's gone through a weird warping/muddying wringer in a disastrous attempt to make it sound more like a movie from the 90's, but I realize this is subjective and I know some people really like it.

It turns out there was a miscommunication and I don't have a source for the Russian dub for Star Wars after all.  So I'll be uploading the two ROTJ dubs I do have, and just hope for more to land in my inbox someday.  PM me if you're interested.

I have been contacted by someone with access to some Russian dubs.  Right now, I have the voiceover-style dub and another more typical dub of ROTJ, and I hope to have access to SW soon, and Empire within a month or so.

They sound good, but unless someone has any need to hear them right now, I'll wait to share until I get the Star Wars dubs (hopefully in time for the DeEd Blu-rays!)

I'm not sure of the history behind the newer non-voiceover Russian dub, and how popular it is with Russian fans.  I didn't know it even existed, and I don't know the status of similar dubs for the rest of the trilogy.

Nope.  Sounds fine here.

EDIT: Waitasec... are you expecting the dialogue to be EXCLUSIVELY on the center channel?!?

Nope, you're hearing it right.  This is an upmix from Dolby surround encoded stereo.  There's no way you're getting that sort of bleed-free channel separation.  It's unlikely it was that way theatrically either.

What's the significance of the "raw" in the filename, as opposed to the other files?

Also, if anyone has the American Spanish ROTJ track from the R1 GOUT DVD, please PM me.  I'd like to compare it against the one I already have from roback214.