CatBus

It really depends on how fancy you want to get. Since you're starting from scratch, you have the freedom to map it all out.

If you just want subtitles without any interesting formatting (i.e. beyond italics), and placement is going to be in a consistent, standard location, then just create an SRT file using any of the tons of subtitle editors out there.  I actually prefer SRT because I can focus on the content and not the presentation.  However, if you want to get all fancy and have subtitles that are (for example) positioned under the speaker of that particular line, go for a more advanced format that can contain positioning information such as ASS.  You can make this exactly as complicated as you like.

As for timing, different editors offer different ways of doing it.  Some allow you to line up the subtitles to the waveform of the audio track, but I actually prefer to do it visually by watching a preview of the movie with the subtitles overlaid.  There is a lot of trial and error and guesswork, but generally it's pretty clear when a subtitle "works" and when it doesn't.

To convert an SRT file to a BD-SUP/BDN+XML format for burning to disc, I recommend easySUP.  This gives you a lot of flexibility about typeface, positioning, color, border/shadow, etc.  Some BD authoring tools may allow you to plug in an SRT file too, but I doubt you'll end up with quite the level of control easySUP gives you.  Also keep in mind you need to install AviSynth for easySUP to work.

I'd also look at some subtitling style guidelines, even if you opt not to follow them to the letter.  The BBC has some pretty thorough ones online, I believe.

Asaki said:

CatBus said:

Out of curiosity, do you happen to have the other half of my amulet?

Does it say "BFF" on it?

No, it's got a jewel offcenter in the middle of it and writing on both sides.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

...plus the improved versions of the subtitles done by CatBus...

With that aspect ratio, my adjustments are more likely to make things look worse than better.  1.75:1 (HDTV) goes all the way to the top and bottom of a 16:9 frame.  2.35:1 (BD) has significant black bars.  So when I moved the subtitles just inside the 2.35:1 image, I pushed them ridiculously far into a 1.75:1 image.  The subtitles will be right over all the action.  I'd recommend using the straight-from-BD subtitles for this one.  You could even afford to move them out toward the edge a bit.

AntcuFaalb said:

I found the 3 missing frames. They were the last 3 frames before the shot where Neo enters the room to see The Oracle. I simply froze the last frame in that shot 3 times to keep it synchronized with the DVD.

Are you sure that doesn't create a visual artifact (I know if's not always visible depending on where it is)?  Would it possibly be better to insert spoRv frames instead, or otherwise color-matched BD frames?

Chewtobacca said:

I agree.

Seems we agree on everything! Out of curiosity, do you happen to have the other half of my amulet?

Harmy said:

This is quite easy actually, the original colors are those the director and the DP would have seen when viewing the dailies and doing the color-timing and since  they would have used the same warm bulb, which was the standard back then, it is quite clear they would have seen the warmer colors.

Ha! I was wondering if we could pull you kicking and screaming back to this thread!  But seriously, I agree.  But I think there is some intangible value to the colors viewed with neutral lighting (because it may more accurately represent the colors that existed in the set, but were washed away by the biased projector bulb), I'm just not sure what exactly to name that quality.

Matt_Stevens said:

Will an actual Blu-Ray version be uploaded at some point?

Yes, a Blu-ray is planned.  It may include lossless 85 and 93 tracks--they were just (IIRC) not available to Harmy when the MKV was released.  Not to argue your point about lossless (my attitude is, even if you can't hear the difference, why not go lossless?), but high-bitrate DD also has dialnorm, so the volume difference alone may be enough to seem different than lossless.

rockin said:

Anyone watched these trailers of ROTLA:

The colour timing from each of these looks more like the old DVD and japanese HDTV versions.

That's consistent with the idea that if the film were scanned using a neutral light source (i.e. for TV or home video) it would look more like WOWOW, and if projected using a typical period bulb, it would look more like the Blu-ray.

Damn it, man, scan it!

dvdmike said:

Harris is amazing with photo chemical but useless with Digital, the man loved the Dracula BD

I've found him to be needlessly lenient toward other peoples' work in general, chemical or digital.  But I haven't seen an instance of him failing to see that his own work is revisionist (which is why I specified I trusted his judgment "on his own work, at least").

It was significantly less odd to me after I saw it looked pretty much exactly like the original 35mm film references.  Also the fact that the stated goal of KOTCS was to look like ROTLA, if taken at face value, makes it pretty much the opposite of odd.

Bulb-matching is a real thing.  If you just scan the film on your typical neutral-to-cool flatbed scanner, it may look great--even more lifelike--but not like it looked in the theatres during its original run.  Lots of older films have taken on a much more golden hue and muted palette after they went through the trouble of bulb matching.  The Godfather films on BD, for example, look practically sepia throughout with the strong yellow cast, but that restoration was overseen by Robert Harris--and much as I like to armchair general things, I trust his judgment (on his own work, at least) that this is just "how it looked"--even if scans of those exact same sources using a neutral light source results in something that looks more like the DVD releases or television cuts, or even how that exact same film looked projected using a later-vintage bulb in the nineties.

EDIT: This does bring up a film purity question, though. If the films from this era were all projected with a heavily biased light source, which is the accurate color?  Is the film in the can or the film on the screen definitive?  I think a fairly strong case could be made that WOWOW may represent the colors of the film "in the can", which nobody actually saw until much later, while the Blu-ray represents the colors of the film "on the screen" which only looked that way due to the very yellow bulbs in common use at the time.  IMO neither colors would be "wrong" or "not original", although only the yellowish ones could be fairly called "theatrical".

PM sent!

AntcuFaalb said:

dvdmike said:

AntcuFaalb said:

stretch009 said:

dvdmike said:

Orange flags......

What does this mean?  Please be kind.

I think he's referring to the red Nazi flags looking orange on the BD.

It was changed to gold to match Kingdom, it is not the 1980's timing at all

Is that including the impact that an 80s projection bulb would have on the colortiming?

At least the orange painted flags were preserved.  They are the about the same orangish red on the BD as on the 35mm prints.  Lacking a reference, can't say for certain about the cloth flags, but it would seem odd for someone to change those while leaving most everything else untouched (or at least leaving all of the frames we have 35mm references for untouched).  Not that stranger things haven't happened, with the sleeves of a certain cantina patron...

PM sent!  I didn't fix the ugliness of the subtitles, just the positioning ;)  It makes sense that these are DVD upscales--that would explain a lot.

The question is: does it more-or-less grain-match the existing project?  Considering the final v2 may mix-and-match sources, it'd be nice if they blended seamlessly.

Well, since it looks like a v2 may actually happen, would anyone be interested in repositioned subtitle files?  I've positioned everything (AFAICT) so that it's more clearly CIH-safe and type-safe (even further into the image than they already are, sorry Andrea :-/ ), and fixed the two mangled Japanese subs.

I can't guarantee I didn't miss something, since I mostly just bulk-converted and spot-checked them.  But since Andrea prefers subs outside the picture, he may not want to incorporate them at all.

Two more notes on subtitles: First, the "Finnish" subtitle here is actually the French commentary subtitle.  Both start with "F", just a typo.  Second, the style of most of the subtitles is decidedly weird (no fault of Andrea's, they're from the BD).  It's as if they rendered their initial subtitles as white-fading-to-transparent-around-the-edges, and then someone noticed you couldn't see that very well against a white background--so instead of making them white with a black border that fades to transparent around the edges, they took the existing subtitles and added a black border around the existing transparent border.  Ugh, looks really strange.

Okay, I'll stop ranting about subtitles now.  If anyone has BD chapter stops, let me know.

So far so good with the current release, thank you--I think it looks great.

Does anyone have official BD chapter stops for this?  I've never been a fan of the every-five-minute style of chapter stops.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and as far as I've been able to determine, the subtitle placement is as follows: Most languages are effectively CIH-safe for the main soundtrack (just a few pixels trimmed--exception: Japanese, which is positioned very high and occasionally not even overscan-safe along the top, and the second and last subtitles are oddly mangled).  Some of the commentary subtitles (example: Spanish), are also not even overscan-safe along the top.  I guess getting them unmodified straight from the disc was no guarantee of better compatibility.  But most are fine.

If you want legal advice, consult a lawyer. My own personal opinion (which should not be taken as legal advice) is that fan-edits are, at best, a legal gray area, which is why you won't see one for sale at Barnes and Noble. Even if you own the Blu-rays and the GOUT discs, and you made all the edits entirely by yourself, they may not clearly legal in all jurisdictions simply due to DRM circumvention. So let's just be clear here: if you seriously want to walk the straight and narrow, just walk away.

Still here? Okay, download a torrent client (I find Vuze to be simple-ish), get an account at MySpleen, and knock yourself out.

Don't order the potatoes.  One of them is actually an asteroid.

phelipebreves said:

Sorry if this has already been explained, I'm not very good with English.

I need the subtitles in Portuguese of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of The Jedi.

As I understand I can get here.

Can anyone help me?

You have a private message.

Okay, personal reflection and mea culpa time.  I never liked the DVD colors (too blue) and also was dubious of the Blu-ray colors (too gold), although I thought they looked good in spite of my doubts about their authenticity.  Upon seeing the WOWOW screencaps, I was sold that those represented the real deal.

I'd downloaded custom Blu-ray cover art with the correct movie title, and I'd even edited the "scenes from the film" on the back cover so that they matched the WOWOW colors.  Yeah, I was that kinda anal about it, but I love this movie.

I was all set to start a new project where I'd apply HDTV colors to the Blu-ray, splice in the old, darker, opening without the clipped sky detail, and even try to put back the snake reflection from Laserdisc, what the hell.

I browsed those 35mm stills posted elsewhere and thought, "Well, that shows that the gold tint on the Blu-rays was at least partially justified, but look at that sunset, that's still not right.  Maybe I can figure out if there's a happy medium."  So I spent some time in Photoshop doing some color correcting, and... er, well, now I'm convinced even the sunset is probably much closer to correct on the Blu-rays than on WOWOW.  I've done a U-turn and now think the golden hues of the Blu-ray are actually the result of a careful restoration, not a deliberate alteration.

There's still plenty of deliberate alterations on the Blu-ray.  The overly-brightened opening, the missing snake refection, and so on.  But the colors?  Not so much, I'm now convinced.  And I'm afraid I just can't justify doing a whole preservation project to undo such fairly inconsequential things.  So sorry to all, and thanks in particular to Harmy for providing those 35mm stills.  They may have taken a really long time to do it, but they changed at least one mind.

Not sure how ColourMatch works exactly, but could it recover lost grain (to the extent that it existed on LD)?

Just to be clear, what theatrical footage is on this exactly?  The ROTJ ghosts?  Are we sure it's not an upscale yet?

deepanddark20 said:

Is there something about the inherent nature of stormtroopers that makes a particular stormtrooper bumping into something an impossible event?

Not impossible, funny.  The stormtroopers are trying to do something very serious and menacing and the headbonk completely undermines that.  It doesn't really matter if it's realistic or not.  If a bank robber in the real world cracked his skull on the doorway on the way out of the bank, it'd be funny.  If you were a policeman reviewing the bank's security tapes, tell me you wouldn't be tempted to rewind and watch him bonk his head again.  Yeah it's slapstick, but maybe I'm just lowbrow.

The dramatic reveal of a planet where the whole planet misses its cue by a good few seconds is funny too.  The thing that makes the latter clearly an error is that the musical cue was obviously intended, as shown by the '77 crawl.  Yeah, obviously you wouldn't laugh if you didn't notice, but assuming you notice, it's funny.