CatBus

Well, now I want to have your synced ESB 93 mix, Teeceezy, because I want to hear the sound of a snowspeeder not crashing. *shakes fist at universe*

Thanks, hairy_hen, that helps a lot.  So depending on what you think of the snowspeeder crash sound, the ESB '93 mix could be considered as containing different content.  Technically it's different, but not enough to make me care.

BTW, in a way, I do listen to the '93 mixes, via your purist 5.1 mixes.  I just had more faith in you to get things right, for example the snowspeeder crash ;)

So our updated list of different-content mixes is:

SW: (1) 77 six-channel, (2) 77 stereo, (3) 77 mono, (4) 85 stereo, (5) 93 stereo

ESB: (1) 80 six-channel, (2) 80 stereo, (3) 80 mono (assuming it's similar to our 16mm mono track?), (4) 8mm mono, (5) 93 stereo (same as 80 stereo except missing snowspeeder crash SFX)

ROTJ: (1) 83/93 stereo/six-channel/mono

...with the caveat that we don't have much info on the ROTJ six-channel or mono tracks and could get surprised by some new mix content at some later date. And the ESB mono story could prove to be much more complicated, if the theatrical mono mix matches neither the 16mm or 8mm in content, which is certainly a possibility.

AntcuFaalb said:

Interesting! I (mistakenly) thought that the '93 TESB and ROTJ mixes had some different content.

That might not be a mistake.  I have always shied away from the 93 mixes because of the changes in Star Wars, so I don't know them as well (even though I'm the first to admit they actually sound very good).

Certainly if all of the 93 mixes are all based on the 70mm multitrack mixes, there'd be room for the differences on the 70mm Empire mix to make their way onto the 93 mix.  I just don't know of any.

AntcuFaalb said:

CatBus said:

From what I've gleaned from the thread, no.  We're talking different mixing levels and dynamics, but the same content (defining content as the dialogue, SFX, and music).

Cool! So, as unique content goes, it's:

TESB: (1) 80/85; (2) 93

ROTJ: (1) 83/85; (2) 93

Correct me if I'm wrong, please!

Thanks!

For content differences as we've defined them, I'd list them as:

SW: (1) 77 six-channel, (2) 77 stereo, (3) 77 mono, (4) 85 stereo, (5) 93 stereo

ESB: (1) 80 six-channel, (2) 80/85/93 stereo, (3) 80 mono (assuming it's similar to our 16mm mono track?)

ROTJ: (1) 83/85/93 stereo/six-channel/mono

...although we don't have much information on the ROTJ six-channel or mono mixes to say for certain if they had unique content.

From what I've gleaned from the thread, no.  We're talking different mixing levels and dynamics, but the same content (defining content as the dialogue, SFX, and music).

Laserschwert said:

CatBus said:

The safe areas are ill-defined these days

Pretty much every video, DVD, compositing and 3D software I've worked with during the last 15 or so years used the 5%/10% guides, so I'm pretty sure that's the most common ratio for them.

Agreed, but authoring software always trends conservative (nothing wrong with that). The percentage of sets out there requiring such extraordinary treatment is now very, very low and you already see game designers (which tend to be more cutting edge) pushing closer to the edge.

That said, until the last first-gen CRT HDTVs fail (and they were built like tanks, so they'll last decades still), I'd use your chart.

EDIT: And I'd especially keep using large overscan values for the left/right borders, because those are relevant to SDTV's, of which there are still millions.  The top/bottom ones are only relevant for 16x9 sets.

And like AntcuFaalb, I love me some CRT image. I personally don't think the color's that great, and the clarity obviously isn't there either, and then there's the overscan. But the motion... the motion on a CRT is puts even plasma to shame, even in spite of telecine judder. And what other display tech can you buy that will easily last thirty years?

Laserschwert said:

Man, you people really have to learn about safe areas

++ It didn't take me long to discover that there are sets out there (16x9 HDTVs, mind you, not just 4x3 SDTVs) with completely ridiculous amounts of overscan. If you design anything for public consumption, always assume the worst. The safe areas are ill-defined these days, but Laserschwert's chart looks pretty good to me.

deho said:

Here are the menus I made:

 

 

FWIW, you probably shouldn't have to specify "German Forced" as an option here.  If you choose German audio, the menu logic should auto-enable the German Forced subs--and the same thing for any audio language with corresponding forced subs.  However, that does mean that any forced subs should be automatically disabled when you choose an audio track with a different language, and that logic might be more cumbersome. No idea, I don't do menus ;)

Fantastic, thanks!  ESB 80 and ROTJ 83 are the ones I'm interested in.

CatBus said:

Looking at the crawl again, it looks like there's some light bleeding in from the edge of the frame in the lower-right corner, and that abruptly disappears around frame 2696 or so (not exact, that was my reaction time for hitting pause).

Odd, it looks like there might be light bleeding in from that corner periodically throughout the film.  It's there again at around frame 29080.  And it appears to be there in the GOUT, so I guess it's on the OCN.

I've got interest, but not much time for listening and feedback right now, I'm afraid.  The last version of ESB '80 I've got has the chopped fanfare and a small glitch where the holographic captains are reporting their status to Vader. I've patched over it in my own crappy fashion but would prefer a better-done job if it's out there.

Didn't realize h_h was taking up ESB. When did that happen?

PM sent!

Okay, I verified the SRT files with DeEd 2.5 are just fine, work in easySUP and other software without issues, checked German and other languages, all good.

Here's the problem: don't mux SRT files. Use SUP files. They are in the project, download it and use them.

Still want to use SRT files? Okay, that's fine BUT you're at the mercy of a lot of factors: there's software support for playback & muxing and OS support for Unicode to start with.  Heck, you could be thrown off by just choosing the wrong font.  FWIW, I use Win7 and Arial for Latin-alphabet subs.

But I don't use MKV for anything.  If you want help getting this working, you could just download and use the SUP files, or, if you really don't want to use the easy-to-use pre-packaged subtitles which are the whole point of Project Threepio, then you should probably post your significantly more complicated SRT scenario in the Project Threepio thread.  There are other users there who use the SRT files and they may have more specific MKV help than I can provide.

Please note that Harmy included SRT files for one specific playback scenario, involving renaming the file, not muxing.  This scenario works.  So does using SUP files, which is my recommendation for all scenarios.

zeropc said:

jubler hasn't done anything. when i look at actual file, all the symbols are there. like i said before, subtitle-workshop doesn't like the srt files either. it opens them, but all the symbols are replaced with some strange code.

#update3#

i imported the subs in easySUP and there are the same problems. that's definitely i problem with the source subs coding.

somebody else have these problems?

I suppose it's possible the folder included with the MKV got corrupted somehow, but I strongly doubt it.

Again, just download Project Threepio and you can use the SUP files, which is way easier and will end up nicer, or you can get SRT files that I know open in easySUP et al without troubles.

zeropc said:

#update 2#

while the remux now worked without problem, but the shown subs now don't show various symbols like ' or german extra symbols like ö, ä, ü

in jubler i don't see any problems. but in the remux it's broken.

As I feared, the Jubler conversion is really just converting everything to 8-bit and throwing out all non-ASCII characters.  I'd recommend using the SUP files unless you have some reason you really need to be using the SRT files.

zeropc said:

mkvtoolnix and subtitle editor don't like the provided .srt files

error message from mkvtoolnix

Error: '---' is neither a valid ISO639-2 nor a valid ISO639-1 code. See 'mkvmerge --list-languages' for a list of all languages and their respective ISO639-2 codes.

any ideas?

#update#

i run the subs i needed through jubler (open and then newly saved) and now mkvtoolnix has no problem with the remux.

The SRT files are just UTF-8-encoded text files with a byte-order mark--it's possible mkvtoolnix doesn't like that encoding (SRT files should not provide an ISO-639 code at all, so some very odd error is getting tripped there).  If the Jubler processing is just stripping out the BOM or converting them to another Unicode format, that's probably fine, but if it's converting them to some 8-bit encoding, there may be some mangling with certain characters--check apostrophes and quotation marks for problems.

If mkvtoolnix supports BD-SUP files, you could use those from the project instead of the included SRT files.

EDIT: Verified that it seems mkvtoolnix supports BD-SUP files, so for those of you doing your own muxing, I'd recommend against using the SRT files and use the 720p SUP files from Project Threepio instead.

FWIW, the MySpleen thread is here, for this project and other goodies.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Request-an-invite-to-MySpleenorg-here/topic/8592/

You would probably be interested in this thread for the theatrical visual changes in Star Wars:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Print-variations-in-77-Star-Wars/topic/14705/

In short, there were multiple extremely minor print variations in the theatrical version, probably due to a combination of last minute changes and poor version control, but AFAICT aside from the alternate crawl/flyover, home video releases were faithful to one of those versions, and the GOUT is moreso.

As for the audio changes, all three distinctly different theatrical soundtracks for Star Wars are well-preserved and you can listen to the alternate versions yourself.

As for the other movies, ESB of course had two totally different cuts, and we've only seen/heard the 35mm one on home video or preservations, and just a list of changes for the 70mm one from people's memories.  It's unclear to me if the 16mm mono soundtrack was the same one used for theatrical mono presentations, but if it was, there's another audio variant for you.  AFAICT nobody's spotted any differences in ROTJ presentations that would indicate home video got something different.

Oh, and this project isn't using a Technicolor print.

Hey, as long as we're doing mashups with other third parts of a series and seeing what wackiness ensues, how about Indiana Jones?

Luke struggles with mixed feelings about his father (they have a troubled past, you see) as he sets out on a mission to save him from the clutches of some archetypal villains. At the climax of this mission, he valiantly risks his own life in an attempt to save his father's life, which serves in the plot as a symbolic gesture that the loving bond is restored and all is forgiven.

Oh, nevermind...

Heh, nevermind then!

Any of them that are synced to the NTSC framecount would be affected.  I think that means all of the English language tracks.  The dubs are probably fine since most come from PAL discs or are synced to the PAL framecount (and sync differences on this scale don't mean much for dubs anyway).

I don't actually have the original tracks anymore, so I can't verify this.

DragoonClawNZ said:

I don't know if this would be going a bit too far, but I can provide text versions for each of the language options in their own language.  One thing that's always hard for me watching imported discs is, for example, trying to figure out which set of Japanese characters means "English", let alone which ones mean "Setup Options", "Subtitles", etc...

A language-neutral interface could potentially be done, at least for the main feature and language options, by using icons in addition to text for audio (speakers icon), subtitles (screen with dots along the bottom), and play movie (movie camera).  Then each language option could be listed in its native language (optionally also in English).  Not sure how you'd handle the other descriptive text like "1978 theatrical 2.0".

Anyway, I like the idea of someone not having to know a word of English to navigate the menus and watch the film with audio or subs in their own language.  How hard that would be is another matter entirely.

Some random internet dude said: Harmy is nerd royalty

I thought we were an autonomous collective.

yoda-sama said:

I think you mean he changed it in the 80's for VHS, Television and--if I'm not mistaken--theatrical rereleases.  The title was not a new change for the '97 SE's.

Yes, the "A New Hope" crawl was added in '81, but the packaging for the films (i.e. Laserdisc and VHS boxes) and other materials still called the film Star Wars pretty consistently until the Special Editions.  A New Hope wasn't used because, at the time, nobody would have known what movie they were talking about--very few people called it that.

I think the statement was that even after the crawl was added, Lucasfilm didn't see any point in wholesale renaming one of the world's most popular movies (i.e. in packaging and related items) until the nineties.

EDIT: Actually I think there was a transitional period where there were big and little titles on the boxes.  i.e. Empire would say in tiny text "Star Wars" and then in big text "The Empire Strikes Back", and Jedi would follow the same pattern, but Star Wars was inverted and said "Star Wars" in big text and "A New Hope" in tiny text, again, kinda admitting that the big text represented the name people knew the movie by.

ray_afraid said:

^Certainly more people call it "Star Wars" than "A New Hope".

True, but Star Wars could refer to the film, the trilogy, the (gack!) saga, or the franchise. There are cases where you need some way to specify one meaning because you can't get it entirely from context--I've certainly had to do it once or twice.

And you can either say "Star Wars--er, the first film... er, no, not episode one, episode four... er, except it doesn't have an episode number... uh, what was I saying again?", or you can say A New Hope.

The terminology may not be accurate, but if it communicates the needed information correctly, and it doesn't require the listener to have any especially deep knowledge of the subject just to unpack the terms, the term has done its job.  I friggen' hate calling it A New Hope personally, but I can see its utility in certain contexts.

EDIT: davextreme said it first :(