The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
I’ve been searching for a better Star Wars trilogy, on-and-off, since 1997, back when I naively thought the Special Editions were just an alternate cut that I could simply avoid buying when the OT was inevitably released on the then-new DVD format. And I waited, and waited, and waited… I eventually bought a set of CowClops DVDs of the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs from some disreputable bootlegger. And as it became clearer that Star Wars was never going to get a true DVD-quality release, and the prequels drove the point home that Star Wars and I were parting ways, I sort of stopped for a few years. I gave up looking for Star Wars.
Until I had kids. Then I broke out the Laserdisc transfers again and thought… this isn’t going to cut it. So I found this place, found dark_jedi’s GOUT upscales, which were only marginally better than the Laserdisc transfers I already had, but they were anamorphic! And I could watch Star Wars without the 1993 audio! And then Harmy came along, and negative1, both of them with crazy ideas that could never work, not with the resources we had, and I started searching again, looking for that better trilogy.
But something important just happened. I’m not searching for a new, improved Return of the Jedi anymore. For the first time since 1997, I’m actually entirely satisfied with the video options I have. I don’t feel the need to look anymore, and that’s a truly odd sensation after so many years.
Well, I’m entirely satisfied with Jedi at least. Still searching for the other two 😉
Verified, I burned this to a BD-50 and played it back in a hardware player. It’s glorious.
Keep in mind, I do have some general caveats about this sort of endeavor. While all of the streams (video, audio), may be individually UHD-compatible, there can be problems when you try to burn them to disc collectively. There is both a maximum bitrate for the disc, and a maximum number of audio and subtitle tracks. Some UHD authoring tools (e.g. tsMuxeR) will let you blow right past those limits without so much as a warning, and create an ISO which plays fine on your PC, but not in a hardware player.
So while you may be tempted to make a super-ultra-universal UHD with every conceivable audio track and subtitle (er, well, at least that thought has tempted me…), that is not going to happen. Put it out of your mind. You are limited to 32 audio tracks and 32 subtitle tracks, and you may be limited to fewer than that if you decide to pile on multiple lossless tracks.
Me, I played it safe, because I don’t like making coasters. My disc had 12 audio tracks, and only the primary 5.1 track was lossless – the rest were lossy. I also showed a lot of restraint and only included 19 subtitle tracks, but those are far less likely to put your disc over the edge. You could probably be a lot less conservative and still make a playable disc.
Also, burning discs beyond BD-50 capacity is probably asking for trouble. Stick to BD-50 and avoid worries.
How did you make a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack out of the 1983 70mm Magnetic Six Track Mix?
That’s the hairy_hen project (it’s a separate project from despecialized, synced to the same standard so that the audio is interchangeable and can be included with many preservations). IIRC this is a reconstruction of that six-channel mix using what we know of the four-track master, the matrixed Laserdisc stereo run through a dolby decoder, and some love (and some educated guesswork when it comes to the LFE). From what we can tell, it’s very close to the real thing. Then you just encode it in a slightly more home-video-friendly format (5.1) instead of the original 4.2.
I’m sorry, but if someone can point me to a simple torrent or something, I’d appreciate it. All of this info is a bit much. I just want to watch Harmy’s work.
Check your WORKPRINT PM thread.
FYI, I threw together this little comparison:
The top row shows that 4K is an extremely subtle improvement over 1080p with these films. It’s there, but many would be perfectly satisfied with 1080p. The difference at 1080p is little more than grain resolution, and it’s possible that a different 1080p encoder tuning could even retain that. There’s a bigger, but still not huge, drop-off at 720p, so that’s actually still a solid resolution for presenting these reconstructions – basically the grain gets obliterated, but differences in actual image detail are still pretty minor. That’s good news for the other Despecialized films, which are still at 720p, and most of the grain was added at 720p, so it’s not lost in the downscale.
The bottom row shows some more interesting things. The DVD downscale looks, frankly, like crap. And that’s an anamorphic DVD downscale from 2160p that I made, considerably better than the recycled Laserdisc master which is the best thing we have from Lucasfilm. The GOUT would look even worse!
The 4K83 images show two things: first, that I really like the colors of Despecialized (but that’s just a matter of opinion). The other thing it shows is the advantage of using the UHD source over a projection print source. You can see more fine detail in the UHD-based source, even at some lower resolutions, because of the generational loss baked into projection prints.
This is the real deal, kids! Thanks, Harmy!
First priority is fixing the problems in ROTJ 3.0, with 3.1. Should be very soon.
In anticipation of the official ROTJ DeEd 3.1 4K release, I created some UHD artwork (DVD versions also available).
UHD (4K) Blu-ray: https://drive.google.com/file/d/130M9JMoRdT6oYjM3Dvm22sNgpkifrJuK/view?usp=drive_link
HD (1080p) Blu-ray: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1glb8XnVxqJstm_FOE11EsGmeCgS6HBQ4/view?usp=sharing
DVD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rcddg4WCtAqhiOhyaLPqw_1UCww4d050/view?usp=sharing
The only difference between 4K and 1080p cover art is the logos (Blu-ray vs Ultra HD Blu-ray)
They’re designed to be in the style of the 1990 VHS releases (Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi), but there are a few places where I modernized things a bit. These owe a lot to the work of ChainsawAsh and EyeShotFirst. There’s nothing preservation-specific about these covers, so they’d work just as well for Despecialized, 4Kxx, D+xx, or anything else you like.
Disc art is also included, in a matching style (including distinct designs for the 1981 version of Star Wars and the 70mm version of Empire).
Hi there,
Please can I get the 15.0 link?
also, does ROTJ-eng-alien-35mm.srt exist?
PM sent. ROTJ-eng-alien-35mm.srt does not exist. The point of alien-35mm SRT files in this project is to generate realistic-looking reconstructed alien PGS subtitles with the same appearance as the original 35mm subtitles, using look-alike fonts. For some languages, that’s currently the closest we can get. But for English and a couple other lucky languages, there’s no need to muck around with look-alike fonts, we can just use the images lifted directly from a 35mm print scan. So for those languages, there are PGS subtitles that look like the 35mm subtitles because they’re taken directly from a 35mm scan, not generated from text. There’s no SRT file because that step in the process wasn’t necessary.
PM sent.
PM sent.
Thanks Harmy! We’re waiting (somewhat) patiently!
I suspect none of the above. If you can’t count on the native subtitle format to be frame-accurate, I would not trust another format that has to be converted into that native format to be frame-accurate either. So I’d just make sure they never show up early (which IMO is worse than late), and call it good enough.
I’m doing a complete overhaul for my subs so stay tuned… 😃
But I found a weird problem. It seems that sub tracks have different timing when used in mpv vs. MPC. I can’t play SW 4K smoothly on MPC so I’ve always had to use mpv, also when re-adjusting the timings. There seems to be 2 frame difference between the players. That’s pretty weird, does anyone know the reason?
I know PGS subtitles can be off by a frame from what you intend because the internal timecodes use 24.000fps, even for 23.976 subtitles, and rounding issues can potentially send a subtitle to one frame or another. Presumably since PGS is more like the native subtitle format and even it has issues, text-based subtitles could potentially have even more due to the extra conversion. And, of course, there are just plain errors. For most people, if the subtitle is off by two frames, nobody would even report the bug, let alone fix it.
4K77 currently includes at least one frame from the Blu-rays.
Enjoy your stay.
PM sent.
He’s there. I’ve linked to his Japanese ROTJ audio thread from my International Audio thread if you can’t find it.
Many forum-spanners like me post more info here when we feel it would be useful to be seen by more people (publicly searchable).
Honestly I’d recommend the 1080p route for now at least. The 4K files are huge and require significant decoding horsepower, and people regularly report playback issues in less-then-ideal circumstances. You could try looking for smaller or less demanding 4K encodes if you like (or make your own), but really 1080p is just the fastest and cheapest way to your destination IMO.
What I have noticed about the Laserdisc audio in many films is that the sound is very in-depth and robust.
Which Original Trilogy preservation do you recommend?
Depends on what you want. If you want the experience of watching the movies in a theater, go for the 4Kxx projects. If you want to see what a respectful Blu-ray release would have looked like, Despecialized is your best bet IMO. I lean toward the latter. Star Wars is sadly in the roughest shape of the trilogy for both projects.
So, “matrixed stereo” is a stereo mix encoded in a special fashion where, if you pass it through a proper Dolby ProLogic decoder, you can get four-channel audio. The Laserdisc audio can be decoded in this way to get true multichannel. The six-channel reconstructions are based on this four-channel decode of Laserdisc audio, and for the past several releases has used a proper professional-grade decoder for that work. We also have in-theater recordings of the six-channel mix, which aren’t an audio source per se, but allow us to know which slight variations of sound effects happened, and when. The LFE is a bit of a best-guess, using some SE when it aligns with theatrical effects.
This work is all based on the theory that the six-channel and stereo mixes were based on the same four-track master audio, which has at this point been proven enough through various audio discoveries to be considered fact. There’s a lot of archaeology in this as well…
Keep in mind that, at the time, only the Star Wars six-channel mix even attempts to match any unique 70mm six-channel content. That may change, but right now Empire and Jedi are more like “tasteful and respectful upmixes” than 70mm mixes – although they may end up being extremely similar to their respective 70mm mixes, due to the shared lineage of the four-channel master.
ProLogic decoding can’t get you literally back to the discrete six-channels on a 70mm print. For one thing, there’s still a bit of channel bleedover that would not be present on a 70mm print, the other is of course the missing two LFE channels*. But these things were done with love. It’s not at all like those Blu-ray mono-to-5.1 upmixes which kill the soul of the original audio. It can be done well, and in this case, it’s been done in an exemplary fashion.
* The original 70mm six-channel audio was 4.2, not 5.1. It was L, C, R, and a single surround, plus two LFE channels. So a four-channel ProLogic decode gives you everything except the LFE. Since 5.1 is far more compatible with modern playback systems, that’s how it’s encoded for these preservations.
What are the best audio versions for the Prequels and Original Trilogy?
Audio is typically restored as a different project, and then included with restorations that are designed to sync to it. The only difference is scan-based projects which will usually include optical audio directly from the film print.
“Best audio” could be its own thread, and there are tons of opinions. First of all, some people swear by the optical audio because it sounds more like what you’d have heard in the theater back in the day.
However, Laserdisc-based preservations provide more of a clean, high-end home-video sound. Laserdisc-based audio is available for the original stereo mixes and 1993 revised “THX” mixes, and the 1985 home video mix for Star Wars. The mono audio is typically from either broadcast recordings or film scans. There will likely soon be at least one original six-channel mix available from a print scan too.
But what I feel stands above the rest is hairy_hen’s six-channel reconstructions, which are based on the matrixed stereo mixes, and a ton of TLC.
Which mix is “best” is a matter of taste and priorities, but I feel I can safely say:
Hope that helps. Generally speaking, the most recent preservations will have the most recent versions of the six-channel audio. The others have not changed much in years, as the best-of-breed Laserdiscs were found and ripped years ago.
Be careful mix-and-matching audio. There are two frame standards currently in use (GOUT and theatrical), but they’re close enough that you might not notice slight sync differences until years later.
I have no opinions on prequel audio.
If it helps, there are already at least two projects that do exactly that or something very similar: Despecialized and D+77/D+80/OTD83. The main project files are large, since they try to keep their encoding quality similar to an actual Blu-ray disc (~20GB+ seems about right for this). But there are also official AVCHD versions for burning to DVD9s, which are necessarily under 9GB, and even DVD5 downscales for those who don’t need HD. I also know that there are a ton of unofficial re-encodes of Despecialized that sacrifice a little visual quality for a lot of space savings, often putting the whole trilogy at under 10GB. If you’re looking for torrents, you’re actually more likely to run across one of these unofficial re-encodes than the official version, since there seems to be a similar bias in favor of small file sizes in that community.
PM sent, and thanks! That change has been made and will be in the next release (which likely won’t be for a while).
Speaking of said corruption, I’m guessing the name of the project comes from 3PO being said out loud, as well?
If you check the English credits for Star Wars, R2-D2 is actually spelled out as “Artoo-Detoo (R2-D2)”, and C-3PO is “See Threepio (C3PO)”. At least to me, Artoo and Threepio still work fine as nicknames, but spelling out their full two-word names like that is pretty awkward.
But yes, the project is named after C-3PO, because he was also known to be fluent in a few languages.