CatBus

I think it is HD, but from a much worse source than other HD sources.  Like scans of a spliced-together projection print (which would result in quality around the level of -1's project, which I think it does).  The Sebastian Shaw ghost looks better than what we've got right now IMO, but like you said earlier, it's not enough frames for anything useful.  Oh well.

I was hoping an HD emperor hologram or DS explosion might be usable, but yeah a lot of the shots are very truncated.

Looks usable in many places to me.  Not necessarily for color, but certainly for detail.  Posted the link in Harmy's ESB thread.

Another source?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151522574287443

(link shamelessly grabbed from the "other projects" forum)

SilverWook said:

You saw Star Wars at the drive in? Coolness!

I'm pretty sure the reel broke too, for extra coolness points ;)

Seriously, these kids today who think everyone who saw it in '77 had some sort of amazing A/V experience... well, maybe some of us did, but...

It's strictly tsmuxergui that creates a PGS stream from text when you create an M2TS, wasn't aware we were talking about MKV.

EDIT:

deho said:

By the way, I've muxed [the subtitles] with mkvmerge and the resulting mkv played just fine and the subtitles were ok. Then I tried to mux it with tsmuxer, to create a Blu-ray folder structure, but vlc wouldn't display the subtitles correctly, no matter which edit I use. Are you aware of this problem?

Actually, we were talking about M2TS, not MKV. So yeah, tsmuxer creates a PGS stream on-the-fly from text, and that PGS stream is the one flickering.  I've seen something like this before and fixed it, but apparently this is a different situation because my fix didn't work.

Well, Lowry did go through the trouble of removing all those pesky stars for us...

I think the credits-after-the-credits cover the "which version?" issue pretty well.  I personally wouldn't want "draft version" put over any part of the video on a full release, even if it was a draft.  It'd be too distracting for those who want to enjoy it.

Just be careful about setting those mileposts up in advance.  When you planned SW 2.0, you didn't know there'd be a 2.1 or 2.5 per se.  Those revisions were essentially created by problems found that were not planned for.

So if your first ESB with completely-revised despecialization is 2.5, what's to say this version won't also have some unplanned fixes requiring future iterations? I know you're learning a lot as you go, and ESB might therefore go more according to plan, but still... seems safest to target something less than 2.5 just to give some wiggle room.  Screw consistent versioning.

Well, I'm of two opinions on that.

While I think it's great we have a complete mono mix to work with at all, and that it sounds as good as it does, I think its audio quality really pales compared to our Laserdisc-sourced tracks. I find it a little jarring to watch some of our preservations with stunning video and mediocre audio, so I don't give the mono mix as much love as it deserves.

That said, the first time I heard the mono mix "theatrically", it was via a tiny plastic speaker hanging on the window of my parents' car. So to be honest, we'd really have to make it sound a whole lot worse to get "theatrical quality" ;)

FWIW, Feallan has some Polish VHS dubs for the complete OOT (not synced to any reference at the moment) and I'm getting copies of the audio just in case we can't find anyone to work on them for a while.  If anyone here has the time and skill to sync them to GOUT, let me know.

As long as all the intermediate versions wouldn't slow down your progress toward the final product, I'm okay with it.  But if it would end up slowing things down, I'd say plow straight ahead to the Blu-ray.

If you knew the speed and quality of my Internet connection, you'd be even more amazed...

Thanks--could you nuke the 5.1 torrent?  That version really does have some problems I'd rather not have floating out there.

Also, apparently version 6.1 got in under the wire to be included in Despecialized 2.5, so hurray for that! My metal body was fast enough, after all!

Project files have been updated to version 6.1 (original post has been updated as well). Please PM me for the temporary download links until the files are available in a more permanent location.

Rough summary of changes:

- Added Cantonese (scaled/verified), and promoted Mandarin/traditional from unverified to scaled/verified--big thanks to Laserman and none for this!

- Minor quality improvements to other scaled subtitles (Japanese and Thai).  Honestly probably not that different from 6.0.

That's it!  No changes from 6.0 for any other languages, or any text-derived subtitles at all.

If anyone is planning any exciting global travel, there were strong indications in another thread that there were GOUT releases in Greece, Turkey, and Russia.  I also speculate that there may also have been releases in South Korea and Israel, perhaps elsewhere.  Any of these would be in a good position to help us out with a number of our not-so-well-supported languages.

deho said:

Tried that, to no avail. But I found the culprit: It's VLC!

MPC and hardware players tend to work fine on subtitles with the single-frame-flash problem, so this was only ever a VLC-specific fix.  Sorry it didn't work, though.

deho said:

The subtitles are in srt format, but the flashing is exactly what I've experienced.

Actually the muxer (tsmuxer or mkvmerge) just converts the SRT files into a BD-SUP file on-the-fly and you never see it, so the muxer is the software creating a bad BD-SUP file.  No problem though--you can just demux the results to get the actual BD-SUP file it created.  Then import/export the file in BDSupEdit, and then remux the whole thing again, only this time mux your fixed BD-SUP file instead of the SRT file.

Er, I think... ;)

HanDuet said:

When deho sent me the updated German subtitles, he also mentioned the following:

deho said:

By the way, I've muxed [the subtitles] with mkvmerge and the resulting mkv played just fine and the subtitles were ok. Then I tried to mux it with tsmuxer, to create a Blu-ray folder structure, but vlc wouldn't display the subtitles correctly, no matter which edit I use. Are you aware of this problem?

Is that an issue someone here could look into? Thanks everyone!

IF the subtitles are in BD-SUP format (pre-rendered graphics, not text), AND the problem he saw was that the subtitles flashed by for a single frame and then disappeared, then yes I've seen this problem. The solution is easy--just import and re-export the BD-SUP file in BDSupEdit.  Whatever software originally created the BD-SUP files created buggy (but not atypical) output.

If the above doesn't exactly describe the problem, more info is most certainly needed.

You could also provide downloads for alternate formats/lossless WAV/FLAC versions.

Well, if it's a factor, using an Arcsoft DLL with eac3to, you can supposedly extract the lossless track to WAV file(s), from the DTS-MA format. So those who want to have the lossless in another format could theoretically do this.

I'd say if you're going to do an MKV, put it out now.  I think MKV isn't really going to benefit from the things you're waiting for on the Blu (EDIT: and certainly a DVD downscale wouldn't), so it's already as good as it's going to get for that format. Plus, you know, we'll be able to spot how you forgot to remove one of Luke's CGI eyelashes, so you'll have to re-render for the Blu-ray anyway ;)

DuracellEnergizer said:

I wonder what kind of dreams he ended up having.

Mmmmm. Billy Dee Williams, you really need to ask?

YanniD said:

I thought Harmy was only rendering SWD at 720p, which is why the mkv is better as it can retain 24fps:  going to official Bluray at 720p means it must be 720p60 and therefore have frame repeats that introduce judder.

If I am mistaken and Harmy intends to render at 1080p24 for Bluray, even though I thought most of his modified source is 720p, then the Bluray will be a substantially larger download for no increase in detail and thus I would still prefer a 720p24 mkv.

Happy to be corrected if I have misunderstood anything.

Blu-ray supports 720p24, but HDMI does not.  So Blu-ray players convert 720p24 to either 1080p24 or 720p60.  The player decides whether you get judder or not, (hopefully) according to the capabilities of the display.

Laserschwert said:

generalfrevious said:

At least (hopefully) it won't be letterboxed like last time. I'd rather have a DNR'd OT than have them sit in a basement at LFL's offices.

It will definitely be letterboxed, because there are no anamorphic Blu-rays.

Don't be so sure. They could crop it to 16:9 ;-)

A new official OUT release just opens the discussion of how badly they could screw it up.  I still think the best-case scenario is they release the '81 crawl on Star Wars with the '93 mixes all around and they're still pretty faded.  The good news is that it pretty much has to be new scans.

So yeah, yay for new sources for Harmy to fix up and make presentable...

I don't know if my experience is representative, but I have seen better compatibility using DTS-MA.