CatBus

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.

Project files have been updated to version 6.0 (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.

The goal of this release was to get in one last push for global coverage before Harmy's big Star Wars Despecialized 2.5 release--not only by adding new languages, but also by trying to ensure playback compatibility across the widest possible range of devices. Quite a lot of the effort behind this release was just to get subtitles working better on ancient DVD players attached to CRTs, for example.

Some of the updates in this version are not trilogy-complete (Indonesian and Polish), and once these updates are completed for the entire trilogy, I plan to release another updated version (probably not anytime soon). However, I considered some of the other completed updates to be important enough to release the project in its current state without waiting for the pending updates.

Rough summary of changes:

- Added two new languages: Korean (unverified) and Indonesian (verified--Star Wars only, updates pending for other two films). We're (mostly) up to 26 languages now!

- Added Mandarin/traditional, as used in Taiwan (unverified)--I know there are official versions of these, and Cantonese too, on the Region 3 Taiwanese GOUT, so I hope to be able to update these with verified (scaled) subtitles later as well. Now that we're venturing into multiple writing systems and dialects within the same macrolanguage, calculating an exact number of languages supported by this project depends on how you define a distinct language, and I don't want to get into that business. So, as of this bullet point, I'm no longer keeping an exact count of supported languages. We've got around a couple dozen, and that's good enough for me.

- Major improvements to Polish subtitles. Promoted Polish status from "unverified" to "verified" (Star Wars only, updates pending for other two films). Thanks, Feallan!

- Fixed numerous minor punctuation problems in English subs, and even fixed some actual text errors in Jedi. I'm so embarrassed that I'm still finding English text errors...

- Fixed the framerate problem with 720p Thai subs.

- Gave up on trying to right-align double-dialogue in Arabic. It never worked quite right anyway (my rendering software barely supports RTL scripts as it is), so now it's center-aligned.

- Used a better scaling algorithm (hqx) to scale graphical-only subtitles (Japanese and Thai) from SD to 720p. I felt that the old upscaled subtitles didn't look bad per se, but were distractingly anachronistic--more like the onscreen text you'd see playing Super Mario Bros. in 1985 than watching a Blu-ray in 2013. The new ones are still neither as nice nor as flexible as the rendered subs for other languages, but until I can find volunteers to transcribe these subtitles into text files, these new upscales should be adequate for most purposes.

- Fixed a problem in 720p subs that would cause them to display improperly in VLC (they would appear for only one frame).

- Fixed a problem in DVD subs that would cause them to display improperly on some older hardware players (they would shake between scanlines). The fix for this issue requires that the DVD subtitle file sizes be nearly twice as large as those from earlier versions.

- Instructions for converting subtitles to other formats have been updated to ensure better compatibility with more authoring software and playback devices.

- Repositioned all DVD subtitles slightly so that they display nicely regardless of whether the player is in widescreen (16:9) or letterbox (4:3) mode (i.e. in letterbox mode, each line of a subtitle is now either entirely in or entirely out of the frame). This is relevant only for hardware DVD players--software players and Blu-ray players always use widescreen mode for anamorphic DVDs and just pad the top and bottom of the image for 4:3 displays. Subtitles in letterbox mode are not CIH-safe. Due to this widescreen/letterbox business and some other DVD arcana, I am now recommending against using matching subs on DVD projects.

With so much focus on issues of quantity (number of languages, number of playback devices), I hope more focus can be given to issues of quality in Project Threepio. I can personally vouch for the quality of only the English subtitles. Even the verified subtitles, while certainly good translations overall, may have occasional errors and inaccuracies. The unverified subtitles may vary anywhere from quite good to merely intelligible.

I'd love to get more community feedback on the quality of our non-English subtitles. With the release of a major Star Wars preservation which includes these subtitles, that may just start to happen.

Now with the offtopic stuff safely out of they way, we can get back to our regularly scheduled T-shirt design, router recommendation, Linux, anime, and general untargeted enthusiasm thread.

satanika said:

My (not so) quick ANSI logo attempt (simple image edit+convert):

Text version here, if it doesn't look similar to the above you need an nfo-viewer.

What software did you use for the image-to-NFO conversion?

SpilkaBilka said:

Not trying to belittle you or anything- just genuinely curious- if you're that sick of SW and haven't watched it in 10 years... why exactly are you posting on a SW website?

Well, I went a good decade or so myself before I found this place.  For a lot of people, Star Wars died when their VCR broke and they didn't know to look around in the dark corners of the Internet, because they remember the day Lucas told them their VHS tape was the end of the line for Star Wars, and they knew Star Wars was living on borrowed time even back then.  Yes, a True Believer would have scoured Goodwill for functional VHS players and eBay for replacement tapes, but that level of commitment, I felt, just made the whole situation of the trilogy seem more sick.  I let it die.

When I found this site years later, I still had a lot of misgivings that it was even possible that something like "fan preservations" could even really exist ("better than any commercial release? pschaw! how can it be?"), and just lurked for a bit.  But fast forward a little while later and I'm much happier now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and what brought me back? Having kids, and thinking to myself, "Oh God, they're going to be exposed to the Special Editions. What a friggen nightmare... well, off to the Internet to see what I can do about this." You can inoculate your kids against anything these days.  There's a chicken pox vaccine AND a Special Edition vaccine!

Yeah, I'd prefer front-only too.  I'm also OK with just Harmy Film... it's a subtle potential conversation starter, and a fantastic geek dog-whistle.  Seriously, if I saw that shirt across the room, I'd head over there to see if it was Puggo or some other luminary.  Or just Frink ;)