CatBus

From a complete anal-retentive point of view, you connected up the F and the I on the front, but not the back.  Also I believe the black interior of the text is completely opaque in the film.

But from a non-anal-retentive point of view, awesome.  I wonder if a subtitle like "Preserving Classic Cinema Since 2010" (or some such thing) might work.

EDIT: Nevermind about the subtitle, that would just make it look like my signature line (no wonder I liked the idea).  Carry on.

Just got verification that the Polish subs are pretty awful, which I kinda suspected anyway.  They may still be better than nothing, but maybe not much better ;)

Anyway, I have a volunteer offering to make them better, so hooray for that!

EDIT: FWIW, I'm also suspicious of Arabic, Croatian, Bulgarian, and at least for some of the films, Turkish. I suspect Romanian and Chinese are excellent.  Then again, I could be wrong about the whole lot.  The problem with using random fansubs as a source is that I don't know how fluent the author was in either the language in question or in English, and if they were even trying to translate from English, or maybe just transcribing a dub.  All I've got is Google Translate telling me that they are more-or-less in the approximate ballpark.

If you demux and remux just video and audio using tsmuxerGUI and the result syncs just as good as the original, then I think the problem is the mkv creation tool or configuration.  You could post in the technical how-to forum for advice.

Are both the audio and video from Harmy's original?  If not, where's the audio from?

Does the original 2.1 download play okay?  Maybe it's corrupt somehow?

Sorry, I'm pretty useless at troubleshooting this sort of thing.

Quick question for whoever's planning to do the official DVD downscales of these (Harmy or Chewtobacca): Previous DVD downscales included nominal analog blanking, which I'm assuming is the Right Thing To Do[TM] for some arcane technical reason I don't quite understand.

Is the plan to keep including nominal analog blanking?  I don't care one way or the other, I just want to know.  Changing this moves the top and bottom edges of the movie frame in or out about 4 pixels, which has a potential impact on subtitle placement.

So actually I do have an opinion--not changing this is less work for me, which I'm always in favor of.

Just to update everyone on the status of version 6...

I've been working on resolving some compatibility issues with SUP files generated from BDSup2Sub (discussion here), and that's taken care of now. If you see these compatibility issues yourselves, there's an easy solution for 720p subs and a very painful solution for DVD subs, both described in detail in the discussion link.

I've also been getting a lesson on the vagaries of how different DVD players can do totally different things with the exact same streams, and have concluded that if you're making a DVD project, and you don't control every single DVD player it's going to be played back on, don't bother with matching subs.  DVD players in widescreen 16:9 mode seem to do the right thing, but DVD players in 4:3 letterbox mode are not predictable, and they can effectively shift the subtitles out of the frame, making matching subtitles fairly useless, not to mention making all subtitles not CIH-safe (not that someone with a CIH system would use a DVD player in 4:3 letterbox mode, but still...).

Anyway, it's being worked on, and version 6 will be not only closer to universal language support, but also closer to universal playback device support.  So we'll have quantity on our side, even if some of the unverified subs are probably lacking in quality. 

Yeah, my process goes roughly like this:

1) You start with a subtitle in any state, in any format, made by any software.

2) BDSup2Sub converts the subtitle into a collection of DVD-sized PNGs and an XML file.  This collection is cropped.

3) The Perl script converts this collection into another collection of uncropped DVD-sized PNGs and an XML file.

4) You can then use BDSup2Sub with the /acrop:0 flag to convert this second collection back into a DVD subtitle.  And it's uncropped!

Well, the only good fix is to actually uncrop all subtitles when they are output in a DVD format--everything else is a half-measure to some degree.  The doubling of the filesize is concerning for media as space-limited as DVD, but I guess if it was optional there'd be no room to complain about that.

Well it turns off I'm terrible at putting things off.  Here is a (not permanent) link to the portion of the Project Threepio files that are applicable here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/3283096184/DVD-resources.rar

The instructions are in the _README.html, in the section about converting to other formats.  Hope this helps.  I probably will not be able to assist in writing any more code, but I could answer questions if that helps someone else get some use out of this.

For what it's worth, using a Perl script, ImageMagick, and an old version of BDSup2Sub, I think I've found a way to remove this jitter in a more-or-less automated fashion.  I'm still checking for bugs but things are very promising (my first "successful" run introduced some color problems, and I can't be sure there aren't other surprises lurking in there)

First off, you made an observation in another forum that you can check a subtitle for this problem by opening it in DVDSubEdit, enabling the zoom window, and then adjusting the vertical position.  If the image in the zoom window wobbles up and down one pixel as you adjust the position, the subtitle has this problem--otherwise it's good.  This is a nice way of testing if you don't have easy access to a problematic hardware player (or an endless stack of DVD-R's :-/ ).

Second, the problem seems to be caused entirely by cropping.  To fix this problem, BDSUp2Sub should not only avoid autocropping DVD subtitle formats, but should also actively UNCROP already-cropped subtitles if they are being output in a DVD format.  Uncropping the subs nearly doubles the file size, so I can see why a developer may choose not to implement this fix for a problem that affects so few(?) devices.  BDSup2Sub 4.0.1 (my preferred version because of its wildcard handling), allows the command line argument /acrop:0 which prevents cropping of uncropped sources, but it does nothing to fix already-cropped sources (and it doesn't work at all for GUI operations).

Assuming all goes well, I'll share my Perl script and instructions.  They are designed to work specifically with my project and will need some tweaks before they can be a more general-purpose solution.  For example, my scripts use 720p BD-SUP files as the source for the DVD subs, and all scripts assume the subs are widescreen.  Also, this was a quick-and-dirty solution, so the complete lack or error handling and horrifying code passing itself off as an XML parser may need some touching up.

This is a busy week for me too so don't expect too much right now.

Not frequently, but with the kids growing up to movie-watching-age I think that's likely to change...

I hate to keep spamming your thread, but here are my results--the BD-SUP method mentioned above is a winner for that particular quirk, but the DVD method doesn't do anything about the jitter.

The DVD player I was able to find that had the jittering effect was one that seemed to always output for a 4:3 display.  It was old and had no option to specify 16:9.  And I noticed that the jittery subtitles were shifted down in the frame from where I'd expect them to have been on a 16:9 display, so I believe it was doing something unique to the subtitles because of the display aspect ratio, even though the video content was anamorphic and it dealt with that fine.

I do not know if the player has to be in 4:3 output mode for this bug to get triggered, but that seems like a good lead.  Encoding the subs on the DVD as LB or WIDE didn't seem to change the behavior at all.  And the shimmering is not consistent either--some lines are almost perfectly stable, others are a jittery mess.

Do DVD subtitles contain both embedded LB and WIDE variations?  Is it possible the LB variant is screwed up and the WIDE one is fine, or that the LB variant is missing and the player tries to apply the WIDE one to the wrong AR somehow?

For what it's worth, I think BDSup2Sub-created files currently have two player compatibility problems.

First, the BD subs work fine on all hardware players I've tested and on MPC, but flash for an instant and disappear on VLC.  I've found that you can "fix" BD-SUP files created by BDSup2Sub by running them through BDSupEdit (just open and re-save the file, no changes).  The resulting file then works fine on both MPC and VLC, and I suspect it will also work on a hardware player although I haven't tested that yet.

Second, the DVD subs wiggle around on some hardware players (still not sure what the criteria are for which ones do this).  I've found that if you use BDSup2Sub to create a SUB/IDX file, and then use SubToSup to create a SUP file, the resulting SUP file is different than the SUP file that would have been created directly from BDSup2Sub (binary compare shows they are different).  How different?  Fixed?  That part I don't know yet, I'm still looking for good test hardware.  I thought maybe Doctor M could try it out.

Anyway, I'm pretty reliant on BDSup2Sub for a lot of heavy lifting on my project, so finding a simple process to fix these issues without having to completely replace my existing processes is appealing to me.

My completely uninformed guess is that the error is in how they interlace the subtitle images.  "Smart" deinterlacers such as you'd find in software players, upscaling DVD players, and Blu-ray players can probably handle it, but dumb deinterlacers in TV sets cannot.  I believe I've seen this before but I thought it was a one-off--I don't have good equipment for testing it...

I'd like to see the manual version if you still have it.  Even if it's just via PM and not very well formatted.

Doctor M said:

Just an update, the BDSup2Sub jittering issue may only be apparent if you play back on a 480i device.  (Not many people have noticed it.)

Someone new has taken up development of the software and has stated that he will take a look at the issue in the future, so I can't see making a modification to the guide at this point.

If anyone does have an issue with subtitles displaying badly with the guide as it currently is, PM me and I'll post the old (longer) method as a stop gap.

Was this issue ever fixed?  I rely on BDSup2Sub pretty heavily in my project and want to make sure it's not affected.

Rory Pond is Yoda!

Nevermind.  Looking at his lips, it's clearly a "V" and not an "X", so it's Five-Seven.

A question for everyone: Harmy just released his first ESB test clip, and I've had the chance to listen to some Hoth dialogue over and over and over...

Luke's line: Echo Station Five-Seven. We’re on our way.

Sure sounds to me like he's really saying: Echo Station Fox-Seven. We’re on our way.

Some Googling indicates I'm not the first to feel that way, but most people hear it as Five-Seven.  What's your take?  Again, I don't care what name the script says or what the EU has standardized on, I care what Mark Hamill actually said, even if it was a flub.  However this is the sort of thing that I'm not certain enough to change without some independent verification.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the new languages will be Korean and Indonesian, but it's taking a while because I've got a native speaker actually going through and verifying the Indonesian.  Harmy's got the files for Star Wars, I'm waiting on the rest of the trilogy.

EDIT 2: The alternate way to hear Luke's line is that the dipthong for "i" is really drawn out, so it's "Echo Station Fahvs Seven".  Which is plausible and why I've leaving it alone unless I hear some good convincing outside input.

poita said:

Has anyone converted the Harmy releases to standard DVD? If so, how do they look?

Chewtobacca has regularly created DVD5's in the past, and they look great.  One soundtrack (5.1 AC3), no other features.  I like to add a few extra audio tracks and make a DVD9 from it.

EDIT: Especially with the 1.0's some people even prefer the DVD downscale because it evens out the differences between HD and GOUT footage.  FWIW I believe Chewtobacca is planning to do the same for 2.5 or will provide Harmy with his scripts so Harmy can do it straight from his sources.

No Japanese audio on these.  You'd have to mux it in yourself (files available on alt.binaries.starwars)

TV's Frink said:

We also used to trust leeches to make us feel better. :p

What do you mean "used to"?

70mm 5.1 mix FTW.  Historically accurate, high quality, AND makes good use of a modern home theatre.  The mono mix is interesting to me too, but I just can't get into it for whatever reason--quality issues, too used to the stereo variants from home video, whatever it is.  '77 stereo is too close to 70mm to be that interesting to me, and '85 and '93 stereo just seem wrong to use without the '81 crawl and flyover.  YMMV.

And you didn't notice my post contained two of the Internet's most common spelling/grammar mistakes?  Now I has a sad.

Davnes007 said:

It's 'should have'...NOT 'should of '.

I have a feeling we're going to loose this battle.  It's usage is already very common. ;)