CatBus

yoda-sama said:

In all fairness Chyron, you could probably make a .ASS subtitle file that'd have a pleasing enough font, still not be burned into the video and be usable across a large number of software and hardware players.  But it'll be burned in, so no worries.

.ASS doesn't give you anything more than .SRT in this context except better positioning options.  The font can be very pleasing but still not accurate--in fact I find the theatrical subs to be harder to read than font-generated subs.  But readability and pleasing appearance are not the point.  Chyron wants theatrically accurate subs, which I don't think is unreasonable for a theatrical reconstruction.  The only way to achieve theatrical accuracy is PGS or burnt-in, and PGS doesn't work everywhere.  You can't work around this by changing the format of a text file.

You CAN get something that makes both you and Chyron happy by using multiple angles.  This path is not a dead end, unlike the path you are on right now.

yoda-sama said:

Chyron, I agree about the typeface, but if the font and position could be reproduced correctly as a Blu-ray subtitle, would that not be close enough?

The whole thing is doable, theatrically accurately, as a Blu-ray subtitle.  But each subtitle would consist of hundreds of images, accounting for gate weave, inconsistent positioning, a mostly-transparent rectangular bounding box to simulate the compositing effect, etc.  It'd be done as a long, long series of hand-adjusted images, not rendered text, in order to be theatrically accurate.  I don't volunteer for this.  Also this method would only work reliably on Blu-ray and AVCHD, it may not work on MKV, and it wouldn't necessarily work on software players at all, and it would also suck when scaled down to DVD because DVD subtitles don't have the necessary color palette (or alpha) to be convincing.

The next best thing, and far easier and more compatible thing, is burnt-in.  Hey, do you want theatrical accuracy or don't you? ;)  I spent a long time trying to match the theatrical font and placement with a traditional subtitle, and really, you just can't do it convincingly.  You can get close, but not close enough to seem like the real thing (check the last image in the first post of the Project Threepio thread for an example).

For your particular complaint, multi-angle with burnt-in angles and a subtitle-free angle is the way forward.  It's just not an easy way forward.

FWIW, if whatever authoring tool you choose doesn't accept BD-SUP subtitles, it's pretty trivial to convert them to BDN+XML with bdsup2sub.  There's a sample command line to do this as a single batch process in the Project Threepio README if you still have it.

EDIT: Regarding burnt-in subs, alternate angles is ultimately the ideal way to handle subs for multiple languages while at the same time maintaining theatrical fidelity.  Each language with theatrically-accurate subs could have its own angle, and the rest could get standard subtitles overlaid on a subtitle-free angle (more-or-less the same for the crawl, and even credits).  But multi-angle is non-trivial, and besides I'd have to re-render most of my project :-/

Any progress to report Teeceezy?  I'd sure love to hear these!

lpd said:

But once again i've never had an edition of Star Wars that reminded me of what it used to look like as much as this one.

Agreed.  After 2.5, I feel the remaining despecializations would be so minor that I might not even notice them if I was trying.  In fact, if Disney released the "original" Star Wars (most likely scenario with the 81 crawl/93 audio/not great colors), I'd probably stick with Harmy's.  So to quote Harmy from earlier: "Harmy wins."  I guess there's also a little bit after that quote you could fill in the blanks for, too.

TK421138 said:

The original 1977, 1980, and 1983 sound mixes are all at significantly lower levels than the Hairy Hen 5.1 Purist mix on my copies of the DE ED editions.

Well, I haven't verified this, but I would not be surprised at all.  All of our audio resources were made by different people from different sources, and different levels is a sign of that.

Also, different mixes have different dynamics, so there is simply no way to make the levels match exactly all the way through.  If you match peak levels, then the '85 mix will be louder than the '93 mix because the '85 mix has no dynamic range.  Matching "normal dialogue" levels doesn't really work with Star Wars because the movies are so driven by the score, and it ends up matching even worse.  So no matter how you try to make them match, they won't match exactly.  Not to mention the fact that DTS is louder than AC3.  And let's not even get into the dubs.

That said, I'm sure they could be better-matched than they are right now, and I apologize for my contribution to the problem.  The 85 mix was normalized 3dB louder than hairy_hen's mixes, and I didn't think it was my place to make changes to someone else's work, so the DTS track I gave Harmy is exactly as I found it.  For my own personal collection, I reduced the volume by 3dB so at least the peaks match (if nothing else).  Then when Harmy wanted a lossy option, I was lazy and gave him my -3dB modified version.  But it's in AC3 format which means it still won't match peak levels with hairy_hen's lossless track...

Is it prediction time again?  I can try to see if I can be more wrong than the last time... lessee April 21st 2013 17:22:21.282.  You can bank on it.

msycamore said:

When I saw the film when I was a kid, I completely failed to recognize what he/she was wearing and thought it was just a phony looking trunk.

Um, so now you've made me feel bad for asking, but...  if it's not a phony looking trunk... what is it?

I'm just proud to be a member of a forum where the "Stormtrooper white crotch debate" is a thing!

TK421138 said:

Catbus, I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you for this fantastic project. You did on hell od a job and your read me was written so well that, though I was nervous I might actually screw something up, I was able to mux in subs like a pro. I can't tell you how happy my deaf friend was when I presented him with these discs and told him that they had subtitles. He sent me a text saying that these were the nicest, easy to read subs he's seen on a dvd EVER. Plus, now I can enjoy Star Wars while my partner is asleep without having to turn up the volume too loud. So there you go, two lives touched by your dedication.

That is great to hear.  The thing that got me started on this project was making good SDH subs for a deaf friend of mine, so I'm very pleased to hear more deaf viewers like it too.  I really spent more time on those SDH subs than anything else.  Also, good to hear feedback about the README file, I tried to make it pretty easy to follow and I'm glad to hear it worked out.

One thing I do feel the need to point out, and this is not a poke at you or a complaint, merely made me chuckle a bit. When you watch Star Wars with the subs but the mono track enabled, when the Stormtroopers are checking the doors of Mos Eisley and they say "The door's secure, move on etc.." the subs still read "the door is locked." I know you can't have a mono sub and a stereo sub, just thought it was worth mentioning.

This is, as you pointed out, fairly unavoidable due to subtle variations in the sound mixes, I opted for matching stereo/70mm because it's the most popular option and the default on most preservations.

...BUT, you'll notice that there IS in fact a mono SRT file in the project files for fans of the mono mix, it just hasn't been pre-made into a SUP file.  It's a little more involved to make the SUP files, but the process is described in the README.  And there's even a mono SDH file in there too!

Cobra Kai said:

It's not the title menu, it's for the extras, and do you really not understand the significance of the animation there? 

It's quite possible he, and many others, may not.  For a lot of people, they saw the SE's in 1997, declared them to be an abomination, and never saw or thought much about them again.  The details of what exactly made it an abomination were forgotten well over a decade ago (maybe they remember the "Han Shot First!" controversy more from the T-shirt than from the actual scene)--they just stopped paying attention to Star Wars developments and they stopped watching Star Wars entirely when their VCR broke.  Seriously, I went about 10 years without giving a damn about Star Wars.  It happens.

That said, a sense of humor about this situation is good, and I think the menu animation handles it nicely.  Some people won't get it, and that's OK.

chyron8472 said:

poita said:

I had a look at a 35mm print of ESB last year that had only been screened 3 times and had been kept in climate controlled storage. It had very little fade, [...] I only wish the owner would consent to having it scanned.

Sounds like a delicate subject to broach. Not sure how I would word that.

It seems this ground may have been covered before ;)

If they are afraid that their scans will end up out in the public (exposing them to legal issues), assure them they won't by requesting something that is unusable as anything except a color reference.

e.g. Scale images down to standard definition or less, and only one frame per second of film.  For example ;)

Or, since we don't likely have time for him to get such a big thing together, scans of a single frame per scene or so, reduced to SD.  You can't do anything useful with that, except color reference.  You can also provide a testimonial that Harmy will keep even these low-res scans private, because he's done it before.

Heck, even pics taken from a camera during the screening could be of some value (also scaled down).  The ones of the Senator screening were pretty close even with all the auto-white-balance stuff cameras do.  Just ask for another screening with cameras permitted, and allow him to limit the images and resolutions that would be shared.

Nope, neither of those are perfectly synced.  But honestly they are close enough for most people.  If you made something that matched that, 98% of people would be happy.  And I could patch it myself for the anal-retentive crowd.  But following the instructions above, you should be able to get yours synced without a perfect reference track.

The original project files contain a _REAME.html file explaining all the technical stuff... I'm assuming what you downloaded was SRT files only?  If you want selectable subtitles on an AVCHD, I'd recommend getting the full project files for the SUP files and the instructions.

Harmy said:

Should I make a VHS version too? It's 2013.

 

There's this farmhouse out in the country I stay at sometimes.  They've got this huge bookshelf of books, and on the shelf are about six VHS tapes.  Three of them are the '97 OT Special Editions.  Every time I walk past them, I have to say to myself "Just walk on by.  Don't say anything.  Just walk on by."  I don't even know where the TV is in that place, so what's the purpose...

But now that you brought it up, I think I may make a VHS transfer.  I still won't know where the TV is, but first things first.

BTW, are we rendering yet?

One more thing, to get the timing exactly right, the frame you trim at 1:38:33 should be the last frame before the cut, and the frames you add at 47:37 should be the first frames after the wipe is complete.  Uh.. at least I think so...

Teeceezy said:

My expertise in film audio is virtually non-existent. I've used ACID, Audacity and FL Studio for a few years, and have done a bit of video production at University, but it's unlikely anything I ouput would be at the same standard as a lot of the audio work on this forum. So far I have aligned the digital rips against other GOUT-synced audio sources, and patched the disc change gaps with the analogue captures of the theatrical mixes. Outside of that, and matching the master gain to fall in line with other mixes I have not made any changes.

I will scan over these in the next few days, and see what needs fixing. Does anyone know of any particular defects that are in these mixes already?

ROTJ GOUT NTSC-based audio (unfortunately, this includes most of our GOUT-synced audio resources) will fall out of sync with PAL-based projects (all of our big ones) at about 47:37 (just after Luke's last scene on Dagobah) and will continue to be out-of-sync until 1:38:33 (after some Ewoks jump over a log), after which the sync problem becomes so minor you don't notice it anymore.  It's worst when you're watching Han speak--other characters either don't move their mouths as much, or speak more slowly, so it's always worst with Han.  At its worst, it's only a two-frame sync problem, so some don't notice it at all, but I sure do.

The easiest way to fix this is, once you're done syncing to NTSC, trim one frame from 1:38:33, and then add two frames to 47:37, and patch over the transitions to smooth it out.  Ta-daa, it now syncs perfectly with Harmy/dark_jedi/You_Too's projects.

As for the digital rips in particular, I just casually listened enough to declare they sounded great, and to hope someone synced them, sorry ;)

EDIT: Although I'd certainly be willing to give your files-in-progress a test-listen... ;)

First of all--yes, this project has the whole trilogy available in all languages.  The subs are in various formats depending on what you're looking for--SRT for software/HTPC playback and SUP for DVDs, Blu-rays, and AVCHDs.  English has a couple variations just on its own--typical and SDH (hard of hearing).

The complete project (all languages/all movies/all formats) is available on MySpleen and a.b.starwars.  The project package is big, because it has everything.  MKVCorp said he uploaded the SRT files only to some web hosters, and you could contact him for the links.  I'm a little hands-off on this project right now due to a new baby, so hopefully that will be enough to get you going.

Teeceezy said:

As far as I am aware schorman has these, and they are part of the Star Wars Laser Disc Audio Archive on the 'Spleen. I am looking into syncing these rips to match the other GOUT-synced mixes, as the jump between the Digital rips and the Analogue ones is night and day.

Excellent news.  Please consider patching over any problem areas (dropouts, pitch warbles) with the best available other sources, and also making the ROTJ sync match the PAL framecount.  Can't wait to hear these all synced up--you're right they sound pretty great unsynced already.

Oh I know.  There's definitely going to have to be some sort of sanity checking of any adjustments, but I thought it could be a good first step.

AntcuFaalb said:

The 1985 CAV P&S LD of The Empire Strikes Back might be a good color reference.

I know that the 1985 CAV P&S LD of A New Hope has surprisingly-accurate colors, as it was pressed from a 1982 master.

Would it be possible to see some screencaps of both?  i.e. using the Star Wars caps, we could see if there's any global problems to that master/transfer (such as desaturation, weak yellows, poor contrast, etc) because we have such good references there.  Then we could look at the Empire screencaps and see if it could possibly be that we could apply the same global fixes there.  Just a thought.

Speaking of audio, Belbucus' Audio Resources seem to be missing many critical parts AFAICT (it's pretty old).  If anyone can help, let me know.

For those still not quite sure what the difference is between Andrea's project and my own, it's the old and sometimes controversial distinction between "subtitles" and "dubtitles".

Dubs are rarely literal translations of the original dialogue and necessarily introduce some changes.  My project's subs attempt to be literal translations of the English audio; this project would create subs that literally match the dubs.  Both are "literal", but based on two different audio references.  Feel free to use any of my subs as a starting point or reference if it would help.

yoda-sama said:

What I'm wondering is in what aspects exactly does it best it?  ...did they somehow mess up how things sound in general; are the audio channels perhaps messed up, or something sound weird throughout, etc.?

I think an audio guy might have a more technically accurate description of what they did, but in 2004, they really screwed up the audio globally, and they never really undid it.  It's really screwed up for sure, but I can't say which knobs the audio guy couldn't stop messing with.  All I know is they should have fired him for the 2006 DVDs, and they appear to have promoted him so he could do the Blu-rays.  The 97 mix wasn't bad, except for the SE changes.

yoda-sama said:

...in '77 in a backwater theater that only had the mono track...

Actually in '77, I believe the term for that sort of theatre was a typical theatre.  But yeah, times change and I think that of the original mixes, the 70mm mix has aged best, YMMV.