CatBus

Well, let’s see how it pans out, but yeah. I’m hopeful!

Apparently there was a Turkish theatrical dub, never released on home video. More to come on this later, I hope! 😉

That would be the way to do it, definitely.

The front cover of the Navajo version can be found here:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Star-Wars-Episode-IV-A-New-Hope-Navajo-Limited-Edition-Widescreen/33963129

A discussion here can be found on this forum:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Episode-IV-A-New-Hope-Special-Navajo-Edition-Official-DVD-Released/id/47569

The problem with the Turkish dub is that the dub was made for the 1997 version, so when released with later edits, the dub of the ESB Vader/Emperor scene is reverted back to the English version (because the dubbed Turkish dialogue no longer matched the altered scene). If there was a complete Turkish dub, it’d have to be from VHS/Laserdisc/TV broadcast of the 1997 version. I’ll PM you for more info.

I believe localized crawls were made for the unaltered original trilogy for German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. A localized Special Edition home video crawl was made for Navajo (Star Wars only).

I know localized credits exist, but I don’t know for which languages (probably the first five). I don’t know if dubbing credits were included – there was no theatrical dub for ROTJ in Japanese, for example – that was all-subtitled until the later home video dubs were made.

I don’t follow much beyond the unaltered forms of the original trilogy, so there could have been a great deal of movement on this front in the past couple decades.

Also, I would not count on the text in Project Threepio to accurately reflect the localized crawl, if you decide to go digging in there. IIRC, there’s a typo in the localized French crawl which is fixed in the subtitles. But if you want the text for the Navajo crawl, that’s verbatim (sans Episode IV: A New Hope), albeit not in fancy scrolling yellow text.

Also, if you actually have access to complete, non-mangled Original Trilogy (SE is OK) dubs in Hindi, Tamil, Galician, or Turkish, let me know ASAP, as I’m very interested in those – I have all of these, but with some glaring missing sections. Or if you have any other unusual original trilogy dubs I’d be interested in.

PM sent.

No problem. Long pedantic answers on obscure topics are my specialty!

Both GOUT and theatrical refer to the unadulterated versions of the films. When films were released on home video, it was pretty typical for a few frames to get dropped, most typically at reel changes, but sometimes elsewhere. Honestly it’s not unusual for theatrical showings to also be missing frames at reel changes. Theatrical refers to that perfect set of every single frame ever on any projection prints. GOUT refers to a set of frames used by one of the most common, and most complete home video releases. Even when dealing with the exact same cut of a film, if you use a slightly different set of video frames, this affects sync, thus the terms “GOUT sync” and “theatrical sync”.

GOUT is a frame standard that dates from back when people were ripping Laserdiscs, based on the 1993 Definitive Collection Laserdiscs. These were re-released, with the crawl reverted to its original form, thirteen years later as a DVD bonus disc known around here as the GOUT. There were actually two GOUT standards, NTSC GOUT, and PAL GOUT, and they did not have exactly the same set of frames. If they don’t specify, people usually mean NTSC GOUT. There are nearly thirty years worth of synced audio and subtitles scattered over the Internet all using the GOUT standard, so if you just find some random Star Wars audio track, more likely than not, it’s GOUT-synced.

Theatrical is something we’re pretty sure about at this point, but technically we could still be surprised by an extra frame on some print floating around out there. Based on what we know right now, it goes like this:

Star Wars theatrical = NTSC/PAL GOUT + 1 extra frame
Empire theatrical = same as PAL GOUT, or NTSC GOUT + 2 extra frames
Jedi theatrical = NTSC GOUT + 2 frames, or PAL GOUT + 1 frame

Despecialized is GOUT-synced throughout, although the current Empire sync is off by one frame due to a mistake (if you add a one-frame offset to your audio/subtitle tracks, it goes back to perfect sync). 4K77 is GOUT-synced, and 4K83 is theatrically synced.

One frame is about 42ms, two frames is about 83ms – certainly the visuals from that number of frames are nothing you would notice was missing or not. And for subtitles, that amount of difference is irrelevant as well. Project Threepio is GOUT-synced, but it works fine with 4K83 with no modifications. Audio is another matter. A two-frame difference between audio and video is definitely something I can notice (and I was shocked to discover it’s bad enough I can notice it with dubs as well), but some don’t notice it at all. One frame is probably less than I could notice, but I’m sure others could.

In short, no matter which frame standard you use, you’re getting the original unadulterated cuts of the films. No special edition revisionist nonsense either way. But you can’t mix-and-match between the two standards haphazardly, or some percentage of the audience is going to think the audio’s annoyingly out of sync. IMO the main problem with trying to get people to change from GOUT to theatrical is that the standards are too close. If they were off by a full half-second or something, it would be clear when there was a mismatch. But as it stands, mismatched audio is just too easy to pass off as close enough.

The UHD/D+ versions are synced to some other Special Edition frame standard I don’t know anything about. If it’s not the original versions, I don’t really follow it.

2/3, except that “never” means copyright expiration.

PM sent.

I have a lot of the dubs, can you be more specific about which tracks you want?

This is an open call for translation help. I have a handful of lines I’d like to confirm/improve translations for – they are all for “alternate” versions of the subtitles, like for the mono mixes or the 81 crawl, and so on.

I have template files and probably pretty good translations for all supported languages already, but could use some help confirming everything is good/making things a bit better.

I need help with every single language supported by Project Threepio except English (even languages with limited support like Navajo and Hindi).

So far, I’ve gotten assistance with:

• Polish
• Turkish
• Finnish
• Hebrew
• American Spanish
• Swedish
• Czech
• Arabic
• Hungarian
• French

I’ve got help on the way for:

• Castilian Spanish

If you know a supported language not already covered and want to help, send me a PM. Again, this is a small job, not an entire film – only about ten lines to translate, and I already have some possibly good enough translations from other sources.

And yes, this does mean the next Project Threepio will support all of the different pre-97 versions of the trilogy.

44rh1n said:

Disney is literally sitting on a gold mine with this.

Stage 1 😉

Lots of classic films (My Fair Lady, Lawrence of Arabia, for example), have had partially or completely destroyed negatives and managed to go on to have extraordinary restorations, using IP’s, private collector prints, and so on. That said, the film stock quality for those films was much better than the film stock used for Star Wars and Empire. It’s a matter of will, and that’s the main thing missing at Lucasfilm.

PM sent.

Well, as this is Despecialized, we’re frequently talking about 4K77 and UHD footage on different parts of the exact same frame.

It occurred to me to do a COVID bump for this thread.

Are you stuck in your house with nothing but the sound of your own voice to keep you company? Do you have access to recording equipment? Do you have any experience at all in radio or voice performance work? Do you think getting paid is overrated? Do we have an opportunity for you!

Seriously, though, it’s a lot of work. We have some scripts you’d need to read, and they are long, because they cover six hours of movies. The recordings need to be good quality, with no background noise. You might be asked to do some of the lines over again. But in the end you’ll be helping the visually impaired enjoy these classic films.

Send me a PM or respond here if you’re interested.

bttfbrasilfan said:

if the goal is to make 4K77 look closer to the 4K UHD official release

I think the goal is simply to make it blend, by hook or crook. You could also add grain to the UHD in order to make it blend better with 4K77. And you’ll have to add grain to the UHD, at the very least to cover up the frozen grain, but also because to most observers, the whole thing is too far gone in the DNR direction.

But that doesn’t mean you have to make everything as grainy as 4K77, you could degrain one, and regrain the other, and meet in the middle. I expect that’s what’s likely to happen.

Beware temporal degraining – aggressive use of this technique is likely what led to the frozen grain plaguing the UHD’s. But in moderation, it could be useful.

Link to start of previous discussion:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-V27-MKV-IS-OUT-NOW/id/12713/page/671#1363149

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

bttfbrasilfan said:

https://youtu.be/pdh-29ZRUUA

Maybe this technique will work great to remove grain and enhance detail in shots that don’t have too much motion?

Why would we want to remove grain? The UHD is already overly grain “managed”.

When you mix 4K77 (heavy grain) and the UHD (little/frozen grain), something’s gotta give or they won’t blend seamlessly. A mixture of degraining and fake grain is pretty much inevitable at some level.

I wasn’t able to repro the issue either, both VLC and MPC-HC, the only software video players I’d ever used. So IMO whatever I saw was either a bug fixed in a newer release, or something in the Windows audio mixdown to stereo, which may be different since I’m using a different machine now than when I saw this before.

PM sent. If you are fluent in both Japanese and English, I’d love some help comparing two different translations to see if one is distinctly better than the other.

PM sent.

Woohoo! A whole reel! Oh, and the colors look good too 😉

There’s a README file included with the project which explains all of the file names. I haven’t used the term “forced” in years, so I think you have a very old version. I sent you a link to the current version.

Summary of the meanings of the various filenames:

• mono: indicates subtitles designed to accompany the unique dialogue in the mono mix
• SDH: indicates subtitles designed for the deaf and hard of hearing
• full: everything is subtitled
• titles (previously forced): only onscreen text is subtitled, to accompany a dub that does not voice over the onscreen text (and/or alien languages)
• native: no onscreen text is subtitled, designed to accompany video that already includes burnt-in alien subtitles
• nocrawl: the opening titles and crawl are not subtitled, typically designed to accompany video that does not include burnt-in alien subtitles
• match: same as native, but designed to mimic the appearance of theatrical alien subtitles
• alien-35mm: subtitles for alien dialogue only, taken directly from 35mm film elements
• alien-reconst: subtitles for alien dialogue only, rendered to look almost exactly like reference images of the theatrical alien subtitles
• template: used only for creating new subtitles
• compat: indicates that the text is specially formatted for broader compatibility with media players

Oh, and IMO it’s not entirely clear the problem is a missing center channel. You should still get dialogue bleed-over in the L/R channels if you just mute the center. But this thing, IIRC, was just zero dialog, like a whole different mix, or something created from combining the surround channels only. I’ll also see if I can repro the issue here, but it may take a while.