CatBus

Leonardo said:

CatBus said:

3PO would have to fill in for all of R2's parts.  I hate to think how HE'D have to interface with the imperial network.  Nope, can't unthink that thought...

Ahhh, thank you very much CatBus! Now I can't help but imagine 3PO shutting down the garbage mashers on the detention level by frenetically humping a hole in the wall.

Also, consider: the power socket gag in ESB would have been funnier, and you'd always have a vague icky feeling whenever 3PO claimed to be "human-cyborg relations".

3PO would have to fill in for all of R2's parts.  I hate to think how HE'D have to interface with the imperial network.  Nope, can't unthink that thought...

Episode VII: Resuscitation of the Franchise

Episode VIII: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Resuscitator

Episode IX: Flatlining But Still Merchandisable (The Big Cash-In)

I'd personally hate to lose even more grain than we already have from the Special Edition's Lowryization process.  A little grain filtering is already baked into the SE because of that!  If anything, I'd imagine a proper restoration from original negatives would have more grain than we're currently seeing.  IIRC Harmy does add fake grain to his low-grain sources (GOUT, matte paintings, etc) so that they aren't quite as jarringly different from the surrounding scenes, but I don't find anything to be too grainy--in fact, I'm always pleased to see how much grain the film has retained.  Grainy film is IMO an essential part of the 70's aesthetic; I'd probably find it distracting if there were noticeably less of it.

Also, low-res sample clips may have extra artifacts from heavy compression, which won't be in the final product.

EDIT: You'll also see more grain in brightened scenes (the ground in the redone sunset, for example)--but that's not because grain was added, it's because the Blu-ray hid a lot of grain by making scenes overly dark, and Harmy's just revealing it again through brightening.

Easterhay said:

What could I do but shrug and say - once again - "They messed up."

You could have been a little more explicit, such as: "They weren't very careful with continuity problems when they made the prequels."  And you could even explain what continuity is, how there's people whose job is to maintain continuity, and how there was actually no continuity problem with this scene until they made the prequels.

But yeah, they messed up a lot of things in the prequels, not just continuity.  Oh well, your kid's pretty astute to pick up on things like that.

khaosxrevolution said:

Wouldn't you rather have them watch something like the Phantom Menace instead of a cheap Disney movie?

No--a thousand times no!  There's some great Disney films out there--even some mildly sci-fi ones with explosions and adventures, if that's their taste.  IMO Phantom Menace doesn't measure up by any standard to something like Lilo & Stitch, or even its cheap direct-to-video antecedents.  Cheap Disney shlock all the way here.

Given the choice between two movies, I'd always show my kid a better movie over a worse movie.  So they may very well see TPM some day, but only when the only other choice is ROTS.

Check MySpleen.  You can get an invite for the site from WalkingDork.

Follow the image link in my signature for information about subtitles.

Harmy said:

OK, here's the final coloring of the Ben scene. Pay no mind to the resolution of the v2.1 sample (bottom), it's just a quick draft render to show the colors:

http://uloz.to/x3eUYAJ/ben-test-new-mp4

I'm glad you took another crack at this, Harmy.  Looks better from what I can tell.

Also, for DVD burning, I use muxman+imgburn, which can do as many audio tracks as the DVD bitrate allows.  I'd suggest using the existing good-looking DVD5 downscale for the video, rather than trying to make your own downscale.  Adding multiple audio tracks will just push it to a DVD9 size.

Harmy said:

Now lets talk other mixes in lossless, would there even be a point to something like that, since they don't come from lossless sources?

Did you just diss on Laserdisc?  I'm standing back...

I'd say all mixes are potential candidates for lossless encoding.  Certainly we already have Belbucus' mono mix in lossless format around here somewhere...

Darth Mallwalker said:

So if I've been paying attention...
This will match PAL GOUT's frame count? (while running at NTSC frame rate)

Correct.

This part baffles me.
Is it going back in the vault?
Superseded by a Special Edition?
This is your Last Chance To Own...

;) My free filehosting links will eventually expire and I don't plan to re-upload.

In response to some questions: the sync problem in the original file starts about 0:48 and lasts until around 1:38, where it becomes much less severe and in my opinion becomes unnoticeable.  It continues at this less severe level until the end of the film.  So for about 50 minutes mid-film, there's a noticeable (to me) problem with audio sync.  It's most noticeable when Han is speaking.  It's not as noticeable with other characters, either because they speak more slowly or because they don't move their mouths as much.  Anyway, at its worst, the sync problem is only two frames--pretty minor.

Also this is a limited-time offer.

I’ve done another audio experiment, and fixed the sync issue with hairy_hen’s 5.1 ROTJ mix.  Not that the issue was terribly noticeable to most, but it bugged me enough to do this.

The fixed audio is available in lossy (448k AC3) and lossless (DTS-MA).  Contact me if you’re interested.

Fair warning, my audio work is pretty amateurish compared with h_h’s, but I’ve only edited it in two spots for a grand total of less than two seconds altered, and I think it sounds pretty good.  YMMV.

There were lots of complaints for lots of reasons issued via PM's that we did not see in this thread, many of which were just "guesses" about how to improve the scene without actually having access to the reference frames.  I certainly know I made an attempt myself, which apparently directly contradicted someone else's attempt.  To me, the brightened scenes just don't look quite right in 2.0--but not having the reference, I can't say definitively what's wrong with them, and I defer to Harmy.

But I do have a bias: I'm in favor of abandoning IB fidelity whenever the IB exposure was clearly off--which would make it something other than a theatrical reconstruction.  Harmy's goal is IB fidelity all the way through.

Oh yeah, and Harmy--do you have any insight into whether you're going to be able to get a lossless audio track from hairy_hen for this?  I fear from his extended silence that he may not make your Christmas deadline.

If you mean the official Lucasfilm Blu-ray, then no, it's not synced to that.

If you mean Harmy's upcoming Despecialized 2.1 Blu-ray, then yes, it's synced to that.

...and if you have Turkish dubs synced to Harmy's releases (especially if you have the whole trilogy), boy would I like to hear those!

dr.olds said:

CatBus said:

Yes, they are available.  They are on MySpleen and alt.binaries.starwars for download under the name "Project Threepio".

great :)

but can can you explain me , how to load ? i don't know myspleen or any binaries ...

MySpleen is a website: www.myspleen.org. If you need an invitation to log in, contact walkingdork.  alt.binaries.starwars is a newsgroup, if you have newsgroup access.

Yes, they are available.  They are on MySpleen and alt.binaries.starwars for download under the name "Project Threepio".

dr.olds said:

i did not read all 276 pages , so i'm asking here : does anybody know if there are subtitles for the episodes 5 and 6 too ?

Click the image link in my signature.

FYI, it was another boy!  A friend of mine had jokingly offered to show my kids how to throw a ball properly, and I'm afraid I may have to take him up on it now.

The baby appears to be a procrastinator ;)

FYI, for those of you using Thai subs, the 720p Thai subs are marked with the wrong framerate.  This is easily fixable... open them in BDSup2Sub (4.0.1) and change the framerate from 23.976 to 23.976 (yes, the "from" and "to" framerates should be the same), then export the result.  The Thai DVD subs are timed correctly.  I've provided updated files to Harmy.

Hal 9000 said:

I think the concern is that seeing the title "Despecialized Edition" in the menu right before watching the film only reminds them that the Special Editions exist. 

Any sort of customization is possible for those who want to author their own BD's using the streams Harmy provides...

PM sent!

negative1 said:

netflix has to have all their stuff captioned by 2014

guess, that includes star wars eventually..

I doubt it.  Even if Star Wars becomes available for streaming someday, when it comes to movies with multiple editions, Netflix tends to just pick one edition and make only that one edition available.  It's quite possible they'll just stream the Special Editions they currently have on disc, if for no reason other than it's easier.  When browsing titles, Netflix treats the Special Editions as if they were Star Wars, so they probably don't feel like Star Wars is lacking from their catalog at all!

So even if we someday win the war and get the originals properly released, physical media may have become so irrelevant by then to most people that much of the world may not be able to see Star Wars anyway, so the battle just moves to the streaming services.  Bleh to the rental model future.  I'll be kicking and screaming, I tell you.

Two more things: First, when you mux in a sub, that doesn't mean it displays by default.  You still need to select it during playback to make it show up.  Second, if you go through the trouble of getting the SUP files from Project Threepio, you'll discover that there's complete Japanese subs in there (the SRT files only have forced subs).  You may then prefer to have English audio with Japanese subs.