I prefer the top version, but would be totally fine with the bottom because I don't think it's really that bad. I am also somewhat suspicious when the IB print is the only outlier.
Laserschwert said:
I guess with all the audio projects going on here, it's not really that problematic to NOT have sound coming with the files.
To be honest, I think the restored mono track from these reels is one of the more exciting aspects of the project, and I'd hate to not hear it!
Fantastic news!
Could be. I'll ask the translator to assess the two translations and I'll make a call based on that.
My suspicions about the "added humor" are based on Bedevere's plan to "absorb" the Frenchmen, which I suspect is due to a Japanese word with multiple meanings, one of which is more correct and the other is funnier. But then it could also be that in the 80's, it was not assumed that your average person in the US market would even know what "sake" was, so they went for a more universal "wine". We'll see.
You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
russs15 said:
The thing that suprised me was the lack of available subtitles.
Check Project Threepio for subtitles. Currently at ten languages, but it should get to eleven or twelve pretty soon. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Also, FYI, there's an Italian dub on the PAL GOUT, and supposedly a Japanese dub on the Japanese Region 2 NTSC GOUT (I've never heard it).
Okay, one more update before a fairly long pause. All of the audio work is done, forced subs are done, and now it's just down to the Japanese-back-to-English translation. I've got a friend in Japan right now trying to get a friend of hers to help, and we'll see how that goes. I have a few other options if this particular translator doesn't pan out.
What I'm working on is a template for her to use, i.e. mostly just the English subs with appropriate timing, so that, for the most part, she can just type in the new text and not worry about timing. However, I'm "pre-translating" the sections that have already been translated as home video extras (French castle, Knights of Ni).
And here's where some judgment calls come in. Both the Criterion LD and the BD have translations for the French taunting scene, but they are slightly different. I believe that the LD is more of a straightforward translation, while the BD occasionally tries to be funnier (of course, I could be wrong about this), and also the BD seems to translate a lot more fleeting minor background lines, which could get annoying if done for the whole movie.
So here's what I'm doing: when the LD and the BD are different, I opt for the LD translation. Where the BD provides the only translation, I use that. Then, for words and phrases that also appear elsewhere in the film, I pre-translate those for consistency. i.e. "Holy Grail" -> "sacred wine glass", "shrubbery" -> "bonsai", "Run away!" -> "Escape!", etc. Not because that's actually what is said in these other scenes, but just as a sort of guideline for the translator to fill in the gaps while maintaining some degree of consistency between the three different translations.
If you're feeling on the fence about Jedi, consider doing a "just Lapti Nek" transfer, getting good copies of otherwise lost footage. And Vader with eyebrows, and Vader's ghost, etc.
Yes, Porco has an older dub. It is execrable though. Only worth the bother if you want to see how bad a dub can get. Seriously, and I'm not a huge Disney dub fan.
I'm most of the way through the Japanese track now, at least enough to give some more info on it. Technically the Blu-ray used the exact same dub as the LD, but they mysteriously swapped out occasional sections and put English voices back in, with subtitles. We'll get to why in a second. Nevertheless it was good that the dubs were largely the same because it would have been hell to try to sync the LD track if they weren't.
First, the LD dub isn't all Japanese either. For most singing parts, it's still in English too (Robin's minstrels, the entire Camelot scene, etc). So for that, we will still need to have "forced" subtitles on the Japanese track. I haven't checked the French and Portuguese dubs to see if forced subs are required for those yet. So that's a pretty small extra job I forgot about. If someone wants to check these other BD dubs to see if they contain subtitled English parts, that would save me some time.
It looks like they swapped in English whenever the LD Japanese dialogue dropped a line they thought was important (such as "We found a witch, may we burn her?") or when the LD dub had alternate music that maybe someone didn't like (reading the writing in the cave). Oddly, the new Japanese Anthrax scene has different background music, perhaps to cover up a few lines of narration they didn't like. I'm not sure what the narrator says in that scene, but it sounds incredibly over-the-top cheesy and I can't wait for the translation. And then there's scenes where I just can't explain at all why they reverted back to English (the whole of Scene 24), but nevertheless they did.
Anyway, the synced LD track sounds mostly great with a few glitches, some of which I can't entirely cover up--for example, there's a distinct glitch right when the Castle Anthrax cutover to the additional footage happens. I'll do my best, and the result will be lossless mono. Huge thanks to Silverwook on this--I definitely could not have done this without you--and I hope to hear back from my Japanese counterpart in the next couple weeks for the fun subtitle work.
I understand. There's different goals for different people, too. Some people will certainly want to know what subtitle variations existed between versions and if you clean them all up what do they do?
FWIW there's also a much more minor hiccup at 53:11. I probably wouldn't patch over it if that was the only thing I wanted to change, but I'll probably get it too on my copy.
Actually there's a pitch warble at 25:46 that's either more pronounced in this version or not present in Belbucus at all. It's a little hard to take; I may try to manually patch my version.
Does anyone have access to the "revised" German audio for Star Wars? There's an updated dub out there which includes Han and Luke's conversation in the elevator on the way down to the detention level (This is not gonna work/Why didn't you say so before?/I did say so before.), but all I can find is the earlier version with this dialogue missing. PAL format preferred.
Thanks again, just got through this, and I'd say the dynamic range improvement alone makes this my recommended stereo mix, replacing Belbucus' mix. Great work.
There's a little divergence at ROTJ. Properly adjusted, the PAL SW and ESB tracks will exactly sync with NTSC SW and ESB tracks, but this is not the case with ROTJ.
The divergence is very small, but noticeable if you watch mismatched audio and video carefully. So technically there are two ROTJ GOUT standards: NTSC, which many older, smaller, projects use, and adjusted PAL, which DJ and Harmy use (due to better image quality on the PAL transfer).
A mismatch in one direction sounds slightly more natural than a mismatch in the other direction, because slightly-delayed audio is more natural than audio that leads the video. i.e. audio derived from PAL muxed with video derived from NTSC, even though it's a mismatch, will sound more natural than vice-versa. So IMO PAL-derived ROTJ audio is better if you have to choose just one version.
Long story short, the GOUT is not one standard for ROTJ, but two. But it's one standard for the other films.
Will these new mixes be available in lossless form? Also, PM me if you haven't gotten any offers yet for regular download links for the digital 77 stereo mix.
Harmy said:
And thanks for reading it guys, I didn't expect that anyone would want to :-)
Workprint withdrawal. A few more weeks and we'll pay money to see your dirty laundry.
I know I should probably keep this to myself, but... I found a typo. Ronald Reagan has TWO A's in his last name. This is probably not helped by the fact that his Treasury Secretary was named Donald Regan with only one A.
Still, great to know you've finished. That's a lot of work!
Heh, it is in English by default. My guess is your MPEG converter picked one of the several soundtracks at random... see if there's any way you can specify which soundtrack you want. #1 (the default) is the one you want.
I've got interest... but probably only in Empire unless your Jedi also compensates for the sync issue.
Heh, not at the moment. Seriously, I'm neck-deep in (not Star Wars related) badly-out-of-sync Japanese audio I don't even understand, this will take me a very long time, and I'll probably want a break from audio editing after that. Sorry, I'd never say never, but definitely not anytime soon.
I've considered it, but I'll admit it's pretty low on my list. My motivation for the ESB and ROTJ tracks were:
1) AFAICT, no GOUT-synced lossless original stereo tracks existed for these films.
2) Existing ROTJ tracks had a sync problem.
3) I needed to practice/learn syncing audio for an unrelated project.
Frankly I don't think my skill at audio sync and repair measures up to what Belbucus and others have demonstrated, so I steer clear of Star Wars simply because it looks like the pro interest is already there. I'll probably be quite happy with the digital SW audio from the Japanese P&S disc, and it's hard to be motivated when you're not dissatisfied with the status quo.
Also I've recently learned that I hate working with audio, with a passion ;)
I'm just impressed after all this he named it the "final" version. I hope there's not a "much more finaler" version in the wings.
This is interesting...
The PITCH of the commentary on the Blu-ray is 4% lower than the pitch on the Laserdisc, which I take to mean that the Laserdisc commentary was originally PAL. But the quiet soundtrack underneath the two commentaries is the same pitch, meaning it was mixed in later.
So, what to do? I believe the Blu-ray pitch is probably correct. I may try to just pitch-correct the bits of dialogue that are missing from the Blu Ray (from around the video edit) and merge them into the Blu-ray commentary. It's just a commentary track so I can live with that. Other suggestions welcome.
EDIT: Nevermind, the Criterion commentary covers the Anthrax extension so I'd have to edit it anyway. So basically unless I hear otherwise I'm merging the Blu Ray two-channel mono track back down to proper single-channel mono, pasting over the transition around the cut, and leaving it lossy (no Laserdisc material used). Japanese track, here I come...
Okay, I've got the English mono track synced! I was also able to clean up a handful of very minor issues, like that pop you heard when Arthur reaches for the Holy Hand Grenade.
So, just to recap, here are the key differences from the Blu-Ray:
DONE:
Cut Anthrax scene extension
Default track is lossless mono (single-channel DTS-MA with 192kbps core)
German subtitles
PLANNED:
Original Criterion mono commentary track (lossless?)
Original Criterion mono Japanese dub (lossless?)
Full Japanese-back-to-English subtitles
I imagine this will be slow going again. Luckily I believe I'll be able to sync both remaining audio tracks with a single pass because they're from the same source.