CatBus

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.

I hope h_h is reading this so he knows we now have a very good quality original '77 fanfare...

How do we tell the difference?

I've given this a listen and here are my thoughts, particularly when comparing against Belbucus' reference level LD rip:

Wow, your Fox fanfare sounds MUCH clearer.  Night and day.  Are you positive this is the right one?

Your dynamic range also seems much higher.  While in general I like this, it makes volume normalization really difficult.  What gain values have you come up with?  +8dB seems to be pretty close for "normal conversation", but that can make it loud as hell on occasion, although it doesn't ever appear to clip.  Which I suppose is just fine, I just want to make sure.

Other than that, I'm not sure I hear a lot of difference (and I'm still listening, too), but a little better is still better.  Thank you very much for sharing!

PM sent.  Yes, they already sync to the Despecialized Editions, but they are FLAC, so you need to convert them to WAV or AC3 first.

Part 28 is the missing part.  I'd probably be able to manage with just that bit.

One part missing; parity files can't reconstruct it.  I try to build the RAR file without the missing bit (just in case it's not that important), and I get a 5 minute AC3 file.

I just discovered that these exist, but Usenet has a corrupt copy of the Star Wars dub–I can only get about 5 minutes of it.

Can anyone help?  Star Wars (Episode IV: ANH) is the only one I’m missing.  Unconverted straight from the PAL disc would be great.

Files uploaded and PM's sent.  Please let me know if you want links, if you spot problems (e.g. the laserdisc was known to have the wrong fox fanfare, or something like that...), or if you have anything else helpful to add.  Positive feedback is always nice too.

Okay, looks like there is some interest, so I'll be uploading them and sending PM's to mavimao and msycamore (and anyone else who wants them) probably later today.

Oh yeah, and if it wasn't clear from earlier, the 1983 ROTJ track that Harmy/DJ supply not only has the sync problem, but all of the same audio glitches from the Laserdisc.