CatBus

Project files have been updated to version 1.2, incorporating many suggestions from IronMagus (original post has been updated as well).  Please check tehparadox for the updated links, they are NOT the same as the original link.

Rough summary of changes:

Minor improvements to subtitles in all languages for all movies, fixed one major mistake in ROTJ where a burnt-in subtitle was unnecessarily subtitled.  SRT files contain many fixes (codepage fixes, closed all italic tags) which should improve compatibility with other software and platforms (I cannot guarantee they will work with everything, however).  Project files are broken into three separate downloads so that people just looking for one type of file don't have to download as much other stuff.

I'll figure more out as I work with the audio.  Right now I'm cutting the video because that's the really hard and time-consuming bit, and I'll leave audio alone until the video is done (the computer is totally bogged down with that job).  To me, it sounds like the sound editor simply took the first few seconds of audio from the deleted scene, and put that onto the first few seconds of the following scene so that they just blended together.  However I'm a little concerned that they may have also added an echo effect and a fade in to better match the existing dialogue.

According to the progress bar on my computer, I should be done cutting the video sometime next week ;)

Wow, thanks for both.  I was definitely cutting in the wrong place!  Oh well, time to start over! ;)

EDIT: Looks like the audio cutover and video cutover are not in the same place!  Tricky, but I think I can swing it.

That's the current plan.  The hangup is getting the software to cooperate (I'm attempting to cut based on the CED screenshots right now, and it's taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R, let's see if my feeble hardware can handle it), and then if I want to port over the dubs & subs too (and you know that's a hard trap for me to avoid).  And chapter stops.

EDIT: Laser/DVD screenshots still very much welcome.  The CED-based cuts don't seem ideal to me (which doesn't mean they're not correct, but still)

We're talking theatrical... to the best of my abilities ;)

I'm not sure one way or the other about the Studio 5 logo.  Certainly the Blu Ray has no logo (old or new), but that doesn't mean anything, except that's what the final product will look like unless someone convinces me otherwise.

...and I'm only half-joking about my ability to pull this off at all.  The whole POINT of me choosing this movie was because it was so darn easy to fix and presented a good learning proof-of-concept.  If it gets much harder, it's a less attractive choice for a beginner like me.

TServo2049 said:

Also, that Cinema 5 logo only showed up on the U.S. theatrical run. It wasn't on the 1999 DVD, and it wasn't on the theatrical screening I attended - both of those just started with "PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD in association with MICHAEL WHITE presents". This project shouldn't have any logo at the beginning, or anything preceding that credit.

Not to worry.  This project is in the hands of someone who is not only inexperienced, but also fairly lazy.  I wouldn't worry so much about me overreaching so much as finishing the project at all ;)

I could use before/after frames from laser or DVD, just any source where I'm sure I'm getting the exact frames.  They may be the same as the CED frames in the previous link (well, technically the CED frames are the beginning and end of the new bit, so they're one frame off, but it's still the same point), but again I just want to be extra sure before I do any cutting.

I don't believe Dentist on the Job was originally theatrical, although it may have been added to the 2001 theatrical run with the revised print/surround audio, so it's theatrical in that sense.  Either way it's beyond my capabilities to mix different sources at different resolutions and have it come out looking halfway decent, so no I'm not doing it.  I'm not Harmy ;)

Consider yourself lucky.  I think the extra bits really drag the whole pace of the scene down (which is, I'm sure, why it was cut in the first place, and why I'm bothering re-cutting it).

The original 2000 DVD release may very well not have the extra Anthrax scene, yes.  But I'm doing all of this based on the Blu Ray release, editing to match those frames (more or less).

So, having looked at the sequence now, I could probably still use some reference frames (I can probably work with the CED frames but I'm not sure how accurate they are).  It looks like the cuts are not made during a camera change, so with the scene removed it may "jump" a bit at the cut point.  A frame on each side of the jump is what I'd like ideally.

Well, if you don't hear from me on this for a while, I'll be giving the following a whirl:

Remove the Dingo scene, have the only English soundtrack be the mono one.  I am sticking with 1.66:1.  I'll see what I can do about dubs & subs, but that's secondary.

This could take a long time.  I'm in no hurry and am learning as I go.  If all goes well, maybe I'll try to re-yellowify Do the Right Thing, who knows...  Basically I'm looking at movies where the video quality is already damn near perfect on the Blu-Ray except for one little easily fixed issue.  Suggestions welcome!

SilverWook said:

I'm holding onto the three disc DVD set, as a couple extras got dropped for the Blu Ray, or were put into that iPhone app I'll never be able to use.

The LDDB listings mention three different ratios:

http://www.lddb.com/search.php?search=holy+grail&sort=title

I'm not that fond of the 2001 re-release soundtrack remix, as they added music and effects that weren't there originally. Unfortunately, if you catch a theatrical screening today, that's the soundtrack you get.

Actually LDDB reports 4 ratios!  Love that 1.75:1 ratio, way to anticipate HDTVs!

I'm already decided on mono sound (MAYBE with 5.1 as an option).  Well I'll let this thread simmer and gather posts and see how it stacks up.  Certainly 1.66 is both easier AND people seem to like it, so really it's just my residual nervousness keeping me away from it.

The aspect ratio is more a matter of wanting to get things RIGHT than something I care strongly about.  Actually the only thing I care strongly about is getting that extra Dingo scene out of there!  Mono or 5.1 doesn't even matter a great deal to me, but it's very clear which one is theatrical, so that's an easy decision.

So, with respect to other Python films, And Now For Something Completely Different was 1.85:1, Life of Brian was 1.85:1, and Holy Grail was in between those, but at a different AR?  Why did the 1.66:1 aspect ratio apply only to the middle film?  Even Jabberwocky was 1.85:1.  I'm trying to look for some sort of evidence of something other than 1.85:1 in a European theatre setting, but I'm just not seeing it.  I'm not saying it wasn't 1.66:1, but the available evidence, if it can be said to point any direction at all, seems to point the other way.

Aesthetically, I don't mind 1.66:1 one bit.  In fact, like you, I like it and may even prefer it.  But if I'm going in there and editing out a scene anyway, I may as well get the aspect ratio while I'm at it.  And for me it's not a matter of which I prefer, it's which is correct, and that's why I'm asking.

Please don't take this as pushing back out of sheer stubbornness.  I just want to make double- and triple-sure of everything before I dive into this.  Certainly leaving the AR along would make the task a lot easier!

Unfortunately I get mixed info on aspect ratios depending on where I look, and I don't know how to interpret the confusion, and I don't see any source being more authoritative than another.  The US theatrical ratio was definitely 1.85:1, so maybe the sites reporting that as the OAR are just being US-centric.  But then the aspect ratio on the film itself was definitely 1.66:1, so maybe the sites reporting that as the OAR are just using "original" to mean "on the film" rather than "in the theatre".

Hard to tell.  It's also common practice to soft-matte a film to 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, but then when the film is released on disc, to open the mattes back up to whatever was on the negative, resulting in a taller aspect ratio.  Frankly given my cynical take on Blu-Ray mastering (and the fact that other MP films are 1.85:1, why would this one have been presented differently?), I am still inclined to believe this is what happened with the Holy Grail.  I certainly could be wrong though.

Can't help you with the Japanese ;)  Still, feel free to consider this thread a dumping ground for all related developments.

I can't believe the Dingo scene was inserted that long ago!  That was a useful link for deciding where to make the cut.  Also, I'd be interested to know what the European theatrical ratio really was, if there's any way to find out.  I'd always assumed the 1.66:1 framing was just chosen as a convenient way to shoot film that could be alternately framed as 1.85:1 or 4:3 depending on whether it was for theatre or television.  If it was actually shown in any theatres like that, I may not mind so much.

Looking for an “easy” first project for learning how to edit, this one seems a good match.

Things to change: Remove deleted scene where Dingo asks if the scene should be cut (never liked that addition).  Revert to original mono for default soundtrack.

I think I can probably learn how to do this slowly through trial-and-error, but I definitely need help on one thing–where exactly to cut the Dingo scene out.  Can anybody provide a reference for the last theatrical frame before the Dingo scene and the first theatrical frame after the Dingo scene?  I’m assuming there’s a Laserdisc or early DVD release out there that doesn’t have it…

Thanks in advance for any help (and if anyone has already done all of this, that’s good info too…)

EDIT: OAR was a point of contention, but I’m sticking with 1.66:1.

You could probably PM You_Too about the font and stretch characteristics, as well as other custom edits.  Regardless, the only downside of burnt-in subs (other languages) already has a workaround, so I'm not sure of the value for this particular purpose  Nevertheless, if you want to create a custom font for this, create a new thread and I'd be interested (complete font if possible, not just selected characters sampled from the subs).  I'd also make a personal pitch for a version with no drop shadow if you can swing it.

The fonts used on the theatrical subs cannot be recreated using any existing font--they need to be hand-modified in Photoshop, so a straight SRT-to-subtitle conversion is simply impossible if you want good-looking results.  It would be possible to make the burnt-in subs available as separate graphical overlays using the Photoshop files, but it would add complexity--users would need to know to enable them, and many software players still don't get PGS subs right even when enabled.  Better to have them burned in, at least for the moment.  There's no real downside to burned-in subs except for other languages, and I believe Harmy provides sub-free files to the authors of other projects in other languages, so that's taken care of already.

BMadden said:

What's even more amazing is that one man, Harmy, is doing all of this and not a team of people like ILM. Impressive, most impressive.

Although Harmy deserves the bulk of the credit, there are a lot of people involved in providing Harmy with the sources he uses.  Upscaling the GOUT footage, rendering the credits, and audio are all mostly or entirely done by others.  Let alone identifying the things requiring despecialization.  That doesn't make it the least bit less impressive.

Thanks a lot, Jedi definitely got the least proofreading (and is really difficult in spots), so this is helping a lot.  Very good work!

FWIW I fixed the Threepio "It's restricted." grouping in SW (except in the SDH subs where it's unchanged) and also capitalized Hell. ;)

Taking all of your last ROTJ English changes, except below:

Not sure about "Into the pit with you".

For the dead animal line, I'm not sure Han says "I mean"...it sounds more like "Nah" or "Aah" to me.  Not being sure exactly what it is, I'm leaving it alone (but included the "Hey").  Han makes a similar "Aah" sound before shooting the trash compactor beast and I didn't subtitle it either.

I also decided for consistency on alien languages to take out Jabba's "Oohh!" lines since they are pretty much equivalent to Chewie's howls.  So they get subbed in the SDH subs but not the normal ones.  And the "... Jabba du Hutt ..." line is now "... Jabba the Hutt ..." because I'm subtitling what you are able to understand, not the literal sounds (which is more like what you're doing).  And I grouped Lando's lines together "That blast came from the Death Star/That thing's operational!" and got rid of the "Oh!" sub for his copilot, since I never really liked that grouping either.

So I guess sentence grouping isn't off my radar after all...

EDIT: It occurred to me that since you're subtitling alien languages, you'd be able to subtitle "Lapti Nek", which might be neat!  You could even do the little musical note symbols ;)

I landed on non-capped, but considering how I drifted around on it, don't consider it a permanent decision yet.  It's definitely a proper place name, but I read around to get a sampling of real-world usage and it appears (at least for "Go to hell!" which was the phrase I checked), it's trending lowercase, possibly because the people who use the phrase don't even consider that they're talking about traveling to a location, it's just a kind of mass of words with a single meaning.  I like doing things the "proper" way, but when proper and contemporary usage differ, I go for contemporary (e.g. "gonna").  Also I'll be gone for a few days so nevermind the radio silence for a bit.

Ah crap you convinced me.  OK re-rendering SW and ESB now...

Too late for that, I probably won't change mine anyway.  For things like that I go off the implementation of subtitles on discs I think are done with some attention to detail (this is how I decided on the rules about leading ellipses, etc).  That may vary from, say, how a newspaper handles it.  And they could very well be wrong, but I'm at least consistently wrong now ;)

If you have an M2TS file (AVC+AC3), can you trim out a tiny chunk in the middle, then splice the two larger pieces back together, without re-encoding?  If so, which tools could you use for this?

I'm very new to anything remotely video-related, so assume no knowledge of existing tools.  The reason I'm asking is that if this can be done significantly more easily than re-encoding could be done, I would forgo the other possible edit which would definitely require re-encoding and just do this easy one.

xhonzi said:

Why do you think that Yoda and the Emperor were never implied to have lightsabres in the OT?

Why do you think that changed in the PT?

There are many reasons Yoda didn't have a lightsaber in the OT: Plot-wise, he knew Dagobah to be a safe hiding place so he had no need to carry one.  Storytelling-wise, it would have been a dead giveaway for this anonymous crazy swamp creature to be carrying a lightsaber (Luke: "Oh jeeze!  I shoulda known you were Yoda!  The lightsaber!  Duh!") And just visually, Yoda would have looked ridiculous with a lightsaber so it was left out of any design consideration.

Similarly with the Emperor: he knows he is always safe in his surroundings, and the "reveal" of his powers would have had less impact if he didn't seem physically defenseless before.

My PT memory is foggy, but neither of them are in "always safe" surroundings, there's no mystery about their powers or identity (there was a mystery about the Emperor's identity to other characters, but never to the viewer), and looking ridiculous was no longer sufficient reason for excluding something from the movies.

I'm assuming SW and ESB have no more suggested changes, so I'm rendering these now so that I can upload the changes faster.  I'm holding off on ROTJ for now.

By the way, I made a discovery today that syncing the wrong subtitles to the film can occasionally be hilarious.  For example, Vader can become a wisecracking action movie villain:

I don't think negative1's going to give up his award for Most Weirdly-Formatted Post very easily!

EDIT: Oh dang, I liked it so much better before it got cleaned up.  It was kindof Dada Postmodernist.