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CatBus

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Join date
18-Aug-2011
Last activity
27-Jun-2025
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5,996

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Post
#570905
Topic
Nancy Allen on Irvin Kirshner
Time

walking_carpet said:

i've been hearing a lot of this teal-orange thing.  can someone explain?  at first I thought it was too many movies having a blueish tint like Underworld.  I saw a link that explained it further, but not sure if I get it.

I'll do my best.  When you retime a film, you can choose to push everything to opposite color extremities: green/purple, yellow/blue, etc.  Because these colors contrast with each other, they make the picture look more vibrant, have more "pop", jump out at you, etc.  Now because Hollywood is Hollywood, most films have an overrepresentation of actors with a skin tone that's pretty close to orange or peach color.  The opposite of orange is teal, which sometimes the sky can look like if, you know, you're wearing green sunglasses or there's a tornado nearby.  So orange-teal is the preferred pair of colors because it kinda-sorta matches an oversaturated version of what's typically onscreen.

The result is that many films today, and more importantly, many older films being released on Blu Ray, have unrealistic colors in a very consistent way, summed up as Tanning Bed Disasters Versus Tornado Alley Skies.  Now, I like when people use color timing alterations to some sort of artistic end: I loved what they did with Amelie and O Brother Where Art Thou?  It's a great tool when used properly.  But boy am I effing sick of teal and orange.

The blog post that kicked off a lot of people's interest in this is here: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html  I don't necessarily agree that every example he gives is egregious and unnatural, but certainly some of them are, and even the ones that aren't unnatural show a complete lack of interest in any other colors by the costume/set designers/CGI artists.

ALSO: Where is the Buckaroo Banzai love in this thread?

Post
#570744
Topic
Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)
Time

Sure, keep in mind that this project is designed for the "supply-side", for the creators of preservations, so that in the long run you may not have to do this for yourself.  So the tools used for this may be unfamiliar to you.

The main data files on a Blu Ray/AVCHD are the M2TS files, and the main data files on a DVD are the VOB files.  Each file contains multiple "streams"--typically a video stream and a few audio streams.  They can also contain subpicture streams, which is where subtitles are stored.

You can demux these files, which means extract all of the individual streams, and you can mux them, which means merge them together into a VOB or M2TS file.

It looks like you're dealing with the DVD downscale of Harmy's Despecialized Edition.  You'll need a tool like vobmerge to take all of the individual VOB files and make them into one big merged VOB file.  Then you can use a tool like PGCDemux to extract the video and audio streams.

At that point you can just use muxman to merge them back together into a DVD folder structure, and you just add in the SUP files (*NOT* the SRT files!) as subtitle streams.  You can find some rudimentary instructions for this in the _dvd_workflow.txt file, toward the end.  Just be sure to specify a language and select the LB and Wide options for each subtitle.

If you want to do this with a Blu Ray or AVCHD, just do the exact same thing, except the software you use is called tsmuxergui, which does both the demuxing and the muxing.

The SUP files for DVDs are in the "SUP-NTSC DVD" folder, and the SUP files for Blu Rays and AVCHDs are in the "SUP-720p" folder.

You may be able to do something simpler, more like what you were trying to do initially, where you play back the files and point the player software at the SRT files.  But frankly I'm not sure how well that will work out, and I'm sure it won't look as nice as I intended (all special formatting may be lost, font size may not be right, leading to extra line wraps, etc).  Nevertheless, I believe you may be able to merge the VOB files into one big VOB file, as described above, and then you can just play that with VLC pointed at the SRT files.  VLC won't get confused when jumping to the next VOB file because there won't be a next VOB file.  But I haven't tested that and if it doesn't work there's not much help I can offer--that wasn't really how these files were designed to be used.

Hope that helps!

Post
#570495
Topic
Starwars.com closes its forums
Time

Man, you really are the tragic, misunderstood hero of this piece, aren't you?

BTW, I've heard mockery is often misinterpreted as outrage, here and elsewhere.

Frankly I don't know what's more precious: that you might think your mastery of words can dig you out of this hole, or that you might not think you're in a hole at all.  Either way it's adorable as all get out.  Please keep it up.

Post
#570458
Topic
Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released)
Time

laserdisc said:

I have a question which will no doubt drive people mad, as I'm sure it's been But can some in the know clear up the quote (or misquote) above? Are the blu rays the same resolution as the HDTV broadcasts? Why does Harmy say he would still need to work in 720p? Is it because upscaling oot elements to 1080p becomes noticable? Thanks.

The film scan upon which the HDTV version and the Blu Rays are based is the same resolution.  It's an old low-res cruddy scan by today's standards, so even though the Blu Rays are technically 1080p, they really aren't that much better than 720p given the lack of detail resolution in the source material.

Actually Harmy could work at 1080p using Blu Ray sources and private film scans.  I don't think he'd get much benefit for the abovementioned reasons, but every little bit counts I suppose.  IMO the sweet spot for Star Wars preservations based on the Blu Rays is 720p until there's a new 4K scan of the film.

ALSO: Harmy is using the Blu Rays as a source, so that quote is already wrong on one point.  While they aren't really that much more detailed than 720p would be at the same compression ratio, they do have more detail than the HDTV versions due to less compression.

Post
#570447
Topic
Starwars.com closes its forums
Time

TheBoost said:

CatBus said:

DavidBrennan said:

...

Wow, just wow.  I can't imagine a less effective post for demonstrating how completely blameless you were in this whole affair...

 Calm down PC Police! Stop trying to censor David's brave fight against all the girly hysterical power-tripping lisping stupid plants who only exist to oppress his thoughtful free speech!

Fight the power Davey! Fight the power!

Sorry, I got all hysterical.  I think this transgendered thing, whatever it is, must be contagious.

Post
#570386
Topic
Info Wanted: Which OT preservation is right for me?
Time

You would probably like dark_jedi's preservation here best:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Original-Trilogy-Theatrical-Editions-Info-ALL-versions-SEE-FIRST-POST-FOR-INFO-AND-AVAILABILITY/topic/10550/

The V3 DVDs are very nice.

You MAY want to check out Harmy's despecialized editions too.  This is the Star Wars link:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-AVCHD-DVD9-and-NTSC-DVD5-AVAILABLE-see-1st-post/topic/12713/

Proper anamorphic (16x9) is a given with any preservation these days, and 5.1?  Heh, are you in for a surprise--the 5.1 mix used by dark_jedi and Harmy will blow away any mix you have ever heard for Star Wars, ever, period.

As for color correction, these both are color corrected, because the color on the 2004 DVDs is simply badly inaccurate by any objective standard.

Post
#570340
Topic
Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released)
Time

flynn2000 said:

The only quibble I have with it is Vader's cloak brightening, starting at 1:08:17. I don't think the benefits of making the cloak stand out more from the darkness make up for the high graininess swarming over it. Plus it looks like a matte is moving over it. I'm curious to see how others see it.

This is the only thing I noticed too.  It also may have something to do with how lower-bitrate encodes deal with very minor color differences.  It may be OK at a higher bitrate, not sure.  Didn't look quite right how it was IMO.

Post
#570074
Topic
General Star Wars <strong>Random Thoughts</strong> Thread
Time

TheBoost said:

 Instead of being the brave rebel fighting the PC police who want to control your thoughts (ooooooooh scaaaaaary!!!) maybe you're being the guy who might step back and reevaluate his actions.

Thank you for just existing, TheBoost.

It's no coincidence that the word "polite" and the word "political" (as in PC) share the same root.  Yes, politeness is technically a form of self-censorship, and attempts to enforce politeness are a form of censorship.  But almost all social environments work better when people are polite and respectful most of the time.  I'm GLAD I work in an environment where I could get fired for telling my co-workers they were worthless pieces of shit, because, you see, it works in reverse and everyone benefits.

I get it, really I do.  When I was a kid I was filled with outrage that my mom wouldn't let me talk about vomit at the dinner table.  It WAS censorship.  But there are degrees and moderation in everything.  The "PC" boogeyman certainly has the capacity to step over the line into real harmful censorship, but I find that it happens far less frequently than people step over the line of just being rude for no constructive purpose.

Post
#569890
Topic
Info Wanted: Best source for the Mos Eisley speeder pass-by shot?
Time

msycamore said:

Harmy said:

Well, not necessarily. I think what DE did there is just about perfect, because it gets it much closer to what it would have probably looked like on an earlier generation print.

No, the built-in dirt was very much seen even on brand new '77 prints, I just hope -1 doesn't clean it up.

Do we have a Verta reference for comparison?  While I'd agree it's just a dirty bad-looking shot and it should continue to look dirty and bad in a 35mm preservation, is the AMOUNT of dirt variable depending on print generation and other factors?  DE's shot looks cleaner (and more importantly to me, sharper) than I think this shot SHOULD look, but I imagine his method could still be used for a more restrained cleanup, if we see evidence that cleaner prints existed.  Also, for merging into a preservation that's already using cleaned-up sources like Harmy's, the clean look of DE's shot would blend better, although the sharpness still looks too much even for me.