CatBus

LexX said:

Well, I think there are only Nordic subtitles on the original version DVDs so it wouldn't be that much more. Just saying if people start to use your package it would be cool to have all that are available.

I get that, and it's really just the OCR/manual correction/manual retiming steps outlined above I don't want to do myself with yet another language I don't speak.  If someone wants to do those steps and provide me with the resulting SRT files, I can do the rest and include them in the next iteration of the bundle.  Not just Nordic languages, but really any language, including those not available on GOUT discs.

But to be included in this project, I do need those steps done--I simply can't trust OCR without manual correction, nor can I easily manage subtitles with wildly differing timing from each other.

You_Too said:

I don't know if this has already been fixed, but I thought about the first line in the English SDH subs for SW being "Did you hear that?", but no line before it telling what sound it was. (The alarm, explosion?)

All of the SDH cues in this project are from scratch.  Like the English subs in general, the official SDH cues aren't very good in my opinion, so mine are different.  Fidelity to home video subs is not a goal of this project.

You_Too said:

Actually, I OCR'd the additional subs and they'll be re-rendered in high quality.

Cool, that should look much better!

I'm just loving the fact that I'm even able to notice grain on Star Wars.  On Star Wars!  Zero complaints with the newest workprint.

DavidBrennan said:

...I can't imagine many people seriously thinking the PT scores were bad.  I mean, how many movies nowadays have truly powerful, memorable core melodies?  Not very many at all...

The OT had an unusually good score, the PT may very well have a better-than-average score but it's not like that's a very high hurdle.  Better than average can still be bad (even very bad) in my book, because average is godawful.  I would describe the PT score as dull and uninteresting, "bad" isn't quite the right word.

I'll leave the "academics talking about Star Wars" to others who probably know a lot more about this subject than me, and I'll throw in some non-academic stuff.  I haven't studied this in detail (so my analysis is shallow), but I am an American so I feel I can give opinions about stuff without being burdened by the need for any research or facts.

To me, the most interesting "cultural landmark moment" was when the term "Star Wars" was used politically to discredit the US SDI program in the 1980's (to portray it as unrealistic/infeasible/"science fiction" as opposed to an achievable technology).  I think this is interesting because it's completely outside the typical film/literary context and also because the term was politically very successful (indicating it resonated with the US population).  Counterarguments are that this happened in the heyday of the Star Wars phenomenon (concurrent with ROTJ) and doesn't indicate a lasting influence, and that SDI failed for far more serious and concrete reasons than a simple political slogan.

You can get some basic quotes and info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#Controversy_and_criticism

As far as I know, cultural influence can only be measured by inferring from the number of references over time.  i.e. William Shakespeare has more cultural influence than Christopher Marlowe in the 21st century, but they were probably equally influential in the 16th century, and you could measure/prove/disprove this by how many other authors cribbed lines and concept from their writings over time.  So you've probably seen all of these lists below, but I'd be remiss not to include them because IMO this is the solid measurable stuff.  Of course, you may need to compare this against other American cultural landmarks to see how it stacks up: I'd suggest Casablanca or Wizard of Oz for other iconic films and the Beatles (yes, I know they're British) for a non-film comparison.  Certainly academics may have already looked at this and made their conclusions, but I find these lists interesting in their own right.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_references_to_Star_Wars_in_movies
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_references_to_Star_Wars_in_television
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_references_to_Star_Wars_in_video_games
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_references_to_Star_Wars_in_webcomics
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_references_to_Star_Wars_in_miscellanea

Whenever I'm concerned about compatibility, the maximum speed I'll burn at is half the rated speed of the media (i.e. for 12x DVD-R media, I won't burn faster than 6x).

I was a little young to remember very much detail (I was 5 in 78), but I really remember being so excited about the Holiday Special, being captivated through the whole thing, and not being the least bit aware of any shortcomings.  Such was the power of Star Wars (or extreme youth).  I also remember the head came off my Luke action figure early on, so every time I played with it, Luke had to get decapitated somehow.  Good times.

EdFarmer said:

CatBus, I agree! If I end up doing a font, it will definitely be a complete font. Eventually I would hope to get enough sources to complete an entire alphabet without using another font for filler.

For me, using another font for filler would be necessary under any circumstance.  I don't just want 26 letters, I want a decent chunk of Unicode's Base Multilingual Plane...

LexX said:

I think people in the US and UK (the places where the movies were made) seem to think that they have more global significance than what it really is.

Yeah, I think global significance is a pretty big stretch for any cultural work.  The Bible and Greek/Roman mythology may have meant everything in Europe for a thousand years, but they meant squat to the Maori.  Global communication and media changes this a little, but not as much as you'd think--language and cultural barriers are still pretty tough to bridge.

I think the general trend of the ABILITY of popular art to be influential in the long term is declining.  In a barely literate European society, classical mythology and the Bible were the only things you could count on your audience knowing about if you wanted to use some stock character or allegory within your own tale.  They ruled the cultural influence roost for thousands of years and nothing will ever match that from a longevity perspective.

Now not only is everyone literate, but literacy is, from a cultural perspective, increasingly unnecessary.  Everyone has access to everything, and cultural works are now being targeted to microdemographics instead of even trying to appeal to everyone.  Star Wars was before that last bit happened, but that last bit ensures there won't be another Star Wars.  Or Beatles.  In fact, I'd say Star Wars ranks pretty evenly with the Beatles.

The difference being, I doubt the Beatles would be nearly as popular today if people born in the 1980's and later could only listen to Wings and Plastic Ono Band, so long term, the cultural influence of Star Wars may decline faster than the Beatles.

So is this gonna be in 3D or what?  Cuz I don't wanna see it if it's not in 3D.

EdFarmer said:

...I guess this could eventually turn into a source to create a font, which could then be used for the alien subtitles...

I would be very interested in this angle, but I'd like to add a request that, if possible, we do a "complete" font and not just the letters we are able to sample from the sources.

For example, if you determine that the best match is TradeGothic LT Bold, but squeezed/stretched a certain degree and with a certain thickness, you could use a bulk-adjusted TradeGothic for all of the letters we don't have samples for, and only truly recreate the ones we do have samples for.

The lack of an accurate out-of-the-box subtitle font has certainly been a pain in my ass.

DuracellEnergizer said:

This is the main reason I don't post on the TFN boards anymore: almost everyone there in a high-strung candy-ass.

As a laid-back candy-ass, I just can't be bothered to be offended by that statement.

LexX said:

Could you rip the subtitles off from a PAL release and then use them in the package?  Some aren't that good but it's better than nothing.

Actually that's more-or-less how I've got the non-English subtitles I have right now.  Just for my own sanity, I limited the number of languages I was willing to work with, but there are lots of other languages that can be converted this same way.

Here's the process I used:

Rip the subs and OCR them into SRT format.

Open up my English subs in Gaupol, then open the new subs as a translation.  Then spend a lot of time adjusting the timing, grouping, fixing OCR errors and just general mistakes.  Sometimes a line may even need to be shortened to fit properly.  Once you have it all nice and neat, re-time it yet again against something like my German subs (Gaupol will do most of the work automatically)--this takes care of the minor timing differences between my English and non-English subs.

At that point you have an SRT file you can feed into the process described by my workflow documents.  You can either make the overlays yourself or ask me to include them in the next round of changes.  Keep in mind the next round of changes may be a long way off...

EDIT: If you're talking about just scaling the existing DVD subtitle graphics, that's something You_Too may be doing for the Blu v2 project (not sure).  That would be helpful in general, but it's outside the scope of what I want for this project.  I want good correct text files as the basis for all my subs, because that gives me a lot more flexibility when rendering.  And with all the problems OCR can introduce, that means manual editing.

Project files have been updated to version 1.1, incorporating many suggestions from msycamore (original post has been updated as well).  Please check tehparadox for the updated link, it is NOT the same as the original link.

Rough summary of changes:

Minor language changes to English subtitles for SW and ESB (fidelity improvements).  These changes involved slight timing/other changes that also affected other languages, so subtitles for all languages for SW and ESB have been very slightly changed.  ROTJ is unchanged.

Harmy said:

I still want to re-render reel 2 as well.

Did you figure out where the flicker was coming from?

Theoretically, you might think a movie will be bad, but upon watching it, think it's good.  And you might think a movie will be good but it turns out to be bad.  The latter scenario happens all the time, and certainly part of that is due to the fact that you actually go and see the movie when you think it will be good, and only then can your expectations be dashed.  If you think it will be bad, few will go through the trouble of watching it to confirm the fact.

But a movie is not a black box.  You get some idea about what's in the movie from other channels--previews, reviews, friends, knowledge of the writers, or directors, or actors, etc.  So in my experience when you think a movie will be bad, you are almost certainly correct.  Unfortunately the inverse is not true... at least not for me.

Are you suggesting Jar Jar is a Cylon?

xhonzi said:

CatBus said:

Donate $200 and get a coffee mug with an image of Greedo saying "I've been looking forward to this for a long time".  Fill it up with hot liquid and it changes to Han saying "Yes, I'll bet you have".

Now that's an idea!

Not that it will be half as popular as the metal bikini one, but at least it's classier.

Oh, come ON.  You were thinking it too...

I'm afraid we need to accept the terrible, terrible truth.

George was a TREKKER the whole time.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Donate $200 and get a coffee mug with an image of Greedo saying "I've been looking forward to this for a long time".  Fill it up with hot liquid and it changes to Han saying "Yes, I'll bet you have".

That is a topic for its own thread, probably in the technical how-to's forum.  FWIW I tried and failed to de-muffle the audio.  Certainly the EQ needs balancing as the bass is boomy and the treble is subdued, but everything I threw at it ultimately made it sound worse.

Is it September already?

March 15th 2012 at 08:32:12.004 GMT.

Do you REALLY want another wrong prediction (sorry, Harmy)? Just be satisfied knowing it's getting closer every day. We're all impatient, but we'll have to wait a little longer and nobody can say how long that will be.

ww12345 said:

'Cause that ain't how the CatBus rolls. He wants his BluRay now! lol

Pretty much.  A small amount of effort for a big improvement in video quality while waiting for the Blu Ray.