CatBus

Please keep in mind that suggesting GL kiss your ass is still kosher; it's just the not buying the Blu Ray part that's objectionable.  They make good Christmas tree decorations and coasters, I see no reason why you shouldn't buy them.

Actually I wonder of someone fitted the Blu Rays with a nice absorbent cork backing, they might be able to resell them at a profit...

Yes.  Sometimes it's bad to be right.

nightstalkerpoet said:

TMBTM said:

But a painter does not sell his work to someone then few years later comes in the customer's house to take it off the wall to draw a mustache in the middle, then ask few dollars more or he'd leave with it.

How many people have had George come into their homes, alter their OUT VHS tapes and laserdiscs, then threaten to take them? 

The correct question is: how many theatre owners with prints of Star Wars have been ordered to return their prints, in exchange for prints of the Special Editions?

I'm afraid the answer is quite a few.  TMBTM's metaphor isn't perfect, but it's close.  Star Wars is a cultural work that was out circulating in the public in better-than-HD quality for decades.  Lucasfilm is actively trying to remove it from the public space, and as far as the best quality versions go, it has been very successful.  The low-quality versions you speak of are not the central issue at all.

nightstalkerpoet said:

We asked for a release of the OUT, and got one.

There's a certain causality you're following that I don't buy.  I simply don't believe the GOUT was released because of consumer demand.  I don't think it even factored in.  As far as I can tell, there were only two reasons the GOUT was released: to shut down the burgeoning bootleg laserdisc business, and to make the Special Editions look appealing when contrasted with a really awful transfer.

Given that, we have nothing to be thankful for, unless that "thank you" is followed by "may I have another!"

Replace all dialogue, but just switch the American and British accents.  Everything else stays the same.

FWIW the rating system was instituted in 1968 so you can see 8 out of the 10 top ten films on the AFI list, uncut.

Not that you'll necessarily like them all.  I can barely sit through Gone With the Wind myself, but they all have a strong appeal to a lot of people and all in all they are mostly very fine films.

And a special plug for #57, which would easily be #1 on my list.

This is a better idea of the consensus, although the consensus can clearly still be wrong:

http://www.afi.com/100years/movies.aspx

I'll admit I was shocked to see Schindler's List in the top ten.  I wasn't surprised Private Ryan failed to make the list at all.  Godfather is placed just about right.

#15 shows we didn't drift offtopic at all...

darth_ender said:

The prequels aren't exactly Saving Private Ryan, The Godfather, and Schindler's List.

Someone's clearly a Spielberg fanboy.  I mean Schindler's List was pretty good, but it certainly doesn't measure up to the Godfather.  And Saving Private Ryan?  Aside from the Normany landing... *spits*

Thread successfully derailed, you're welcome.

ray_afraid said:

Alexrd said:

STENDEC said:

the fact that no one is saying he can't edit his movies,

We both know that that is not true at all.

I've never met anybody who cares about the changes he has made or even future changes he might make. Doesn't mean everybody likes the changes, but if he'd release the original along with his new version, everybody would be happy.

I think this belief stems from the ambiguity of the word "should".  I certainly say "he shouldn't make changes to his movies" all the time, but I really mean "It's not advisable that he make changes to his movies (because he always makes them worse)".  But certainly some could misinterpret such a statement to mean "It it morally wrong for him to make changes to his movies"  This is compounded by the fact that people (including me) definitely feel it's morally wrong for him to suppress the original films.  A "should" in one statement right next to a moral issue in the next sentence is pretty much asking for a misunderstanding (and that's if you even bother to separate the two issues into two distinct statements, which most people don't).

So I can see how Alexrd (and perhaps Lucas himself) thinks people are saying he can't edit his movies.  It's a sad fact that language is ambiguous, and that leads to misinterpretation.  They are still wrong, but I can understand how they got there.

LexX said:

CatBus said:

OK got all my answers.  FWIW all languages except French are okay to use leading ellipses as far as I can tell, so I'll follow that rule regardless of what the burned-in subs did in those languages.  And all languages including French can italicize ship names.

Depends on what are "all languages".

Yeah, sorry.  "All languages" in that post means "the four languages listed in the OP".

Also I already have the Castilian Spanish subs from the GOUT, no worries.

OK got all my answers.  FWIW all languages except French are okay to use leading ellipses as far as I can tell, so I'll follow that rule regardless of what the burned-in subs did in those languages.  And all languages including French can italicize ship names.

doubleofive said:

Harmy said:

That looks good, way better than the official one, I'm considering ditching it and using these instead.

Thanks Harmy, I'd be honored to have provided your covers for the official release! If you or anyone else wants the PSD file to maybe remove my snark or the Ronto Ass, I can upload it somewhere.

Actually the Ronto Ass is the only side-by-side photo I really like.  I think for Empire I'd have chosen a heavily cyanified Hoth shot (I think there's a good one with the probe droid and a walker in your Picasa album), and for Jedi I'd have chosen the Hayden ghost or created one showing Lapti Nek vs. Jedi Rocks, preferably using the ridiculous waggling uvula shot.

doubleofive said:

He also said he's fine with us as long as we let him make his Special Editions. Crap.

Wait, wait.  I see a lawyer-sized hole.  He says we could release the 1977 version as long as we don't put his name on it (maybe he'd also like to be scrubbed from the credits, unsure about that part).

I think Star Wars fans are just fine with those terms, sir (I'm sure the credits scrubbing will cause some whining but we can manage it).  Alert Mike Verta!  Get Lucas to make this statement legally binding and we're all set!

Maybe we could balance the concession of taking his name off the film with being able to charge money for it, since he wants nothing to do with it...

Just to verify, is this what you're planning?

1) Lower-bitrate AVCHD DVD9

2) Higher-bitrate MKV

3) Possible Blu Ray (same encoding as MKV, maybe with some extras)

I'm also assuming that, if I download the MKV, I could demux the streams and make my own barebones Blu Ray that I can live with until the fancy one comes out, and #2 and #3 would have the same video quality.

Is that how you see it happening (at least right now)?

jabbo5150 said:

I have an Oppo BDP-93, which seems to be able to handle this format. Is this burnable to a disc though? Would I need a Blu-Ray burner?

mkv format that is. Meant to include a quote in my reply

My BDP-93 plays AVCHDs and mkv's just fine.  Note that mkv is just a container format and if you put weird enough streams in it, it won't play.  I'm assuming Harmy's mkv would be fairly standard.  However I will probably choose to burn to Blu Ray regardless of what Harmy makes available, just because I like physical media.

I am using the DVD subs as a template (I have to since I don't know the languages), but I'm correcting problems as I see them and style-matching the other subs is something I'm considering while I'm at it.  I know a little German too and have corrected a couple lazy subtitling problems toward the end of ESB for example, and OCR can do some pretty weird things to the subs, so manual cleanup is not really optional.  It sounds more difficult than it really is.  I'm pretty much done with all of the languages except Portuguese and am just doing "finishing touches" right now, which is why I'm asking weird questions like this.

See this post for why I want to OCR them instead of just using the existing graphical overlays (if you have text, you can do cooler effects when you render the graphics): http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Looking-for-people-who-speak-German-French-Spanish-or-Brazilian-Portuguese/post/547180/#TopicPost547180

So by "not a standard", does that mean it cannot be italicized, or it can be italicized or not and doesn't matter?

Laserschwert said:

At least we don't in the subtitles... uhm... are there any ship names in the Greedo/Boushh/Jabba subtitles?

If I remember correctly some German translations of EU novels put ship names in italics. It's definitely an option and not forbidden by some crazy law.

I'm doing subtitles for everything.  I'm just trying to match style with the Greedo subs whenever possible.  So the real question is, do you italicize ship names in everyday German, in newspapers, etc?

Excellent, thanks.  Do you italicise ship names in German?  i.e. <i>Millenium Falcon</i>?

msycamore said:

There are people that have been upset by the four dot ellipsis in the A long time ago preface and IIRC the three dots in the crawls for being typographical incorrect. ;)

Uh, no!  That wasn't me! I never get worked up about such things!

OK thanks.  I'll check some generic language style rules and go with that.

In the English subs for Greedo/Jabba, they include leading ellipses for continued dialog.  As below in the second subtitle:

He has no time for smugglers…

…who drop their shipments at
the first sign of an Imperial cruiser.

What I want to know is, for other languages (specifically: German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese), do they also use leading ellipses in this way?  Would it be incorrect style to use leading ellipses in any of these languages?

Thanks.

If the burnt-in subs are finalized yet, I'd like a screengrab of Greedo's two-line subtitle in SW, and one in ROTJ of the "You may have been a good smuggler..." line.  I don't care if the image scaling/color grading issues aren't resolved yet--if the font size and placement are final, that's good enough for me.

Just to update everyone with the resolution of this issue: I've managed to modify and compile vsfilter.dll on my own and it actually works (and I am feeling like SUCH a bad-ass right now)!  Thanks to everyone for their pointers.  This DLL will be included as part of my upcoming subtitle project.

Alexrd said:

CO said:

This was the first fatal plot hole of the SW movies when Darth Vader's name appeared in ROTJ.  If Luke was hidden from his father, why the hell would they use his same last name???????

Who said Skywalker was such an unique name?

...and Kenobi, same problem there ;)

Star Wars is now a very successful direct-to-video franchise.  With that model in mind, there's no reason to release anything on video that people have already seen before.  Every future release will contain changes until the copyright expires and we can finally end the madness.

OK, good to know.  I managed to get what I think is the source code for vsfilter.  I think I'm bound to this particular DLL for my functionality because easySUP solves a lot of my other problems, and I'm trying to make a simple(ish) solution for the masses and easySUP gets me 98% of the way there...

I'll see what I can do.  The code looks ... not simple ;)  Hopefully the forums may yield something.