CatBus

oohteedee said:

Dubbed audio does not match the lips. They are speaking another language.

The ADR team does a surprisingly good job, and the dubbed dialogue is frequently chosen to use words that match lip movements. It’s variable, though. German in particular is pretty good, Thai is all over the place.

Don’t let me get in the way of you dismissing the actual complaints of your actual listeners however you see fit, though.

The GOUT audio is not actually synced to the GOUT video. It is off by as much as 5 frames. This was discovered by hairy_hen while working on the 4k83 audio.

This is true, and just as irrelevant to the discussion as ever.

People don’t complain of it because they aren’t aware of where it’s off. They assume it’s right so their brain tells them it’s right.

There’s a thing called tolerances. You can be off to a degree, but within tolerances, it’s okay. For dialogue, the tolerances are pretty tight–around one frame. For a tracked score, tolerances are well beyond five frames. The GOUT audio was surprisingly off, yes, but it was within the tolerances of the viewers. The 4K83 sync problem, while only two frames, is outside tolerances for a lot of people, because it covers dialogue.

People may complain of alternate audio being used with 4k83 because they know exactly where the sync issue is so they listen and force themselves to hear it. It’s a placebo effect.

If you take something perfect and tell people something is wrong they will find something wrong even though there isn’t.

I’ll just let that stand as its own counter-argument.

Even one version of despecialized had audio out of sync and no one noticed because we all assumed it was correct.

Yes, DeEd at one point (ROTJ 1.0 IIRC) used PAL video and NTSC audio, for a two-frame difference. The same people complained and it got fixed. Harmy couldn’t see the problem himself, but he could see the technical fault and never implied those who complained were just making things up. It’s part of his charm.

Williarob said:

CatBus said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Better, I think, to start transitioning everything over to the new frame-complete standard now.

That makes sense if other video preservation projects join in. But that’s been asked and answered. Other video preservation projects are not joining in. So here we are, so providing compatibility releases of 4K83 seems to be a stopgap… and possibly an indefinite one.

The only other project I recall you mentioning is Despecialized. Are there any other potentially ongoing Return of the Jedi projects that aren’t based on 4K83?

Just ones based on Despecialized: Krieg Der Sterne and such. In that sense, I’m calling “Despecialized” a single preservation in the same sense that I’m calling “4K83” a single preservation. It’s a single root source with multiple takes from it. So the Star Wars video world has basically two video preservations, using two different standards.

There are other preservations that I think are safely considered unique, such as Puggo, etc. They are fully self-contained, and make no effort to please a broad audience.

I mean, I can understand why nobody feels the need to go back and try to add two frames to projects that were released years ago, but has anybody actually gone and checked the sources for all of these alternate audio tracks? Aren’t some of them from VHS tapes and laserdiscs? The original film always contained these “extra” frames and no doubt many of the PAL and NTSC sources used to create those alternate tracks actually still had them. We already know that they don’t all sync perfectly to the GOUT.

No, but being audio, we listen to them 😉 I was just as surprised as everyone else that a two-frame difference would be detectable on a dub, but there it is, the complaints are right in this thread. Regardless of the sync problems each of these tracks from myriad sources may have had with the GOUT, the sync issues were not nearly as detectable with GOUT-synced video as it is with 4K83. That’s borne out by the actual complaints.

I also think it is fair to assume that any future Return of the Jedi projects would either be based on 4K83 or on a new official 4K Bluray Release from Lucasfilm, or most likely some combination of both.

That depends on timing. Harmy’s plans have never been for anything above 1080p, so using existing Blu-ray footage seems plausible.

If Harmy ever feels the need to revisit ROTJ Despecialized, these two sources will likely be his starting point, not the current Bluray, nor any previous version of Despecialized (unless it’s used purely as a color reference). Which means, going forward, the complete film as presented in 4K83 will become the new standard for Return of the Jedi.

Did you… ask him this? I did. At least as of then, this is absolutely not the plan. When trying to implement a new cross-project video standard, I’ve found talking to the other projects is a helpful tactic.

And Frankly, when 4K83 already looks like this:

Why is anyone still watching GOUT or patched Bluray versions of this film anyway?

Everyone has different tastes, but those who like more fine detail and the IP/negative scan appearance of your typical modern Blu-ray release may prefer DeEd to 4K83. Color is much more subjective, but until DrDre gets a crack at it, I’d say DeEd maintains an edge there too. In my case, I prefer DeEd on all three counts.

Also, until yesterday, people who liked the audio for their dubs to match the lip movements of the speakers preferred DeEd, so you’re welcome – that one’s now off the list.

ChainsawAsh said:

Better, I think, to start transitioning everything over to the new frame-complete standard now.

That makes sense if other video preservation projects join in. But that’s been asked and answered. Other video preservation projects are not joining in. So here we are, so providing compatibility releases of 4K83 seems to be a stopgap… and possibly an indefinite one.

It’s actually a lot simpler than “Each person has to make up their mind on their own.” The audio and subtitles pretty much always follow the lead of the video, in terms of timing. But the video is now leading in two different directions simultaneously, which is the root of the problem. If that were addressed, the sync issues could be resolved case-by-case pretty easily.

towne32 said:

CatBus said:

Discostu said:

CatBus said:

FWIW, I plan to release a GOUT-synced 4K83 to address all the sync issues with not only dubs, but any other GOUT-synced audio tracks (Laserdisc rips, in-theatre recordings, etc) that people may have collected over the last 26 years since the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs came out and became the primary thing to sync to.

Awesome!

Okay, this is done. Sorry it was delayed a little extra due to the impending release of one of my other projects. In a nutshell, this is what it is:

GOUT-synced 4K83 with the 1.1 color correction, at 1080p (MKV format), using an encoding and filesize that could easily be used to create a BD25. Includes one of each major English track variant (83 6-channel, stereo, mono, and 93 stereo) in DTS-MA, defaulting to 6-channel 83 (which is just hairy_hen’s new track for 4K83, GOUT-synced). Also includes all of the dubs in my personal dub collection (Dolby Digital), which is big but not exhaustive. Also includes 32 subtitle tracks (only 32 to avoid player compatibility issues) chosen to be most useful for most American, Western European, and Japanese audiences. The subtitle tracks are from the upcoming Project Threepio 11.0, which will be available soon, and you can download that or the current version if you need additional subtitle options.

The purpose of this release is to have a version that “just works” for any mix-and-match purposes without having to think a lot about it, the main beneficiaries likely to be people who watch with their favorite dubs, but it could work with any of the random tracks collectors have been accumulating since the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs were released in 1993 and created this long-lasting fan frame standard we now call GOUT.

PM me for a link if you’d like it. I’m checking with admins right now about putting it on MySpleen (I’m also a complete torrent novice, so there may be technical delays)

I’ll take a different approach on how to respond to someone politely:

Thanks, Catbus.

Your welcome. Hey, I knew it was a niche use case to begin with. Most people don’t even notice the sync problem to begin with. But the requests did start coming in not even a full hour after I posted it, so clearly it’s not that niche.

But to address the point of contention more seriously – I do not have access to all of the GOUT-synced Star Wars audio tracks, or even all of the dubs, in order to re-sync them to 4K83, even if I wanted to. Fans have been slowly accumulating GOUT-synced tracks since 1993 (the year the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs came out) – dubs, in-theatre recordings, commentary, and who knows what else, very little of it having even the most tangential relationship to the deservedly-maligned 2006 bonus discs – and I just provided video that makes these fans’ 4K83 audio experience suck less for very little technical effort on their part. Furthermore I currently do not want to sync my own personal audio files (those included with this release) to 4K83 because I personally favor the DeEds at the moment, and Harmy has indicated he has no plans to move to the 4K83 frame standard at any point in the future. So while we live in this bifurcated universe with two competing frame standards and no reconciliation on the horizon, what I’ve just now done is provided an option so that the choice of watching 4K83 is a painless one because it’s now available GOUT-synced too. There’s 26 YEARS of GOUT-synced Star Wars audio sitting in collector’s closets spread across the globe with no system in place for updating them in any sort of centralized fashion. This audio will be with us for centuries, even long after I find it worthwhile to resync my own relatively small collection to 4K83.

Discostu said:

CatBus said:

FWIW, I plan to release a GOUT-synced 4K83 to address all the sync issues with not only dubs, but any other GOUT-synced audio tracks (Laserdisc rips, in-theatre recordings, etc) that people may have collected over the last 26 years since the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs came out and became the primary thing to sync to.

Awesome!

Okay, this is done. Sorry it was delayed a little extra due to the impending release of one of my other projects. In a nutshell, this is what it is:

GOUT-synced 4K83 with the 1.1 color correction, at 1080p (MKV format), using an encoding and filesize that could easily be used to create a BD25. Includes one of each major English track variant (83 6-channel, stereo, mono, and 93 stereo) in DTS-MA, defaulting to 6-channel 83 (which is just hairy_hen’s new track for 4K83, GOUT-synced). Also includes all of the dubs in my personal dub collection (Dolby Digital), which is big but not exhaustive. Also includes 32 subtitle tracks (only 32 to avoid player compatibility issues) chosen to be most useful for most American, Western European, and Japanese audiences. The subtitle tracks are from the upcoming Project Threepio 11.0, which will be available soon, and you can download that or the current version if you need additional subtitle options.

The purpose of this release is to have a version that “just works” for any mix-and-match purposes without having to think a lot about it, the main beneficiaries likely to be people who watch with their favorite dubs, but it could work with any of the random tracks collectors have been accumulating since the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs were released in 1993 and created this long-lasting fan frame standard we now call GOUT.

PM me for a link if you’d like it. I’m checking with admins right now about putting it on MySpleen (I’m also a complete torrent novice, so there may be technical delays)

PM sent.

Okay, I finally received the one piece that I decided I didn’t want to release a new version without (the last file of the new Arabic translation). That doesn’t mean I’m 100% ready–I still need to do some processing of that file, etc, but it’s now just a matter of time. 11.0 is imminent… for certain generous definitions of imminent 😉

If you have any improved translations, now is the time to send them in if you want them in the next version. I’ll still take them afterward, of course, but there may be a delay before the next version of Project Threepio is released.

ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, it’s a “sourced from a release print” thing. They got super lucky with the 4K83 print since it was (assuming I remember right) a show print that’s a couple generations closer to the negative than a release print would be, so it was A) rarely projected and thus in much better shape, and B) not nearly as contrasty, so you don’t have the crushed blacks or clipped whites that the 4K77 print has in some areas.

Yeah, the 4K83 print is simply stunning. I’ve only seen one print in better shape, and that’s (what I’ve seen of) Poita’s Empire print. Which is pretty good news on the Star Wars preservation front…

GodMars said:

CatBus said:

GodMars said:

No one else has experienced crushed blacks and blown-out whites with 4K77?

Depends what you mean.

4K77 DNR suffers a complete loss of detail in areas of certain shots depending on the lighting, and scenes with any sort of brightness or darkness skew in those directions pretty heavily. This is on a calibrated 4K TV. I assume this is an issue with the source, but I’ve never seen anyone else mention it.

I’ve noticed it. It’s one of the reasons I still prefer DeEd, even though I’ll be the first to admit Star Wars DeEd has some serious issues in its own right. Nobody brings it up likely because there’s not likely anything to be done about it, and it’s considered tolerable to some, and there are other preservations for those who don’t like it.

Also, you must keep this in mind – if the whites were blown out and blacks crushed in the theatrical showings, then 4K77 has done its job in reproducing the theatrical experience. Lower-contrast sources like negatives and IPs create a different “Blu-ray”-ish look that I (and likely you) prefer, but it may simply not be theatrically accurate.

Discostu said:

CatBus said:

FWIW, I plan to release a GOUT-synced 4K83 to address all the sync issues with not only dubs, but any other GOUT-synced audio tracks (Laserdisc rips, in-theatre recordings, etc) that people may have collected over the last 26 years since the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs came out and became the primary thing to sync to.

Awesome!

Yep, I’ll share more once the thing’s available.

oohteedee said:

Just keep in mind that when the 4K83 optical audio was being synced to the print it was discovered that the actual GOUT audio isn’t properly synced to the GOUT video. Just as they screwed up and missed two film frames they also screwed up syncing the audio.

So really if you’re going to GOUT sync 4K83 you should properly GOUT sync all the GOUT audio tracks too since they are not even synced properly to the GOUT video.

The print audio can be accurately synced to the print since any audio dropouts you hear can actually be seen as to why they dropout in the optical audio track on the left side of the print. The audio dropouts are at splices in the optical audio track on the print.

I’m not sure anyone ever synced to the GOUT audio on purpose (the video frames are the reference, not the audio), but if so, sure. Some of the GOUT foreign language tracks aren’t even synced exactly to the GOUT English audio. It’s more likely every audio track has idiosyncratic sync issues, but none as big as the difference between GOUT and 4K83.

Not to worry, though, I’ll be using hairy_hen’s newly synced audio for the main English track, so the English sync will be just as good as 4K83.

The GOUT audio was always assumed to be correct but it’s not.

I don’t recall that ever being the case. I’d say it’s fairer to say people were surprised at how badly off it was, but they weren’t surprised at all that it was off. It’s Lucasfilm for goodness sake.

FWIW, I plan to release a GOUT-synced 4K83 to address all the sync issues with not only dubs, but any other GOUT-synced audio tracks (Laserdisc rips, in-theatre recordings, etc) that people may have collected over the last 26 years since the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs came out and became the primary thing to sync to.

I understand it’s probably a niche use-case, since the 4K83 English tracks are synced just fine and the sync issue is so small/barely noticeable in other tracks, but it’s one easy solution for a lot of little problems that could drag on for years. Don’t know if that old track you got from alt.binaries.starwars in 2003 will sync? Get this version and you don’t have to worry about it. Or at least that’s the theory 😉

Since I really didn’t like the initial color grade, I’ll base this on Sanjuro’s v1.1 grade, and I’ll try to also make it fit on a BD25 (it’ll be 1080p), just to check another box on the compatibility concerns list. No plans for 4K. Encoding at 1080p is choking my computer quite well enough thank you very much.

IMO 4K77 at 4K has less fine detail than DeEd at 720p, so 1080p should be a fine option. I’m sure this will start an argument though. I don’t know much about 4K77 alternate encodes, so I can’t say much else on the subject.

Next DeEd’s are all planned to be 1080p.

DB2 said:

I have a couple of questions:

1. I tried to watched 4K77 and found it was very choppy on my laptop or on my flash drive which holds 128gb and is supposed to be good for movies - it was playing on my Panasonic 820 4K player. Thoughts on the issue?

2. I watched the Despecialized 2.7 Star Wars 720p last night and was very impressed! The only issue I saw was the whites seemed a bit clipped at times - specular highlights in particular. Is there a version which alleviates this?

Thanks.

Not sure about #1, but if you try playing the file over the network on your Panny 820, you could rule out disk/interface bottleneck issues. You could also try demuxing the movie and remuxing it with just the audio you want, etc, and see if that helps.

For #2, no. Clipping is an issue on the Blu-ray source (most visible to me in red lights, actually, not whites) and IIRC Harmy has never really addressed that. I expect the nest version WILL address this better due to the availability of good-quality print scans, which wasn’t an option for previous despecializations.

FWIW, I just re-compared ROTJ DeEd vs 4K83 (Sanjuro’s regrade) and still felt DeEd compared favorably. Even in the Rancor scene, in the scenes where the monster’s color looks better in 4K83, Luke looks better in the same shots in DeEd. I guess different strokes, and so on.

GodMars said:

No one else has experienced crushed blacks and blown-out whites with 4K77?

Depends what you mean. The optical duplication process effectively boosts contrast at every step, so a projection print (4K77) should look contrast-boosted compared with a negative or IP (DeEd). That’s part of what I personally don’t like about the look of print-based preservations in general (and why I prefer the look of well-done Blu-rays – 4K and otherwise – to 35mm prints). That said, 4K83 keeps it pretty under control somehow, possibly because the source was just better. To be honest, I’d probably prefer 4K83 if it came out first, but both it and the DeEd are so far beyond close enough to perfect for my tastes, I go with DeEd simply because I’ve already got one Holy Grail and have no use for a second one.

I actually prefer DeEd for all films, even though Star Wars is definitely the ugliest of the DeEds.

I’ve found people’s preference largely depends on what they’re looking for. If you’re looking for a true recreation of what the cinema experience in 1977 was, 4K77 is the only way to go. If you’re looking for what a respectful modern Blu-ray transfer would have looked like, then Despecialized still fits the bill better IMO. I’m a purist to the degree that Greedo doesn’t shoot. But I’m happy to get rid of reel change marks and the film damage on Tantive IV.

Jedi is an easier choice for me. Jedi DeEd doesn’t have any of the warts of Star Wars DeEd, and it’s very hard to beat if you’re looking for something equivalent to a modern respectful Blu-ray treatment. 4K83 is clean as hell (amazingly so), but it’s still an old theatrical print, and looks like it (which could be good or bad, depending on what you want).

All DeEd’s are encoded and sized to fit on a BD25 if you want to burn them.

The files for comparison aren’t all in the project (yet). I’ll make a separate link for these works-in-progress.

I’m more likely to do a GOUT sync of the 4K83 video and solve lots of compatibility problems simultaneously, but ATM I don’t have much free time at all (and my priority is the next Project Threepio).

I only have the later home video dubs for the trilogy, but I’ll send what I have. They are all GOUT-synced, not 4K83, but depending on the dub, that may be good enough.

Yeah, I got confused by this as well – Puggo’s 8mm digest ESB project includes the same video differences as the 70mm version, so I just assumed the audio differences in that version were similar if not the same as the 70mm. But that’s not the case – in-theatre recordings confirm the 70mm audio was extremely close to the 35mm audio, in spite of the different video. Go figure.

EDIT: Also, if you haven’t heard it, the 8mm digest audio has even more differences from the 35mm audio than the 16mm audio. Give it a listen, it has lots of “what the hell?” moments, and features alternate Leia dialogue where her lip movements actually match what’s said, rather than the 35mm version, where they definitely don’t (“I know where Luke is.”)

PM sent. BTW, if you’re willing to help compare two different Japanese translations, I’d love some help on that front. I have a feeling the translation we use right now is the original theatrical one, which may have been rushed, and the other translation is from the home video releases, which had a little more time for better translations.

Yup, I did a GOUT sync. I can provide links to the lossy and lossless encodes of this (I’ll need to upload them first), and also encode the FLAC track into DTS-HD, if you send it to me again.

Argh, sorry, I overpromised. I thought I still had the original 4K83 sync around, but all I have is the GOUT sync.

PM sent.

Do you want 4K83 or NTSC-GOUT (DeEd) sync? DTS-MA or Dolby Digital (ac3)?