CatBus

PM’s sent. I’ve also been informed that Project Threepio v11 is now available on MySpleen.

I’m all for better sources, but every release brings with it more alterations, even if unintentional (in this case, the film scans would predate the Blu-ray changes, so they’d likely re-do those from scratch, and they’re unlikely to be 100% identical). If we wait for the UHDs, then we should also wait for analysis of those new alterations, otherwise basing something on them could be a step backward. Also, the step-down in fine detail from DeEd to 4Kxx is already pretty obvious, even at 720p… if DeEd were based on something with more fine detail than the current Blus, the seams between footage from the new source and 4Kxx-based footage would be even more apparent. Not an insurmountable problem (blur the Blu source, sharpen the 4Kxx source, fake grain tricks, etc), but something to consider.

PM sent.

PM sent.

CourtlyHades296 said:

If the OUT gets an official (U)HD release, will Project Threepio still be maintained?

That’s a really good question. My entire personal motivation for this project is that there isn’t even a respectful DVD-quality release of the OUT (recycled decade-plus-old Laserdisc on the DVD format with the wrong audio didn’t cut it even in 2006). Given what I’ve seen of the condition of these films, what I would be satisfied with as a fan is a respectful 1080p Blu-ray transfer. No SE changes, every attempt to maintain color and sound fidelity, but your typical well-done Blu-ray film damage cleanup and such is fine. UHD would certainly be gravy and I wouldn’t turn it down, but a top-notch Blu-ray would meet my needs and I’d be a delighted customer.

So would I maintain Project Threepio under such circumstances? To be blunt, no. I wouldn’t necessarily abandon it, though – I’ve written this thing to be a self-contained toolkit that anyone with enough knowledge could use and even maintain. So if someone else wanted to take over, I would stick around to show them the ropes.

That said, if I believed that there was even a remote chance that such an official release would be available to fans within my lifetime, Project Threepio would never have even started. Project Threepio is, in a way, founded on the idea that Star Wars will never be available to fans in any acceptable format aside from fan preservations, until it enters the public domain. Therefore it’s worth my time to make those fan preservations as globally accessible as possible, because public domain Star Wars is a long, long time from now.

LordZerome1080 said:

CatBus said:

LordZerome1080 said:

To be honest I think that its good news that Harmy has found a fellow.

If you use YouTube’s realtime closed-captioning, it reveals through a mistranscription of “Despecialized Editions” how the dynamic may work between having a girlfriend and Despecializing Star Wars.

I’m confused

Dumb joke

Desexualized Edition

Does Project Threepio go to eleven? Why, yes, yes it does…

Project files have been updated to version 11.0 (codename: “Leggo My Eggo!”), and the first post has been updated. Please PM me for temporary download links until the files are available at some more permanent locations.

Quite a few new languages have been added in this iteration, in addition to translation improvements for several existing languages.

Rough summary of changes from 10.1 to 11.0:

• Added new languages: Bengali, Serbian (Latin & Cyrillic), Lithuanian, Macedonian, Latvian (all previous thanks to schorman13), and Burmese.
• Improved translations for Arabic (thanks to RashadShehadeh)
• Improved translations for Finnish (thanks to LexX)
• Improved translations for Traditional Mandarin (thanks to kylefan)
• Improved translations for Swedish (SW and ESB only, thanks to Rondan)
• Improved translations for several other languages: Indonesian, Malay, Persian/Farsi, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and Estonian (again, thanks to schorman13)
• Changed language code for Malay from MSA to ZSM (to better distinguish it from the Malay/MSA macrolanguage that includes both Indonesian/IND and Standard Malay/ZSM)
• resync_subs script now supports Return of the Pug (Puggo’s 16mm ROTJ preservation)
• Alien 35mm subtitles (in English) are now available in 2160p (4K) resolution, and are also available downscaled to 1080p and 720p – these are the 35mm theatrical Greedo/Jabba subs for subtitle-free preservations (thanks to the 4K77 and 4K83 projects, Faithwyn and ChainsawAsh)
• The README now allows you to more intelligently filter down Project Threepio’s somewhat unwieldy list of available subtitles to just those that would be most applicable to a particular region of the world (using Blu-ray and DVD regions as an example). Since disc-based formats and some media players are limited to 32 subtitle tracks, this is often necessary.
• Added a new dual_subs script, which can be used to merge two subtitle files into a single new file, so that you can watch the trilogy with subtitles in two different languages simultaneously, using normal playback hardware/software. If you use this script with graphical subtitles, the first subtitle is displayed within the frame of the film exactly as before, and the second subtitle is added in the letterboxing below the film’s frame (see example image in first post). However, this does break CIH compatibility, and may extend outside title-safe and even action-safe areas, depending on which settings you choose. This was a user-requested feature from a long time ago, but the difficulty of handling graphical subtitles that didn’t have 100% matching timing kept me from being able to provide it until now.
• All precompiled Windows executables are now built using Python 3.7 and PyInstaller (instead of Python 3.4 and py2exe).
• To help anyone looking into the project’s scripting code, I’ve modified all code to better comply with various scripting style guidelines (e.g. PEP8 for Python). This doesn’t necessarily mean the code is actually well-written or even usefully commented, but it’s a start. I’ve also added clearer instructions in the README about exactly where edits should be made to the scripts in order to add new functionality, such as when you need to add support for a new language or preservation.

The new Serbian (Cyrillic) and Macedonian subtitles provide even more reason to use graphical subtitles whenever possible – to italicize text correctly in these languages, you need to use both a font and software that are capable of displaying the text correctly using the OpenType “localized forms” feature, and that software must also be aware of the language of the text it’s presenting. In much the same way RTL subtitles tend to avoid end punctuation, subtitles in these languages usually avoid italics. Project Threepio does not avoid italics in these languages, but as with RTL subtitles, provides “-compat” files without the formatting that may look bad in some players. But if you use the graphical subtitles, you don’t need to worry about any of this, and they are certain to display exactly as they are supposed to appear.

I’m very excited about the new Bengali and Burmese support. South Asia represents one of Project Threepio’s largest remaining areas for future growth, and I hope to be able to build on what we have. Since there are Hindi and Tamil dubs, I think it’s reasonable to assume Hindi, Tamil, and Urdu subtitles should all be within reach.

Fulgore said:

mega.nz

Free account allows 50GB. Can encrypt files/folders. Fast up and down!

This is frequently ISP-throttled (so slow for some), but it still just plain works. No piecing together parts, no server overloaded, no captchas, no learning how to say download in Czech… even when it’s throttled, just start downloading and step away for a while. The problem is if it’s throttled for the uploader, but even then, just don’t do it very often.

LordZerome1080 said:

To be honest I think that its good news that Harmy has found a fellow.

If you use YouTube’s realtime closed-captioning, it reveals through a mistranscription of “Despecialized Editions” how the dynamic may work between having a girlfriend and Despecializing Star Wars.

If you can wait a day or two, there’s a new major project release in the works.

Thanks Williarob – I do enjoy a spirited debate as well, and I think you managed to walk that line gracefully, no offense taken or intended. In spite of my current preferences for DeEd, I do respect the work you’ve done and look forward to more from the team. 4K83 is an amazing achievement, and while a lot of the credit goes to the preposterously well-maintained print you found, the team itself is no slouch either 😉

As I’ve stated elsewhere, part of the problem with 4K83 is that it simply came after DeEd 2.0. Once you’ve already got one Holy Grail, it’s really not clear what’s to be done about a second one. The fact that two Holy Grails exist, however, is a far cry from where this community was only five years ago. There may be strife and arguments from time to time, but we’re all better off now than at any time since these films came out. And you’re a big part of why.

oohteedee said:

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

If you truly believe that 2 frames of foreign dialogue is more out of sync than 5 frames of English (original) dialog then this whole conversation is pointless. Logic has lost.

CatBus said:

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.

Note the emphasized sentence. 4K83 is off by a smaller amount, but in a spot where you’d be more likely to notice it (a “spot” that covers a majority of the film). GOUT was off by more, but in a spot where you wouldn’t notice it at all (not sure how many milliseconds it was off by five frames, so can’t compare overall lengths). Not to mention how ADR might be messing with things at the home video level (SFX and score can be off, while at the same time dialogue is perfectly synced – this, and the reverse of this, are extremely common in dubs).

If you continue responding to posts without actually reading them, then this whole conversation is pointless. Civility has lost.

Williarob said:

CatBus said:
Harmy’s plans have never been for anything above 1080p, so using existing Blu-ray footage seems plausible.

I didn’t talk to Harmy about Jedi, I was just extrapolating

When you assume…

Seriously. Ask the guy. Get an answer. It saved a lot of time for me, and then we can both be operating with the facts.

clinging to a crappy DVD from 2006 as the defacto standard

To be fair, it’s a crappy Laserdisc from 1993. People have been “GOUT syncing” since long before there was a GOUT to sync to.

Why not conform the remaining audio tracks

Because even if you had a catalogue of all of them (which does not exist), they won’t work with Despecialized. People may stop watching Despecialized once 4K83 catches up, though, so it’s a thing to reconsider periodically.

If we’re really lucky, it won’t even need despecializing. But if that happens and the official release is 4K83 sync’d rather than GOUT sync’d, will you be cutting those frames out of that version too?

I plan to sync to the version that best resembles a modern, respectful Blu-ray treatment of the original trilogy. If an official release qualifies, I’d sync to that (…and drink to that). Until then, I have to decide between two competing factions and right now I’m coming down on the side of DeEd. Again, maybe that’s just until Harmy changes his mind, and maybe that’s just until 4K83 does better. Either way works to resolve the schism.

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.