CatBus

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CourtlyHades296 said:

The Faces VHS set had a Descriptive Audio version without SE changes. I’m hoping someone can add this VHS Hi-Fi into Despecialized for 3.0.

We could also make our own. We have scripts, we have sound mixers, we just need the voice talent.

Doctor M said:

Holy crap! Did the movie really look like that in theaters? That’s nuts.

More or less. There was a warning displayed before the film when I saw it, but apparently it was not in the film provided by the studio, but was added afterward by the theatres. Even with the warning, late-arrivers could easily have missed it with very serious consequences. I think it’s surprising that a big-budget film even made it to screens looking like that at all. A film that could potentially injure a viewer, were all the lawyers on vacation that week or something?

More info on the re-edit here.

EDIT: This is not intended to criticize narth at all for his effort. Presumably nobody will see his edit without full knowledge of what they’re getting themselves into, so no harm, good work, and as someone who saw it in the theatre, I can say it looks about right to me. Disney/Pixar, on the other hand, they should have known better.

Improved translations are… well, hopefully… along the lines of fixed grammar/spelling, removal of awkward or outmoded language, more accurate translations, and so on. I really have to take people’s word for it, since I don’t know all of the languages myself 😉 “Better” is subjective – some want a translation that matches a certain dub verbatim, while I prefer one that matches the English dialogue, faithfully translated. But other improvements may be presentation (appearance, timing), or other things – those are usually done by me.

My release philosophy is based on this: Of all the possible improvements I mentioned, it’s possible that no matter how long I wait, none of them will happen. Even the most committed volunteers can simply have lives that are too busy for translation work, and I don’t begrudge them for it. But I also have several real and significant improvements already done and ready to release. So the longer I wait for one set of improvements, the fewer people may have access to another set of improvements. For example, the Traditional Mandarin subtitles could use some work, and people who want them may benefit from a longer wait. But there are no Bengali subtitles in the current version at all, so people who want them would certainly benefit from a shorter wait.

All of this points to a release early, release often approach, which would be great if I had the time and a less terrible Internet connection to manage it… but I don’t. Instead, the question that usually drives a release is “Will I regret releasing it as-is, and just release a newer version only a few months later?” If the answer to that question leans closer to yes, I’ll hold off. And right now, that’s where we are.

Project Threepio 11.0 will have several all-new languages, as well as many other improvements. It will definitely be a major and worthwhile release. But I really don’t want to do it twice in a row.

I don’t really operate on deadlines (at least not until they’re within one or two days). The one change I’m still working on is syncing a new Japanese translation I’m not even certain I’m going to use yet, and that’s slow going – but I could skip it for this release.

Other changes out there with an indefinite third-party volunteer timeline are a new Swedish ROTJ translation, Mandarin (Traditional) translation improvements, a new Arabic translation for Star Wars, wheedling pittrek into a Slovak translation (apparently haven’t made him feel guilty enough), your changes, and maybe something else I’ve forgotten or don’t know about yet.

Technically I’ve got enough big changes already done that I could release what I have now as 11.0, but I’m happy waiting a couple more months, if that’s what it takes to get a few more of these in.

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Rondan said:

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Tack. 😉

My intent is not to step on any toes, but I’ve made a GOUT-synced version of this new 6-channel ROTJ audio, for those who want to pair it with something other than 4K83. It is almost entirely identical to what hairy_hen released (the theatrical version, not the one with the added score), and any problems with it are almost certainly a result of me mucking something up, not him.

If you’re interested, PM me for a link. I’ve got this available in lossless DTS-MA and lossy Dolby Digital (640k and 448k) formats, which should cover pretty much every use case I can think of.

There haven’t been any changes to those in quite a while, but I’ll send the latest link to be sure. They’re based on OCR, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some mistakes from that (or just the original translation).

PM sent. My suggestion is don’t use the SRT files at all–use the SUP files. These are included in the complete Project Threepio files, but not in the smaller subset included with Despecialized. There are also instructions in the included README file for how to include them in a disc or MKV like you want.

For smaller sizes, I’d recommend looking for the smaller AVCHD encodes (often in the same places as the big MKV encodes)–those are still h.264, but with more compression. But they’re really well done, and they’re from the lossless source. Re-encoding with HEVC from the already-compressed lossy source without a lot of expertise may not end up with a better result.

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I don’t think anyone can answer that until you do it. What you’re describing is the same thing as AVCHD discs (Blu-ray format on DVD media, which work on some players, but not others), but in reverse. You’re making DVD format on Blu-ray media. I’m assuming, like AVCHD, some players may understand what to do with it, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Springing for some writable DVD media would be pretty painless and would always work.

Surprised the GOUT-synced Castilian audio is noticeably off in 4k83–the lip sync on that dub isn’t super-tight to begin with. Have you tried just using the unmodified GOUT track with 4K83? i.e. don’t try to fix something unless you’re sure it’s broken.

Otherwise, you just open the audio in Audition (that’s what I use), and insert .083 seconds at the right timestamp (not at a computer where I can look this up, but it’s around 1h40m, during the rebel fleet shot right after Luke’s last Dagobah scene). To prevent a gap, you’d need to stretch the audio over the gap, and that’s a little more complicated. Copy a chunk of audio overlapping the gap (before you make it), THEN insert the gap, paste the audio into a temp file, stretch-maintaining-pitch so it’s .083 seconds longer, then copy and re-paste over the stretched audio back onto the same timestamp with 50ms crossfades.

Longer term, I think creating a GOUT-synced version of the 4k83 video would solve a lot of problems. If nobody takes up that mantle for a while, I just may.

TGR97 said:

If I were to burn the VIDEO_TS Folder onto a Blu-Ray disc, will it work as if it were a DVD or not?

Not in a DVD player it wouldn’t, the media’s not readable. But software players don’t care about filesystems and media. i.e. VLC can play VIDEO_TS from NTFS. In a Blu-ray player, I doubt such a disc would work reliably across models, if it works at all – it is readable, but doesn’t match any known disc spec.

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Weird about the Obi-Wan music… so the “83 mix” we’ve been using is really an “83 home video mix”, and the “83 theatrical mix” has different content? Am I getting that right? EDIT: I re-read what you wrote and nevermind, I get it now.

Also, any chance of a GOUT sync for this?

Project Threepio now has a parallel discussion thread over at fanedit.org. This isn’t just to give me the fun of twice the overhead, it’s to ensure the safety and continuity of this project. That is, if something bad comes to pass and originaltrilogy.com is no longer available, people looking for Project Threepio will know where to look.

Both threads will be updated as the project develops, and I will respond to PM’s on both sites.

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I really like your overall results, Dre.

But I’m also wondering how Luke’s collar got so pink in Docking Bay 94. Not necessarily from color correction, but what conspiracy of lighting and fabric could do that? Or maybe he just wore a pink shirt that day.

dariwonka said:

CatBus said:

PM sent. And if you like this, just wait until version 11.0 😉

Woow!

What are the changes going to be?

Thanks a lot

At the moment, we’re on track to have six new languages (still hoping for seven!), and improvements in at least seven existing ones. This will really solidify our European language support, and we’ll start to break into South Asian languages for the first time. There will be so many languages in the project that the README will have a new method to filter down which ones to use for your international Star Wars project, so that disc authors don’t have to make as many decisions about languages they may not know.

The English alien & matching subtitles will be based on 4K77 and 4K83.

And there’s a craazy new feature that’s cool even if nobody actually uses it, which is likely. You can merge two subtitle files so that you can watch a film with subtitles in two different languages simultaneously (i.e. for a multilingual audience). Tools like this already exist for SRT files, but this one will allow you to merge graphical subs too.

EDIT: The new languages will be Bengali, Burmese, Serbian (Latin & Cyrillic), Lithuanian, Macedonian, and Latvian. Burmese is frustratingly missing a translation for the ROTJ crawl at the moment (volunteers welcome! small translation job! must know burmese! and english!), but that may just have to be good enough. I’m holding out hope for Slovak, but that may not happen. And yes, concerned Serbian and Macedonian readers, I handle the Cyrillic italics correctly 😉

Send me what you have, as long as you’re sure you’re done. That two month timeline could be stretched or just plain wrong, so you may have enough time for all three 😉

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