CatBus

Handman said:

Why does HDMI suck so much?

99% of the answer is HDCP.

Yep, maximum 32 tracks on a Blu-ray disc. And yeah 720p24 is weird. It’d BD-compliant, but it’s not an HDMI-supported resolution, so all players do some sort of conversion before sending to a display – ideally upscaled to 1080p24, but many players are less than ideal, so you never quite know for sure.

ZigZig said:

I just checked, there is no such encoding error in the “official” mkv v2.7. So this issue must come from your friend’s encoding.

Or the player might be converting 720p24 to 1080i for HDMI transmission, and the TV’s turning is back into 1080p and one or both of the devices are not handling it well. 720p24 does invite player problems because it can’t be transmitted over HDMI natively.

I came up with a nifty new thing for people trying to create super-Internationalized versions. Disc-based formats are limited to 32 subtitle tracks, and it’s pretty easy to blow past that if you’re using Project Threepio. What I’ve done up until now is highlight certain subtitles in the README that an author should prioritize for broadest global reach, while maintaining best quality. The problem is, some of our top-quality subtitles, such as Icelandic, get booted off the list simply due to small audience size.

So future versions of the README will have the same list as before, but you will be able to filter the list based on the region you’re targeting (I’m using Blu-ray/DVD regions because disc authors would be familiar with them, not because I want any discs to be region-locked). i.e. You select Blu-ray Region A, and you can now squeeze in Navajo. Select region C and you can safely include Cantonese. Blu-ray Region B and DVD Region 2 still both run past 32 languages, so the author will still need to use some discretion or create sub-regions, but it’s a more manageable amount. Or you can still view the complete unfiltered list and do with it what you will.

Admittedly, this means that the concept of a single super-Internationalized version may be a little pie-in-the-sky, but in the meantime, it will be easier to create three or four regional versions that collectively cover everyone.

EDIT: To save trouble, I created two sub-regions within Region B/2, splitting Europe into Western/Northern and Central/Eastern/Southeast. They have some language crossover, with English, German, Italian, Russian, Polish and Turkish appearing in both groups. So now if you like this arrangement, you can filter languages appropriate for a release targeted to a Western or Central European release. You can also still filter to the complete Region B/2 and make your own subset.

suspiciouscoffee said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Which Darwinian theories aren’t Satanic? Is he saying that the ones that allow for evolution from species to species are satanic but the ones that only micro-evolution, like the beaks of finches, are not satanic? Is that what he’s getting at?

Yes, actually, that’s exactly it.

Whatever you do, don’t let them find out about herring gulls or Satan will lay claim to the rest of Darwin.

TV’s Frink said:

I’m starting to think you’ve never stared at someone for five full seconds.

Can’t. Ever since Scanners, I would never take the chance.

PM sent.

Depending on how things go (my release schedule is loosely coordinated with releases of the Despecialized Editions), the next release will be a major version update, v11. Why? Lots of new languages. We’re breaking into South Asian language support, we’re aiming for supporting over >90% of official EU languages, and lots of improvements to existing translations are also planned. It will be nice. But slow.

But if it turns out there’s a benefit to releasing some partway-there version to accompany DeEd 3.0, we may see a version 10.2 as a placeholder.

Mrebo said:

Problems with crime rate numbers is they don’t habitually account for citizenship and crimes can go unreported for fear of legal repercussions.

Economic effect involves numerous competing variables that are extremely difficult to account for. Also, a person may reasonably find fault on the basis of negative impact in one area, notwithstanding the overall impact.

No doubt we can both compile facts and links to support one argument or the other, but we can’t pretend there is a pat answer.

Some studies on the matter are pretty comprehensive, and there are quite a lot of them. It’s better to look at the studies that exist (keeping their limitations in mind) than to imagine that for every existing study, there must be an equally valid and politically opposite study somewhere else that you haven’t seen. That assumption may turn out to be as safe for crime statistics as it is for global warming. This is how researchers get scapegoated – people assume because science is neutral that if all the research answers a political question one way and none of it answers it a different way, all of the scientists involved must be politically biased. When what it really means is that this particular political question is pretty easy to answer and we can spend our efforts trying to answer one of the many harder ones.

This is a pretty comprehensive and recent study:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.12175

You are correct that crimes absolutely do go unreported when the victim is undocumented, which is the whole reason sanctuary cities improve public safety. The extra undocumented-specific disincentive for reporting is exactly the same as the extra undocumented-specific disincentive for criminal behavior – fear of deportation.

Overall, the NCVS results demonstrate that the findings reported in the main analysis are more likely reflective of less crime, not just less reporting. Though it remains possible that the NCVS results are driven by nonresponse bias among undocumented immigrants, several points suggest this is unlikely to be the case. First, this would not explain the homicide findings, which preclude reporting omissions, and homicide rates tend to parallel trends in overall violent crime substantially (the correlation between murder and the NCVS robbery rate in our data is .83). Second, if nonresponses were driving the NCVS results, we might expect to see substantial differences in nonresponse rates for racial/ethnic groups more likely to be undocumented. But we find little evidence for this.

Not saying I disagree that there are hard aspects to the subject of immigration, and areas where the data isn’t clear, and I honestly probably agree with you on more than either of us would expect. But this crime rate stuff does appear to be very much like global warming. It all points one way.

Mrebo said:

Cat, I doubt your asserted stats and I don’t think there’s a “crisis” but think there is an immigration problem.

Well that’s something.

Here are the links:

More illegal immigrants leaving the US than entering over Mexican border (this is an article, but that stats are from Pew):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/27/even-before-trump-more-mexicans-were-leaving-the-us-than-arriving/?utm_term=.56ebbbbb71de

And here: http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/apr/26/ron-kind/yes-experiencing-net-outflow-illegal-undocumented-/

Crime rates were already covered in mfm’s post.

Economic impact: http://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy

There are definitely problems, I agree. Crimes are definitely being committed, and that needs to stop. Hate crimes are through the roof. No, there’s plenty of room for improvement.

moviefreakedmind said:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/21/theres-no-immigration-crisis-and-these-charts-prove-it/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1e4e01522ed0

Here’s some good information that I’m sure Warbler won’t care about. But if anyone is interested in a starting point for how the illegal immigration “crisis” is blown out of proportion, here’s a couple articles.

I think it’s fair to come up with a set of parameters that, in the abstract, would define an “illegal immigration crisis”, and this could vary from person to person. Then, once you have those parameters, see if the facts match them.

For example, I’m going to rhetorically take the position of a “zero tolerance, law-and-order-at-all-costs” observer. By that criteria, the fact that undocumented immigrants have lower crime rates than the native population isn’t relevant, nor is the fact that they provide a net economic boon. So we simply disregard those facts. They crossed the border illegally, and that’s the only point that matters here.

So to constitute a crisis, merely one person needs to disregard the law and cross the border? Well, even for me, that’s a little extreme. If they get caught and sent back, that’s the law functioning as designed, not a crisis. So to be a crisis, a “zero tolerance, law-and-order-at-all-costs” observer could fairly say more people would have to be crossing the Mexican border than were being sent back.

Which means, for a “zero tolerance, law-and-order-at-all-costs” observer, there was once a crisis, but it ended about ten years ago. Other observers with other priorities such as public safety or economic concerns may find that there has been no illegal immigration crisis for a much longer period of time.

ZaneFlare92 said:

Brenden said:

Wait, so is 2.5 of Empire cancelled?

That sad feeling when your looking forward to something you’ve been anticipating for

then you hear it’s not gonna happen

schorman13 said:

CatBus said:

These things change quickly, but this site says it’s on Amazon, but not Netflix:

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/star-wars/269723/star-wars-streaming-watch-online-guide

EDIT: I don’t see anything but English subs though… iTunes also has it but I’m not clear on the subs there either.

Arabic subs are available on iTunes. I would be very surprised if they differ from the Blu Ray though. Let me know which films you want.

I believe it’s just Star Wars he’s after. You could PM either or both of us. I’ll make sure he gets it regardless.

Yes, it’s probably just the Blu-ray subs again, but sometimes you get someone who cares a little extra.

These things change quickly, but this site says it’s on Amazon, but not Netflix:

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/star-wars/269723/star-wars-streaming-watch-online-guide

EDIT: I don’t see anything but English subs though… iTunes also has it but I’m not clear on the subs there either.

I’m afraid the subs you’re replacing (from v10.0) were from the Blu-rays. I think Netflix or TV broadcasts are your best bet for alternate Arabic translations. Send 'em to either one of us, they’ll get to the right place.

Next question: Can you have it done in time for my kid’s birthday on Monday? 😉

Woohoo! Does that mean in addition to switching films, we’re jumping to 3.0/1080p as well?

KalmeX said:

Hi Catbus, shamefully, I subscribed to this forum only to ask you the same as many others: a PM with a link to the subtitles. It would be for “The return of the Jedi” (because he won’t return if I don’t have subtitles).

Thank you so much!

Never fear, you are just the latest in a long line of people creating accounts to ask for links. Some stick around though.

PM sent. You get all the subtitles, all languages, all films, all formats, so it’s probably a bigger download than you were hoping for.

The idea behind this project was that all the people out there preserving Star Wars would just include subtitles in their preservations, and then nobody would have to download subtitles separately. That hasn’t really completely worked out 😕

oohteedee said:

Lucasfilm could easily nullify our work by releasing their own version.

Indeed, that was exactly what happened with the release of the GOUT, which many people feel was released specifically to curtail the underground market of Star Wars Laserdisc rips. Whether that was the intent or not, it effectively succeeded in that goal.

This situation is a little different because the GOUT required next to no investment, and its shoddy treatment as bonus material could still pass muster with the Original Vision™ crowd.

PM sent.

PM sent.

rainbow battle kid said:

plus it’s a small change that makes it match the other 2 movies

Not really trying to escalate this, but it is more of a change than that. It was intended as a small inobtrusive change, certainly, but it failed due to careless editing. Watch the arrival of Tatooine with the 77 crawl – the planet comes into view right on the musical cue (considering the projected frame was slightly smaller than the 35mm frame, it was likely perfectly timed for theatres), as the original editing intended. Now try the 81 crawl. The entire planet misses its cue, and by no small margin. Cracks me up every time I see it, like the stormtrooper head-bonk.

poita said:

You know, I think you are right.
They did utilise a lot of “found objects” during the production, and I think I have identified the source of the Bacta Tank.

It looks like a Black & Decker Spacemaster.

In just three minutes, we will all be enjoying hot jedi toasties!

Yay!

If my experience with toaster ovens means anything, Han, Leia and Threepio are the ones at the highest risk of being toasted. Luke will come out vaguely warm.

So the Bacta tank used to more clearly be a toaster oven, then. Very 1980.

Mrebo said:

Thought of your project when reading the following passage in book on translation:

It has become conventional to regard average moviegoers as capable of reading only about fifteen characters per second; and in order to be legible on a screen as small as a television set, no more than thirty-two alphabetic characters can be displayed in a line. In addition, no more than two lines can be displayed at a time without obscuring significant parts of the image, so the subtitler has around sixty-four characters, including spaces, that can be displayed for a few seconds at most to express the key meanings of a host of sequence in which characters may speak many more words than that. The limits are set by human physiology, average reading speeds, and the physical shape of the movie screen. It’s really amazing that it can be done at all.

Yes, it’s actually amazing all the different ways this process can go wrong – and add to this 30-odd languages all with their own quirks and… yeah. I don’t think 32 is right, though, especially since TV’s are so much larger (and clearer) than they used to be, and I do go over that, but there is a limit nonetheless. Even the burnt-in Greedo subs go over 32 characters per line. But I also tend to make my subs appear onscreen a little longer than most, because of the possibility of younger viewers, so there’s always things you can do to make the job harder on yourself. Like the subtitle specifications for the DVD format 😕

That’s okay, just tell us if it’s reddish, and that’s good. If so, chalk another one up for Puggo!