Joel

Asaki said:

HAPPY LIFE DAY, FOLKS!

Happy Life Day indeed.

Wasn’t it corrected for the Blu-Ray release? I am curious as well and 440 miles away from my discs…

YRK01 said:

Do you guys reckon the bitrate is the reason my video is so choppy. Like I said earlier im playing it on a TV though a hard drive. I’m not that good with computers so any help would be much appreciated.

There are several factors that could be contributing - which version are you playing? You might try both versions to see if the constant bitrate one plays more consistently than the variable or vice versa…

Tomas Stacewicz said:

My Panasonic Ultra HD Blu-ray player flags the metadata of 4K77 2160p v.1.0 as 23.976 fps. I cannot se any reason that the 1.4 is any different. But I will check it out soon.

Thanks - I know it shouldn’t be 60fps, just wondering why none of my Mac media players can tell me what the frame rate is. Interestingly, using Handbrake “same as source” to re-encode gave me a 23.97fps file, so mystery (probably?) solved, but it doesn’t explain why, for instance, when I try to create a new file with my own settings, it only offers me frame rates in the 30/60 frames world.

Anyway, 1.4 looks great!

Forgive me if this has been answered already, but is V1.4 a 60fps file? For some reason all of my software seems to see it as such…

I saw the 35mm print only once in the theater, and the digital twice. I had a question back then that I don’t really remember answering:

After the title crawl, the digital/home video version has an upward tilt through the starfield (the only one in the trilogy that does that)… does the Film/Centropy version move up as well, or does it move down?

Thanks kindly!

Has it ever been determined which of the Star Wars audiobooks was read by Ed Kemper, the serial killer?

I’m sure there’s a way to do this digitally, but…

One way to do it --in real time-- using hardware is to get a modern Surround Receiver or preamp with analogue outputs for each channel (The NAD T748II has these, for example). Make sure the receiver is playing back the DTS-Master Audio, play the blu ray and record the output of the center channel to whatever recording system you have. Though I haven’t done this specifically with Star Wars, I’ll still bet you’ll end up with a very high-quality recording with almost 100% dialogue, with a few center-panned sound effects popping in as well. Most modern movies have the music panned to some combination of the L, R, and surround channels.

I don’t remember any trailer ending with Darth Maul’s second blade igniting.

I downloaded and saved all of the (US) online trailers from 1998-1999, but they’re on a hard drive at home and I won’t be able to get to them until the weekend. Will definitely check!

Obvious question: have you checked the TV spots from the DVD box set? I don’t remember if they’re the same as the “tone poem”/tv spots or if there are others.

Were all of these shots replaced in the SE?

What if this very reel was missing in the mid-90s, inspiring the idea to “digitally improve” these particular shots, giving rise the Special Edition?

poita said:

I have spoken to Mark Wileage who did the colour for the SE, and I have an almost unfaded Kodak print here, it isn’t very different at all to the Tech IB other than the slight green in the IB being absent.

Mark did color for the 2004 DVD release - I worked at Technicolor at the time and his description of the conditions and timeframe were pretty dismal and surprising. It’s amazing the DVDs look as good as they did - Did he do the SE as well?

According to Wikipedia, Williams re-recorded the fanfare for Empire Strikes Back and his version was used in the subsequent Lucas-helmed Star Wars movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Century_Fox

Incidentally, it seems that the “slanted 0” 20th Century Fox logo originally designated Cinemascope as well. Do we know why that particular version of the logo was used in Empire Strikes Back but not SW or ROTJ?

This is awesome news - congratulations on the great response!

I’m local but didn’t learn about the presentation until after it happened. If there are any more in LA that are open to the public (as the Cinnafilm one seemed to be?), I’d love to attend.

Unfortunately, none of the GUI solutions have worked on my 2017 mac, but as per GZK8000’s suggestion, I googled “Unrar” for command line (Terminal) and got the following two links that will walk you through it:

To get and install UNRAR:
http://best-mac-tips.com/2013/02/01/install-free-command-line-unrar-mac/

To unwrap the RAR files after installing UNRAR:
http://best-mac-tips.com/2013/02/02/extract-rar-archive-command-line-mac-terminal/

Meanwhile, this is beautiful! The reds are pretty intense (as was alluded to earlier in the thread), but it does kind of help Leia look healthier while visiting Luke in the sick bay.

The opening crawl looks a little soft to me. Is that just what it looks like? …And there is obviously some flicker.

Beyond that, what kind of things should I be looking for in order to actually be helpful in this process?

…that is, except The Asteroid Field - which seems to have most of the instruments bunched up on the left, with mostly low strings and reverb on the right. Really bizarre. I haven’t listed to all of these yet, but so far that’s the only track I’ve heard with such radical changes.

Well the good news is that it’s a very different sound from the 2016 hi-res copies I have. Very big, great size and weight.

I’ve only given it a casual and cursory listen, but the Empire stuff is a noticeably different presentation than previous releases, with lots of reverb. I’d love to know if it was added recently or if it was retrieved from the original multis (no liner notes come with the HDTracks download), but in any case, on first listen anyway, it sounds pretty great!

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

PSA the '2016 hi-res soundtracks" are different from the 2018 remasters. The new SKUs that came out the other day are entirely new masters.

It seems like there’s a little confusion in here.

Well that’s interesting! And I’m glad, as the stuff I downloaded (again, possibly not the real deal) was definitely not a good-sounding issue. I guess I’ll pull the trigger at HDTracks and see.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/22/original-6-star-wars-soundtracks-being-remastered

JawsTDS said:

Put them all in a playlist (as well as TFA and TLJ): https://open.spotify.com/user/brannontds/playlist/0k7LpNoWUGGPZESWIH1Ti9?si=T-Dl-E5DQgyPUCoHWSHLBw

SWEET, thank you! I will check these out!

JawsTDS said:

Listened to the new edition of ROTJ and ANH on Spotify, sounds noticeably clearer that previous editions. Can’t speak for the rest yet.

I can’t find these on Spotify - could you share a link?

GZK8000 said:

Again, you’re not understanding how Nyquist works.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/digital_audio.html
See the part about “sample rates” in the middle of the page.

Forgive me if I rely on my audio recording degree, 15 years as a recording engineer, and 30 years as an audio hobbyist over your ability to google something.

Nyquist stated that to reproduce a certain frequency, you need a sample rate of at least twice that frequency. This doesn’t mean that a higher sampling rate only gives you more high frequencies/more frequency response. It does allow for a wider frequency response, but the point of it is to capture more plot points to reconstruct the signal (as per the chart in the link above).

If you want to tell me more about what I don’t know, feel free to PM me here, but we can stop cluttering up this post with the technical discussion.

a_o said:

the new versions are on hdtracks and tidal. lapti nek is on the rotj album still. wonder why it’s not the ‘special edition’ 2-cd versions of the trilogy from 97/2004

i just got the 1993 4-disc cd set myself

Whoa! I’m glad I responded to this year-old thread - I had no idea they were back up on HDTracks - and actually affordably priced ($13.98 for the 192khz/24bit version)!

It’s a little strange to me that they’re still going with the original 70s album track listings. But I’m also worried that they’ll sound like the earlier set I got.

Meanwhile, the 1993 4-disc is my favorite!

GZK8000 said:
Sampling does not work as you’re describing it. The reconstruction filter reconstructs the original analog signal up to a certain time resolution, which is very high in Redbook audio. I also think the time resolution only depends on the amount of bits per sample, rather than the sampling rate, but I don’t remember where I read that.

It actually does work exactly as I’m describing it, unless I did a poor job above. A 20khz sine wave sampled at 44.1Khz gets exactly 2 samples to describe it. At 192Khz? it gets 8, or quadruples. But the bigger difference is in the dynamic range anyway. Meanwhile, frequency is a time-based phenomenon (cycles per second). The word length determines the bit depth, or dynamic range.

The “reconstruction filter” is just low pass-filter at the analog output. That’s catching the high-frequency spikes, or the “steps” between each sampled part of the wave, and is there to smooth out the rough edges caused by the reconstruction.

Anyway, the purpose of this thread was to ask about the hi-res versions. If you don’t believe that there are real benefits, I’ll refer you to the following website:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5891db5329687fadaad172d7/t/59c0e856cd0f6804b6b43ed3/1521034351544/?format=1500w

Density said:

Just FYI, “high res audio” is a fraud, a marketing gimmick based on pseudoscience. It is not physically possible to hear frequencies that high. A standard CD already captures everything within human hearing range and then some, after you’ve reached the age you’re likely to care about audio quality your hearing won’t even be able to reach that, and the vast majority of music does not make use of anywhere near the dynamic range supposedly offered by this “higher resolution.” All it does is waste disk space. It’s useful only in studios for purely technical reasons, utterly useless for the end consumer.

Unfortunately, this is misinformed and based on misunderstandings about sound, among other things. There’s nothing “pseudo” about the science, it is what is. While it’s true that humans can’t hear fundamental tones above a certain threshold (20K if you’re a kid, for instance), high frequency response is only part of what’s happening with high res audio. I won’t go into a lengthy discussion about it, but, as an example if you are trying to recreate a waveform, the more plot points you have, the more accurate that waveform is going to be. Higher sample rate = more accurate waveform.

Secondly, all music is extremely dynamic, and while most popular music is compressed and doesn’t make use of 120+ db of dynamic range (nor would you want it to), dynamic range isn’t the entire point. It’s the fact that going from 16bit to 24 bit gives you way, way more info: 16 bit = 65,536 possible volume levels, and with every bit, that number doubles. So at 24 bit, we now have 16,777,216 different volume levels. Further, the digital noise present in every digital recording (the “noise floor”) is moved even further into the background.

Anyway, maybe you don’t/can’t hear the differences - and I believe you absolutely could hear them given the right playback system - but that doesn’t mean the differences aren’t there or that other people can’t hear them.

***** Meanwhile ******

I got ahold of a download purporting to be the high-res release. It’s VERY weirdly different than all other versions I’ve heard of the soundtracks: thin, no low-end… not sure it’s legit, but if it is, it’s bizarre.

poita said:
It is in two parts, download both and use WinRar or similar to decompress to a single file.
https://we.tl/KTFi9G8t9B
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/53e6c1141a27d2891c9bb2a15bffe3dd20180503053533/8258e5aa2b976c5a31ddeb3fac69704820180503053533/ce0e7c

I’m on a mac and I’m having a bear of a time trying to get these open. I generally get “incomplete” or “file damaged” error notices. Is anyone on a Mac able to watch these, and if so, what did you use to unwrap?

I believe the term is “Mono” whether it’s encoded as a center-channel-only file or the same file in both stereo L and R tracks.

“Dual Mono” is usually used to describe amplifier circuit topology in which each channel of a stereo pair is processed/amplified separately.

So the reference slide is being scanned, then the resulting digital image (assuming a properly calibrated monitor) is compared to the slide to make sure that what is seen in the monitor matches the slide perfectly? After this is dialed in, we can assume that anything going through the scanning process is accurate, too. I think I have it.

Thanks for the explanation!