Regarding screendoor artifacts, it doesn't hurt to defocus your projector just slightly (with a radius of less than a pixel) to hide the grid.
marvins said:
Are these colors different as the colors you use in your first test ? Because, for me, your colors was very good.
Yes, Harmy's colors are slightly more saturated. But we shouldn't forget that he got an actual film source as color reference, whereas we only have analogue transfers (VHS and LD) for the international versions. So I'd say his colors are probably the real deal.
marvins said:
- 'Une production Lucasfilm Limited' is too big and the timing is not perfect.
- 'Il y a bien longtemps...' looks good but the timing is not perfect
- Your crawl begin 1 frame too early. The speed of the crawl is a bit too high.
After finally looking at this again, I have a few remarks about these:
Logo placement isn't a problem, although when I move the French opening clip (with the Star Destroyer flying overhead) to the same exact position as Harmy's video track, the Fox logo is shifted way to the left. Since I'll be using Harmy's Fox logo, its position in relation to the title cards will be different from the French home video versions.
So the question here is, should I properly center the title cards, or leave them (noticably) off center to the right?
The opening logo doesn't start a frame too early in my version, since I've timed it to the english opening logo, and when I do that, the rest of the film lines up as well. If I make the logo appear one frame earlier, the rest of the film plays one frame earlier as well, and we obviously wouldn't want that. I guess the French opening logo sequence (from Fox logo to before the LGdÉ logo) is simply one frame shorter than the English one, but since we're timing this to the GOUT (audio and picture-wise), the English timing will be the way to go.
The crawl isn't moving too fast, but it's scaled incorrectly instead. The "La Guerre des Étoiles" logo is squashed vertically, so I should squash my logo and crawl as well. I'll fix that.
Colorwise I think I'll just use Harmy's colors for the Lucasfilm and "A long time ago" cards, since those greens and blues look different in each transfer.
BTW, I'm sure "Heidy Webel" is a typo, since she's credited as "Heidi Weibel" in the German credits. Looks like she was responsible for several international dubs then.... and her name sounds pretty much German.
Also don't forget that the 1080p transfer of the trilogy isn't as high quality as it could (and should!) be, since it uses the Lowry restauration that was created with only the DVD-release in mind at that time. So the change to 720p isn't that noticable as it would be with a new transfer of the films.
I'll see what I can do ;) Can you upload your new captures?
Sure, I can fix those issues. Although I have based the intro on the video you posted here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Preserving-French-Original-Trilogy/post/577965/#TopicPost577965
I've slowed it down to 23.976fps, so the speed of the crawl should be correct (the original crawl in that video is a bit warped, so the top and bottom parts of it move at slightly different speeds). Also I've timed the SW-logo to be in sync with Harmy's video (and the rest of the video - like the Star Destroyer chasing the Blockade Runner - is in sync as well that way, so it's gotta be correct). Regarding the Lucasfilm and "A long time ago" cards, yeah, those are timed like my German cards, so I can change them to the French timing.
Do you have a reference for size and placement of the Lucasfilm logo and "A long time ago"?
Perfect! Thanks :)
Also an update on the German version:
I've finished syncing up both the Blu-ray track and the THX track to Harmy's video, so now we have three audio options for the German Despecialization:
It would be very cool to have both a lossless recording of the 1993 version and the 1982 mix as well. Anybody able to help?
Regarding audio tracks, I was wondering, is there a good reason NOT to add an audio track simply as a PCM WAV file? For my German version I have the THX mix as lossless PCM and I'm not sure if I should make an AC3 out of it or not. Are all Blu-ray players able to play PCM tracks? I've tested it with the AVCHD on my PS3 and it worked.
There are several lines missing since the very first home video releases, though only lines coming from off-screen, so I didn't know about them until recently, because the German Blu-rays reinserted them for the very first time.
The lines are:
HAN: Seems okay, if we can get to it.
+
LUKE:Look! (both when the gang tries to escape from the DS)
LEIA: They're tracking us! (unfortunately this one is still missing, even from the Blu-ray)
LUKE: You know what's about to happen, what they're up against.
+
LUKE: Well, take care of yourself, Han.
The sentences around these lines were always kinda weird in the German version, but the fixed ones now make much more sense.
Also these lines of dialogue by Han and Luke disguised as stormtroopers are missing from some German mixes (the pre-THX ones, I think):
LUKE: I can't see a thing in this helmet.
+
HAN: This is not going to work.
LUKE: Why didn't you say so before?
HAN: I did say so before!
Yeah, it works now... maybe the video wasn't ready :)
Mh, somehow the pass doesn't work for me...
And yes, I'm using After Effects.
napponapp said:
Wie das ohne " Episode 4 - Eine neue Hoffnung "
Der "Episode 4"-Titel ist doch nicht der einzige Unterschied zwischen SE- und Kino-Lauftext. Anderes Logo, andere Schreibweisen, andere Wortabstände, andere Schriftart, anderes Timing.
Gute Arbeit, wenn auch nicht perfekt :)
Außerdem ist's der Crawl der Special Edition, und nicht der Kinofassung ;)
That would be 255/198/0 ... but I've used and brown/red tint once letters (and logo) get far away (and thus darker).
One thing I've noticed about optically composited text (be it credits or the crawl) is the fact, that saturation gets much stronger when something fades out. So that's what I did with the title cards as well - the green of the Lucasfilm logo gets a darker but much more saturated green while it fades out and the "A long time ago" card gets a dark, but very saturated blue during the fade. And the same goes for the receding logo and crawl as well (with yellow not getting a "darker, more saturated yellow", which would just look dirty, but a reddish/brown instead).
Also rounding off the contours of text is an important factor.
What you mean is "spelling" or "orthography" (= Rechtschreibung)... "grammar" (= Grammatik) didn't change with the Rechtschreibereform ;)
But I'm still wary about literal subtitles... usually subtitles are shorter than what's said for a good reason (so that you can read them in time). Still it might make an interesting addition and can be called "dubtitles".
I assume promo pics don't provide helpful color information, but here goes:
http://www.moviepicturedb.com/movie/0080684/Star-Wars-Episode-V-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.html
Here we go again:
I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty to re-create the French intro using the setup I've created for my German crawl. I've spent quite a bit of time matching fonts, character spacing and the "La Guerre des Etoiles" logo as closely as possible:
https://vimeo.com/62474907
(password = ot.com)
Make sure to download the original MP4 file using the "download" button below the video. Timing is matched to Harmy's 2.0 (and I'm using its Fox logo too), so just put it at the start of Harmy's version and it will be in sync (and I guess this goes for 2.1 and - soon - 2.5 as well).
(the first time I've uploaded the video, I found an error in it, right after posting it here - hence my previous post ;) ).
Edit:
Nevermind, I made a mistake.
I've had no luck importing x264.exe-generated videos into Encore either, which is really stupid. Also it's the only authoring tool I'm really familiar with, so I think I have to resort to some other solution to at least get a pop-up menu for audio selection for the German Blu-ray.
yoda-sama said:
Since we're on the subject of audio and this forum is so difficult to search...
Let me help you:
;)
What do you guys think, should I add the missing lines of dialogue to the THX-track as well? After all it wasn't a creative decision to leave them out, but sloppyness.
Yay! (I guess)
Regarding flickering (and this might just be a problem of the AVCHD's bitrate) it was especially bad in the trash compactor scene - not only in darker areas, but also the red lit faces.