bilditup1

^this. You have my sword!

ROFLRICK said:

I just completed downloading the fixed DVD-5 version from MS, and I have a question:

Has anyone noticed the cropping that is occurring on both the right and left sides of the frame? This is not present in any other version, and as best as I can tell, it is actual cropping. Information visible on the MKV, AVCHD, etc. is seemingly missing on the DVD-5.

I haven't seen any mention of this on MS or here. I just want to know if I'm nuts. If it helps, I've been using VLC to make comparisons.

Screens would be helpful. I don't think I realized this myself but I wasn't really looking that closely to the edges.

Aside: looks like I picked a good day not to follow the forum. Though I would prefer to have realized that Harmy was gonna release incremental updates, I cannot seriously begrudge him that. He is doing all of us here a service which most of us have neither the time nor the knowledge nor the patience to do ourselves. Some humility, please!

hairy_hen said:

The two channel version of the 70mm track isn't in the Despecialized Edition—what I was referring to there was the actual 35mm stereo mix, which I also encoded to AC3 along with the mono.  The links are there just in case there were any problems with the tracks in the first mkv.

 

That reminds me of something I'd forgotten to point out, though: since the 5.1 mix was created by upmixing a stereo track and is not truly discrete, downmixing it back to stereo again is inadvisable.  There is a distinct possibility that doing so could cause phase problems, most likely heard as distortion in the high frequencies, which obviously is a less than optimal listening experience.  The most obvious cause of such phase problems would be the fact that the surround channels (which contain a certain amount of unavoidable crosstalk from the front) are delayed by 10 milliseconds, and definitely won't align properly in a downmix.  Add this to the fact that Dolby Digital decoders may drop the LFE channel when downmixing, in which case the main benefit of the 5.1—namely, the added bass content—would go unheard.

So if, for example, you will be listening to the movie on headphones, or any system without a subwoofer installed, then the two channel version of the 70mm track could make for a more optimal listening experience.

Since it isn't included here, due to the 5.1 more properly representing the theatrical experience, the user would have to mux it in themselves, but it may be worthwhile depending on what kind of listening setup is being used.  The links for it are in this post if anyone doesn't have it yet.

Very cool, but had I known all that yesterday, I probably would have muxed it in before rereleasing. I think I just won't be worrying about it going forward...just too much of a hassle.

Any news on when these will hit newsgroups? I promise I'll help seed on the spleen if not upload myself. I'm a great fan of your earlier work released in conjunction with ABC!

No problem. I actually feel guilty for not nuking a few days ago, even though I didn't get the new audios till yesterday. I pm'd walkingdork just now but decided not to wait for his response.

Nothing should be corrupted rox. Everything is fine, nothing is ruined ;)

In the meantime, over at the spleen, I've released an MKV that has h_h's fixed 640kbps audio and the properly synced German and Spanish dubs @ 384kbps.

Trooperman said:

 I am actually really disappointed that DVD-audio didn't catch on.  CD is not a good format- it cuts off too many frequencies that a lot of people actually CAN hear

Very strong, contrarian pushback from xiph.org:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Also makes the same point as CatBus about different masters.

One thing I have to say is that the DVD5 that's been released is not nearly as bad in motion in real-world situations than it looks on, say, a solid 23" 1080p monitor at close range, or in stills. But the 448kbps track, even fixed, sounds, to me, significantly worse than the 640kbps one, which surprised me a bit. I actually got scared that I released the wrong DVD to the spleen (even though it was labelled h_h 5.1 fixed on a.b.sw) so I went back and listened to the fixed AC3 that hairy released yesterday or the day before to make sure, and lo and behold, the DVD matched the released track. It's really a shame about the limitations of the DVD format, because the lossiness of AC3 at less than max bitrates per channel is really on display here

pittrek said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I too believe that the AVCHD is the most important release, because it is by far the HD format that most people can handle.   

That's funny. I know NOBODY who uses (or even KNOWS) the AVCHD format :-) 

 

Sorry for the offtopic :-(

So people who don't, er, *acquire* films on a regular basis aren't going to know anything about these formats at all. They'll know what a DVD is, and they'll know a BluRay is. MKV? They probably don't even know that they can stream video from their computers; most people simply are not tech-savvy.

They're not going to be the ones downloading Harmy's film...they're going to be the ones who are given copies by friends. That's why the AVCHD is so important: BDs and BD burners are still not as cheap as DVD burners and media. (And yes DVD+R DLs are still significantly more expensive than normal DVD+Rs_) The AVCHD is an excellent value proposition in that regard.

Zottig said:

As it is it's inconceivable Lucas went cheap and only scanned such an important film at only 2k just because two of his precious prequels were limited to 1080p. 

 

Oh, it's even worse than that. The 1997 YCM Labs version was at 2K, back when the scanning tech was in its infancy. But the new 2004 master was made at just 1080p. See zombie's excellent article:

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

Anyway - I broadly sympathize but think that if the price higher quality is a much smaller audience, then Harmy's project has not fulfilled its mission, and concur with Puggo about the importance of the AVCHD release. Can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good; the AVCHD version is not akin to the 128kbps bladeenc mp3s of yesteryear, and not even to the much better quality v0 lame mp3s of today...

rchdggr said:

Ummm, I've had the AVCHD and the DVD5 torrents downloading for many many hours (dvd5 for days actually) and both are still stuck at 0,0%.. What am I doing wrong? The MKV started downloading right away with no problems.

For the DVD5, could be you're trying to download the nuked torrent, which won't work. Go back to the spleen and get the new one.

Dunno about AVCHD; there's only ever been one torrent for that one.

More finicky, not to mention more expensive. That said I would still prefer there be an official DVD9 version, too.

woodibly said:

Thanks for all the tips! I'll check it out when I get home tonight.  I definitely didn't mean to take credit for Harmy's work! :O

I didn't mean to suggest you did!

Other thing is to link to the other versions (I've now linked to yours)

woodibly said:

It's up on myspleen!  The new avchd is just an mds and iso file, right?  It's my first time uploading to myspleen, so please let me know if you want anything changed with any descriptions!

 

Thanks!

Grr! beat me to the punch :) Helping to seed now.

I appreciate your consistency with regards to the title of the torrent, thanks (prolly wouldn't have specified ISO but that doesn't matter). I wanted to include a modified version of the readme with it but that's not so important. It might be a good idea to point out that your torrent has the fixed version of Hairy_Hen's 5.1 and that this isn't your project (duh).

If possible you should also learn how to open your ports so that people who don't have theirs open can also connect to you (unless you're on a university network or something)

Oldfan said:

I'm just wondering if I should hold off on the download of the 2.0 AVCHD version if an updated "2.1" version will be showing up any time soon?

 

wait wait wait, let's not all start calling it that before Harmy weighs in - I don't wanna cause trouble!

Harmy said:

And, ok, I'm just gonna go out and say it, even though it's against my better judgement - I will likely do a new render for the BD in which I will fix a few things. 

Can you call it the '2.1' or something like that? To differentiate between versions? This kinda makes the 2.0, er, more like a workprint. I'm not saying not to do it but people are gonna get confused so we should make some game-plan.

Asaki said:

Yep, the fixed one looks the same.

Here's a really good example: http://i47.tinypic.com/9tzdy0.png

This isn't my computer, though, so maybe it's just a codec issue or something.

P'raps it is. Using the built-in MPEG-2 Decoder of Media Player Classic...well the results also not exactly pretty once you blow them up, but it's not like watching a moving pastel like what you posted.

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6990/lukeberu.jpg

EDIT: ugh, that pic is heavily compressed and not representative. For some reason the built-in capture function of MPC is greyed out...I'll try a different output renderer, hold on.

where is it precious, where is it??? we needs it we does

negative1 said:

 

just watched your version on a bigscreen tv yesterday,

it matched our's pretty closely also...

later

-1

As good as an endorsement as any!

Harmy said:

Well, it's kinda obvious they had to be replaced when the shots they wipe to/from were replaced, so it's not really new info, just missing from the list

Right - I was referring to the cataloguing, even if it's for something like this which is implicit because the shots they cut to/from have been redone. The level of dedication here is just amazing

Beginning download of the AVCHD now. (EDIT: Speeds are actually half-decent at ~1.5MBps!)

And the DVD5 does NOT look bad...certainly not waxy or dvnr'd.

No. It was nuked because of Hairy's encoding error on the audio. 

msycamore said:

These three SE-wipes were replaced by new ones for the 2004 DVD transfer.

Will this never end?

msycamore said:

bilditup1 said:

msycamore said:

...and for some reason they also removed Lord from Darth Vader.

The answer to this can be found in zombie's book.

Yeah, I guess the name Darth being retconned into a title could be the reason for it. Like Captain Lieutenant Vader... ;) talk about half-assed, the retcon doesn't work and doesn't make sense in the film anyway.

Yes! That's what happens when you're making these films on the seat of your pants, without any real grand plan :) I'm reminded of the 'Raiders' story conference...

Rox64 said:

Sorry if this has been asked before, but will the Bluray have a bigger bitrate and quality than the MKV released?

Harmy has said that he's going to use the same bitrate for the video. There may be lossless audio from h_h, don't quite remember.