hairy_hen

How about right now?  ;)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17

These links are for the six mono files that make up the 5.1 mix; note that they have to be combined in a multichannel form (be it wav, FLAC, raw PCM, DTS-HD MA, whatever) in order to be used.  I'll leave such specifics of format up to those who download them, but be sure to observe the correct channel mapping order for whatever format you end up going with—otherwise you'll have things coming out of the wrong speakers for the whole movie.  Each file is clearly labelled by channel.

You may notice that surround left is marked 'inverted', and this is because I manually flipped its polarity after the upmix was made, in order to spread the mono surround effects around the room somewhat and avoid the feeling of a phantom center behind the listener.  This kind of inversion also takes place in Dolby Prologic II movie mode; THX processors use a more sophisticated variable phase shift technique on the surrounds, but I didn't have the ability to make use of that.

Since I attended carefully to phase issues throughout the mix and arrived at what I felt was the best possible result, I would ask that it be used 'as is' and not subjected to further alteration (unless, of course, you think there's something actually wrong with it, in which case please let me know).  The exception would be for synchronizing to video with a different frame count, which I'm fine with as long as the edits are clearly documented.

Let me see, what else . . . ah yes, earlier there was a question about releasing a 24-bit version—but due the source tracks being from laserdisc, anything more would simply be a waste of space without any actual gain in sound quality.  Therefore the 5.1 is presented at 16-bit, 48 khz.  I do know that the actual 70mm mix has been digitally archived at extremely high resolution, so it is safely preserved for the future; but since I haven't got a copy of that (lol), my approximation of it will have to do.  I don't think anybody will be disappointed with the sound quality, anyway.

Thank you!  I'm always glad to hear that my work is enjoyed.  Yes, the spit sound did get taken out from the previous version, but this time I left it in for the sake of authenticity to the original, since it can clearly be heard on the in-theatre recording.

The 2.0 torrents at Myspleen (mkv, avchd, dvd5) all contain the fixed 5.1 audio.

The latest lightsaber improvements look really excellent.  ;)

"Luke, I raped my father!"

. . .

. . .

Bizarre allegations aside (snerk), I am currently the editor of a story in which Vader was never injured, killed Palpatine mere days after becoming his apprentice, and ruled the galaxy for over twenty years before abdicating his throne and departing, along with Grand Admiral Thrawn, to the Unknown Regions of the galaxy to fight against alien invaders.  In addition to the familiar characters, the story also features appearances from Revan and the Jedi Exile (as well as the morbidly hilarious assassin droid HK-47) from the Knights of the Old Republic series, as well as an original villain called the Burned Lord, a figure partially inspired by the Joker, whose aim is to consume the galaxy in a Force-induced inferno.

It isn't completely finished yet, but we're consistently posting a new chapter every two weeks.  There are some elements of the prequels here and there, but don't let that put you off—I'm pleased to report there are no midichlorians anywhere in sight.  ;)

link

In short, if you're in the mood to read SW done right, look no further . . . and I would say that even if the author was not a close friend of mine.  (The complete prequel-rewrite I've occasionally mentioned will be his next project after completing this story.)

The 'tragedy of Darth Vader' stuff doesn't fit at all with the way the original films were written at the time they were made: it's all revisionism imposed upon them decades after the fact.  Star Wars is very much 'the adventures of Luke Skywalker' at its heart.

What I've suggested is one of the only viable solutions to the problem suggested in the first post.  To pose this question and then ridicule the answers received is a useless and inane waste of everyone's time.

Incidentally, when my author friend rewrites the prequels to be consistent with the original trilogy next year, that's how he's going to do it.

Simple: don't show it.

More easily done by having Anakin Skywalker not be the main character, and occupy less of the focus.  Neither would Obi-wan exclusively be the protagonist, so that the fight which leads to Vader's need for the suit of armour isn't really shown either.  This allows Anakin to 'disappear' from the story, say at the end of Episode 2, without being fully explained; and Vader to appear as a menacing and mysterious villain who hunts down and destroys the Jedi in Episode 3.

Sometimes the sabers are too bright, for sure, but the reason for that is because they were inserted from the GOUT, which has fairly severe clipping of the white levels, and so this somewhat blown-out appearance can't really be recovered to what it ought to be.  Despite that, it definitely looks miles ahead of the rubbishy 2004 replacements.

As for the speeder shot, apparently that always looked kind of bad in the original (I saw a comment somewhere from one of the people who worked on that part of the film, saying that it could have been better if they'd had a few more days to get the composite right), but given the lack of quality sources available to work from, I think what Harmy was able to achieve with it is nothing short of astounding.

In uncompressed wav form, the six channels of the 5.1 mix are a total of about 3.9 gigabytes in size.  Depending on the format and settings, lossless compression can probably reduce this to somewhere around 2 to 2.5 gb.

As with other lossless codecs, DTS-HD MA uses a variable bitrate, so louder parts of the track will take up more bandwidth than quieter sections.  The LFE channel is mostly silence, so it compresses more easily than the rest.  The inclusion of a 1509 kbps core track may reduce the efficiency somewhat, resulting in a slightly larger file size.  It's difficult to say for sure how it will turn out until it is actually encoded, but at any rate it will definitely be rather smaller in size than the uncompressed source files, which are in 16-bit, 48 khz resolution.  16-bit seems to compress a lot better than 24, from what I've seen.

Hey guys—I haven't been around lately, due to focusing on school and other interests (as well as a desire to only think about the SW films in terms of watching them, rather than scrutinizing and working on them), but I'll most likely be uploading the lossless files for the revised 70mm track pretty soon.

I'm pleased to relate that I've finally made the jump into the world of HDTV and Bluray, so my visual experience of watching movies at home at last matches up the aural end of having a good 5.1 system.  I have to say, I'm very impressed with how good the Despecialized Edition 2.0 looks even on DVD when put through a quality upscaler, so naturally seeing it in 720p will be a must when version 2.1 comes out.  A few years ago I never dreamed that watching Star Wars with such good picture and sound would actually be possible—and yet, here it is.  ;)

BmB said:

And really, any "restoration" that is sourced off a DVD or BD is questionable to me. Because try as you might, once those blacks have been crushed, they are never coming back. No matter how carefully you colour correct it.

Not so: while in the DVD and HDTV versions the blacks were crushed beyond repair, it was discovered that much of the shadow detail is actually intact in the Bluray versions, and can be made visible again through careful gamma adjustment.  The reason behind this is that the 2004 scan did indeed capture the full luminance range of the film, but came out too dark because they were apparently over-cautious about not clipping the white levels, and then failed to compensate for this later on.  In the earlier releases the dark areas were eaten up by video noise and could not be recovered, but the Bluray has a high enough bitrate that the shadow detail was preserved, even though it remained invisible until the gamma correction brought it out again.

Because of this, it is indeed possible to watch a high quality version of SW with proper contrast.  True, it isn't as perfect a result as would be obtained from a new film scan, but it's a huge improvement over what is commercially available, and a giant step toward making the movie look like itself again.  When you combine that with the original colour timing, original sound mixes, and the fantastic work of restoring/recreating the original special effects and editing, recommending the Despecialized Edition 2.0 is a no-brainer.  ;)

The Bluray shots of GoldenEye definitely look too soft, which is unfortunate, but if they went back to an older video master, then there's at least the possibility of the audio being the original mix, rather than the newer one.  The original 5.1, as heard on the older DVD and on laserdisc, has such powerful bass that the UE version just sounds wimpy and muted in comparison.  So that, at least, may perhaps be a point of good news.

This kind of thing also goes along with what Mike Verta was saying about the '77 crawl on his sources having a lot of instability, while the version seen on the GOUT (which to me looks pretty damn authentic) weaves differently and much less.  It's possible that the GOUT version was recreated with CGI, but given the general lack of effort associated with that release, it seems more likely that it's actually real, because to have recreated it so closely would have required an authentic source to base it on, and simply scanning it and pasting it in would have been much easier.

My first thought was that these recomposites were done at the same time they made the mono mix, but if the bootleg sources with mono audio have the early versions, then that wouldn't seem to be the case.  Perhaps they were done when the film's release was extended in 1978, which would allow ample time for them to have noticed the minor flaws and decided to correct them.

As for the earlier shot appearing on the 80's video master, which also doesn't have the burn damage seen on most other versions, it had to have come from an earlier source than was used for every other release.

I can't speak definitively on every aspect of Raiders' appearance, but I can state with absolute certainty that the DVD version is not always completely faithful to the original look of the movie.  Watch the scene in Marion's bar on the DVD, and get a look at how much red there is in the whole scene.  When I saw an old 35mm print a few years ago, I specifically noted how very different from that it appeared: the red just wasn't there at all.  The print probably wasn't a perfect reference, being somewhat worn and slightly faded, but that's nowhere near enough to account for the scene looking so vastly different.

So imagine my complete lack of surprise when I saw an IMAX showing last week and that scene scarcely had any red in it whatsoever.

I'm not saying the new transfer doesn't have flaws or hasn't been manipulated digitally, but unquestionably it is closer to the original colour timing than previous editions.

The sound mix is not the same as what's on the DVD, as some have said.  They're close in a lot of ways, including the use of the original stereo surround effects, but the bass has been toned down compared to the previous 5.1 version.  Again using the bar scene as a reference, all the gunfire during the shootout has a lot of low end reinforcement on the DVD, but in the new mix this was just absent.  Elsewhere in the film the bass is generally present, but seems reduced somewhat in level.  Which is closer to what was included in the 70mm version I don't know.

Trooperman, you're mistaken about these differences being on the 70mm version of Empire.  I take it you've never heard the in-theatre recording made by David Morgan that surfaced recently.  An accurate list of changes in the mix can be found here.

Anything not mentioned in that thread is incorrect—the 70mm version is actually extremely similar to the 35 aside from a few small details.  All of those other changes were made after the original mixes had been completed, appearing in foreign language dubs and so on, and apparently the 16mm version got the alterations as well.  That they later resurfaced in the SE has nothing to do with it, because the 70mm version was actually the one they made first, and everything that followed was a modification of that.

So apparently, the 16mm version is a completely separate mono mix that is unrelated to either the 35 or the 70.  Interesting . . .

I'm glad to hear that people are enjoying the mix.  At some point I may make a list of all the work that was done on it, so I can show that I did actually improve it compared to the previous version and wasn't just  harping on about insignificant details.  ;)

I just posted this in Harmy's thread, but I'll put it here too since it's relevant:

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.

The AVCHD now has all the fixed tracks, but for anyone who downloaded the mkv or the first DVD5 and wants to replace the audio with corrected versions, I posted the links for the 5.1 in my thread, here.

It may not be necessary, but just for good measure, here are the re-encoded stereo and mono as well:

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Here we go.  Fixed audio for all.

5.1, 448 kbps: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

5.1, 640 kbps: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

Lossless source files will be posted soonish, when I have time to do it.

Yes, it's for real. I sent the fixed 448 kbps track to Chewie and Harmy first, so they could integrate it into the DE and get it out there as soon as possible.  I'm going to post the links here once I'm done uploading a new 640 kbps version also.

The other had a lot of distortion on the high frequencies, and sounded like a bad mp3 in those parts.

@ Moth3r: I use a GUI for the Aften encoder since I can't afford one of the professional ones.  It has a lot of user-adjustable settings for things that should perhaps not be open to manipulation, and I seem to have inadvertently picked the wrong one for high frequency cutoff, so it came out screwed up even despite using the low pass filter.  This time I forced it to accept full bandwidth, with only the filter providing any cutoff, and it's much better than before.

When listening on hifi, the quality reduction at 448 kbps is somewhat noticeable, although it still sounds quite good.  640 is difficult to distinguish from the lossless source, and would be my recommendation for watching on a format that isn't restricted by DVD's 448 limitation.

Okay, I think I figured out what the problem was.  My AC3 encoder has adjustable settings for dealing with the high frequency cutoff point, and I seem to have inadvertently done this wrongly.  The AC3 format's lossy compression throws away the most detail in the highs, I believe, and the range is dependent on the bitrate used, so that's probably why it was so noticeable in the 448 but the 640 came through mostly unscathed.

I've encoded the mix over again at both bitrates, this time with correct settings, and the sound quality is much better as it should be.  I'll be uploading them shortly, and the links will be posted in my thread—I highly recommend that anyone who downloaded the faulty tracks delete them and replace them with the new ones once they're up.  I'm not sure if the stereo and mono I provided were also affected, but just to be safe I'll do them over as well.

Again, really sorry about this error.  I can't even begin to describe how embarrassed I was when I noticed it, but I guess that's what I get for not listening closely enough.  My classes were starting up, and I was trying to finish everything before that happened, but . . . oh well.  At least it was something relatively easy to fix, anyway.

Harmy said:

TRACK 1) 5.1 70mm mix @ 448Kbps 

Oh, crap.  This is bad news, because I just realized that I made a mistake when I encoded the AC3, and the 448 kbps version came out sounding like a bad mp3.  Seriously, the sound quality is not good—there's all kinds of distortion in the high frequencies.  I'm going to make a fixed version as soon as possible, but unfortunately I didn't catch the mistake in time to prevent it being used here.  How I didn't notice the terrible sound quality in the first place is something that will bewilder me for quite some time.

The 640 version was affected also, I think, but to a much lesser extent.  I'm just going to redo them both.  For this reason, I'd request that nobody make a torrent of this or anything until I can get the corrected tracks uploaded.  The DVD5 is also affected, though that's already been out.

Really sorry about this, guys.

That's very interesting about them only using DVNR on the luma portion of the image.

Are you going to take advantage of this at all?  Applied carefully and selectively, it could eliminate the worst and most noticeably smeared shots in the GOUT, and that would definitely be worthwhile.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Moffat has no idea how to write women convincingly.  Words like 'shallow' and 'obnoxious' don't even begin to cover it.

'Sexist pig' is how I would have to describe him on a personal level, given the types of asinine comments he makes in interviews.  He's capable of brilliance, but quite honestly I'm utterly bored with his whole schtick.  His Sherlock stuff is better, although even that I think has more to do with Mark Gatiss than him.

I'm not watching any more Doctor Who at all until he leaves the show and someone else takes over.  It used to be an entertaining diversion, but now it's just become a sad parody of itself, one that gets worse and worse with each passing year.

The 448 on the DVD is legit: I sent it to him a few days ago, but neglected to post the links here as well.  Here they are:

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

The stereo version is already available in lossless, and is linked to here.

Since there is a demand for them, I'll post the six lossless mono files for the 5.1 as soon as I'm able.  I'm still looking into how to encode DTS-HD MA, but I'll keep that separate and won't make it the only way to obtain this.

With my upload speed being slow and other duties occupying me, I can't make any promises about when that will be ready.  If any of you are holding out on watching the movie until then, I urge you not to wait, as I highly doubt the AC3 will be a disappointment.  As I've said before, though lossless audio will always prove superior and should be chosen when available, high bitrate lossy encodes may be quite difficult to distinguish in a blind test if all other factors are the same—and in this case the bitrate truly is the only difference.  The simple knowledge of what format one is hearing, I think, influences the judgement on perceived quality, so take this bias out of the equation and I think you'll be surprised at just how good it actually sounds.

Remember that the content is still by far the most important element of what you hear: given the choice between a lossy encode of a good mix, and a lossless copy of a bad one, I know which I'd choose.  To cite an extreme example, if I wanted to watch the special edition and all I could pick from was the 1997 version in 384 kbps laserdisc AC3, or the 24-bit lossless mix on the 2011 Bluray . . . do you see where I'm going with this?

Star Wars Purist said:

If only Lucas could have been Master of his Domain...

I've heard it said that many scenes in the prequels could be completely replaced with footage of him yankin' it in front of a green screen (and yelling 'meesa!' at the end), and the movies wouldn't lose anything essential at all.

In fact, this might actually improve them, because then at least they would be rather repulsively hilarious, as opposed to just plain stupid.

The new version is saved on my computer as six individual mono files, so if I uploaded them directly, the end user would have to combine them on their own in some form.  Given that a DTS-HD MA encode would probably be most beneficial for HD formats, I'm leaning towards doing it this way rather than posting the source files directly.  I'll have to investigate the possibilities.

The 448 kbps AC3 should be posted later today, I think.