I rather like those screenshots also. It seems like the GOUT is reaching the point where it's about as good as it ever could be given the quality of the source material available. I would certainly be very pleased to watch the movie with it looking like that.
Yeah, that should do it. A designated stereo mix is generally going to sound better for two-channel than downmixing, so the most ideal sound is going to come from that version, but with a desktop setup such as yours it's probably worth the slight tradeoff in sound purity to be able to use the LFE channel. As long as you've got the external sound card set up to handle the 5.1 signal properly, downmixing but still retaining the LFE since it's multichannel analogue, you'll get pretty good results on the desktop system--strong bass and no dynamic range compression, at least for my mixes anyway.
Other films will still have unavoidable peak reduction, since Dolby made it impossible to get around the downmix DRC without having really expensive equipment. Using stereo or DTS if available can bypass this for some movies. It's not until a centre and rear speakers are added to the system that it goes away for 5.1 ac3, and nearly all commercially pressed dvd's have aggressive DRC profiles applied. This really annoyed me once I realised it--Casino Royale, for example, has a very powerful mix that impressed me a lot in the theatre, but became muted and dull in stereo at home. Finally getting the full system put together was the only way to make it sound as powerful as it's supposed to.
The Haunting, the original black and white version. Extremely effective and creepifying film, precisely because absolutely nothing is actually shown except shadows and awful noises. The unknown is usually the scariest thing, something far too many modern films have completely forgotten.
Also watched Song of the Thin Man, which is the sixth and last of the great series of detective films with William Powell and Myrna Loy. Offhand, I can't think of a more interesting onscreen couple than those two--fantastic banter and wit throughout them all, and clever mysteries along with it.
When people talk about how getting characters together 'ruins the tension' or some such nonsense, I point to the Thin Man films as evidence that a solid relationship need not be boring. It's really a failure of imagination to think that the process of becoming attracted to someone has to be dramatically superior to anything that could ever happen after that. A lot of tv shows could stand to learn that lesson, I think.
Agree with ChainsawAsh on just about everything.
I use a Mac because I am accustomed to them--my dad works exclusively with them in his capacity as systems director for a publishing company. He knows all the ins and outs of their capabilities and is always up to date on their releases. After some bad experiences with PC's, he made sure we only ever had Macs at home, and I've kept to that for myself ever since.
The capabilities of Firewire alone astound me and I'd never want to be without it. Not only is it faster and more reliable than USB, functions like Target Disk Mode are immensely useful and make data transfer very easy.
The Death Star interior does seem to be significantly less blue and contrasty in the 70mm scans than in those Technicolor photographs. The funny thing is, both of them look equally 'correct' in differing ways . . .
I'm coming late to this party, so I can't perhaps claim with complete believability to have been right (lol), but my reaction to the clips was in line with the actual results. At first I couldn't tell anything was wrong with any of them, but looking more closely I then thought the second was most correct while the first was late and the last was early. It's kind of hard to tell with dialogue perhaps, because nobody really moves their mouth exactly the same way or fully enunciates or whatever, and the difference was so small I couldn't really have said with any degree of confidence that I knew which was which. Still, I was gratified to see that my fleeting impression was actually the right one.
So it seems that a couple frames difference is noticeable, but only just barely, and perhaps not completely objectionable if the error is small enough. I think the sound being early was easier to spot than being delayed, because the movement carried on a bit after it was already heard, which is the least natural. But, they were close enough that it was very easy to get psyched out and confused about it. Hmm . . .
Now, when you say you have a 2.1 setup, does that mean it's an actual receiver with two speakers and a subwoofer hooked up to it? (I had such a setup for a long time before adding the other three speakers.) Or do you mean it's one of those computer speaker things with a bass module?
Really the only way to hear the LFE channel is to use a digital cable (S/PDIF or HDMI) to bitstream the 5.1 ac3 signal to a receiver with Dolby Digital decoding. My Macbook has a combined headphone/optical mini output, so I'm able to use an optical cable with one standard side and one mini side to connect to my receiver and use 5.1 audio in DVD Player or VLC. If you don't have such a thing built in, an external sound card with S/PDIF (or multichannel analogue) output may get you what you need.
Moth3r is correct that the LFE channel is normally dropped when downmixing into stereo. Depending on the program and equipment, volume reduction schemes may be employed to prevent downmix clipping. Whatever dynamic range compression profile is specified in the ac3 signal will be acted upon to reduce peak volume, which is annoyingly non-defeatable on nearly all setups short of a full 5.1, but that does not apply in this case because my Star Wars mixes are specified not to use DRC at all. Some receivers, such as mine, may actually send the LFE into your left and right speakers if no subwoofer is present in the system, which can be either a good or bad thing depending on your speaker capabilities. Generally, it is better to let a real sub handle such strong bass signals.
If using an analogue stereo output, which it sounds like you'll be doing, then you'll want to use the stereo track for sure. The LFE will not be heard regardless in this case, and by selecting the stereo version you ensure hearing audio that is optimised for 2-channel playback. There is a possibility of phase smearing when downmixing a previously upmixed 5.1 signal to stereo again, due to whatever delay may be present in the rear channels, and as previously mentioned the volume may be reduced, so this is not particularly recommended, though it may not be as bad as all that.
Interestingly, I have found that playing the 1993 stereo mixes with a subwoofer turned up about 6 db louder than normal results in something that approximates having an LFE channel at times, since there is genuine low bass mixed into those tracks in some places, but you should never actually watch the films this way because you'll also get a huge increase in bass from the music and other elements that really shouldn't be amplified that much. (Jabba's voice is one example.) Unfortunately, LFE channels can't be sent over a stereo analogue connection, because it would result in ridiculous amounts of clipping were they to be added into the rest of the sound, creating truly hideous distortion.
Evil!Wheaton on The Big Bang Theory is pretty dang funny.
Terminator 2. Damn fine movie if there ever was one.
Am I the only one who gets sad at the end? It's not depressing or anything, but . . . yeah. I got attached to Uncle Bob just like John did. ;)
(Perhaps more appropriately belonging in the tv thread, but I think having a terminator as a kind of father figure probably contributed to the complex nature of John's relationship with Cameron on the show. Hmm.)
lol yeah, I really hated those cadets too.
Having the Dominion take over the station at the end of season 5 was a stroke of brilliance, and I particularly liked the season 6 episode "In the Pale Moonlight", as well as all of those dealing with Section 31. The fact that they are betraying everything Starfleet and the Federation stand for even while ensuring their continued survival is dealt with in great depth, and while Gene Roddenberry probably would have hated the whole idea, the fact that they openly go against that sort of ideal vision is the whole point, and the irony is lost on none of them. I found that all to be extremely interesting.
Angel Main Theme--the Sanctuary remix, by Darling Violetta.
see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPnkB_cKKi8
(obviously, youtube sound quality is not that great, but whatever)
In addition to being longer, the vocal is mixed louder than the guitar in this version, while the reverse is true in the tv mix, interestingly.
<adamsandlerbuffoon>
One time I saw my grandmother in the shower. Her bush starts above her belly button.
</adamsandlerbuffoon>
I eat pizza and drink soda much more than I should.
Fortunately, I have a hyper-metabolism so I am rather thin and never put on any significant amount of weight at all. Secretly I fear that when I'm old it may finally catch up with me and I'll become a diabetic tub, but so far there's no sign of that.
Each of the original films has what could be called an 'it' moment, where the music reaches awe-inspiring brilliance and completely carries the scene in a very memorable way. Star Wars has Luke watching the sunset, Empire has Yoda lifting the X-wing from the swamp, and Jedi has Luke defeating Vader. Though all three movies are filled with excellent and wondrous scenes, these especially stand out for sheer magnificence.
(Raiders of the Lost Ark arguably has a similar kind of moment when Indy uses the staff to find the location of the Well of Souls.)
Jeez, I stay off the internet for one day and this thread suddenly turns into a whining stupid ass-fest.
Grow up, ya Bum Buccaneers. :p
I don't get it. Is this an SE change? Why does he only have two eyes? ;-)
LOL
Ah crud, I didn't know about that. I suppose it doesn't affect me directly because I'm in NTSC-land, but it could mean that these might not synch 100% with adywan's and Harmy's theatrical versions, since I assume those were made with reference to the GOUT in PAL. Hmm . . .
Saw the Mission: Impossible episode called "The Mind of Stefan Miklos". Very subtle and complex, all about making an enemy agent think they're trying to fool him, so he sees through the 'deception' and believes he has won, but really the whole thing was an even more massive smoke screen to get him to believe disinformation. I was very impressed with it.
Randomly, my top five television theme songs:
1. Mission: Impossible
2. Angel
3. Firefly
4. The X-Files
5. Doctor Who
Everything You Know Is Wrong by Weird Al.
Then Aces High by Iron Maiden.
Satanika works quickly. ;) I'd have been able to post the links even sooner, except that my connection was rubbish for a while and I wanted to verify the sound first.
The links to the FLAC versions seem to be gone. Have they moved some place else or am I just too late? :-(
Yeah, those links have expired. I believe I will upload the edited sections for enterprising individuals to use on their copies of the 1993 mixes in order to reproduce them if they wish--not much sense in putting up the whole things when the vast majority of the tracks are identical to what's already out there.
Sounds great. So will these "original" mixes be in the GOUT v.3?
dark_jedi has indicated that he will be using these new mixes on his upcoming project, yes. Harmy's also interested in it for his RotJ theatrical reconstruction. I myself will probably make separate discs using the authentic and music-edited mixes respectively, for the choice of listening. ;)
One of these days, just for the heck of it I think I'll make a list of everything that went into the LFE channels and exactly what I did to make them sound right. It may be of interest to some.
Here are the new Empire and Jedi 5.1 mixes. Aside from reverting the music back to how it was originally presented, everything sounds exactly the same as the previous versions.
Empire: http://www.nakido.com/A79D1681FBAE5459337580B6C92AEDB89963D72B
Jedi: http://www.nakido.com/0F196D0DEA5E5A752ECE1E15DE3ACE7E31BEC143
Hope you all like them!
Oh, and here's the Star Wars 70mm LFE channel as requested. http://www.sendspace.com/file/q5dsqm
That's a pretty loud clicking sound all right. Glad they fixed it. The Belbucus track definitely doesn't sound like that, thankfully.
Darth Mallwalker --> Marth Dollstalker
Quite so, quite so. My dad was 22 when Star Wars came out and he went to see it three times in less than a week. The youngest of my aunts was 12 at the time and became utterly obsessed with it. She was the one who later got me into it, when I was 7. It really is a film for all ages.
Now 7 may have been a bit young for Empire, because I was utterly freaked out and dismayed by it, but I suppose I was probably a bit oversensitive back then, and at any rate it had such gravitas and depth that it really stayed with me regardless. Jedi is a bit more of a kid's movie than the other two, but still has enough weight to be worthwhile. But the prequels, by contrast, are easy to grow out of once you're able to see past the shiny surface to the nothing underneath (and get bugged by the contradictions).
Oops, I must have missed it, it is on the list after all. Thanks for pointing that out. I guess it makes sense if it was a transition point that something could get misaligned during the switch. Still no idea what would have caused those screeching/chirping noises though.