msycamore

I feel your pain, Asaki. The JSC LD's or the US equivalents is somehow not that important in peoples eyes. I think people are offended by the dirty/noisy picture. But I take that over a cleaned up mess- GOUT. The GOUT transfers are sharper and have more detail sometimes, but only when not in motion, but these are motion pictures afterall. ;) 

If you would color correct these transfers, to get rid of that nasty green/yellow tint in some scenes, these transfers would wipe the floor with most versions out there IMO. They actually look more like films than video. I still hope Arnie.d finish his project someday. His V8 is amazing.

none said:

Question for those that can read the subs, any translations which are of note.  Something mistranslated or where they've changed the meaning?  Any ideas for the meaning/origin of Tugg?

There are a few translations which are of note, some mistranslations and funny lines, I can try to point them out sometime when I have the time. Maybe someone else will do it before me, there seems to be a few swedish guys around here.

The name "Tugg" is so horribly bad that it's actually good. As already explained in the post, Leo linked to, the word "chew" is = "tugga" in Swedish, so the genius who did the translation, opted to name Chewie -Tugg. Chewing= Tugg. :)

steb74 said:

Uranus, the Magician from The Planets by Gustav Holst.

A wonderful piece indeed!

Ah, The Planets, so that's what it was. I'm ashamed that I still don't own a single recording of it.

Again, no need to apologize, erri. These things are confusing sometimes, and as I said, I didn't explain it that well the first time.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

So, quick contest - what's the music I timed for it?

Sounds very much like a John Williams score, a score I've not heard that much... hmm, could it be one of the Indy sequels? maybe I'm not even close, it's very fitting though. :)

Again, thanks for a beautifully well done preservation, Puggo!

Puggo's Swedish 16mm preservation, which is cropped at the top instead of the bottom, only have one cue mark.

No problem, Rogue. I don't think I described it that clear earlier anyway.

g-force said:

Hey msycamore,

just curious how you ended up making your subs the right size, but still have them not get cropped off the edge of the screen.

Makes me a bit nervous, but I have to say, if you managed to pull that off, they look really good from what I've seen!

-G

Well, when I first did these, I took the TV-overscan into consideration. But when people suggested I should go ahead and do an as close as possible match, I realized they didn't get cropped off. Well, at least not on my CRT-TV. But I would not call my subs safe from TV-overscan.

Here's where the picture gets cut off on my Sony trinitron CRT:

not so aesthetically pleasing, and when checking this, I also realised my TV doesn't even overscan equally on both sides, which I find strange. Anyway, I decided to not bother with this overscan, as I realised most people doesn't have old CRT-TV's these days.

Anyway, I'm glad you like them, g-force. :) And I fully understand your subtitling choice.

erri_wan said:

msycamore for the question of the four different aspect ratio I would just leave exactly as it is for two reason

First because it's less work for you

Second and most importantly because we want to preserve the Italian version "as is", including the letterboxing choices.

 

Why in the world would you want to preserve a broadcasting error? The TV-master they had was correct that it had the picture in letterbox at the beginning and end, but it was still displayed at the wrong aspect ratio (vertically stretched).

erri_wan said:

Afterall we (us Europeans) will still have the PAL version in Disc 1 with correct widescreen so in my opinion it's best to leave it the way Italians choose to release it, with all four different aspect ratios. They are editing choices that we should leave untouched if we want to show THX as it was shown to Italians (and maybe other European countries too... if I can find a German or French tape to make sure).

That is my opinion at least. It seems to be the best choice for the project.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, or if you understand me, this is still video related flaws. When this film played at Italian cinemas, the picture was beautiful and not stretched vertically, and it didn't have PAL-speedup either. This is not editing choices, or some European standard, it has simply been broadcasted incorrectly, it happens all the time unfortunately.

As seen on your broadcast, letterboxed but wrong aspect:

letterboxed but correct aspect:

The reason I asked about the issue with the opening credits, is because the first half of it is presented in letterbox, still in the wrong aspect ratio though:

Corrected:

but when they decided to suddenly go fullscreen in the later parts of the credits, it became horribly streched in order to not crop out some of the titles, why they decided to do this, is beyond me, when they just could have had the whole credits letterboxed. The switch in aspect ratio comes at a place where the screen is black, so no problems with that. So the question is, do you want me to leave it as is:

or correct it with black borders:

No matter what, it will look jarring, the borders size will suddenly gets bigger. IMO the latter is a better choice but I want to know what you all think about it.

As for what this version should be called, why not call it what it is "Italian TV-broadcast version". The run time on the Italian video boxes indicates that this is the old regular Italian cut, but we're still not entirely sure of this. Also the German TV-broadcast discussed earlier in this thread was much longer and different from this version.

erri_wan said:

If I'm not mistaken Lucas said in some audio commentary that 2.35:1 is the only format that preserves the original proportions. I never really investigated on it but I'm supposing that if Laserdisc has a different ratio (for example 1.85:1 or other) then it would necessarily have something cropped. 

It depends entirely on what format the film was shot in, it doesn't have anything with the media it's stored on.

erri_wan said:

myscamore, I've got a little trivia about Italian 4:3 movies for you. Movies altered to fit into letterbox format often kept the ending titles in widescreen. I never understood why. Usually you would see the black orizontal bars coming in at the end of the film. The most noticeable I remember was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because the ending credits roll in without cuts or fades to black so you see these two black bars squeezing the film. Was this procedure done also in other countries or did we only have the pleasure?

In the era of only 4:3 TV's, the only way to preserv the full aspect ratio of widescreen films was to have video transfers in 4:3 letterbox, black borders at the top and bottom of the frame, way back when most films were mostly presented in fullframe or pan&scan, many opening titles and end titles was often presented in letterbox or slightly squished to fit the screen. So what you describe is not something that was unique to Italian audiences, this was the common practice in the earlier video age.

Thanks for the suggestion Puggo, don't know if it will be entirely possible as there's often important picture information behind it, but I think I will take a look at this VirtualDub, anyway. Thanks. :)

Ok, how do you want me to handle this, as I've already said the Italian broadcast have different aspect ratios, the opening titles for example is in letterbox but in wrong aspect and suddenly in the second half of the titles, the image shifts to fullframe but instead of the correct aspect ratio it stretches the image as seen below.

Should I leave it alone or should I just add borders to make the aspect ratio correct 4:3 LB like this?

The problem is, if I do it like this, the black borders will not match the borders of the other resized titles.

And is this even the correct way of doing it when dealing with vertically stretched video? Just using the addborder command in Avisynth? Please help out a happy amatuer!

The aspect ratio of THX is 2.35:1 or 2.39:1/2.40:1 if you want to be pedantic. Films always have some amount of cropping applied when transferred to video.

Speaking of aspect ratios, I just noticed that the Italian cut actually have four different aspect ratios!! only the main feature was broadcasted correctly.

erri_wan said:

I know msycamore, don't worry. I agree with you 100%, we should definitely find the best source available. Unfortunately I haven't been able to secure a copy of this film yet. I'm still hoping that the guy I contacted on a forum will reply my message, he was selling it for 5 euro.

 

I am still keeping my eyes open for it as well.

erri_wan said: 

Do you guys think that it could be possible perhaps to make two separate (but identical) products, one NTSC for Americans and the other PAL for us Europeans?

Of course, no problem. We make it both ways then.

Another thing, in the broadcast, the channel logo appears in the corner of the frame five or six times, I don't remember exactly, the first appearence is in the black border so that one is easy to mask out, but the other instances we will have to live with, as it was broadcasted in pan & scan.

You could always try to splice in fullscreen footage from another source to get rid of them, but I don't think the logo is that disturbing. Thoughts?

doubleofive said:

 

msycamore said:

I don't know if you missed my post on the last page, 005. But the Death Star shot Treadwell was talking about in comp 60. was recomposited for the '97 release, on the frames I posted you can clearly see this in the different positioning of all the elements in it. The easiest way to spot it, is to look at the position of the stars against the battle station. The original elements recomped in '97.

You also have the recomposited sunset I posted a few examples of a few pages back. I've noticed that there actually was always static dirt in the close-up of the twin suns in all home-video transfers of the original film, at the bottom of the frame in the middle, there is some dirt, I don't know, could be what they're talking about, it's not there in the '97 footage, (when you can actually see the restoration job) in the documentary "The Magic and the Mystery". I believe both the wide-shot and close-up was recomped, in the process they took the opportunity to also revise the colortiming.

Nice finds! especially the Jedi- skiff, actually very professionally done, ooh, that hurts to say. ;) 

Those torpedoes had motion blur applied as well. Good job, everyone!

 

Got em, I think!

 

No, this is the shot I'm talking about:

msycamore said:

Treadwell said:

There was some discussion of missing or extra frames here and there, namely fading out/in to Threepio in the oilbath, or the TIEs approaching the Death Star in comp 60. These are reel change points--as such, it is common for one transfer to have a few frames more or less than another, as they have to be either put together later in the video realm, or the reels edited together in real time during the telecine. While these would count as differences, they are the kind of thing that will be found between every transfer ever made (not just original/SE), and thus do not fall within doubleofive's listing criteria.

 

I agree with you, the fade out/in to Threepio in the oilbath is a reel change point, but I don't know if that one was missing any frames between transfers, they just remade the fade, right? And I don't think the other one, comp. 60, is a reel change point though, IIRC the next reel change is after Tarkin says "We will then crush the rebellion with one swift stroke", I could be wrong though.

Edit: I checked, the scene is actually a 1997-recomp:

last frame of GOUT

last frame of 2004 DVD

I've since double checked, this is not a reel change point, if it is sligthly retimed, it's probably a result of a remade shot. Take a close look again, and you'll see that this shot was recomposited in 1997. It's not only the starfield that is in a different position, also the TIE's in relation to the Death Star or vice versa.

And this was the other post I was referring to:

msycamore said:

doubleofive said:

I'm not seeing the static grain in the GOUT to get a picture of it.

What they're talking about may not even be on the GOUT, it could also be hard to see due to the heavy DVNR applied, or the bad resolution. Just their description of it should be enough, besides you cannot even do a proper comparison of what they accomplished when the telecine turned out like this...

1997 SE

I actually think both shots were recomped for the SE, but it's impossible to know for sure though, besides the weird choice of colortiming the white sun always looked different to me in the SE, smaller and more spherical in shape...

...in the original film it is equal in dimension to the lower red sun, it cannot just be the clipped white levels that make it look that way, it looks like that in other transfers as well.

There's only one thing that is weird about all this, IIRC the bright white sun was the real location photographed one and the red one inserted in post or am I wrong?

Any thoughts on this? to me it actually looks like both suns in the wide-shot was digitally remade for the SE, also remember, the '97 wide-shot is not the same in the 2004 DVD, where they inserted clouds.

I can post a few examples of the dirt I mentioned in the close-up of the suns, if you want me to. Maybe it was on the negative.

And here I thought the colors were untweaked... anyway, it seems Moth3r did an amazing job improving the source.

dark_jedi said:

I just finished the Theatrical PCM for ESB, so now ALL audio files are done for SW & ESB now onto Jedi.

I like the sound of that.

Thanks for the hard job you're doing syncing these beauties to the GOUT, much appreciated!

As I earlier thought could be the case, it was on a single line. :) Theater Performance Edition it is, sorry, Fritz. ;)

You'll have to wait at least a week for it d_j.

LexX said:

Moth3r said:

"2.0 Surround" would be a more accurate description than plain old "Stereo".

Is there a difference between them?

Yes, there is, plain 2.0 Stereo doesn't have real surround content. Where as 2.0 Dolby Surround is the home theater equivalent to 35mm Dolby Stereo.

Moth3r said:

Also posted for the first time are the source discs, for anyone who wants to take a shot at devising a better filter chain than I used. 

 Nice! :)

Impressive results, Leo! Looking very good, do those filters work in YUV or RGB? I only do Avisynth, but I guess the results would be about equal? Thanks for helping out! I'll check it out. :)

And I am not mocking your source, erri_wan, I just wanted to let people know what we're up against and how high we're setting the bar.

SilverWook, thanks for the update and for taking the time studying the best capture options. Damn, you have three players! :)

dark_jedi said:

I think I figured out how to fix the Jedi subs myself, I believe all I had to do was add the interlace=true to all the lines and now it is good to go, msycamore let me know if there is more to it than that.

 

Well, the reason I'm waiting for Video Collector's Jedi bootleg, is to finally see what the true line breaks and timings were on the theatrical prints. Most of the timings and references I had when doing my script besides the ones appearing in "Empire of Dreams" were from the LD-captures you kindly sent me, why they are perfectly fine as they are now, I'll update them if the real theatrical ones differ in any way. So it's up to you if you want to wait or just go ahead with it as it is. If so, that line interlace=true is all that you need.

As I described here http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-DVD-Covers/post/455024/#TopicPost455024 the font doesn't look exactly the same anymore, it's SerifGothic. I'll send you a PM.

I've now gone through the Italian cut, thanks again, erri! It was nice to finally see that extended scene with Donald Pleasence.

A few comments on the video:

The intro and end titles is letterboxed in order to not crop out the titles, however it is stretched causing a wrong aspect ratio- that should be easy to fix, I guess.

Unfortunately, this video is also in very low quality sometimes, lots of bad MPEG artefacting as you can see below, in fact, this whole scene looks like this, and many other scenes as well.

So a different source of this cut would've been nice to have.

This cut of the film is 01:17:25 min, converted to NTSC it is 01:20:43 min... I want to know what you all think of this, if it is even worth to convert this file to NTSC and loose the extra lines of resolution? Should we do anything with it? just release it as it is, with the subtitle stream, or should we wait and see if we could get a better source for this?

rsortor said:

Strange that the subs would take a break for a couple of lines sometimes.   (something I wish contemporary subtitlers would take a cue from, too much extraneous text in domestic releases of many foreign films)

IIRC, that was common practice in Swedish subtitling back in the day, not sure how it is nowadays, DVD subs translate almost every word. I have many old home video titles subtitled in the same way as this, where only the essential things is translated, either they were lazy or I guess they assumed most people understood what was said anyway.

rsortor said:

The Maniac was cute.  Reminded me of some of my own grade-school super-8 efforts!

I was kinda surprised at the on-screen special-thanks credit, but I appreciate that Puggo!  I didn't really contribute much so it'll be considered a TIA for the inevitable Puggo STRIKES BACK! ;-)

Same here.

The Maniac was a nice little bonus. :) John Carpenter's masterpiece, Halloween was probably in their minds, I guess... or was Maniac done '77? (Edit: seems it was made in 1980.) Anyway, it's a classic and easy theme to use when making your own films when you're a small kid.