CatBus

Heh, I think YouTube dropped some frames then too.  Oh well!

Troyig88 said:

For the first time I not sure what I am seeing.

A testament to how perfect things already were!

Check the smoothness/jerkiness of the motion.  1.2 looks much better.

Close to perfect Harmy.  I can see a little difference in the angle of the hook in the question mark, but nothing I'd actually bother to fix myself.

Harmy said:

I'm not being an ass or anything, I really don't see it.

You really don't need to worry about that.  I don't know if you're intentionally working on your nice-guy image or what, but I think the consensus here is that you're always very level-headed about everything.  Sure, you make subjective decisions based on your own eyes, but we expect that.  It's not unreasonable in any way.

Interesting comments, I'd like to hear a little more.  Here's why:

I actually started working on this project because I wanted to make a good hearing impaired option for GOUT projects.  In other words, I've been working in the reverse direction from where you seem to want to go, taking English language-only subs and adding audio cues.  That said, I didn't go all the way and ended up with a hybrid--I didn't compromise on the dialog, and I rarely identified the speaker (except when it was both very non-obvious and relevant).  Those are the two things I thought could annoy people about hearing impaired subs.  I personally don't mind the occasional [creature roars] showing up in the subtitles, but I wonder what you think.  Anyway, you should have a copy of the unfinished hearing-impaired subs, and you can let me know if a pure dialogue-only sub is warranted.

The other thing is that I'm already planning two English subs (same text, different placement), one standard and one CIH, so doubling the English subs would actually mean four sets.

I am trying to avoid any further scope creep (after all, my original scope included one language and look where I am now), so I will probably not create subs specifically for additional projects like Laserschwert's.  But I will make it easy for people to do this on their own, and I even may provide files outside the main project if people want them.  One big reason is the CIH thing--I think the CIH subtitles in my project are pretty neat, and I suspect if Laserschwert uses my subs, he may want to make CIH German subs, which take a little more work.  Images attached, I think ;)

EDIT--I think I should be able to provide SRT files to accomodate everyone.  I may not provide all the graphical overlays everyone wants, but I'll include instructions on how to create them, so I hope that works.

Me neither.  I'm just a professional worrier, that's all.  And I don't know how to turn it off.

I feel like R2 in that image (your Blu screenshot too) has some pretty weird unnatural stuff going on.  I think your DE looks better because it's the same image, but blurred (due to downscale and compression).  Blur can be a good thing when there's detail you DON'T want to see.

But really, forget it.  That was one specific example and maybe it wasn't a good one.  Most of my concern over the Blu Ray is just a vague uneasiness based on how long it took to figure out what exactly got changed in the DVD releases, not on any actual particular thing.  I'm not worried at all about the things I can point out, I'm worried about the things I don't know about yet.

Harmy said:

Where are these screens? Could you link to the specific ones that you mean?

This is the one I was referring to:

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/5592/020lr.png

Harmy said:

CatBus said:

I mean, just LOOK at the screenshot of R2 and 3PO just after they landed.  Yick.

What screenshots? If you mean screenshots from the Blu-Ray, that scene looks exactly the same in the broadcast, except in the broadcast the graininess of that scene produces a lot of compression where in the BD there are no compression artefacts that I can see.

I was talking about You_Too's BD screenshots from the other thread.  Whether the broadcast compression is responsible for it or not, yours looks much better.  It was just an example of bad things lurking in the Blu-Ray I hadn't seen before--why I hadn't seen them before may be because you already took care of it.

Sorry, didn't mean to be a wet blanket.  1.2 was already on track to be enough of an improvement to make a lot of people very, very happy.  I'm not sure I'd risk it myself.  I mean, just LOOK at the screenshot of R2 and 3PO just after they landed.  Yick.

TServo2049 said:

1.0 has been released for quite a while.

I will warn you, I was looking at You_Too's Blu-ray screenshots, and I did notice something unsettling. The screenshot of Vader's first entrance looks to have that waxy, Photoshop-watercolor-filter look of an image that has been too heavily degrained. Fortunately, I didn't see that in any of his other screenshots.

Actually that's a pretty strong argument against starting over whole-hog with the Blu Ray.  The Blu Ray introduces a lot of subtle changes that may take years to identify, and shortcomings of the HDTV capture are pretty well understood by now.  I wouldn't be against using the Blu Ray to fix specific problems, but starting over from scratch using the Blu Ray may break as many things as it fixes.

By the way, I found nothing to complain about with the latest credits.  Now get to work on Empire and Jedi ;)

Just so you know, Harmy.  My kid's not seeing Star Wars until your next release.

No pressure! ;)

Mavimao and TheHutt, please PM me with your real e-mail.

More details: yes, I actually already have complete subtitles (from some of the places listed above, even) for all of these languages, and I've got them timed and formatted very nicely for the GOUT and specifically to match Harmy and DarkJedi's projects (i.e. alien subtitle timing).  I do not know if these subtitles are any good, however, and that's what this request is all about.  For example, I used Google translate to fill in some gaps, and some of the typos I fixed were clear signs of OCR, and that makes me very nervous.  In other words, I'd like to take what may be decent, intelligible subtitles and convert them into excellent, error-free subtitles.

pittrek, more languages are always welcome.  Your job would be harder because you would not be starting out with a complete subtitle set, but you could certainly help.  PM me if you're interested.

none, I used Gaupol+VLC to do the timing and text editing.  I have processes for getting them onto DVD and AVCHD/Blu Ray, but they're not fully documented yet, and they use some Windows-only software.  I plan to release complete workflow documents as part of this project so that anyone can make their own using my procedures.

OK, PM me your real e-mail and I'll send you the French subtitle files I have, along with some instructions that will either help or confuse you ;)  Please bear with me, you're the first volunteer.

God, my post does read like a personal!  I am so embarrassed.

In case anyone reading this thread is interested in helping a slightly different project:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Looking-for-native-fluent-speakers-German-French-Spanish-Brazilian-Portuguese/topic/13463/

...not sure if that violated some Internet etiquette rule.  I hope not.

<span> </span>

UPDATE: I now need help only for Portuguese.  German, French and Spanish are taken care of.

I am currently working on a GOUT-timed OT subtitle package for all of the above languages, and right now I have SRT (text+timing) files for all of the above languages for all three films, using misc Internet sources (which almost certainly have some problems).

I’m looking for people to read, correct, and mail back these text files. You don’t need anything more complicated than Notepad, although an SRT editor may be handy because it would allow you to play back the corresponding English audio. You don’t need to worry about the timing; only the text needs verification. There are some limitations regarding length of text that may make some lines difficult.

If you’re interested, PM me with your language(s) and e-mail address. I’m only really interested in working with one person per language. Also, I only plan to give credit in my project post–the subtitles themselves will be clean of credits. So, lots of work, not much glory, but not much technical skill required either.

I am hoping to release these subtitles as a single collection sometime soon. Thanks in advance.  Below are instructions for anyone helping with this project.  The SRT files themselves will be mailed to individuals.

==========

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

I like to use Gaupol to edit my subtitles; you’re welcome to use different software if you prefer.  Open the subtitles in your language, then “open translation” to open the English subtitles (or vice-versa) so you can see them side-by-side.

The subtitle timing is already good, so don’t make any changes there.  The text is where work needs to be done.  There may be bad translations, typos, bad grammar, missing subtitles, all sorts of problems.  I’m also hoping to improve some subtle things, like consistency between movies (e.g. if a certain word is translated two different ways in two different movies, make them more consistent).  I may have chosen bad places to break lines—feel free to fix that as long as it doesn’t impact timing.  Please translate things that don’t necessarily even need translating (i.e. “No” in the Spanish subtitles)—this text can still help the hearing impaired.  These subtitles are designed to accompany the English audio and video, so these subtitles also include the complete crawl text and alien language subtitles.

The limitations are: no more than two lines of text per subtitle, keep all lines shorter than 34 in length (Gaupol tells you the length), and try to keep consistent with the existing style.  For example, subtitles for partially intelligible alien languages (ROTJ) use a particular format I’d like to keep consistent.

Once you’re happy with what you have, mail them back to me.  I’m trying to time this release with Harmy’s and DarkJedi’s next releases, but I may not succeed there.

The French translation seems good but minimalist.  It could probably use more detailed translations in a number of places.  Many of the translations are missing character names (i.e. “Luke, help me” is trimmed to “Help me”).  To better match timing, and for the hearing impaired, I would like character names included.

The German translation seems very good to me, and may not need much work.

The Spanish and Portuguese translations are very uneven, and I suspect they need a lot of work, particularly in ROTJ.

There are a couple of quirks in Gaupol: to enter a linebreak into a subtitle, type Ctrl+Enter.  And be sure to hit Enter at the end, or changes are reverted.

I fear the power of our collective anal retentiveness.

I noticed that apostrophes in the new credits (e.g. Dan O'Bannon) are "straight down" rather than "curled".  It's hard to tell from the GOUT, but I believe the originals were curled (at least they blur a lot like the commas, which are curled).  I think the "straight down" apostrophe was a computer convention created after these credits would have been done.  Then again, I could be wrong.

EDIT: The same probably applies to quote marks, which I didn't check for.

Actually I've been searching around for "things that need doing that don't require a great deal of technical expertise", and once I'm done with my current project, I could try my hand at a credits recreation.  I wouldn't have anything to show for a couple of years, though, I estimate, assuming I can even do it.  Interested people may want to try their own mini-projects to see if it's feasible.

OK, I'd like to request them when they exist.  No special hurry, and worst-case I can just grab them from the final product myself after-the-fact.

DarkJedi--I've been trying to PM you but may have run into technical difficulties.

When/if they exist, I'm looking for 720p screencaps from the Blu versions of both SW and ROTJ showing the burnt-in subtitles you're using.  I'm trying to do a good font/placement match (and I really need actual screencaps).  I'd prefer to get them in advance of the actual release--I'm trying to get my project out there in advance of yours and Harmy's next releases, as I'm trying to get it to integrate well with both.  PM me for details, thanks.

Hell now that I think of it you might be able to rescue the Lucasfilm logo, the galaxy far, far away text, and at least some if not all of the end credits this way.

Harmy--do you want to handle seeing if you can get those 35mm stills for mattes, or is there something you'd like the members of your robot army to do for you?  We await commands.