CatBus

Honestly I’d recommend the 1080p route for now at least. The 4K files are huge and require significant decoding horsepower, and people regularly report playback issues in less-then-ideal circumstances. You could try looking for smaller or less demanding 4K encodes if you like (or make your own), but really 1080p is just the fastest and cheapest way to your destination IMO.

Edomex Sound said:

What I have noticed about the Laserdisc audio in many films is that the sound is very in-depth and robust.

Which Original Trilogy preservation do you recommend?

Depends on what you want. If you want the experience of watching the movies in a theater, go for the 4Kxx projects. If you want to see what a respectful Blu-ray release would have looked like, Despecialized is your best bet IMO. I lean toward the latter. Star Wars is sadly in the roughest shape of the trilogy for both projects.

So, “matrixed stereo” is a stereo mix encoded in a special fashion where, if you pass it through a proper Dolby ProLogic decoder, you can get four-channel audio. The Laserdisc audio can be decoded in this way to get true multichannel. The six-channel reconstructions are based on this four-channel decode of Laserdisc audio, and for the past several releases has used a proper professional-grade decoder for that work. We also have in-theater recordings of the six-channel mix, which aren’t an audio source per se, but allow us to know which slight variations of sound effects happened, and when. The LFE is a bit of a best-guess, using some SE when it aligns with theatrical effects.

This work is all based on the theory that the six-channel and stereo mixes were based on the same four-track master audio, which has at this point been proven enough through various audio discoveries to be considered fact. There’s a lot of archaeology in this as well…

Keep in mind that, at the time, only the Star Wars six-channel mix even attempts to match any unique 70mm six-channel content. That may change, but right now Empire and Jedi are more like “tasteful and respectful upmixes” than 70mm mixes – although they may end up being extremely similar to their respective 70mm mixes, due to the shared lineage of the four-channel master.

ProLogic decoding can’t get you literally back to the discrete six-channels on a 70mm print. For one thing, there’s still a bit of channel bleedover that would not be present on a 70mm print, the other is of course the missing two LFE channels*. But these things were done with love. It’s not at all like those Blu-ray mono-to-5.1 upmixes which kill the soul of the original audio. It can be done well, and in this case, it’s been done in an exemplary fashion.

* The original 70mm six-channel audio was 4.2, not 5.1. It was L, C, R, and a single surround, plus two LFE channels. So a four-channel ProLogic decode gives you everything except the LFE. Since 5.1 is far more compatible with modern playback systems, that’s how it’s encoded for these preservations.

Edomex Sound said:

What are the best audio versions for the Prequels and Original Trilogy?

Audio is typically restored as a different project, and then included with restorations that are designed to sync to it. The only difference is scan-based projects which will usually include optical audio directly from the film print.

“Best audio” could be its own thread, and there are tons of opinions. First of all, some people swear by the optical audio because it sounds more like what you’d have heard in the theater back in the day.

However, Laserdisc-based preservations provide more of a clean, high-end home-video sound. Laserdisc-based audio is available for the original stereo mixes and 1993 revised “THX” mixes, and the 1985 home video mix for Star Wars. The mono audio is typically from either broadcast recordings or film scans. There will likely soon be at least one original six-channel mix available from a print scan too.

But what I feel stands above the rest is hairy_hen’s six-channel reconstructions, which are based on the matrixed stereo mixes, and a ton of TLC.

Which mix is “best” is a matter of taste and priorities, but I feel I can safely say:

• For Star Wars, people gravitate to the six-channel or mono mixes. The 1977 stereo is so close to the six-channel as to be a “why bother?” option – you may as well downmix the six-channel. The 1985 stereo mix has no dynamic range to speak of, but is a valid mix if you’re trying to reproduce that home video feel. And the 1993 stereo mix is generally great quality, but includes divisive additions.
• For Empire, the six-channel is much-loved. The 1980 stereo mix is solid, and as with Star Wars, the 1993 stereo mix is generally great quality with one small error. The 1980 mono mix is more of a novelty but it includes alternate dialogue, so it’s fun.
• For Jedi, again I recommend the six-channel. The 1983 and 1993 stereo mixes are both very good, 93 with better quality and no divisive changes or errors. The mono mix is definitely a novelty with missing foley effects.

Hope that helps. Generally speaking, the most recent preservations will have the most recent versions of the six-channel audio. The others have not changed much in years, as the best-of-breed Laserdiscs were found and ripped years ago.

Be careful mix-and-matching audio. There are two frame standards currently in use (GOUT and theatrical), but they’re close enough that you might not notice slight sync differences until years later.

I have no opinions on prequel audio.

If it helps, there are already at least two projects that do exactly that or something very similar: Despecialized and D+77/D+80/OTD83. The main project files are large, since they try to keep their encoding quality similar to an actual Blu-ray disc (~20GB+ seems about right for this). But there are also official AVCHD versions for burning to DVD9s, which are necessarily under 9GB, and even DVD5 downscales for those who don’t need HD. I also know that there are a ton of unofficial re-encodes of Despecialized that sacrifice a little visual quality for a lot of space savings, often putting the whole trilogy at under 10GB. If you’re looking for torrents, you’re actually more likely to run across one of these unofficial re-encodes than the official version, since there seems to be a similar bias in favor of small file sizes in that community.

PM sent, and thanks! That change has been made and will be in the next release (which likely won’t be for a while).

Thrashlark said:

Speaking of said corruption, I’m guessing the name of the project comes from 3PO being said out loud, as well?

If you check the English credits for Star Wars, R2-D2 is actually spelled out as “Artoo-Detoo (R2-D2)”, and C-3PO is “See Threepio (C3PO)”. At least to me, Artoo and Threepio still work fine as nicknames, but spelling out their full two-word names like that is pretty awkward.

But yes, the project is named after C-3PO, because he was also known to be fluent in a few languages.

Thrashlark said:

Hey, Catbus, I was interested to get a download for the Spaniard and Castilian Spanish subtitles of the OT, if possible. I’ve always been curious to know what differences were made by each region for Star Wars, Empire and Return. Thanks in advance!

PM sent, but keep in mind: Project Threepio’s subtitles are not necessarily the same as any official translations (subtitled or dubbed) for any language. They often start out the same as the official translations, but users contribute improved translations to Project Threepio all the time. The goal is that they eventually become the best modern translations of the spoken English dialogue, rather than something with quirks from the time and place they were first translated.

All of this is especially true for Spanish. We have had some active Spanish contributors over the years.

PM sent.

PM sent.

Grindhouse doesn’t attempt to do the cleanup and stabilization that would be done to more involved restorations. The color correction is usually pretty basic. Missing frames are common, although this one is fully GOUT-synced. Basically, watching it is like watching the film at the end of its run in a cheap second-run theatre. A bit banged up, but watchable. It’s an informal term for this sort of preservation, not an official term.

LPP just says what sort of 35mm filmstock it was (Lowfade Positive Print), because especially when you’re dealing with old faded prints, that is sometimes relevant (low-fade doesn’t mean no-fade, especially after decades of non-ideal storage conditions). Some filmstock fades differently or worse than other filmstock. This could be relevant if you’re trying to fill in missing frames using another film scan – mixing filmstocks could give you different color or grain characteristics.

Project files have been updated to version 15.0 (codename: “Rohini”), and the first post has been updated. Please PM me for temporary download links until the files/ are available at some more permanent locations.

Rough summary of changes from 14.0 to 15.0:

• Added new machine-translated languages: Hindi, Urdu, Swahili, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Albanian, and Georgian, including titles-only subtitles to accompany dubs and voiceovers, wherever applicable
• The synchronization script supports more targets: 35mm Guerre Stellari Italian Preview, ESB 35mm German Print Grindhouse, ESB Super-8 Scope, ESB Fuji 2 Preview, and the ESB and ROTJ 70mm grindhouse releases (thanks to hot noodles). Popular print scans that don’t require any special synchronization are now mentioned by name in the compatibility guide.
• The synchronization script now supports changing PGS subtitles from one aspect ratio to another (repositioning within the frame). When synchronizing to pre-defined targets, this conversion is automatic.
• For preservations available both with and without a brief intro clip, the synchronization script now targets the version without the intro clip, and the sync offset for the version with the intro clip is included in readme.html
• Added Tajik titles-only subtitles (machine-translated), to accompany Persian dubs
• Improved Dutch subtitles for ESB (thanks to frater)

PM sent!

Ron78, you have a PM.

haru KI do said:

This project will resume once we have 35mm film for screening.

Is that likely? I’m very interested to see what the 35mm Greedo subtitles looked like in the Japanese release!

This project has gone silent, and there’s little expectation that this will change in the future.

He’s fine. He just got kicked off Facebook like a week or two ago.

haru KI do said:

All right. I’ll give it a try.
The 2006 Bonus DVD and the Japanese subtitles translated by Kanji Hayashi on the 2020 Blu-ray can be used together for optimal subtitling.

Thanks! There’s a lot in the queue for the next version of Project Threepio, so no need to rush.

haru KI do said:

Hi CatBus,

I first checked the subtitles for this project when I saw DEED v3.0 and I have a question about the Japanese language.
Who is the translator of these subtitles? There are two main types of Japanese subtitles, but this subtitle falls into neither category. And, not a few mistranslations. Is it possible to change to 2020 Blu-ray subtitles in the next version?

The Japanese translations have been through A LOT of changes over the years. We started with the Japanese GOUT, where there were actually two sets of subtitles (I believe theatrical and home video). But a problem with these was that they were available only in graphical form (discs use graphical subtitles). In order to fully incorporate them into the project, we needed to OCR them, and the OCR software we’ve used tends to be tuned for Latin or Chinese characters. Which means that the kanji came through pretty successfully, but the kana was pretty bad. So we had someone manually correct them, but due to other problems they were just the theatrical subtitles, which were not as good translations (for example, “Return of the Jedi” was still called “Revenge of the Jedi”, which is cool but wrong). They also contained lots of Furigana, which didn’t work well in subtitles at all.

Anyway, this background is just to demonstrate why we later threw all of that work out, and went with some 2004 Special Edition subtitles in text form that we found. So we knew these subtitles were likely to still have problems, but were at least closer to a modern translation, and we didn’t add additional errors through OCR.

With the 2020 Blu-ray subtitles, we are definitely more likely to start off with a good translation/few errors, but the OCR process could add a large number of new errors, perhaps making them unintelligible.

This is where someone like you could come in. 😉

If you can edit the existing Japanese subtitles to correct the problems you find, that would really help a lot. You can use the 2020 Blu-rays as a reference. To do this, you’d go into the current project files and look in the srt\original folder, and edit the files *-jpn-full.srt. You do not need to edit “titles” or “localized” SRT files – these are derived from the “full” files. You also do not need to edit files outside the “original” folder because these are derived from the originals.

But you may need to edit the text fragment files located in resources\fragments\txt, named *-jpn.txt. The formatting in these files is a little funny, so if you have questions, you can ask. These “fragments” are how we create subtitles for the mono mix and other special versions.

Once edited, send me the results, and I’ll include them in the next version. You can PM me with any questions.

Shoulda called it Star Trek!

For the people I think might be interested, I’ve sent them messages with a link to this thread. They’ll show up if they are – they’re interested in Spanish Star Wars, I’m just not sure they’re as interested in theatrical bootlegs as I am.

I would love a compressed link to the full file.

Wow, what a great find! I know a few people here who may have an interest in this, but I’m mostly interested in the first 30 minutes. If you have full-length links to share, I would love to know about it.

The theatrical releases in Europe often had different text translations than you’d find for home video releases. For example, I see a slightly different translation for “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”. Also, this appears to confirm that Return of the Jedi was very standardized in Jabba subtitle fonts (where Star Wars Greedo fonts were very random)

I’d also confirm that when you say “Spanish”, you mean from Spain, rather than the Latino release, which would also be a popular find!

Sorry to hear that. There was a lot of good content on your Facebook page.

Harmy said:

The UHD Blu-ray is unfortunately plagued with frozen grain all over the place, so there’s no chance of really fixing that short of scrubbing whatever grain is left and regraining and that would destroy even more fine detail.

Would there be any benefit to adding light fake grain without first scrubbing the frozen grain? Just enough to mask the frozen grain a little bit?

I should add, I don’t know enough about how these things work to know what’s possible/what looks decent.

I lied about not seeing anything else.

In 3.0, I noticed a mid-wipe grading shift at 1:21:38. Not sure if theatrical or not.

Also, did you take a look at the Boba Fett flyby? I know it’s supposed to look janky, just want to be sure none of that is due to source problems.