Info on import Blu-ray titles

[kannisto]

Thanks for the info, pre-ordered this and Swing Girls earlier. Watched the trailer on the official web page, looks like a good and gripping drama.

I pre-ordered Swing Girls and Wonder Boys from Amazon since they are the ones announced with English subs. With Japanese movies, when the BD doesn't have subs I'd rather rent or record the movie from WOWOW (unless the movie is a real favorite of mine). The rental selection is pretty limited still though, mostly just some of the Warner, Fox and Sony releases available + a bunch from Bandai Visual. I was surprised to find this one available. Not many people seem to be renting them as my local Tsutaya always has about 90% of their Blu-ray rental discs available in the shop. It's 520 yen for two days / one night rental if the release is new. A bit older ones can be rented for a week for the same price.

I watched the trailer of "Ano sora wo oboeteru" this morning and it does look interesting, I had little knowledge about the movie itself beforehand. I actually thought it's some kind of a happy family movie but from the trailer it seems to be a bit more dramatic and thus more interesting as well. Haven't watched the rental disc yet though.

EDIT:
These can give an idea of what "Ano sora wo oboeteru" looks like (not quite lossless caps but just to get an idea):

[kannisto]

AnalogueGhost and DCSholtis, thanks very much for the additional information for the German and French lists! I'll try to add the entries / updates asap, today or tomorrow. I'll cross-check a few sources though since Amazon shops always tend to have some ghost entries that have been actually cancelled or postponed. At least I was under the impression that Highlander has been cancelled.

DVDFR says that Highlander was cancelled here:
http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/f150651_highlander.html

Also when I tried to find it in other shops like Studio Canal's own shop and FNAC, I couldn't find it at all, so I think that one is not likely to come out. Amazon's cover pic for Highlander has a HD DVD logo on a Blu-ray case, by the way http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/imag...4344350&sr=1-2

[DCSholtis]

Actually kannisto I checked my pre order at FNAC and they now list Pulp Fiction as coming out on December 4th still nothing on Amazon France though.

[ahsoka]

I pre-ordered Swing Girls and Wonder Boys from Amazon since they are the ones announced with English subs. With Japanese movies, when the BD doesn't have subs I'd rather rent or record the movie from WOWOW (unless the movie is a real favorite of mine). The rental selection is pretty limited still though, mostly just some of the Warner, Fox and Sony releases available + a bunch from Bandai Visual. I was surprised to find this one available. Not many people seem to be renting them as my local Tsutaya always has about 90% of their Blu-ray rental discs available in the shop. It's 520 yen for two days / one night rental if the release is new. A bit older ones can be rented for a week for the same price.

I watched the trailer of "Ano sora wo oboeteru" this morning and it does look interesting, I had little knowledge about the movie itself beforehand. I actually thought it's some kind of a happy family movie but from the trailer it seems to be a bit more dramatic and thus more interesting as well. Haven't watched the rental disc yet though.

Thanks for the pics, look forward to watching the movie. The picture seems to have a rather hazy and subdued appearance. I guess it might be intentional to fit the theme of the movie.
Have never seen Water Boys. Will order it later but Swing Girls (from the same Director) is a favorite so I wanted to get that one as quickly as possible. The DVD of SG looks quite good, there's quite a lot of grain but it's not distracting.

[kannisto]

Pulp Fiction was delayed until 1/31/09. Also interesting is that they have Ghostbusters up since its been delayed here in the States until next year sometime.

DVDFR now says that French Pulp Fiction release is delayed until March 2009.

http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/f150737_pulp_fiction.html

Annoncé en
mars 2009

[kannisto]

I went through AnalogueGhost's additions (thanks very much!) for the French list and found a couple of more while I was checking around.

I've added these to the French list now, mostly releases by BAC Films.

Dead Man
Man Who Wasn't There, The
Wild at Heart
Scary Movie 2
Scorpion
Miss Potter
Hoodwinked
Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale)
Chasseurs de dragons (Dragon Hunters)
Requiem for a Dream
Scoop
French Connection (2-pack)

I didn't add Highlander or Ghostbuster set as those seem to be unavailable in reality and only Amazon has active listings for them. DVDFR indicates that Highlander is cancelled and it indicates that Ghostbuster films have no announced release date currently.

[kannisto]

A few German additions:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Oct. 27th):

http://www.amazon.de/Fear-Loathing-L...ef=pd_sim_d_25

Pitch Black (Dec. 4th):

http://www.amazon.de/Pitch-Black-Pla...4352706&sr=1-1

Chronicles of Riddick (Dec. 4th):

http://www.amazon.de/Riddick-Chronik...4352764&sr=1-1

Also added these 3 to the German list now, many thanks!

I think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas might be a ghost entry in Amazon.de though as there seems to be no info about it in Cinefacts.de. Hannibal seems like a similar ghost entry, both are claimed to be by UFA (according to Amazon) and release date is the same. I added that one with a disclaimer text in Notes. Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick seem reliable.

[AnalogueGhost]

It looks like your info about Highlander is correct. I went ahead and closed my preorder for it since it's a movie I enjoy, but not a favorite, and it was holding up an order of stuff that's out now (Brotherhood of the Wolf and La Haine).

Has anyone seen definitive proof that Double Indemnity is out in France?? Amazon.fr says it ships in 7-10 days, but the retailer that DVDfr.com links to shows 11/2...

[kannisto]

It looks like your info about Highlander is correct. I went ahead and closed my preorder for it since it's a movie I enjoy, but not a favorite, and it was holding up an order of stuff that's out now (Brotherhood of the Wolf and La Haine).

Has anyone seen definitive proof that Double Indemnity is out in France?? Amazon.fr says it ships in 7-10 days, but the retailer that DVDfr.com links to shows 11/2...

DVDFR itself says this for Double Indemnity (translated by Google):

Output lagged
Was scheduled for October 8 2008

I think it's probably not out for real, FNAC doesn't even have a listing for it and since Amazon FR has no marketplace sellers offering it, it's likely that it wasn't released yet.

My order in Amazon France for [REC] and Frontière(s) is already locked for shipping, expected to ship tomorrow (22nd). I've been looking forward to [REC], apparently the Spanish release is 1080/50i so it's not really good and this one should hopefully be better (BD-50 with plenty of extras as well and DTS-HD MA which I prefer as it's better with optical out and works well in my remuxing). No English in either one though but that'll be fixable

[LFletcher]

No English in either one though but that'll be fixable

Is it easy to add or remove subs from the foreign releases? Do you have any links on how to do it?

Thanks

[kannisto]

Is it easy to add or remove subs from the foreign releases? Do you have any links on how to do it?

Thanks

I don't have any links but I came up with my own workflow with some PC tools. The complete workflow can be kind of questionable from legal point of view as in some countries it's illegal to bypass encryption in order to create a backup of content even though you own the original disc. Basically I create a personal Blu-ray disc backup of the movie (no menus or extras included) remuxed with external subtitles for my viewing.

Not to go into details of the questionable part, let's assume that you have some movie's content files on your hard disk without encryption. After that need the following:

- tsmuxer and GUI for it (GUI not necessary if you like to use it through command line, I prefer to use it with GUI) (both freeware)
- Subtitle Workshop (2.51) to process the subs (freeware)
- SRT subtitle file for the movie in question (free, many such files can be found in internet for most movies that are popular enough internationally and not extremely new)

The most difficult part is processing the SRT file to get exactly right timings for the subtitles. First I check the time where the first and last dialogue in the movie occur and make notes of the timings e.g. by observing a player's clock display while playing part of the movie from the beginning and from the end. Then I open the best looking SRT file I could find for the movie with Subtitle Workshop and try to set correct fps settings for source (whichever release the original SRT subs were prepared for) and output (target movie's FPS).

The original SRT file already has timestamps for every bit of dialogue in the subs, but the timestamps may be somewhat wrong for the target version if the original was e.g. prepared with a PAL DVD of the movie and if the source version of the movie had different intros than the target version etc. etc.

Often source fps needs to be set to 25 fps (PAL source) and output as 23.976 fps (typical Blu-ray movie fps). If fps settings are set right, the timestamps shown in Subtitle Workshop should already then be synchronized with the target movie's timings though there may still be a relatively small gap (e.g. around 10 seconds) that should be constant from beginning to end. To correctly match the timings in the SRT file and the target movie, I need to recognize some of the subs in reference to actual dialogue in the movie to be able to compare the timings exactly and these comparison points should cover at least both ends of the movie to make sure the overall synchronization will be correct.

If the timings seem to be far off in the end or if the gap is not consistent in the beginning and end I need to continue modifying mainly source fps settings to find the right overall timings (I should be able to check the target movie's fps and set that part correctly from the start). Once the subtitle gap to target movie's dialogue timings is constant throughout the subs, the gap can be removed by applying delay setting in + or - direction in 0.1 s steps from Subtitle Workshop's options. This takes some careful adjusting while comparing the subtitle timestamps to the actual dialogue in movie against player's clock in multiple spots. Luckily subs don't need as careful synchronization as e.g. audio would need. I think it's important that subs don't appear before the actual dialogue though as that would be distracting. If they appear at the same time or very very slightly after the dialogue it works fine. Once the timings seem good enough I save the modified SRT file to hard disk.

Then just need to find the movie's .m2ts file that includes the video and audio streams for the movie (usually the biggest .m2ts file there) and open that to tsmuxer's GUI e.g. by drag&drop. Then drag&drop the newly polished SRT file to the GUI as well. Font settings for SRT subs can be adjusted, e.g. font, pixel size, color and placement from the bottom of image can be selected. Then need to mark checkboxes to select which streams get included (no need to include all audio tracks in case there are some unnecessary dub tracks there). I usually include just the movie's video stream and the best audio stream in original language and the SRT subs. Then just click on create Blu-ray disc option and tsmuxer does the job. In the end need to burn the newly created Blu-ray disc files to e.g. blank BD-RE (of required size) with ImgBurn (freeware), and after that it's ready for watching. Movie will auto-start in player and audio track (if multiple) and subs can be selected by remote or basic playback controls.

Typical problems I still have:
- I can't yet get remuxed TrueHD tracks to work right on my PS3 with optical output though they should contain the AC3 "core", so I try to do this mainly with movies that have some type of DTS tracks
- If SRT subs contain HTML-like markup elements, those should be removed e.g. by notepad "replace" operation by replacing them with blank as otherwise those markup elements will show up as text when watching the movie

Removing forced subs is much easier, e.g. just need to remove prevented user-operations when making a backup (then you can freely toggle them off with remote or playback SW's basic controls as long as they are not burned into video image) and if you remux the content you can always skip including unwanted subs altogether.

For watching the movie on PC there are various other methods too such as Titledrome to overlay external subs on top of video playback.

[DCSholtis]

Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla and Meat Loaf - 3 Bats Live now up on Amazon.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meat-Loaf-Ba...4611527&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rocknrolla-B...4611574&sr=1-1

[AnalogueGhost]

Nice write-up on adding subs Kannisto. I'll try your method later this week when I get back to that project.

By the way, I saw that Chicken Run is out on Blu in France... anyone seen it?

http://www.amazon.fr/Chicken-run-Blu...ref=pd_sbs_d_4

[kannisto]

Nice write-up on adding subs Kannisto. I'll try your method later this week when I get back to that project.

By the way, I saw that Chicken Run is out on Blu in France... anyone seen it?

http://www.amazon.fr/Chicken-run-Blu...ref=pd_sbs_d_4

Thanks, I hope the method works for you too and if you have any questions about it I'll try to answer. It's also possible to add multiple SRT files into the remux at once if you want to try slightly different timings, just need to save multiple differently named SRT files that can all be added into the remux separately. I added 3 versions of the SRT file with slightly different timings when I did my previous trial. The first version was already so good that I didn't need to try the other two subs while watching the movie.

I'll need to add that Chicken Run into the list, thanks for notice

Amazon FR already shipped my [REC] and Frontière(s) yesterday and now Amazon DE has locked my order of Leon, The Constant Gardener, The 9th Company and Lady Vengeance for shipping too so it seems Leon is coming out on time and luckily all the other disc in the order are also in stock. I hope to receive them early next week if the French order doesn't already arrive on Saturday or so.

EDIT: Got my German package shipped already as well

[kannisto]

Adding these to the French title list now:

- Grand bleu, Le
- JCVD
- Gloire de mon père, La + Château de ma mère, Le
- Visiteurs, Les
- Chicken Run

First 4 are Gaumont releases and Chicken Run is by Pathé. Thanks to AnalogueGhost for Chicken Run notice. Also adding Gaumont studio links for a couple of titles that didn't have them before and adding Amazon FR as a source for Taken.