Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys English Dub Project.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Okay, I added the cast sheet to the front page and added a section that lists all the actors that have sent in all their lines.

[Duo_R]

How about you voice Adol and do the "Track 2" warning?

I didn't get the chance to send in an audition... oh well, next time.

Make an alternative dub with you playing all the parts

[Burnt Lasagna]

How about you voice Adol and do the "Track 2" warning?

Sorry, Leonardo DiCaprio is already doing the part of Adol and Will Smith is doing the Track2 error message    

[Keranu]

There's always the strong possibility of cast members bailing out, good to have interested back ups ready.

[NightWolve]

Just FYI, all technical issues were solved this past Sunday and the project was fully converted to work with the SOX (Sound Xchange) utility! The sample rate used at the command line by videogame programmers when encoding the dubbing clips to ADPCM was most likely 16000 Hz (99% sure, slightly possible it was 15989Hz so close enough), and it was definitely NOT 15789 as had been used, so that mistake was caught and taken care of (it caused slightly longer audio lengths (by a second) and presented syncing issues if it had been used). Justus, the prior project leader of the dub that there was, is helping once again having his friend record Dogi's lines (same guy that was used last time). Anyway, to celebrate, I put up two videos for your viewing pleasure.

Darm Opening Battle :

(Made back in 2004 - Preserved on youtube finally for all time!)

Dogi Opening Old Sample :

(This is from the same actor that Justus is using again, though it is getting re-recorded - the audio to lip-synching is almost perfect in-game, but Justus is a sound engineer and really focused on getting the timing right, so we're not gonna get such a great result as this with the other actors.)

[roflmao]

Holy cow, that opening battle scene is badass!  I can't wait to play this game.

[Burnt Lasagna]

This is from the same actor that Justus is using again, so I doubt this has to be recorded again, but here it is

Justus told me he plans on fully re-recording Dogi's lines. Because we only have half of his lines recorded from 2004 and he wants re-record everything to ensure complete continuity in his voice. 

EDIT: Also, I just sent you a sample for Garuda via email, voiced by Lawrence Simpson (He played Goku in the parody series Dragon Ball Z Abridged.)

[Bernie]

You guys are kicking ass on this project. Lots of love from this side of the USA! 

[Arjak]

Doh! Now I'm even more disappointed that I didn't make the cut!

[Burnt Lasagna]

Um, I sent you an Email about whether you would like to be cast for one of the soldiers. Did you not receive it?

[NightWolve]

Justus told me he plans on fully re-recording Dogi's lines. Because we only have half of his lines recorded from 2004 and he wants re-record everything to ensure complete continuity in his voice.

Fact-checked and corrected! Well, probably a good thing anyway since the actor is 8 years older now, so his voice should be a little thicker/older sounding making him a more closer match to what I think Dogi *should* sound like. He was excellent back then, but a little older sounding would be an improvement technically. I just wonder if he can repeat the great timing that was accomplished in that video. The youtube video was recorded with MagicEngine and it was pretty good I thought, but when I played the game with the Japanese Ootake emulator, the lip syncing was damn near perfect!

EDIT: Also, I just sent you a sample for Garuda via email, voiced by Lawrence Simpson (He played Goku in the parody series Dragon Ball Z Abridged.)

He sounded very appropriate for a villain. Just the "mwhahah" laugh was excessive as we talked about. ;)

[Arjak]

Um, I sent you an Email about whether you would like to be cast for one of the soldiers. Did you not receive it?

Apparently not. Still, I'll take any role you are willing to give me!

[Burnt Lasagna]

Alright, I'll make a dub pack for one of the soldiers. Expect to see it in your inbox soon, so watch for it.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Expect to see it in your inbox soon, so watch for it.

I'll right, it's sent.

[Arjak]

Received! Thank you so much! I'll try to get started tomorrow!

[dairugger]

god i hope this comes to fruition. makes me long for the days of rigg.. fun times! 

[Keranu]

god i hope this comes to fruition. makes me long for the days of rigg.. fun times! 

Word! Fellow RIGGer here -- those were the days!

[NightWolve]

This is a Karna dub by an actress that Justus Johnston used back in '04 with the first attempt at this project. It's all defunct since all her lines weren't completed and BL now has a new actress, so this won't be in the new dub patch, but I thought I'd share it anyway. It's too bad her lines weren't finished, I think she did an excellent job.

[Burnt Lasagna]

The new actress for Karna is Mizura (internet name).
I would say she's definitely a great voice for Karna. I would go as far as saying that she's just as good, if not better, then the actress from JJ's 2004 attempt.

[NightWolve]

Ah, good to hear!

[Bernie]

Man, I am so stoked to see this being worked on like this.     Also, thanks for the videos NightWolve. 

[ParanoiaDragon]

The new actress for Karna is Mizura (internet name).
I would say she's definitely a great voice for Karna. I would go as far as saying that she's just as good, if not better, then the actress from JJ's 2004 attempt.

Awesome.  I do seem to recall really liking Karna's voice BITD.

[NightWolve]

Awesome.  I do seem to recall really liking Karna's voice BITD.

That's her right here, did you miss it? I wasn't sure I should upload it to youtube since she's getting overwritten and it might be misleading (though I made it clear about that), but it's a little bit of history so what the hell.

@BL, eh, I do have something to report... I'm making preparations for performing the S-Video mod on my TurboDuo and I had burned a CD-R of Ys IV with a fully patched image for later testing. So earlier today, I loaded the game up to check out the Dogi dub for the opening scene and the distortion bug was in full effect unfortunately... I suspect it's a preamp level issue, the best idea is to use Audacity to lower the volume to get it to match the original or something. Here's what happens: Dogi says, "Can you believe it, Adol?" and that part sounds just fine, but then the louder "HEH!" part right after causes a distortion and it seems to carry over for everything else that's said thereafter - it messes up ADPCM decoding/processing (you get loud static, obnoxious sounds thereafter for most of the rest of the dialogue)... So that's as best as I can describe it while it works fine in the emulator of course since I recorded this just fine... I wonder how your Dracula X dub behaves on real hardware as well. Whatever the case, we're doing something wrong. 

[ParanoiaDragon]

Yup, I remember seeing those scenes of Karna BITD.

So Dogi be clippin' eh?  That stinks, maybe we need some volunteers that can beta test on real hardware once everything is inserted!

[NightWolve]

Ah, so that's the proper term then, clipping ? I read about the issue in the SOX manual. I guess it's a matter of watching the decibel level, finding out what's the max limit and making sure no part of the audio exceeds it.

EDIT: Well, I get it and I guess it's perfectly visible - BL likely has it covered. The answer is likely to keep things between 0.5 and -0.5 or 1.0 and -1.0 at max... All Japanese samples I looked at are safely between .5 and -.5. The top wave is English dubbed Dogi, the bottom is his Jap counterpart. Big difference:



Easy to fix with Audacity then, needs a -5 decibel reduction which does the trick, so nothing to see here. I'll burn another CD-R, but I'm sure it's that simple of a fix.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Yeah JJ just sent in all of Chris's new lines for Dogi the other day, so I decided to do a couple of test inserts to see if it would do the distortion thing even when using SOX. The answer is (of course) yes.

This wont be that big an issue since (as NW described) you can easily circumvent this problem by just lower the volume to every clip to match the Japanese. I've been down this road in the past with Rondo of Blood. Also mednafen can pick up these distortions just like real hardware, so I will be using that to do a test play through after I'm done syncing in all the new dialogue.

[Burnt Lasagna]

I'm not entirely sure what your getting at.
The clipping takes effect when the new English audio is inserted with a higher volume then the TG-CD can handle. Which makes sections of the clip produce load buzzing/static noise when played on the real hardware/mednafen.

Simply lowering the volume of the new English ADPCM to mimic the volume of the original before inserting fixes this. I've even tested this numerous times and it works.
(wiki page on audio clipping)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_%28audio%29

[NightWolve]

Right, there is permanent loss; it's an indicator that the actor is speaking too loudly or more likely that the microphone recording volume level needs to be turned down some what and the boost feature most definitely needs to be turned off (if on). What's lost in clipping at the loud points in the audio is negligible though, no ? I would guess. But I agree, it would be preferable to have a standard for the actors when it comes to the microphone, figuring out the best recording volume level, how close to be when speaking into it, etc. Instructions to each actor like: record a sample, open in Audacity, and see that it's within the -.5 to .5 range and if it's way past that, turn down the mic's recording volume level (either in the Windows Sound mixer panel or your soundcard's custom panel), try recording again, and/or a combination of moving the mic further away from your mouth as well, etc.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I'm we all have different mic's(& different room conditions in general), so I don't know that definitive numbers will work.  I'm assuming(& hoping) that everyone on the project has a dampner(can't for the life of me think of what it's called), that keeps certain letters, like the letter "p" from clipping, not to mentlon keeping the sound of one's breathing to an absolute minimum.

Does Audacity not show you clipping as you record?  I've been using my old Sound Forge, so I haven't fiddled with Audacity.

[NightWolve]

Some more fun, something I've been toying with as a possible intro to a new Ys IV patch (in the distant future)! Check it out!

https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/DarmDemo.7z  (Free 7UnZipper if you ya need it right here)

That is an executable that simply launches a [splash] video recorded in Flash. It's very lightweight too, does the bare minimum as a win32 executable to create a window and an ActiveX instance of the Shockwave Flash control to load the video. I must say, I'm rather impressed with its compatibility after playing with this: I tested it on Windows 98SE and 2000 Virtual PC instances and it worked just fine, in addition to my PC's native Vista platform - as long as the user visited youtube and allowed for the installation of Flash, chances are most PCs will have it. Flash really is impressive in another more important sense: The recorded video (with whatever generic codec) comes out to about ~10 MB, but after encoding to Flash, it's only 746 KB!!! Adding an extra 10 MB to the patcher for this would be out of the question, but since I can get it down to less than a MB, it's somewhat negligible.

Anyway, the idea for this intro is to simply use Darm's line of "You don't stand a chance..." and lead in very quickly with an animated cut-scene that I recorded from the actual opening, him smirking and the 3 fireballs shooting off, etc. I thought it'd be pretty awesome if I could accomplish something like that. But if such a video is gonna start every time the patcher is run, it's gotta be short to avoid becoming annoying, and it turns out since this is all I wanted (as seen in the demo), the length seems just about right coming at under ~5 seconds. It's of course WIP, I'm waiting on clean audio from Justus to see about joining Darm's line with the rest of the audio. Right now, the exe plays a wave file first, before launching the Flash video, so it's far from ready; it's just to give an idea of what I wanna accomplish to Justus, etc.

https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/darm.swf (This is the Flash video embedded in exe that is extracted and played, but it's missing the audio I wanna combine it with - clicking this in your browser should be viewable)

Well, I think it'll be a fun/cool idea if I can get the video just right and it looks like the technical issues of launching it before the patcher's welcome screen or within the patcher are mostly out of the way - it's sound engineering that's the problem (recycling Alan Oppenheimer's line and adding the background music to make it all flow with the audio of the video - really need Justus' help there).

[Duo_R]

Just curious if all the recordings were turned in for all the characters.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Just curious if all the recordings were turned in for all the characters.

All most!
Just waiting on ParanoiaDragon to send his remaining narrator lines and for the final lines for Tim, done by ThatDasheKid.

When those are all sent in this project will be fully dubbed! Then I'll be able to have maximum work space to do the fun part

[Burnt Lasagna]

Alright so I have a question that hopefully some more well rounded Ys fan's can answer.
Is there any clean version of the song that plays during this scene,

_{► this.mp3}

I've figured out that the song's name is "Eldeel" and that there was a version of the song in the perfect collection but it wasn't quite like the one played in the game,

If it turns out that there was never an exact release of this song then I'll just use the remixed one that is shown above (becomes more like the original at around 0.28).

[Keith Courage]

The beginning sounds like an Ys song mixed with the drums from a Zepplin song/beastie boys. http://thehiltonburnellfiles.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/30-breakbeats-in-30-days-day-13-led-zeppelin-when-the-levee-breaks-1971/

[ParanoiaDragon]

Yup, as far as I've never known, the Zepplin version is the only version from Dawn of Ys released.  I may have some other versions of Eldeel, I'm going thru my soundtracks right now, but I'm sure they sounds nothing like Ryo's version.

[NightWolve]

Yeah, I think that JDK Eldeel version from the Ys IV Perfect Collection (Vol. 2) is all there is. It's good enough I'd say.

Did anybody try my Darm splash video BTW ?

[Burnt Lasagna]

Some of you might already know this from Nightwolve's blog (Ys Utopia) but Happy Console Gamer did an excellent two part 25th anniversary retrospective on the Ys series. Figured some people here would enjoy this,
(Part 1)

(Part 2)

[NightWolve]

Ah, good idea to post about it here! Well, no takers on my Darm splash idea, ah well.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Ah, good idea to post about it here! Well, no takers on my Darm splash idea, ah well.

Gah, sorry, I've had alot going on, totally forgot, getting behind again on my personal schedule for Jungle Bros. tunes.

Anyways, so the basic idea is for that to be just a little easter egg of sorts when you open a patcher to patch the game?  Or am I understanding wrong?  I think it's kinda cool, though I'm just more interested in patching that bad boy & playing it completely in english!  Either way, might be worth implementing.

As for the 25th anniversary videos, I want to download them & watch them later, but for some reason, whenever I try downloading anything from youtube, it doesn't give me the video.  It just downloads 1.7 MB's of....nothing.  Very strange.  I'll have to watch them on the tube I guess.

Edit-Just watched it.  I think he called Dogi, Doji..not to mention calling Nightwolve, Nightwolf   Anyways, I totally was expecting him to mention that Ys Celceta comes out next month, though, seeing as how he hasn't gotten into Ys Seven yet....

[NightWolve]

Anyways, so the basic idea is for that to be just a little easter egg of sorts when you open a patcher to patch the game?  Or am I understanding wrong?  I think it's kinda cool, though I'm just more interested in patching that bad boy & playing it completely in english!  Either way, might be worth implementing.

Yeah, just unzip this and execute it: https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/DarmDemo.7z

It's a few seconds, you'll see it. The audio needs work, blending Darm's voice to the rest of it, but that's mostly the idea at work.

As for the 25th anniversary videos, I want to download them & watch them later, but for some reason, whenever I try downloading anything from youtube, it doesn't give me the video.  It just downloads 1.7 MB's of....nothing.  Very strange.  I'll have to watch them on the tube I guess.

Right click on anywhere on the flash video area, select "Settings...", click the 3rd tab which should be for "Local Storage", -- which is probably set to 100KB as you'll find -- drag the slider all the way to the right and it should set it to "Unlimited". Now, anytime you click a youtube video link and pause, it'll completely download the whole video and have it ready for you. From time to time you have to remember to empty out your browser's cache of course. I'm assuming you didn't already do this, so FYI.

Edit-Just watched it.  I think he called Dogi, Doji..not to mention calling Nightwolve, Nightwolf  Anyways, I totally was expecting him to mention that Ys Celceta comes out next month, though, seeing as how he hasn't gotten into Ys Seven yet....

Yeah, he told me he was gonna mention me in part 2 after I plugged his part 1 video on my site. Cool guy! As for Dogi, at least he stopped calling him Doggie! ;) The other one was pronouncing Napishtim as Nepotism! Hehe! I also had a few laughs over him referring to the Ys VI opening as disgusting! ;)

You know, I actually have a similar story to his of getting stuck at a point in Ys IV and not being able to figure out why because of the Japanese, but in a different place: it was the case when there's a white soldier blocking the entrance back to the castle and whatnot and you had to know that you need to equip your first level equipment (sword, armor, shield) to fool him into thinking you're one of them, etc. I couldn't beat the game because of this, so years went by, the Internet happens, and then I looked up and found a FAQ at GameFAQs of all places (the sewer of the Internet these days in terms of its congregants), and that's what allowed me to finally beat the game...

[Burnt Lasagna]

I also had a few laughs over him referring to the Ys VI opening as disgusting! ;)

Yeah that was pretty much my reaction when I first saw that opening. Luckily it does have that code, so you can just pretend that the game never had that horrible CG.

Aside from that I really liked the PS2 version of Ys VI! I even thought the dub was great, purely because it was so goofy.
( P.S. If the guy who voiced Admiral Agares came up to me and told me he wanted to voice everybody in Ys IV (male and female) I would freakin let him do it! Might even write extra dialogue for the game just so he could talk more!)

[ParanoiaDragon]

Hmm, well I went to the settings & did what you said.  Now it shows 2.3MB's, I though I cleared the cache, but, maybe I'm not clearing what I thought was the cache.

I also had a few laughs over him referring to the Ys VI opening as disgusting! ;)

Yeah that was pretty much my reaction when I first saw that opening. Luckily it does have that code, so you can just pretend that the game never had that horrible CG.

Aside from that I really liked the PS2 version of Ys VI! I even thought the dub was great, purely because it was so goofy.
( P.S. If the guy who voiced Admiral Agares came up to me and told me he wanted to voice everybody in Ys IV (male and female) I would freakin let him do it! Might even write extra dialogue for the game just so he could talk more!)

Yeah, that video is horrendous, but I too like the voice acting.  The only one I can remember loathing, is Terra, she was horrible!  Actually, a few of my favorite voice actor's are in it, including Scott McNeil, who played Dinobot, Rattrap, Silverbolt, & Waspinator in Beast Wars, a show I originally hated with a passion, but grew to love.  Actually, the kid with the bad lisp is essentially Rattrap....with a lisp!

[Burnt Lasagna]

Hmm, well I went to the settings & did what you said.  Now it shows 2.3MB's, I though I cleared the cache, but, maybe I'm not clearing what I thought was the cache.

Use AVC (Any Video Convertor).
http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/

[NightWolve]

Hmm, well I went to the settings & did what you said.  Now it shows 2.3MB's, I though I cleared the cache, but, maybe I'm not clearing what I thought was the cache.

Is this Chrome or another browser? If not, I recommend a little switch to Google Chrome. It's a fast, lightweight, barebones type of browser that maintains a decent speed by not being bloated with all the extra features like the others.

Anyhow, I think the solution for whatever browser this is happening with is to make sure you have the latest Adobe Flash. The updater just updated the installation a couple of days ago actually. Goto http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and make sure it's updated if not already.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Ah, oh, that new downloader worked!  Awesome.  I'm on one of the IE's, I forget which one.  I know I should switch to Chrome, but I'm lazy.  One of these days I'll bother with it.

[NightWolve]

Use AVC (Any Video Convertor).
http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/

You know what I could REALLY use? A simple damn freeware video joiner! Wouldn't know of one, would you? Every one I have ever found is crap, just crap! If I have 2 or more videos in the exact same format and resolution, I can't find something to simply append one video clip after the other! They always wanna convert to another video format in the process of joining!

[Burnt Lasagna]

Hm, I've never needed a video joiner so I haven't tried this yet, but have you ever heard of Fast AVI MPEG Joiner?
http://www.alloksoft.com/fast_joiner.htm
There's a free version of it and I've heard good things about it.

[NightWolve]

Yeah, that's what I want, but it's been trial limited to where only 50% of each video is used. I think I might've found a shitty one that works, need to test it, but I dunno how it's trial limited. If I'm recording something with my camera, I should be able to record in parts, in sections and repeat takes if needed, then easily join all videos together without the joiner having to reencode it, assuming all video chunks are in the exact same format. Surprisingly, the default behavior of most joiners has been to reencode the combined video with a codec of your choosing.

[roflmao]

You know what I could REALLY use? A simple damn freeware video joiner! Wouldn't know of one, would you? Every one I have ever found is crap, just crap! If I have 2 or more videos in the exact same format and resolution, I can't find something to simply append one video clip after the other! They always wanna convert to another video format in the process of joining!

It looks like ffmpeg should do the trick.  I use it to convert videos that come out of Wirecast into something Premiere will play nice with, but it appears to have a concatenation feature.

http://ffmpeg.org/faq.html#How-can-I-concatenate-video-files_003f

Be warned, it's a cli utility, which can be kind of daunting.

[esadajr]

If videos are avi in the using the exact same codecs and resolutions, just use the append avi segment function of Virtualdub.