Suggestions

If you can think of something this site needs, and that you can't do yourself in the wiki, please let us know by editing this page. We'll watch this space.

A Hindi version would be great. I would like to show this movie to my family and sadly all of them are not fluent with English.


 * releasing a plain text subtitle track (.SUB or .SRT) would allow people to translate it for a wider audience (I know I would).
 * I don't know how to make a .SUB or .SRT file, but I've put up a plaintext format transcription here. Is that easy to convert to .SUB or .SRT?  Let me know, thanks. Kfogel 03:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Jubler is a great open source tool to create/edit text-based subtitles (see Jubler features. It's cross-platform ...
 * Thank you. Do you have time to use it to convert the transcriptions at http://sitasingstheblues.com/info.html into the appropriate format(s)?  (We kind of depend on crowdsourcing here, as you may have guessed... :-) )  Kfogel 15:30, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I just made a dirty python script to convert the csv transcription into a SRT file. It needs a lot of synchronisation work, which I have not done, but I've watched the (great!) movie with it and it's not so bad. Feel free to copy the file on the movie server, and improve its quality. You can find it here. I hope others than me will find this english subtitle useful…Morhelluin 2:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. We'll wait for someone to do the synchronization improvements, and then we'll post the file outside the wiki when it's ready. Kfogel 07:40, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There is now a Russian subtitle file in the new Subtitles page. Perhaps that one is properly synchronized, so that its timings can be used for the English subtitles? 70.24.140.165 16:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello everyone, I have made a synchronized .srt from Morhelluin file. It is available here. I also split some sentences into several subs and added some line breaks to ease the reading. I synched against the small download and verified with the 500MB one. I hope it can be a starting point for translations. We, at framasoft, intend to make a french translation.--Joan 10:52, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the synchronisation. Although according to the subtitles page, a French translation has already been made. Esn 10:17, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Translated song lyrics are essential for people that don't understand English as explained on the talk on subtitles. Ousia 18:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC).
 * Soundtrack Album? The Annette Hanshaw songs are already available on-line and are freely distributable (no synchronization!), but are the original Todd Michaelsen songs available under a CC license as well since they're part of the movie?  He's selling MP3s of them on his web site (which is great, and I hope he make some $!) but the copyright status isn't clear.
 * We're working on a soundtrack album. All songs by living artists, including Todd, are © by them, but they're a lot easier to get permission from, being alive and all.--Nina Paley 03:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you post the recommended reading list from the credits? Thanks!
 * List Sita on Vuze and Miro
 * Do it! :-) Kfogel 19:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean the one from the film? Hey, this is a wiki!  We want you to post it! :-) Kfogel 03:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Recommended_Reading --Kriegsman 16:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Kfogel 05:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Enable kids' size merchandise in the Cafe Press Sita store, if possible, please! --Kriegsman 18:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We're working on a totally new Sita merch store, that will carry higher quality silk-screened shirts. If enough people pre-order kids' sizes, we'll produce them. Store should go live May 23, we hope.--Nina Paley 03:30, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The one thing that sticks out to me is the director's commentary, which is uncompressed and weighs over a gig. Though it's perfectly suited to the DVD, it's hard for me to download, so perhaps a kind soul would compress it in a popular format and post it? Mp3 maybe, though Ogg Vorbis would be more in the spirit of things... or just put up a good FLAC and let the rest of us recompress it lossily. Strange that no one seems to mind... you people must have awesome internet connections :-)
 * I'm all in favor :-). Can someone out there who has a good Internet connection convert that .wav to .ogg and/or .mp3?  (I'm no format conversion expert; if I get a chance I'll take a look at this.  But this is the sort of thing we pretty much depend on volunteers for.) Thanks. Kfogel 16:04, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I've waited for a while and no one seems to have had the inclination, plus my connection got better, so I did it myself. I now have a lovely half-gig FLAC file for people to use as a convenient lightweight master, and an .ogg and an .mp3. All the colors of the rainbow. Compressed from the original .wav without any modification (except of course the compressor stripped from the .wav the extended data from whatever studio software was originally used to create it, and I added some simple tags). I'm now looking for a place to host these...
 * I've found a temporary solution, so I'm going to add a 'Commentary' section to the main page and put all the links there. Everyone is invited to find a more permanent home for these files!


 * Here's a suggestion: I've just set up a 'Commentary' section to house the Director's Commentary files - but there's no reason they should be the only ones there. I'm talking about third party commentaries; an idea that's been coming in vogue for a while now. (I mean when Blu-rays start implementing support for it, you know it's hit the big time.) Roger Ebert loves the movie? Ask him to record a commentary and post it here - he did do it for Dark City (how is his voice these days though?). Any viewer who thinks they have a particularly interesting point of view (someone with an expertise in Ramayana maybe?) can add to the list. And so on. An extension of this idea would be to create subtitle files known as 'fact tracks', adding text commentary with trivia (or not-so-trivia) to the film. Same principle. Creative Commons licenses for the commentaries would be appreciated.


 * Merchandising suggestions
 * Sita Coloring book for kids.
 * I liked this idea, and creating black and white versions of the available stills shouldn't be a difficult thing, maybe I will give it a shot.--Fczuardi 23:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * A printed sheet of Sita or the shadow puppets that you can cut out and make your own puppets from.
 * Sita doll (Hawaiian hip-rocking kind)


 * I think it would be a good idea to publish the "source files" of the movie, like the Flash editable files and all the material used to create the movie. That would be really usefull to allow people to derivate and make new creations based on the movie. Franco (yaco at gnu.org)
 * I think there's a FAQ item about this... Kfogel 05:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Re. source files: My fourth graders do an art project about the Ramayana & Indonesian Shadow Puppets.  I love your hip version of this epic.  Is there a way I can alter the movie to remove colorful language and suggestive scenes?  They are quite funny but inappropriate for grade schoolers.  Perhaps a G-rated version can be released?  I would be happy to purchase a DVD!
 * While we don't get the flash files, I've started a project to redraw some of the characters and release the SVG vector files, you can follow the progress on this git repository, and watch a movie showing the process on Inkscape :)


 * A link to some good resources on how to create a DVD from downloaded files would be helpful.
 * An ancient and honorable site for media authoring http://www.videohelp.com/author


 * Would it be possible that the NTSC disc image (http://www.archive.org/download/Sita_Sings_the_Blues/Sita_Sings_the_Blues_DVD_NTSC.img) would be also available as standard ISO image? ISO is the standard way to deal with such things.
 * Can one be converted to the other? (I.e., can you do the conversion and post?) Kfogel 17:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * [VersionZero's Instructions] for burning IMG, ISO to DVD's on different OSs helps. Also IMG can be converted to ISO using ccd2iso in linux. But most recent DVD burning software deals with both ISO and IMG formats it seems. [Infra Recorder] is an Open Source Windows app if necessary (K3B/Brasero burn IMG's on Linux and OSX's Disk Utility handles IMGs). Cybertoast 20:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * A page/database of where to get physical copies of Sita would be useful in areas with low-bandwidth. I just ran into this trying to get some friends in India to watch it. Instead of everyone having to download the movie and watch it, there should be a registry of where you can get a local copy. This would have a few benefits: physical connection to other fans; potential for a screening; better communication of the values of the commons (i.e., better opportunity to proselytize). I had great experiences getting FreeBSD, Mandrake and Ubuntu CDs this way in Chennai, India and Capetown, SA. Cybertoast 20:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I would love to hear Nina Paley interviewed by Terry Gross on the NPR program Fresh Air. I wrote to NPR to suggest this using this link: (http://help.npr.org/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=5670&task=ticket). If others who agree also write to recommend this show idea, perhaps it will happen. It would be great publicity to help more people learn that this movie is out there.


 * It would be great if there was a Blu-ray version with menus and extras such as the Official DVD! The 200GB master is already out there if someone with the technical skills could author a BD. Preferrably in both BD25 and BD50 versions. (25GB and 50GB for single and duallayered BD's)


 * I'm currently downloading the 200GB master (55hrs :P ) and intend to author a BD version. Hosting it will be an issue, if anyone can make suggestions other than archive.org and torrents get in touch. kingjojo75 AT hotmail DOT com


 * Wiki Spam - This wiki seems to be filling up with spam entries and users. What is the policy on this? Deleting the spammy users and pages seems like a good idea. Fortunately they don't seem to be defacing the useful pages, but having a lot of spammy pages is not good. Geoff 23:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Please upload on YouTube different versions of Sita Sings the Blues with subtitles in various languages.


 * Wider audience: There is a TV programming service called Classic Arts Showcase. It is provided free, without advertising, to cable, satellite, and educational outlets and their viewers. It shows short (3-12 minutes) excerpts of music, performance, film, short subject, animation, documentary, etc. Their goal is to introduce a wide audience to the arts and to stimulate them to seek more. Unfortunately, their programming lacks diversity. Much of what they show is western European classical opera, ballet, and orchestral music. That said, they have also shown the work of Zbigniew Rybczynski, so I hope that the problem is just a lack of available material that they can show for free. I think Sita would be perfect for this venue -- both would benefit. They accept contributions of content; see their FAQ. 20:26, 27 January 2011 (PST)