Mothr wrote:

Using an Avisynth script along these lines:

PointResize(1,1) # this basically produces a single pixel by averaging every pixel in the frame
DumpPixelValues("RGB", "(0,0)")

Now open the file dumppixelvalue.log in Excel, and manipulate (convert hex to decimal, etc.) to produce your graph. It will look slightly different because the default will be 128, with differences shown as either higher or lower than this mid point.

Thanks, These sound in the same direction:

"Movie Color Palettes"

http://www.bwolfdesign.com/movie-color-palettes/

"Average color for movie playback"

http://processing.org/discourse/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1226878575

Not sure of the applications or systems they're using so might move towards trying in photoshop, automating each frame to 1 px width like the

"Movie Barcode" people: http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

Watched ESB and most of AotC and ran off RotJ and watched the Jabba sequence, and there's a tremendous difference between SW/ESB and RotJ. RotJ for the most part completely blacks out. There seems to have been zero to none color tweaks between these files. In SW and ESB bright whites registered and reds pop as different, but with RotJ even those area very rarely peak out. You can see that in this clip.

Boba's demise has been revised:

http://noneinc.com/SWDIF/SWDIF_EarlyTests/RotJDIF_480-BobaDeath.mp4 (5.1mb)

The 'hit' shot is now zoomed in:

and a explosion added to mask the hit:

then the shot returns to as it was.