I really like where csd79 is going, and I hope he continues his work at some point.

I really like what Ady did there; looks fairly similar to my own second test on that page. It's amazing how much nicer the GOUT looks when you just restore the colours. It's like how when sick people lose all the colour in their skin and look grey, once you see them healthy again you realise how bad they looked.

For what it is worth, I would recommend a light contrast bump in addition to the colour restoration. The GOUT is a bit flat, probably due to the age of the tape and the fact that this was intended for 1990s television. If they were to transfer the print today the contrast would look different. Nothing too serious, because SW has a high-key pastel look, but just a few points of increased contrast I feel it gives the image a little something.

One of the few fixes that the X0 Project produced was a landspeeder shot, I don't know if they ever released that (Zion said he would), but that could be another source.

Also, I'm not totally convinced that the 2004 DVD cannot be used for donor parts. You would have to filter it to match--softening and probably some light grain--but I don't think it would be so jarring if you just need a shot or two. Of course, if you are starting with the 1997 SE then this becomes unnecessary. Are there screens of the 97SE V2? I don't believe I am familiar with it and I'm curious what the detail level is.

ChainsawAsh said:

Not sure if DJ did more post-processing to them, but he used the GKAR as a base for Jedi, and the Flunk as a base for Empire and ANH.

But like I said, while these screenshots look nice, these versions (and specifically GKAR Jedi) are totally f'ed up by DVNR. I'd post some screenshots but I'm too lazy right now, maybe later.

I've only really seen the Rancor scene that was sent to me by Erikstormtrooper to use for my reconstruction and the DVNR ghosting is really bad in that scene, sometimes you can see a trail of movement throughout a whole shot (in the last frame of a shot, you can still see ghosting from the first frame of it.)

Also there is stuff like this, which is IMO also caused by the DVNR:

(A shot from Max_Reebo's 97SE thread).

Are these any good?

GOUT Originals vs GOUT Colour Corrected

Dunno, it seems like the same saturation just with some blue shift, stormtrooper armours are now blue and so is Obi-Wan's beard and hair.

Also, here's the promised screenshot from GKAR. Just to show how bad the smearing is, I added a 2004 screen as well:

Thanks for the critique Harmy! :) Are these any better?

GOUT vs Colour Corrected

I like Adywan's improvements of the whites, but besides that, I don't see much difference (if any).

The cleaner whites is REALLY nice and should probably be considered no matter what else we do.

none said:

Could anyone recommend monitor calibration tools/techniques?  

See Post 89 ITT.

People interested in this topic can check out an improved version of my initial page here, with a lot of extra-GOUT source comparisons.

http://www.savestarwars.com/goutcorrect.html

Cool, I'm interested in this as a way of finding out what the colours should be for colour correction.

Btw, I noticed this:

 

One drawback of saturating the GOUT is that it sometimes brings out the flaws in the master. Although difficult to see from a still, this shot has a lot of video noise and artifacting in the sky, because the original negative is very grainy and also because the video master has a hard time with strong primary colours. This noise is on the uncorrected GOUT but it becomes more noticeable when saturated. The 2004 master had the same problem with this shot as well, and you can see it in the Puggo 16mm too.

The 2004 master can't possibly have the same problem with this particular shot as it's been replaced by a completely new one for the SE.

Great work as always Zombie84 :D

adywan said:

Here's my attempt at colour boosting the GOUT:

 (warning it's a very large image)

http://img573.imageshack.us/i/goutcolourboost.jpg/

Now every shot has the same settings. All i did was this in After effects:

First i added the levels filter & very slightly lowered the white level (this eliminates blown out high levels that can be caused by the next step), then added the colour correction filter & very slightly lower the red highs & midtones to make the white point white instead of having the red tint.  Next i added the hue/saturation filter & boosted the saturation level to +26. last step was to add another hue/saturation filter and lower the red saturation to -23.  Boosting the saturation levels any more in step 2 and the colours are just too oversaturated  and it looks horrible.

This worked for the entire move apart from one scene which was the lars homestead sale. This already seems to have the blues boosted so all that would need doing for this scene would be to drop the blue & cyan saturation to equal levels (about-11 each). there is already some nasty video noise in the sky tones for this scene in a few shots so not much can be done about that. I have made a preset that can be loaded straight into after effects is anyone is interested in it.

Can I get that preset you mention? OH, and which version are you using or does it matter?

Wow, I'm always struck by how gorgeous Star Wars really looks when seeing those pictures from real film sources. There is a very natural quality to them, and so bright, vibrant, colorful and alive! :)

If we could even get close to those colors, while keeping the flesh tones from becoming too red, that would be a major improvement. I really like some of the color correction samples recently posted here, those are getting much closer than it was to the proper colors. If an overall ideal set of general corrections can be arrived at for each film, and then be adjusted on a shot-by-shot basis as needed, the end result would be closer to the correct theatrical appearance than has ever been seen before on home video.

Harmy said:

Cool, I'm interested in this as a way of finding out what the colours should be for colour correction.

Btw, I noticed this:

 

One drawback of saturating the GOUT is that it sometimes brings out the flaws in the master. Although difficult to see from a still, this shot has a lot of video noise and artifacting in the sky, because the original negative is very grainy and also because the video master has a hard time with strong primary colours. This noise is on the uncorrected GOUT but it becomes more noticeable when saturated. The 2004 master had the same problem with this shot as well, and you can see it in the Puggo 16mm too.

The 2004 master can't possibly have the same problem with this particular shot as it's been replaced by a completely new one for the SE.

 D'oh! In my defense it was 6 am when I wrote that and I hadn't been to bed yet.

Oh wow, look at what Mike seems to have access to.

http://www.starwarslegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33

What wonders of restoration could be done if the tech guys here had access to a source like that... :)