its funny you should post that.   I was going threw some stuff in my collection looking for some books for a certain person and found that card. 

Reel 4:

http://uloz.to/xD99Tvs/wp3r4-mp4 

CatBus said:

March 15th 2012 at 08:32:12.004 GMT.

Damn.

djchaseb said:

Reel 4 looks great.  I love the color and detail, noticing all kinds of things in the background that I've never noticed before.  The special edition is stupid dark. 

I'm sure I missed it, but do I need to order a Blu Ray drive for this? Or AVCHD again?

He's releasing the AVCHD first, and then I'm pretty sure he said he was going to release a blu-ray version sometime after that.

From my understanding the AVCHD will come first the follow by a blu ray.

flynn2000 said:

The only quibble I have with it is Vader's cloak brightening, starting at 1:08:17. I don't think the benefits of making the cloak stand out more from the darkness make up for the high graininess swarming over it. Plus it looks like a matte is moving over it. I'm curious to see how others see it.

This is the only thing I noticed too.  It also may have something to do with how lower-bitrate encodes deal with very minor color differences.  It may be OK at a higher bitrate, not sure.  Didn't look quite right how it was IMO.

Hey Harmy, I noticed something else in reel 3.  The shot where Luke is training on board the falcon right after alderaan blows up, the stop motion chess pieces on the table are still the recomposited ones from the special edition, but in the next shot from the same angle where the training remote shoots Luke in the leg and Solo laughs about it, it has the original composites matted in.  Are you going to apply that same process to the first shot?

I have a question which will no doubt drive people mad, as I'm sure it's been well answered. I did try searching for an answer before I asked though. In an interview Harmy says this about using the blu ray sources: Even with Star Wars finally out on Blu-ray, Harmy doesn't plan to start the projects from scratch. "I also decided against using the Blu-Rays as a source for the new versions, as I’d still have to work in 720p and from the comparisons I've seen between the Blu-Rays and the highest quality HDTV captures, the difference is so small (being the same resolution from the same master) that it wouldn't be worth it," he explained. If I were Harmy I wouln't start the project from scratch either, it's clearly a monumental effort (I watched in awe his youtube clip of despecializing the blast shield helmet / light sabre / target scene). But can some in the know clear up the quote (or misquote) above? Are the blu rays the same resolution as the HDTV broadcasts? Why does Harmy say he would still need to work in 720p? Is it because upscaling oot elements to 1080p becomes noticable? Thanks.

laserdisc said:

I have a question which will no doubt drive people mad, as I'm sure it's been But can some in the know clear up the quote (or misquote) above? Are the blu rays the same resolution as the HDTV broadcasts? Why does Harmy say he would still need to work in 720p? Is it because upscaling oot elements to 1080p becomes noticable? Thanks.

The film scan upon which the HDTV version and the Blu Rays are based is the same resolution.  It's an old low-res cruddy scan by today's standards, so even though the Blu Rays are technically 1080p, they really aren't that much better than 720p given the lack of detail resolution in the source material.

Actually Harmy could work at 1080p using Blu Ray sources and private film scans.  I don't think he'd get much benefit for the abovementioned reasons, but every little bit counts I suppose.  IMO the sweet spot for Star Wars preservations based on the Blu Rays is 720p until there's a new 4K scan of the film.

ALSO: Harmy is using the Blu Rays as a source, so that quote is already wrong on one point.  While they aren't really that much more detailed than 720p would be at the same compression ratio, they do have more detail than the HDTV versions due to less compression.

That quote is very old and a lot has changed since, so yes, I am using BDs now and the reason I'm only working with 720p is that my computer simply couldn't handle After Effects and Premiere work at 1080p. And there is also the thing of scaling the SD elements to 1080p being a bit counter-productive.

As I've broken the psychological barrier to asking stupid questions for tonight, may I just ask one more then... Are all the changes you made 'stored' in a seperate 'execution stream' to the movie itself so that if you had a faster computer you could flip a switch and reapply the changes in a 1080p way? Or is it the case that it's more hardcoded now to 720p?

The reason of course I'm asking is if it's just a problem of a faster computer then there would be a queue of people donating whatever you needed.

I watched nearly all of your youtube clips and have fallen in love with the way you've done it (original colour timing).

I'd have to start from scratch if I was to do it at 1080p.

I agree 720 is heaven. It seems to have worked out very well. Maybe things happen for a reason sometimes, if Harmy had tried to do it in 1080p the sd elements may not have been so seamless and he might have felt the need to carry on in 1080p anyway. I actually agree with the poster above who said all factors considered that 720p is the sweet spot for this.

I would love to see some capture of Despecialized running on 1080p Projector... Anyone?