THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - DESPECIALIZED EDITION v1.0

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This is a cut which is very close to the theatrical version of TESB except for some of the cleaned up VFX (a list of changes with picture comparisons and explanations of how the shots were despecialized can be found here. It is also available as a Powerpoint presentation here - if you don't have PowerPoint, you can download PP viewer here for free).

SOURCES:

1) Adywan's 14GB mkv 97SE ESB

2) Mattman Omega's 720p upscale of the GOUT.

3) Ady's theatrical reconstruction DVD and some higher quality shots from it that he kindly provided for me.

I did an extensive colour correction based on colour boosted GOUT and though the colours  may not make everyone happy, I really like them now.

HIGH DEFINITION RELEASE

FORMAT: AVCHD DVD9

VIDEO: 1280x720p H264 23.976 fps

AUDIO:

TRACK 1) hairy_hen's 5.1 purist mix @ 448Kbps AC3

TRACK 2) 1993 2.0 mix @ 320Kbps AC3

TRACK 3) 1980 2.0 mix @ 224Kbps

TRACK 4) 1992 2.0 CZ dub @ 192Kbps

TRACK 5) 1997 2.0 CZ dub @ 192Kbps

I put in both CZ dubs simply because there was space for them. This gives anyone space to replace them with any desired soundmix, which is very easy to do in a free program called TS Muxer.

Here's a guide for how to burn the AVCHD correctly.

Printable covers and disc art can be found here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R4UWXWY8

STANDARD DEFINITION RELEASE (Converted by Chewtobacca)

FORMAT: NTSC DVD5

VIDEO: 720x480p MPEG2

AUDIO: hairy_hen's 5.1 purist mix @ 448Kbps AC3

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ORIGINAL 1st POST:

OK, since I'm now done with the ROTJ Reconstruction, I'm officially starting work on the PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION v3.0 and since this project will be quite different from the previous versions, I decided to call it just DESPECIALIZED EDITION and start and new thread, in order to avoid confusion. I'll be posting everything regarding the new versions here now.

I'm starting with TESB, since I can use Ady's Theatrical Reconstruction as a source and won't have to wait for DJ's GOUT V3. And since Ady's done such a great job on the reconstruction, it should also be the easiest and I'm gonna do most (and some more) of the changes that Ady did. But I'm gonna try to just use Ady's reconstruction for rotoscoping with HD materials, so as to keep it as HD as possible.

I'm going to use the 14GB MKV of Ady's ESB 97SE and higher bitrate versions of SW (I'm not using Ady's AVCHD of SW this time) and ROTJ. V3.0 will be 720p DVD9 AVCHDs; I'm absolutely decided on that, I don't want to make these Blu-Ray because I haven't got access to a BD burner and the uploads would be painful too but I want it to be playable on BD players. 720p looks great - actually I've got a 6,5GB 720p version of AOTC and it looks way better than an 8GB 1080p version because the compression took away more detail on the 1080p than what was gained by the resolution. I'll also be encoding HQ 2PASS this time to keep as much quality as possible. Noticing the loss of quality and detail in the previous PDE versions was actually the main reason that prompted me to make new versions, so I'll try to make these the highest possible quality given the source materials.