Really? Someone just sent me a package from USA and it arrived in under a week (except then it got held up in the customs office for like two weeks).

hmm, my spleen seems to be hurting but I have no cure... But I was also thinking, it might be easier for me to go to the Czech Republic... does anyone know if a cure might be found there. Maybe with the help of some guy by the name of Jd...?

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Mavimao said:

 
I noticed that the mono sound kinda clips at times. Sounds like someone years ago did a poor job mastering the audio for 16mm optical (which has a piss poor dynamic range of about 20 dB)

 

I have two ways of capturing 16mm optical mono... using my Elmo 16CL or using my Eiki slimline.  When capturing I set the output and input levels so that *I* am not clipping anything.  However, there could be clipping in a myriad other steps I have no control over; the mechanism in home 16mm projectors for reproducing the sound is pretty crude.  I also have to imagine that the process for printing the sound is also limited in accuracy by the film grain.  They probably compress it sufficiently to produce good saturation and volume.

Now, you may have noticed that the level in mine never goes above about 75% of the available headroom.  That's not because I clipped it there... I actually lowered the levels to that so that it wouldn't blast your speakers when switching from stereo to mono.

Just so you know, I wasn't blaming you at all! I know your attention to detail and such an amateur mistake like letting sound levels clip wouldn't have happened on your watch.

I was simply stipulating that someone back in 198-whatever didn't compress it quite well enough. Like you mentioned, 16 optical is very limiting simply because of the relatively slow speed it runs through the projector and the tiny space available (the width of 16mm sprocket holes). You have very little wriggle room for anything dynamic. It also suffers horribly from wow and flutter.

A more detailed explanation here:

http://www.sfu.ca/~gotfrit/ZAP_Sept.3_99/f/fsnd_lect_16mm_mix.html

Similar to other things in life, I've heard great sounding 16mm optical (a documentary on Stan Brakhage) and then I've heard a myriad of student films, the creators of which had little to no sound mixing training, and the sound on their prints always come out sounding distorted.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Thanks everyone for the very kind feedback.  It was fun, abeit slow, to put together.  Working in the little nooks and crannies of my time, this one took a year and a half.

Return of the Pug - watch the ROTP thread.  It should come together similar to PSB.  Adywan color correction is the next step; it's slow and a bit frustrating... the last copy of the capture that I sent him was lost in the mail!  That killed a couple of months, because mailing parcels from California to the UK seems to take about a month - and that's airmail first class.  Ugh.

that's too bad..

i've never had problems getting or sending stuff to

the UK. that happened with insurance and tracking?

and it's never taken that long either.. must

have been bad luck. 

 

hopefully it will work out this time.

 

later

-1

I used to and lost it to the ages. lol

Harmy said:

Really? Someone just sent me a package from USA and it arrived in under a week (except then it got held up in the customs office for like two weeks).

Yes, I can send a package to France, Italy, Germany, even China faster than I can send one to England.  I don't know why.

jero32 said:

So I'm looking at this, and the quality amazes me.
Puggo grande looked ok, but this is alot better imo. Did you improve the technical aspects or anything? Or was the print in a much better condition?

The process was pretty much identical.  The print was in better shape and on non-fade film stock.

jero32 said:

How would one go about obtaining a 16mm anyway? Like what are the going prices?

16mm what?  Film?  Projector?

There are tons of projectors on eBay.  An Elmo 16CL like I used for the sound capture, in good condition, will run about $250.  The 16mm Workprinter I used for capturing the video runs about $2000 new.

I don't know what the films are costing these days - haven't seen one on eBay for quite a while.  Silverwook has a better handle on this.  As for finding one, there's a great 16mm forum I watch now and then called 16mmfilmtalk, run by Urbanski films.  Ask there and you'd probably get an answer.  Although a film like ESB probably wouldn't be cheap there.

This is now my go-to version for "Empire Strikes Back" (until the new 35mm transfer comes out in the future). 

It looks great, and again- when you watch something that doesn't look completely perfect, I think you actually get MORE involved with the story.  It looks natural.  he perfectly stabilized, zero-grain digital look these days is distracting. 

The same thing with LP records- they are not pristine and digital like CDs- consequently they are much less distracting to listen to and you can actually get involved in the music.

Cold, digital clarity does not help you focus on the content- it draws attention to its perfectness. 

Anyway, this looks great.  Like with negative -1's sample clips, I love the hard light, high contrast look of this...most official DVD/Blu-Ray releases don't look like this esp. if they went back to the original negative. 

So we will probably never see something that looks like this from Lucasfilm even if they do decide to release the OOT. 
Thank you very much for this:)

-TM

I also noticed an interesting deviation between the 16mm mono and the laserdisc rip. 

Remember how in the special edition (and presumably the 70mm), Yoda's speech (when he's riding on Luke's back)

"Anger, fear agression..the dark side of the force are they.  Easily they flow...quick to join you in a fight...."

is much louder in relation to the R2 beeping sound? 

 

The 16mm mono has the loud version- the special edition version. 

I may be a bit behind but does anyone plan to reupload this to any file hosts? Since I'm unable to download torrents here.

Trooperman said:

Cold, digital clarity does not help you focus on the content- it draws attention to its perfectness. 

-TM

So I think that really depends on what you grew up with, personally. When I went to a digital theater for the first time, to see 'No Country for Old Men', I was floored by some of the vistas. (It was actually the second time though, I guess, after seeing AOTC.) I have since come to appreciate the filmic, dirty look too, and am not happy where digital has gone since (there as a good series on this in the LA Times this past summer) but I don't think I'm distracted by perfectness as much as I'm just drawn, sometimes, to the imperfect. That's what I love about Puggo Grande and now PSB (saving actual viewing till mid this wk when I'm back home and have a solid TV to work with again). But for me, they couldn't replace Harmy's work, or tide me over till 35mm either - they represent an alternative and in some way much more authentic experience of viewing the films, at least if you're trying to approximate how it was experienced originally, which straight pristine video of course doesn't really allow you to do. It is greatly appreciated, sure, but I can't say that I prefer such an approximation of that experience in general.

I think that shooting in film is much more advantageous than digital - if you have the means of course. In terms of image quality and archiving, nothing that exists in the digital domain at the moment can best it.

However, digital distribution is winning me over more and more. I love being able to go to the movie theatre and watch old movies that look like brand new and not some 4th generation beat up, faded 16mm dupe.

I've seen Grease and Lawrence of Arabia recently on the big screen in digital and I was amazed by the quality. Had I tried to get Grease back in my college film club days, I would have received the reddest, crappiest print the distributors decided to give us.

Trooperman said:

I also noticed an interesting deviation between the 16mm mono and the laserdisc rip. 

Remember how in the special edition (and presumably the 70mm), Yoda's speech (when he's riding on Luke's back)

"Anger, fear agression..the dark side of the force are they.  Easily they flow...quick to join you in a fight...."

is much louder in relation to the R2 beeping sound? 

 

The 16mm mono has the loud version- the special edition version. 

I just noticed another deviation- when Luke kicks Vader in the carbon-freezing chamber, he goes "Uhhh" instead of "Ahhh."

 

THIS LOOKS LIKE A MONO-FOLD DOWN OF THE 70MM MIX! 

When this shows up outside of the Spleen, I'm on it like white on rice.