WOW! Sounds fascinating, thorr. I'll be interested to see the end result. Just to clarify, is this the Special Edition trailer, mainly pushing ANH that is on the '04 DVD set, or is it the one pushing ESB and ROTJ? In any case, you may want to contact dark_jedi since this could be a great special feature for his '97 Blu-Ray set...

The Aluminum Falcon:

The running time of the trailer is listed at 2:27, so it should be the 2.35:1 version of this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwG9xyQmIE&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwG9xyQmIE&feature=related

Laserschwert:

Yes definitely I want to share details like that, but not quite yet.  I want to at least get a working prototype video first to prove out my process.  Hopefully I will have something soon.  Regarding cleanup, I am using a squeezable dust blower on the film like this: http://www.canstockphoto.com/images-photos/dust.html#file_view.php?id=5580993 and a microfiber cloth when necessary to get the dust off.  I may also manually fix with photo software any minor spots worth fixing that I missed and am too lazy to go back and find that exact frame later.  For the most part, I am trying to get the best image up front though.  As of now, I do not plan to do any color correction or other filters because it already looks pretty good.  I may decide to play with the color later and see what I think.  At least so far, it looks like the footage is just a bit blurry, but the film grain is sharp, so I am not sure if that is because the action is in motion or because it is an upscale or other reasons.  Once I get a video working, I may know more.

Thanks for the info. I'm looking forward to seeing it in HD.

Harmy, thanks for sharing.  I didn't realize it was on the DVD, and that's great because now I have a good source for the audio!  Did you do any sharpening when you upscaled it to 720p?

captainsolo said:

Awesome. I love this trailer to death-especially the opening bit with the tiny TV screen and muted audio.

I love that part too especially because it applies to my release "if you have only seen it this way, you haven't seen it at all" in Ultra-HD! :-)

Very cool! (especially since the trailer has the JEDI shot of the death star blowing up without the animated ring, this will probably be the best quality of that shot anywhere)

Nice to see those again, but the trailer that Harmy posted is a different one. I think it's a later one. Some different scenes and release date info, different Jabba scene, etc.

Still brings back memories.

I have an even different one apparently.  :-)  The Star Wars logo has purple lettering under it in my version.

http://i52.tinypic.com/25f4zrl.png

I am learning a lot about my process and unfortunately I am going to have to start over to get the better picture quality.  I kept my old files from my progress so far in case anything got damaged, I will at least have my first version.  I was crushing the blacks which was losing some of the stars.  Now I will just barely more than capture all the blacks and will adjust the brightness down a notch in post to get rid of a small amount of noise that it generates in the darkest areas.  After experimenting with the settings, this gave the best result to capture all of the stars and not affect picture quality.  The screenshot above is a rough example of what it will look like (tinypic likes to mess with the colors a bit).  I will post more interesting pictures as I go along.

In case you haven't figured it out, I am starting at the end and working backwards.  The logo is as far as I got so far, but I will be starting over again tonight.

Round 2 is moving along (and after thinking about it, was totally necessary because I locked the settings so they wouldn't float around).  I am pleased with the results overall, but I am thinking that I might want to apply a small amount of sharpening.  Some slight softness is in the print (still not sure if it is because the objects are in motion), but sharpening seems to help.  Here is a new capture without and with some sharpening (this is just a proof of concept):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/lhalm7

Edit: I tried downsampling the original to 1920 (HDTV resolution) and it seemed to make the difference with no sharpening.  Probably the 1920x1080p version will look fine (included in the attachment above).

bkev - Which tapes?  VHS 1997 SE's?  It seems strange they would show that logo since it is not part of the movie, unless you mean on the cover art.

A couple more screenshots (no manipulation).  http://www.sendspace.com/file/xqs2fs

I think I made a big breakthrough tonight that will greatly improve the result and speed up my process tremendously.  The bad news is I have to start over yet again.  :-)  If only there were 200 hours in a day...

Talking to myself... ;-)

I finally nailed down my process and I am happy with the results.  I solved the softness issue and now the screenshots actually look like HD and the color is much better.  Here are some samples.  I am hoping to get a working video sample shortly.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/s9nbgb