Star Wars GOUT in HD using super resolution algorithm (* unfinished project *) — Page 51

What would be interesting is if a team could be organized to render the film.  Each team member would be responsible for rendering a certain portion of the film and once everyone is done, compile it all together.

That's a great idea!!! ;-)

That's a really great idea. I just got myself a Intel i7 six-core beast with hyper-threading (12 threads), so could definitely make use of the processing power!

So here is a question that comes to mind. What is the source? What has been done to get to the file that we are using super resolution on. Has it been cropped from the DVD rip? Is it the NTSC or PAL DVD? Has any noise reduction or smoothing been done to it, color correction, or other cleanup? In order for multiple people to render this and for it to come out matching, the source file should be the same.

yotsuya said:

So here is a question that comes to mind. What is the source? What has been done to get to the file that we are using super resolution on. Has it been cropped from the DVD rip? Is it the NTSC or PAL DVD? Has any noise reduction or smoothing been done to it, color correction, or other cleanup? In order for multiple people to render this and for it to come out matching, the source file should be the same.

 Dre has done most of his work on a raw rip of the NTSC GOUT, I believe. He was encoding one version from a version of the GOUT that I did, with some manually cleaned up dirt/scratches.

Using the RAW GOUT would be a better idea if this is going to be divided up among many people, because folks already have it or can get it. The cleaned up version version (if anyone even wanted to use it) is huge (as it needs to be exported losslessly) and impractical for the approach being discussed. 

Really?  Didn't know it cost money for SR.  That kills it right there for a lot of people I think.

You could try contacting them. They're nice and reasonable people and made up a deal with me based on personal needs, and also did troubleshooting for a glitch I came across. 

Maybe just mention that it's a one time project and not for profit.

In case anyone considers a more nefarious and unofficial type of 'group buy', it's not going to work based on how their license works (and probably will be noticed due to the scale of their operation). Plus, you know, it's wrong.

I just got my hands on the PAL DVD's of the saga. I sat down this morning to compare to be sure GOUT ANH ripped right and I found that they are not identical. I had heard they were from the same master tape, but the NTSC disc that I ripped has black bars on the left and right sides and the PAL disc does not. Also, the PAL letterbox crops the image slightly smaller top and bottom. Other than that, their image quality appears to be comparable.

yotsuya said:

I had heard they were from the same master tape, but the NTSC disc that I ripped has black bars on the left and right sides and the PAL disc does not. Also, the PAL letterbox crops the image slightly smaller top and bottom. 

 From what I recall, the PAL discs were actually created from NTSC masters (except for RoTJ?). There seems to be a consensus that the NTSC SW and ESB are superior, hence their use here. RoTJ is either debatable or if anyone ever settled it I don't remember the outcome. Or both are too terrible to even be worth discussing? :)

CatBus said:

You could render ROTJ PAL, render the one extra ROTJ NTSC frame, then assemble them as you like as a best-of-breed.

 Just add 3 months of solid rendering time to this colossal rendering project, then. :D

I guess what I'm saying is that ANH doesn't look like it is from the same VT master. If it was, the letterboxing should be identical. I had avoided buying them because I had also heard they were identical, but if anything, I see a small bit of additional detail from the PAL version. Very small, but there. I also like that the sides of the image go all the way to the edge.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Moth3rs-PAL-trilogy-vs-anamorphically-enhanced-GOUT-s/post/509941/#TopicPost509941

Harmy, I don't think they particularly cared about such a tiny data loss. The entire way they released it shows a complete lack of caring for quality. NTSC native resolution is 640x480, so they resized it anyway.

I suspect someone in the PAL production chain put a little more effort into it. Both versions are encoded at 720 pixels wide, so technically the PAL version has a chance to have more data preserved, or different data, with the pillarboxing removed. I am now curious so I intend to see what I can uncover about this. One question would be when this PAL master tape was created. Was it for the DVD or a decade earlier for the LD? From the color and quality, it is obvious that it is from the same transfer. They seem to share the same noise artifacts (which are not film grain).

Noone put any effort into it. It's pure incompetence and negligence the way they handled the transfers. Perhaps they didn't even want to remove the pillarboxing, but even if they did they had the wrong reason for it. It was pointless (overscan in 2006 anyone?), they've lost information on both sides and the encode didn't even have new detail.

They just didn't care. It was hard to swallow, but it's been 9 years already. Let's move on.