Info Wanted: High Bitrate HD Trailers?

Hi all,

I host movie nights at my place and before the feature presentation I like to show trailers, daysets (aka movie theater intros), cartoons/shorts to make it feel like a classic movie showing.

I avoid trailers from YouTube and other online sources because, while they might be HD, they are not high bitrate. This isn’t usually a bid deal on many displays but on my digital projection screen it’s quite glaring. Even a 1080p download from YouTube doesn’t compare to the following BluRay feature.

I usually get the trailers from my own BluRays. I rip the trailers from different “extras” on BluRays and compile them to play before a movie. Maybe 2-4.

I’d really love to have some Star Wars trailers. Even the prequel ones.

I have them on DVD but I don’t want standard def. And I know many of them are HD on YouTube but there’s that previously mentioned bitrate issue.

I know it sounds snobby but I don’t want to go through all that effort and not put care into quality.

So are there any high bitrate preservations of Star Wars trailers? Maybe scanned from 16mm, 35mm, or Super 8 sources? Or are they on that $80+ BluRay set? I don’t want to buy that mega set unless I knew they were on the set and HD. I can’t seem to find any confirmation about that online.

Thanks!

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Extras-on-SW-laserdiscs-and-not-on-DVD-or-BD/topic/15232/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Preserving-the-German-Original-Trilogy-Movie-Trailers/topic/15902/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-OT-BONUS-materials-repository/topic/15985/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Trailer-TV-Spots-Compilation/post/677587/#TopicPost677587

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Trailers/topic/15152/

schorman13 said:

I've posted a 720p upconversion of the SE trailers to myspleen.  They use the original Theatrical DTS mixes for the audio.   

They're fairly high bitrate, and they look pretty good, but they are upconversions sourced from LD.

I've downloaded this set and it IS worth the bandwidth to get.

:)

Yes, thanks I've looked through those threads before. There have been efforts to get trailers from previous releases but these aren't HD high bitrate. Unless I missed something. One of the threads mentioned work by team_negative1 for trailer transfers but I can't seem to find them. 

I actually own a few trailers on Super 8 but I have no means to digitize them. 

@schorman13 Thanks! I'll check out your trailers. I don't have a myspleen account unfort:(

Team negative1 has 35mm trailers for SW and ESB, but I've only seen them share the full ESB trailer with their logo in the bottom right corner. I guess you could ask them.

For the rest of the trailers there are only upscales I guess. Me and dark_jedi will include good quality upscales of all trailers on our future releases.

Sounds great. Thanks. I just requested an invite for myspleen (fingers crossed)

The trailers on the 2004 bonus disc (PAL version) are the best quality I'm aware of. They're quite grainy and dirty but at least they look like film (unlike anything on Youtube), and with an effective resolution of 1024x576 they upscale nicely.

Having said that, a proper HD scan of the trailers would be most welcome - even a 16mm copy (Puggo?)

Jonno said:

an effective resolution of 1024x576

 Ahem... what? PAL DVD is 720x576... if you stretch the anamorphic image to 1024x576 the effective resolution is still 720x576... otherwise you could blow it up to 4K to get an effective resolution of 4K.

Given that you seem to be accepting that anamorphic PAL contains an image designed for display at 1024x768 square pixels (you do accept that, right?) I'm not sure what your point is - I used the word 'effective' for a reason.

Here's a link for a 1982 re-release trailer rip, probably not the quality you want though

http://thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/post/2014/01/15/Star-Wars-1982-Re-release-35mm-Trailer

Jonno said:

for display at 1024x768 square pixels (you do accept that, right?)

No, I don't ;)

And I'm pretty sure, you've used the word "effective" wrong, as the effective resolution of a PAL DVD is always going to be 720x576, no matter how big you stretch that image. That's all I wanted to point out.

Even though this thread has derailed, just to finish the PAL discussion here's an article to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/576i

Just like Laserschwert says, 720x576 is what it is and wasn't "designed for display at 1024x768 square pixels". In the case of square pixel aspect ratio, 720x576 is 5:4 while 1024x768 is 4:3 so nope, they don't match and back when TVs and broadcast signals were launched, they didn't use resolutions like 1024x768.

schorman13 said:

I've posted a 720p upconversion of the SE trailers to myspleen.  They use the original Theatrical DTS mixes for the audio.   

They're fairly high bitrate, and they look pretty good, but they are upconversions sourced from LD.

 Excellent job on those trailers. You're right in that I'd still prefer something in HD direct film to digital scan but you've done a superb job here. 

I would love to see the '97 editions of the trilogy from laserdisc uprezed in this way. 

Laserschwert said:

Jonno said:

for display at 1024x768 square pixels (you do accept that, right?)

No, I don't ;)

And I'm pretty sure, you've used the word "effective" wrong, as the effective resolution of a PAL DVD is always going to be 720x576, no matter how big you stretch that image. That's all I wanted to point out.

 Ah, I mistyped the second resolution statement (of course it isn't 1024x768, I meant 1024x576 as per my initial post).

It's quite possible I used the word 'effective' wrong in an attempt to differentiate from 'actual' (are the two in fact the same, then?) I was simply trying to express to the OP that a 16:9 PAL image imported into a square pixel 1920x1080 workspace will occupy 1024x576 pixels; a considerably more generous starting point for upscaling than non-anamorphic letterboxed NTSC (the next best thing from laserdisc sources) and one that yields impressive results if using a high quality scaling engine (I use InstantHD with Adobe, but I appreciate more folks around these parts are Avisynth inclined).

I chimed in here because I've been doing a lot of this kind of thing myself - making intro reels for various films using original cinema ads and trailers. It's frustrating at times because of the low quality of most sources - I've had to employ quite the bag of tricks to make scuzzy SD stuff sit happily next to the HD main feature. I've quickly realised that Youtube rips are pretty unconvincing - soft is ok, blocky is not. I'll be very interested to see your results if you share them (and I hope there are more helpful leads on SW trailers!)

back when TVs and broadcast signals were launched, they didn't use resolutions like 1024x768

Well, no. They didn't.

Jonno said:

back when TVs and broadcast signals were launched, they didn't use resolutions like 1024x768

Well, no. They didn't.

Just to finish this off: I meant that as a response to "anamorphic PAL contains an image designed for display at 1024x768 square pixels". And no offense intended!

Again, a bad choice of words. I must have used up all the good ones in my day job ;-)

And to get back on topic: If all goes well, I'll get three of the four SE trailers (in German) scanned in HD resolution in the coming months.

Jetrell Fo said:

schorman13 said:

I've posted a 720p upconversion of the SE trailers to myspleen.  They use the original Theatrical DTS mixes for the audio.   

They're fairly high bitrate, and they look pretty good, but they are upconversions sourced from LD.

I've downloaded this set and it IS worth the bandwidth to get.

:)

schorman,

Your solution was better than anything available and still is until there are actual released hi-rez film scans without team logo's and such placed on them.  I was proud to be a part of your project.  I'd do it again without thought.

:)