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Neverar's A New Hope Technicolor Recreation (Final Version Released!) — Page 3

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 (Edited)

I've edited the post, but it is difficult to see unless you're looking up at the monitor from a low angle, then you can tell that there's no information in the Blu-ray highlights. That's why I posted the histograms as well, as they are a better gauge of image information than the monitor.

JEDIT: Since this is on a new page, I'll put the question again:

Which version of the HD broadcast has the highest quality?

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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 (Edited)

NeverarGreat said:

JEDIT: Since this is on a new page, I'll put the question again:

Which version of the HD broadcast has the highest quality?

As far as i am aware, the german hdtv transport streams are the highest quality hdtv broadcasts available. They can be found on usenet, search for 'star wars ts' without the speechmarks and all six should appear. They should be around 16-18gb each and the titles are in german.

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NeveararGreat, very much looking forward to your final results on this. Hoping however it's released it will be a nice fat high-bitrate file. :) Would you consider doing your own "Partly Despecialized Version" or going Special Edition all the way? If it wasn't for the censored laser blasts, Jabba scene and Cantina alterations, the Special Edition would have been perfect in my eyes (excepting the godawful color-timing and oddball sound mix changes).

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Sounds like you're not much of a Special Edition fan. ;)

I'm not an audio person, so the Blu-ray audio stays in even though it's screwed up. That also means I don't foresee changing the Han/Greedo scene or anything else from the Blu-ray except for the rocks in front of R2, because as the original is in 1080 it seems like a no-brainer, and I don't know of anyone who likes that change.

My hope for this project is for it to be a resource for other projects rather than a standalone presentation, so for example, it'll include the Jabba scene and other people can do with it what they will. I'm still deciding how those Special Edition changes should be corrected, whether to the 97 version or a hypothetical 77 coloration to blend in with the rest of the movie.

It'll be 1080p and uncompressed as much as possible - and as the effort to restore the highlight and shadow information show, this should be a video that is more detailed than the Blu-ray itself.

Everything's backed up. After disks finish defragmenting, It'll be upgrade time. Fingers crossed.

Update: Well that was easier than expected. Hello Windows 7.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Everything's up and running now, and I'm evaluating Premiere Pro CC at the moment. It runs quite fast, and there are a lot more options to sort through.

Here's a different test run on Premiere Pro to try and rescue as much shadow detail as possible. The broadcast is no help in this regard, so it's all from the Blu-ray:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/62986

It's a subtle change, so here's the before and after histogram:

As you can see, there's still some absolute black, but almost everything else is now out of that zone. Now all that needs to happen is integrating the previous Broadcast settings, and the blown out sections will be good.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Really looking forward to seeing the finished version of this!! 

How far off are you?

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Calvin sums it up for me:

http://writeradept.blogspot.com/2013/03/ive-almost-started.html

The writer is also not too far off the mark.

In short, I've just upgraded my entire system and and editing software, so the previous settings which were used for the DVD (and ported to the Blu-ray) are woefully outdated, and are being rebuilt from scratch. This is a good thing, as I've found better and simpler ways to achieve the same (or better) results. For example, I've found a way to change the color of of certain gradients which were inaccessible with the original settings. However I'm happy with the look of the previous examples, so they shouldn't change too terribly much in the final version.

We're still on track to get this sorted by the end of the month, from there I'll give the ETA for the completed project.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Awesome!

Would you ever consider doing the same for the ESB and ROTJ blurays?

Many on the forum have spoken of how color correcting these are difficult due to there not being a technicolor print available, but any source other than the 2004 versions would be a massive improvement.

EPIV gets the most attention on the forums but ESB is by far my favorite and would love to see a 1080p high bitrate color corrected version.

Just a gentle nudge. :)

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ESB is my personal favorite as well, But I really don't know where I'd begin that one. The highlights are even more crushed there than in ANH, so the broadcast version may not even fix that issue. Plus as you said there isn't anything to base it off of, colorwise. So I'm not even considering that right now, unfortunately.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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If you're still planning on going scene by scene for star wars theres been a lot of collector film cells for sale on ebay (for all three films in fact) recently. Although the consistency is all over the place (hey its star wars what did you expect?) I think they may possibly be useful references. I have grabbed some star wars images, which I can upload if you need at any stage. 

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Yeah, I'm also patiently waiting for progress on a BluRay color correction. Any would be good.

Probably it's way more work than just adjusting a general gamma curve and color balance correction. 

But isn't the GOUT a ideal color template?

Getting the BluRay to those colors would be ideal.

Good luck with your work

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There's no point in NeverarGreat correcting to the Harmy's version though, since it already exists. The challenge/interest to me would be to find a different approach/ interpretation. I'm not knocking Harmy's work at all - I think its outstanding - but it would be nice to see others trying out different things just as Harmy does between different editions.   

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Any update on this project?

I loved the results you achieved in your first version - particularly the Tantive IV interior!

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Nice job. Just a note to the blown out whites - while there are some problematic shots in that area (such as the screenshot above of the rebel soldiers - in v2.1, I used information from the BD's red channel to restore the detail there), the whites in the 2004 transfer are actually pretty underexposed - this is why the whole '04 transfer is so dim - they tried to keep the whites from overexposure but as a result, you get a dim transfer with crushed blacks. And the combined screenshot does look pretty dim to me.

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Well, I took a hiatus from this for a month to finish the semester, but I haven't forgotten about you guys, or this project. R&D has completed and the real work has begun.

I haven't been updating this thread because I've encountered no real problems as far as the project is concerned. Setting a release date would be premature, as progress is slow but sure. So hang in there, and it will be done in due time!

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Very curious to hear how your progress is going on this. :)

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I think there may be a problem with the way you are converting the blu-ray. I was looking at the screengrabs that showed the blown out highlights with all the missing detail that you say is missing in the blu-ray. But, when i imported the blu-ray into sony vegas to check, the detail is all there and it isn't anywhere near as blown out as in your screengrabs

Left is from your screengrabs, right is a snapshot from the blu-ray imported into sony vegas


one thing i did discover with the blu-rays is that it has been encoded incorrectly. instead of 16-235 it has been encoded somehow as 16-255. The highs are at their full range so, when the player/ program converts it to 0-255 the highs get completely blown out.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

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Yeah, I noticed that too, I converted it using Nuke and it handles it okay.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
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