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Remastering the 1981 Episode IV Title/Crawl/Flyover (Released) — Page 5

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Ah, that makes sense.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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yotsuya said:

Well, after some tweaks, here is what I have. Opinions?

https://vimeo.com/224665998
password: 81crawlhd

I updated the video file. I had noticed that the crawl was cut off (where the BR letterboxing cut it off) and I tried to add it in from the 35 mm. But it doesn’t work and I will be removing it. But the rest of the crawl has been improved.

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Sorry to dig out this thread from 2.5 years ago,

But I am wondering if there still is no proper 1981 textcrawl restored that would be compliant to Harmy’s DE version and/or the 4K77 version?

I would contemplate creating something like a branched MKV (with so-called “ordered chapters”) allowing for both versions to be usable in one MKV file.

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I’m pretty sure there’s a DE v2.7 or whatever with the ANH crawl, but not sure if it’s still floating around, or was ever available on its own

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DE v2.7 uses the SE crawl, not the 1981 version.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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Ah well I’m an idiot lol. I thought that was more broadly about the “episode iv” crawl in general.

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A 4K scan of the 1981 crawl exists, but it requires a lot of restoration and no one’s really tackled it yet. I attempted to, but my laptop is too old and weak to handle the workload…

I also don’t like using the SE crawl just because the SW logo recedes too quickly, but Hal 9000 did a great job of fixing this using the Spanish(?) version of the crawl for the SW logo on his custom SE, so I think using that is a better choice than using the straight 1997 crawl on a Despecialized type project. If you don’t care about 1981 accuracy, anyway (as it uses the 1977 starfield instead of the 1981 one).

(I know Adywan fixed the logo speed too, but he also changed the timing of the crawl to match the 1977 version.)

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Nah, if anything, then it should be the 1981 crawl & starfield, not the 1997 one.

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I really should finish this. I’ve been wondering if there is anything else I can do to it. I should render it out at 1080p at low compression and share it.

Here is the breakdown:
The crawl text is lifted from the BR of ANH.
The Star Wars title is lifted from the BR of TESB
The ships, lasers, and engine glow are taken from a scan of the non-Ep 4 crawl/flyover that Willarob gave me
The moons and planet are also from that scan, but enhanced with a scan of the original matte painting (to reduce the grain noise).
The stars are taken from many many different frames of TESB with a handful drawn in manually to match the LD editons of the crawl. The best was the 1982 pan&scan PAL LD where the titles were squished (more vertical information).
Everything was timed and aligned to the very dark scan of the 1981 crawl that was released with the Silver Screen Edition.

I had to do a lot of frame by frame work to clean up and reposition the Blockade Runner and the Star Destroyer. In each of the three versions of the crawl/flyover, things are aligned slightly different. It took a lot of enhancing of the edge of the star destroyer to make it come out matching the 81 version. The 97 version has the right edge, but not the right engine details and I deemed that to be more work than enhancing the edge. The 77 and 81 seem to be closer connected, except for the stars.

Keep in mind this is a recreation that I hope is close enough that it would be hard to notice. I’m not sure I have the elements properly balanced. The good news is that because I lifted the lasers off as their own element, separate from the ships, I was able to use them in my BR restoration project to restore the look of the lasers to the 1997 crawl/flyover. I might share that as well. I think it came out better than the Disney+ (Which is better than the 2011 Blu-ray).

While working on this I found that the scan of the 1981 crawl has several mistakes (at least one duplicate frame) and it doesn’t match the timing of all the LD versions. It is also very much in need of stabilization. but it does have enough stars to get a good alignment of the crucial pan down. It also let me verify that the title was recycled from TESB (though it fades out earlier) and that the BR crawl is identical.

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I really should finish this. I’ve been wondering if there is anything else I can do to it. I should render it out at 1080p at low compression and share it.

Hear, hear!

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Beautiful.

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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Looks fantastic. I think it’s almost too clean. I’m not really sure how it could be improved. Every element is rock-solid stable, except maybe the Stardestroyer.

Maybe a bit of gate weave and film grain would help it match 4k77 a bit better.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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forgive me if this is a dumb question, but don’t we already have the 81 crawl in the SSE?

(Previously Pickle2503)

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Pickle2503 said:

forgive me if this is a dumb question, but don’t we already have the 81 crawl in the SSE?

It is in sorry shape. Horrible grain and over contrasted to the point there are only a handful of stars. It was unusable. There just was no way to recover the very crushed blacks.

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yotsuya said:

Pickle2503 said:

forgive me if this is a dumb question, but don’t we already have the 81 crawl in the SSE?

It is in sorry shape. Horrible grain and over contrasted to the point there are only a handful of stars. It was unusable. There just was no way to recover the very crushed blacks.

Ahh gotcha, yeah I always thought the 81 flyover and crawl looked so different than the actual film. Is there any way to download this from vimeo?

(Previously Pickle2503)

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Nice!
The aliasing from the crawl letters - is it the vimeo compression?

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TheHutt said:

Nice!
The aliasing from the crawl letters - is it the vimeo compression?

Not sure. One of the things I need to look at. I took the 2011 BR and processed it to isolate the yellow letters. Then it has been scaled to match the image from the SSE 81 crawl, so some things have been resized to match that. I might need to put it through a couple of steps to clean it up. It might benefit from being rendered in 4K and then resized. I’ll try a few things to see if something works. I’m also still not happy with the stars. I need to do a side by side with the 4K77 and a few others to see if the stars look comparable.

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Well, I compared the D+, my 81 redo, and the 4K77 side by side and this is the result. I think the stars work.

https://vimeo.com/385291097
password:81hdcrawl

I think I need to add a small bit of blur to the text and fix the color. I’ll see if that fixes the problems.

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What’s up with that little dip thing that the Lucasfilm linseed logo does?

(Previously Pickle2503)

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 (Edited)

That’s how it was scanned. I found it amusing to use it, same with the blurry and scratched shot after the crawl. The crawl is the only important part, though it is useful to see that everything lined up to 4k77 so while in 1981 they cut off the 77 crawl and spliced on the new crawl, the timing (and audio) remained unchanged so all we have to do when we have an 81 crawl we like is drop it in.

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I see. Well this preservation is looking amazing so far, thanks for all the great work!

(Previously Pickle2503)

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That sounds damn fine! I am curious what can be achieved.

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have been doing some research on the various version of the 81 crawl that are out there and I have found a wide range. I think what I have discovered is that pretty much every copy that was used for home video transfers was an older copy that had the 81 crawl spliced in. The Spanish THX version is very telling. It does have the English 81 crawl. It doesn’t have the 20th century fox logo or music. It starts with the Dolby clip and then to the Lucasfilm logo with no music. Both the Lucasfilm logo and the A log time ago… card match with the rest of the film. The crawl and flyover do not. For one they are lower down in the frame than the rest of the film. Also, very much like the SSE 81 crawl is too dark and over contrasted, the contrast of the 81 crawl from the Spanish LD is lighter. I have yet to find two versions that are not from the same film source that match. I know of 5 distinct copies and no two are quite the same. Even the colors of the components vary slightly. I just wanted to see if I could pinpoint any major failures in my recreation and I have run out of things to check. I think the color of my planets and star destroyer might be slightly off, but I would rather err on the side of better matching the 77 crawl and the 97 crawl (from the BD and D+ sources) than try to dig further. I don’t think that the source we have are going to reveal much more and I think having it be too far off from the 77 crawl, the 97 crawl, and the only copy we currently have of the 81 crawl itself.

The SSE copy differs from the LD copies in a couple of ways. The planet is more pink, the atmosphere and moons are more blue, the Star Destroyer has not yellow tint to it. So overall, that 35 mm print, as bad as it is, makes me lean closer to the 77 and 97 crawl colors. So I think I might be done, except for inserting some things to make it less perfect.

Also, what file format and bitrate does everyone perfer for 4k output? I don’t work in that resolution myself, but I think making the master render at that resolution will improve the 1080p version (by scaling the 4k down).