https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHcEb54vkiU
This is a v3.0 video, but it should be the same in v3.1.
Looks like everything lines up except DeEd, by one frame. Can’t blame the UHD source for this either.
The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
Until version 3.2. 😃
I copied it to a network HDD dock and took a look at it… and I hate to be the first to complain about this amazing piece of work, but it looks like the grain was scrubbed and then fake grain was added.
Was that the 4k source or am I hallucinating?Thank you for saving me the trouble of downloading. I’ll stick with D+83.
For those unable to detect the snark, D+83 (OTD83) uses the same sources as Despecialized, with the same issues. If you’re happy with OTD83, you’ll be delighted with Despecialized.
No snark intended. I just don’t feel the need to have fake grain added to the picture. I’ll stick with D+83 unless I see some screencaps that sway me otherwise.
I get it now. Now I know that pre-2020 versions of D+xx actually didn’t have any fake grain added. I laughed because I thought you were talking about a recent version of D+83, which of course has the same fake grain as Despecialized, and so I thought you were being snarky (i.e. I thought you were saying “I don’t want fake grain… so I’m sticking with this other preservation that’s full of fake grain!”).
The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
Until version 3.2. 😃
I copied it to a network HDD dock and took a look at it… and I hate to be the first to complain about this amazing piece of work, but it looks like the grain was scrubbed and then fake grain was added.
Was that the 4k source or am I hallucinating?Thank you for saving me the trouble of downloading. I’ll stick with D+83.
For those unable to detect the snark, D+83 (OTD83) uses the same sources as Despecialized, with the same issues. If you’re happy with OTD83, you’ll be delighted with Despecialized.
No snark intended. I just don’t feel the need to have fake grain added to the picture. I’ll stick with D+83 unless I see some screencaps that sway me otherwise.
Do you think the official releases doesn’t have fake grain? Why is fake grain so sanctimonious?
TIL that some old (pre-2020) versions of the D+ projects actually didn’t have fake grain added, and they just had the grain from the 4Kxx projects suddenly appear and disappear as the sources changed, even sometimes appearing in parts of a shot and not others. Wow. The current versions do a better job of blending source materials, using fake grain, as Despecialized does. I guess some people hate fake grain so much that they won’t even upgrade to a recent version of D+83/OTD83, and they’re okay with the jarring grain transitions of the older versions. That’s a choice.
The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
Until version 3.2. 😃
I copied it to a network HDD dock and took a look at it… and I hate to be the first to complain about this amazing piece of work, but it looks like the grain was scrubbed and then fake grain was added.
Was that the 4k source or am I hallucinating?No, that’s just how the 4k Blu-ray looks, It’s scrubbed to smithereens… and has so much static grain. Harmy did the best he could to restore the original look. and I’m pretty sure that the grain he added is authentic 35mm is it not? also, how do you not know that at this point? Bad DNR was one of the 2020 Blu-ray’s first issues discussed here.
Pretty easy to miss it, actually. For a lot of Star Wars fans, they hear “Special Edition” and tune out everything about it. Despecialized or D+xx is probably the first time people like that have encountered the UHDs in any form. And yes, you’re absolutely right, they are very heavily scrubbed, so re-graining them is pretty much the only way to go (unless you want to DNR 4Kxx to match!). Nevertheless, possibly a surprise for people who didn’t know that.
The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
Until version 3.2. 😃
I copied it to a network HDD dock and took a look at it… and I hate to be the first to complain about this amazing piece of work, but it looks like the grain was scrubbed and then fake grain was added.
Was that the 4k source or am I hallucinating?Thank you for saving me the trouble of downloading. I’ll stick with D+83.
For those unable to detect the snark, D+83 (OTD83) uses the same sources as Despecialized, with the same issues. If you’re happy with OTD83, you’ll be delighted with Despecialized.
Verified, I burned this to a BD-50 and played it back in a hardware player. It’s glorious.
Do you mind sharing which authoring tool you used? tsMuxer is my go-to, but as you mention it is having fits with this one.
tsMuxer is what I used. You just have to be careful to keep the audio and subtitle options to a sane level. 32 audio/32 subtitle is the hard limit, but really that’s still too much if you have multiple lossless tracks. I only did one lossless track, to cut down on max bitrate. You could probably get away with more.
The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
Until version 3.2. 😃
Not for me. I’m stepping off the upgrade train, 3.1 is my final stop. I can’t imagine what I’d upgrade for at this point.
I copied it to a network HDD dock and took a look at it… and I hate to be the first to complain about this amazing piece of work, but it looks like the grain was scrubbed and then fake grain was added.
Was that the 4k source or am I hallucinating?
That’s almost certainly exactly what happened. The primary 4K source (UHD disc) was heavily grain-scrubbed. To make that blend with 4K83-sourced footage, I have to think fake grain would be involved.
The 1080p version is designed for a BD25, if you keep only the English audio and one or two dubs.
The 2160p version is over 40GB just for the video.
Any recommendations for BD50 blanks?
For this one? Verbatim M-disc. It’s gonna be passed down like a family heirloom.
I’ve been searching for a better Star Wars trilogy, on-and-off, since 1997, back when I naively thought the Special Editions were just an alternate cut that I could simply avoid buying when the OT was inevitably released on the then-new DVD format. And I waited, and waited, and waited… I eventually bought a set of CowClops DVDs of the Definitive Collection Laserdiscs from some disreputable bootlegger. And as it became clearer that Star Wars was never going to get a true DVD-quality release, and the prequels drove the point home that Star Wars and I were parting ways, I sort of stopped for a few years. I gave up looking for Star Wars.
Until I had kids. Then I broke out the Laserdisc transfers again and thought… this isn’t going to cut it. So I found this place, found dark_jedi’s GOUT upscales, which were only marginally better than the Laserdisc transfers I already had, but they were anamorphic! And I could watch Star Wars without the 1993 audio! And then Harmy came along, and negative1, both of them with crazy ideas that could never work, not with the resources we had, and I started searching again, looking for that better trilogy.
But something important just happened. I’m not searching for a new, improved Return of the Jedi anymore. For the first time since 1997, I’m actually entirely satisfied with the video options I have. I don’t feel the need to look anymore, and that’s a truly odd sensation after so many years.
Well, I’m entirely satisfied with Jedi at least. Still searching for the other two 😉
Verified, I burned this to a BD-50 and played it back in a hardware player. It’s glorious.
Keep in mind, I do have some general caveats about this sort of endeavor. While all of the streams (video, audio), may be individually UHD-compatible, there can be problems when you try to burn them to disc collectively. There is both a maximum bitrate for the disc, and a maximum number of audio and subtitle tracks. Some UHD authoring tools (e.g. tsMuxeR) will let you blow right past those limits without so much as a warning, and create an ISO which plays fine on your PC, but not in a hardware player.
So while you may be tempted to make a super-ultra-universal UHD with every conceivable audio track and subtitle (er, well, at least that thought has tempted me…), that is not going to happen. Put it out of your mind. You are limited to 32 audio tracks and 32 subtitle tracks, and you may be limited to fewer than that if you decide to pile on multiple lossless tracks.
Me, I played it safe, because I don’t like making coasters. My disc had 12 audio tracks, and only the primary 5.1 track was lossless – the rest were lossy. I also showed a lot of restraint and only included 19 subtitle tracks, but those are far less likely to put your disc over the edge. You could probably be a lot less conservative and still make a playable disc.
Also, burning discs beyond BD-50 capacity is probably asking for trouble. Stick to BD-50 and avoid worries.
How did you make a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack out of the 1983 70mm Magnetic Six Track Mix?
That’s the hairy_hen project (it’s a separate project from despecialized, synced to the same standard so that the audio is interchangeable and can be included with many preservations). IIRC this is a reconstruction of that six-channel mix using what we know of the four-track master, the matrixed Laserdisc stereo run through a dolby decoder, and some love (and some educated guesswork when it comes to the LFE). From what we can tell, it’s very close to the real thing. Then you just encode it in a slightly more home-video-friendly format (5.1) instead of the original 4.2.
I’m sorry, but if someone can point me to a simple torrent or something, I’d appreciate it. All of this info is a bit much. I just want to watch Harmy’s work.
Check your WORKPRINT PM thread.
FYI, I threw together this little comparison:
The top row shows that 4K is an extremely subtle improvement over 1080p with these films. It’s there, but many would be perfectly satisfied with 1080p. The difference at 1080p is little more than grain resolution, and it’s possible that a different 1080p encoder tuning could even retain that. There’s a bigger, but still not huge, drop-off at 720p, so that’s actually still a solid resolution for presenting these reconstructions – basically the grain gets obliterated, but differences in actual image detail are still pretty minor. That’s good news for the other Despecialized films, which are still at 720p, and most of the grain was added at 720p, so it’s not lost in the downscale.
The bottom row shows some more interesting things. The DVD downscale looks, frankly, like crap. And that’s an anamorphic DVD downscale from 2160p that I made, considerably better than the recycled Laserdisc master which is the best thing we have from Lucasfilm. The GOUT would look even worse!
The 4K83 images show two things: first, that I really like the colors of Despecialized (but that’s just a matter of opinion). The other thing it shows is the advantage of using the UHD source over a projection print source. You can see more fine detail in the UHD-based source, even at some lower resolutions, because of the generational loss baked into projection prints.
This is the real deal, kids! Thanks, Harmy!
First priority is fixing the problems in ROTJ 3.0, with 3.1. Should be very soon.
In anticipation of the official ROTJ DeEd 3.1 4K release, I created some UHD artwork (DVD versions also available).
UHD (4K) Blu-ray: https://drive.google.com/file/d/130M9JMoRdT6oYjM3Dvm22sNgpkifrJuK/view?usp=drive_link
HD (1080p) Blu-ray: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1glb8XnVxqJstm_FOE11EsGmeCgS6HBQ4/view?usp=sharing
DVD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rcddg4WCtAqhiOhyaLPqw_1UCww4d050/view?usp=sharing
The only difference between 4K and 1080p cover art is the logos (Blu-ray vs Ultra HD Blu-ray)
They’re designed to be in the style of the 1990 VHS releases (Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi), but there are a few places where I modernized things a bit. These owe a lot to the work of ChainsawAsh and EyeShotFirst. There’s nothing preservation-specific about these covers, so they’d work just as well for Despecialized, 4Kxx, D+xx, or anything else you like.
Disc art is also included, in a matching style (including distinct designs for the 1981 version of Star Wars and the 70mm version of Empire).
Hi there,
Please can I get the 15.0 link?
also, does ROTJ-eng-alien-35mm.srt exist?
PM sent. ROTJ-eng-alien-35mm.srt does not exist. The point of alien-35mm SRT files in this project is to generate realistic-looking reconstructed alien PGS subtitles with the same appearance as the original 35mm subtitles, using look-alike fonts. For some languages, that’s currently the closest we can get. But for English and a couple other lucky languages, there’s no need to muck around with look-alike fonts, we can just use the images lifted directly from a 35mm print scan. So for those languages, there are PGS subtitles that look like the 35mm subtitles because they’re taken directly from a 35mm scan, not generated from text. There’s no SRT file because that step in the process wasn’t necessary.
PM sent.
PM sent.
Thanks Harmy! We’re waiting (somewhat) patiently!
I suspect none of the above. If you can’t count on the native subtitle format to be frame-accurate, I would not trust another format that has to be converted into that native format to be frame-accurate either. So I’d just make sure they never show up early (which IMO is worse than late), and call it good enough.
I’m doing a complete overhaul for my subs so stay tuned… 😃
But I found a weird problem. It seems that sub tracks have different timing when used in mpv vs. MPC. I can’t play SW 4K smoothly on MPC so I’ve always had to use mpv, also when re-adjusting the timings. There seems to be 2 frame difference between the players. That’s pretty weird, does anyone know the reason?
I know PGS subtitles can be off by a frame from what you intend because the internal timecodes use 24.000fps, even for 23.976 subtitles, and rounding issues can potentially send a subtitle to one frame or another. Presumably since PGS is more like the native subtitle format and even it has issues, text-based subtitles could potentially have even more due to the extra conversion. And, of course, there are just plain errors. For most people, if the subtitle is off by two frames, nobody would even report the bug, let alone fix it.
4K77 currently includes at least one frame from the Blu-rays.
Enjoy your stay.
PM sent.
He’s there. I’ve linked to his Japanese ROTJ audio thread from my International Audio thread if you can’t find it.
Many forum-spanners like me post more info here when we feel it would be useful to be seen by more people (publicly searchable).
