Harmy said:
What do you think?
I like it. I'm sure there's room for improvement still, but it's now clearly the best option so far IMO.
Harmy said:
OK, so I accepted the challenge and put my sources together and came up with this:
1. A frame of the 35mm scan I got.
2. GOUT
3. v1.0
4. v2.0 (unless I get my hands on a better source)
I actually prefer your 2.0 version, but I really think it could be improved in the starfield and in the black crush (most obvious in the shadows on the right half of the frame). Maybe ease up on the black a touch, and copy in the GOUT starfield with boosted contrast to match the blacks?
If this ends up being usable, I nominate this for the Most Awesomest Source Material Used in a Film Restoration Project.
Harmy said:
OK, here's a video with the new matte applied:
Fantastic! And where it's not fantastic, it's still faithful.
TServo2049 said:
Anybody got a 70mm frame of the hangar shot?
Maybe. Do you think it'd be in this 70mm Technicolor IB print I've been using as a paperweight?
Next question: Are you going through the scenes you're working on chronologically? Because frankly if that's true there's more to be excited about than a silly matte painting.
That looks really good to me. If someone with a better memory of the film says it needs to be a touch brighter or dimmer, I'd say there's room for small adjustments either way.
I'd agree with that approach. Would it be possible to try for halfway in-between?
Harmy said:
@ CatBus: Yes, but its a whole original mattepainting, not just the soldiers and I bet that the soldiers are so obvious in the GOUT because of the screwed up black levels - I think they didn't paint much detail on the soldiers because they were meant to be mostly lost in the shadow.
EDIT: TServo beat me to it.
I get that, but I think the shadow in your 2.0 demo is way too dark. Dim is okay, black looks weird.
Have to say I prefer the 1.0 matte. If the goal of this is to re-create the theatrical experience, then startlingly obvious cardboard cutouts are part of that experience.
Harmy said:
And here's a little sample - right is with, left is without:
For what it's worth, that looks a lot better than I thought it would, and it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me. But I still prefer the no-grain version.
I would still want this sort of effect applied to the credits and other "rendered" grain-free content, though, to help it blend.
Harmy said:
Wow, I never said I was gonna do it folks, just that I was considering it.
And that, exactly, is why I never consider doing anything. It's also a lot easier.
I'm interested in seeing a side-by-side demo, but I have to admit I'm just as skeptical as the rest of the lynch mob.
Mexican Spanish is actually preferable. It's all about making the greatest number of Star Wars fans happy.
PM me with your real e-mail if you think you can help--I certainly could use it!
Actually, having thought about it a bit more, artificial grain seems like a perfectly acceptable way to attempt to restore the feel of a film, if you feel it's been damaged by excessive DNR.
The problem, in my opinion, is that DNR really isn't something I'd say is a big problem with these films. Excessive sharpening, sure, crushed blacks, definitely, but DNR? I don't really think so.
As for adding hairs and scratches, I'm just plain against that. People who want hairs on their film can empty their vaccum cleaner bags on their projectors, and those who don't don't have to. It seems like a bad thing to have in the source image.
I was thinking rather of adding fake grain to frames that have zero grain, such as rendered credits and far, far away text. I'm not interested in adding it where the source (BD) adequately captured the grain of the film.
Harmy said:
Why not add grain and scratches and hairs?
I'm actually seriously considering that. I even already did some tests and I like what I'm seeing.
Yes please. Well, at least grain restoration.
Thanks mavimao, that leaves us with Spanish and Portuguese. non, I'll check that link and see if I can find a way to get some attention. Feel free to canvas your friends and family too ;)
Just a bump. I'm still looking for French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and at this point I'm dropping my requirement for fluency and am just looking for someone with general understanding of basic grammar/vocabulary/spelling and a good dictionary (which is still more than I have on my own).
Heh, I think YouTube dropped some frames then too. Oh well!
Troyig88 said:
For the first time I not sure what I am seeing.
A testament to how perfect things already were!
Check the smoothness/jerkiness of the motion. 1.2 looks much better.
Close to perfect Harmy. I can see a little difference in the angle of the hook in the question mark, but nothing I'd actually bother to fix myself.
Harmy said:
I'm not being an ass or anything, I really don't see it.
You really don't need to worry about that. I don't know if you're intentionally working on your nice-guy image or what, but I think the consensus here is that you're always very level-headed about everything. Sure, you make subjective decisions based on your own eyes, but we expect that. It's not unreasonable in any way.
Interesting comments, I'd like to hear a little more. Here's why:
I actually started working on this project because I wanted to make a good hearing impaired option for GOUT projects. In other words, I've been working in the reverse direction from where you seem to want to go, taking English language-only subs and adding audio cues. That said, I didn't go all the way and ended up with a hybrid--I didn't compromise on the dialog, and I rarely identified the speaker (except when it was both very non-obvious and relevant). Those are the two things I thought could annoy people about hearing impaired subs. I personally don't mind the occasional [creature roars] showing up in the subtitles, but I wonder what you think. Anyway, you should have a copy of the unfinished hearing-impaired subs, and you can let me know if a pure dialogue-only sub is warranted.
The other thing is that I'm already planning two English subs (same text, different placement), one standard and one CIH, so doubling the English subs would actually mean four sets.
I am trying to avoid any further scope creep (after all, my original scope included one language and look where I am now), so I will probably not create subs specifically for additional projects like Laserschwert's. But I will make it easy for people to do this on their own, and I even may provide files outside the main project if people want them. One big reason is the CIH thing--I think the CIH subtitles in my project are pretty neat, and I suspect if Laserschwert uses my subs, he may want to make CIH German subs, which take a little more work. Images attached, I think ;)
EDIT--I think I should be able to provide SRT files to accomodate everyone. I may not provide all the graphical overlays everyone wants, but I'll include instructions on how to create them, so I hope that works.
Me neither. I'm just a professional worrier, that's all. And I don't know how to turn it off.
I feel like R2 in that image (your Blu screenshot too) has some pretty weird unnatural stuff going on. I think your DE looks better because it's the same image, but blurred (due to downscale and compression). Blur can be a good thing when there's detail you DON'T want to see.
But really, forget it. That was one specific example and maybe it wasn't a good one. Most of my concern over the Blu Ray is just a vague uneasiness based on how long it took to figure out what exactly got changed in the DVD releases, not on any actual particular thing. I'm not worried at all about the things I can point out, I'm worried about the things I don't know about yet.
Harmy said:
Where are these screens? Could you link to the specific ones that you mean?
This is the one I was referring to:
