Looks amazing! Very film print like. I found the grain distracting. Maybe if it was toned down a bit, would be perfect. Also, the grain is too small?
Work is continuing on processing the 2020 blu-rays to remove the horrendous static grain . Its a very long process though. Having to create multiple masked layers, lots of rotoscoping so that only the areas that need processing get processed (and to enable different levels of processing to sections of the picture) so that you don’t scrub away the detail (like the digital noise reduction has sadly done for so many shots on these new versions). It’s very tedious. So far the first 37 minutes of the film have been completed. This side of things is going to continue well into the new year, but the result will hopefully be worth it. I really wish that it could be an easy fix, just adding a layer of 35mm grain to hide it, but that doesn’t work. Yes, the final result will have some added real 35mm grain, but this film does need to end up with around the same amount of grain as the previous 2 films or it will look completely out of place when watched back to back. Some shots are beyond repair though. Shots that have had so much digital noise reduction applied than the image is blurry and lacking detail. Detail thats actually better in the older 2011 blu-rays, and those are notorious for lacking detail. So its a case of swapping out the destroyed shots and replacing them with either their processed 2011 versions or from footage taken from 4k83. These shots also have to be regarded and processed so they don’t look like they are from completely different versions when viewing. In the end though, it will result in a much better looking version of this film.
When i get bored and tired of the monotonous rotoscoping work, i like to test out what the final grade could be like. Using the 4k83 scans as a reference, i’m able to get this film to look pretty close to how it looked originally. The 2020 blu-rays, for some reason. look washed out and have a very brown tint to them. The highlights are completely flat too. Luckily these are still a better grade than the older 2011 blu-rays, so i’m not having to remove that bad blue tint that was added to the films. Fixing the highlights alone has brought out more detail in the picture but fixing the grading is really making this film look so much better. Being able to bring out colours and tints that were hidden underneath the brown flat current grade. I’ve attached a couple of comparison samples, but the best way to see just how the grading looks compared to the 2020 blu-rays is through these links:
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7GZDLNNX
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/9ECJJNNU
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7GZD7NNX
How did you do this? Would you mind sharing your color grading technique for the 2020 Blu-rays?
Does anyone know if a good 1080p 60fps (deinterlaced) upscale of the EditDroid version is available anywhere?
A good BD compatible h264 encode like this one would be great: https://youtu.be/KxtSX1lg8rE
Dude, stop trying to blame everything on TLJ. That movie wasn’t universally hated like you think, most people actually liked it. The reason Solo bombed was because of Disney’s terrible marketing decisions, and TROS’s performance is actually pretty good for the third installment of a series. The anger of a few hardcore fans had nothing to do with it.
Revenge of the sith made more than AOTC
Return of the Jedi was dead even with empire strikes back
The sequel trilogy just went downhill with every installment with its latter two installments having the worst legs in December box office history
Do you really want to argue with math?
Well, lets talk the maths…
Stats or original release for the OT:
ANH - $503,015,849
ESB - $400,083,259
ROTJ - $374,593,074And those were different times than now. Before the internet and before the rise of the internet trolls and “youtubers” shitting all over everything. ROTJ broke weekend box office records, but the numbers dropped pretty fast after the first week.
Sith made more than AOTC because of the hype surrounding Vader appearing in it and people hoping it would feel more like the OT. They wanted to see the Vader hunting down the jedi, they wanted to see the duel over lava and anakin become vader. It is something fans had wanted to see for decades. You can’t beat that type of hype.
So lets use other stats. Ticket sales. Est # ticket sales for each film (domestic) in ascending order:
ANH 178,119,500
TFA 108,115,100
ESB 98,213,400
ROTJ 94,059,400
TPM 90,312,100
TLJ 67,594,500
ROTS 59,324,600
ROS 54,984,300
AOTC 53,468,500Jesus, fans must have hated ESB. Just look at how many less tickets were sold for that films compared to its predecessor.
The sequel trilogy performed perfectly well. You have to remember that China is a HUGE market for the film industry and its only in recent years that China has even shown any of the Star Wars films. So they haven’t grown up with the films and have an attachment to them as we all do. So a big chunk of the box office market is gone right there. Yet all three earned over $1 billion.
Solo under-performing had nothing to do with TLJ either. Right from the films announcement a lot of the fanbase just wasn’t that interested in the idea of it. Having someone playing Han Solo who wasn’t Harrison Ford turned them off the film right away. That was back in 2015, when Star Wars fever was at a high, 6 months prior to TFA being released. And then followed all the reports of the troubles during the making of it etc. That really didn’t help.
Then you had George jumping in and throwing his dummy out the pram after TFA because they didn’t use his story treatments> calling Disney the “white slavers” etc. You have that section of the fanbase that were loyal to george that decided they were going to boycott the Disney Star Wars out of loyalty to George.
On top of that you had the “Legends” crown that were boycotting everything because “Disney destroyed our Star Wars”
But what is really turning fans off Star Wars, isn’t the movies or TV series, but a certain section of the fanbase. Sucking the fun out of any online discussion about the franchise. You can’t even discuss the Disney films without a bunch of assholes jumping in, telling them that they are an idiot/ moron who must have low IQ if they liked the ST.
Wow…a 4 million ticket decline
Such a disaster
TLJ and TROS still dropped worse than any of the Star Wars sequels
And it’s not the fans that are killing the hype for Star Wars…it is the lack of interesting characters with long term value.
I have yet to see someone who wants to see Rey ever again
I could find a million fans who want Vader to be given a tv series or a movie
I can find no one who wants to see Rey even mentioned in future films
That is what is killing Star Wars.
Maybe get out of your little closed " the sequels are shit" circle and you’ll find there are plenty of people that would like to see Rey back at some point, along with Finn, BB-8 and other sequel characters. And of course you’ll see more people wanting a vader spin off. Vader is embedded in pop culture and has been around for 43 years.
Could you stop your constant anti-sequel spamming? People here have varying opinions about those movies, but it seems like the only thing you ever post is “sequel bad, everyone hates the sequels” which is just not true if you look outside your echo chamber for more than 5 minutes.
Yeh, his constant anti-sequel spamming pretty much proved my point that its the fans destroying star wars and not the films doing this. It just seems to blow this type of fans brains that people may have a different opinion on the films and actually like them. Its as if they have to try and force their view that nobody likes them, down peoples throats until they comply. THAT’S what is putting people off Star Wars.
Well said, Ady. I am one that would like to see Rey, BB-8, Finn, Poe, Rose, Jannah, Babu Frik, etc. all comeback eventually.
I agree, yes. Also we have D+77 for a modernized/grainless experience and 4k77 for a true theatrical experience.
Degraining doesn’t necesserily mean less detail, specially if it’s a static shot or a shot with little motion. Temporal averaging and things like that can actually improve detail, reduce video compression artifacts and film grain. As far as I know, the Lowry process is some sort of motion compensated temporal averaging and all three Star Wars original trilogy of films went through this process when they were digitally restored in 4K by Reliance Media Works. So, if the goal is to make 4K77 look closer to the 4K UHD official release, I guess temporal averaging is welcome.
Maybe this technique will work great to remove grain and enhance detail in shots that don’t have too much motion?
I did a color correction for ANH in collaboration with Stotchy:
The aim here is to maintain a similar color palette, but with improved color dynamics.
Really nice. What did you do exactly?
Could you provide a LUT?
Hey Harmy, thanks for the update. Love your work. Here are my two cents. You’ll definitely be able to do more with the new UHD rips than the new HD rips, because of the wide color gamut and 10-bit color. Even if your final delivery is in SDR, having the HDR version as a source will give you more details to pull from, especially in the shadows. Essentially, you can use it the same way you’d use Log camera footage. It will need to be graded though, otherwise it will look very flat. The other alternative would be to use the UHD source tonemapped to SDR, but in my opinion a tonemapped version would serve as an inferior source because you wouldn’t have that wide color gamut to work with anymore.
You can bring HDR footage into DaVinci Resolve and export it as ProRes (or TIFF/EXR/DPX, although those are overkill IMO), without tonemapping, and then that would serve as your best source for creating an SDR restoration with a custom grade. Resolve doesn’t handle MKV-wrappped files though, so you’d first need to rewrap an HEVC MKV remux to HEVC MP4 with ffmpeg (I recommend the GUI called Hybrid). I’d be happy to walk you through how to do any of this if you’d like. (Or I could do it myself and send the files to you, if someone can provide the BD UHD remuxes).
Just feel free to DM me if you want me to walk you through anything! Working with HDR footage is pretty simple once you wrap your head around it. 😃
Could you, please, make a tutorial on how to grade and export(in SDR) HDR Blu-rays or general video/media files in Resolve? Or at least point the way?
I’m working on Star Destroyer (by Ansel Hsiano, and the bridge from Angel) right now. It’s far from perfect, but I think it already looks ok in terms of realism. I had to modify it a little bit (by adding this hangar part in the middle for example) to make it look more like Devastator. Note that this is not the final version in any way, I just wanted to share it with you 😃
Wow! Looks really good. Was it modeled in Blender, imported and rendered in Element 3D?
To me what makes characters interesting are there arcs, not just how “fun” they are. TFA and TLJ accomplished this. TROS had cool character ‘moments,’ but it’s just about impossible to track any of the characters stories scene to scene. It’s a mess, which really sucks as a conclusion to their stories (especially when many of them undermine the lessons of the previous films).
I think that this is a result of TLJ. The second act of a trilogy is when most of your character’s development should occur, and Rian wasted it with the already-infamously bad Canto Bight subplot.
I disagree. I think TLJ had a lot of character development. Poe, Finn, and Rey each face a major character flaw and come out the end of the film changed. Poe learns the difference between bravado and leadership. Finn learns what it means to believe in a cause. Rey realizes that she can’t look to others and must rely on herself. All very important character moments and all very crucial to the finale in TROS. The characters in TFA could not do what the characters do in TROS without the changes in TLJ. Everything Johnson did in TLJ, Abrams took and used for TROS. Sure, more was added to Rey’s parents, but only who they were related to. They still were nobodies who don’t even have names. As far as I’m concerned, all the ruckass about TLJ and TROS changing course is nonsense. Everything I got out of TLJ is still valid and necessary to TROS. And I loved the Canto Bight subplot. It added a dimension to the Star Wars galaxy and I think it helped Finn find out who he is.
I’m with you. That’s it.
Ok, so my thoughts on this film are complicated.
I knew what was going to happen in the movie, I had read the leaks. I saw how horribly it was being reviewed and I started to feel very worried.
I saw it opening night with my family, with whom I have watched every Star Wars opening night with since Force Awakens. We had a very positive experience. I knew that I loved it but I couldn’t rank it just yet. My favorite moment in the movie was when Rey and Poe yelled at each other for about a minute straight, followed by Ben’s shrug at the Knights of Ren.
Days went by and I slowly realized something. The only real reason why I resonated with this movie is because it had the characters from the previous movies in it. Because of Force Awakens and especially Last Jedi, I had grown to love these characters, especially Rey. This movie, in my opinion, completely ran backwards from the wonderful step forward that The Last Jedi had made in the franchise. That movie ended with a quiet, personal battle between a broken man and his master who failed him. This movie ends with a billion ships attacking a thousand Star Destroyers. I mean, Last Jedi spoiled me.
This is the first sequel movie where I know that I will only ever watch fan-edits of it as soon as they become available. I’m sure that someone will be able to fix a majority of my perceived issues with the movie and make it a worthy trilogy-closer. I can only hope that Disney decides to be generous and provide some good deleted scenes.
I’m so disappointed.
If Finn and Poe had had a romantic subplot I would have been slightly less disappointed.
I agree with you. Thinking about FinnPoe… I think it’s a JJ Abrams thing, don’t know if by accident or engineered from the beginning. The FinnPoe relationship is only alive in TFA and TROS through subtext, but not in TLJ.
:\ I thought the OT couldn’t look uglier than on dvd/blu-ray, but Disney somehow succeded in making it look even worse!
Raw special effect, not properly lit:
Paint it green! 😛
Here brightness is so high you can see this special effect’s corners:
Contrast is so bland you can see Luke’s hair and face don’t cast natural shadows under strong and direct sunlight:
Green-headed Leia! 😄
P.S.: I think I’ll stick with Harmy’s versions 😛
Yea They tried to match the color timing of all the saga films by what I’ve heard. If I remember the the original release of the 97SE (what these are sourced from) had contrast issues as well.
This is the first tine since the 97 release that an official release of the OT has had an “almost” correct color timing. Not great but better then the old 2004 master.
Also take in consideration that moonization’s HDR colors aren´t properly tone maped so they don’t look correct “as intended”. Even the Blu-ray footage looks oversaturated with raised black levels in his comparisons.
Shaw’s eyebrows look different to me, but that might just be the colors.
JEDIT: They’re totally different, and much much more seamless.
Wow, you’re right.
Oh boy, I’m so anxious to see this new remaster. Screenshots of the removed eyebrows shots, please?
Can you guys make some more comparisons? I’m very curious about the Battle of Yavin, Endor, and Hoth. Also Cloud City.
Yes, I’m curious too. Also, how are the Alderaan and Death Star explosions?
Did they forget to redo any of the subtle 2004/2011 changes? Like the cell block “bars melt”, for example?
How is the paint out of Sebastian Shaw’s eyebrows in ROTJ? Does it look any different?
I haven’t ripped my ESB Blu-ray yet actually, I’ll get on that. Just going off memory, the 19SE hologram looks different to me.
Well, if you wanna do quick comparisons, you don’t need to rip your Blu-ray. Use this:
https://starwarsscreencaps.com/star-wars-episode-v-the-empire-strikes-back-1980/35
Please, more screencaps whenever possible.
ANH
ROTJ Blu / 4K Comparison:
Far far better than the Blu-ray. This will be perfect for future Despecialized and Respecialized (97) fan preservations. The colors of ROTJ reminded me of 4K83.
Leoj said:
Does anybody knows what font is used on the GOUT DVD R1?
My best guess is “Franklin Gothic Condensed Book” or “Franklin Gothic Compressed Book”. Leaning more toward Condensed.
It looks like “Open Sans”. The oficial Star Wars Complete Saga BD uses this same font for the subtitles, but hi-res. I think it’s the same font, although I can’t be 100% sure.
Nice! You got rid of that awful green hues.
Please, count me in too.
I tried to correct the issue myself. Using Channel Mixer and Color Balance in Photoshop.
Now we have to figure out why this happens.
The film was fading? Is this a color space issue?
ilovewaterslides said:
Anyway, I would almost prefer a raw scan of the print like that to a color corrected one. These colors look just too darn good for me :-)
Me too. The colors of the raw scan look spectacular.
hairy_hen said:
grifter said:
Still a big "meh" for me, don't really feel anything with this trailer or the last one.
It kind of looks like SW but more like "i'm watching a Dark Forces 2 cutscene in HD" SW...
Am i the only one to feel like this?
That was pretty much my reaction.
Parts of it kind of look like Star Wars, and some of it even sounds a bit like Star Wars, but . . . there's just something missing. The sense that it isn't going to be ridiculously overblown, maybe?
Actually, I got a more genuine sense of SW-ness from those DF2 cutscenes than I did from this.
And seriously, what the hell is going on with Chewie's face?
Yeah, there is something off about the style and aesthetics of the movie. And Chewie looks younger. Babyface.
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