emanswfan

Honestly I really like the new colors for the OT, best I’ve ever seen apart from some of the 4K77 grades.

The real reason why it looks better, is the increased color depth and dynamic range visible even in an 8 bit SDR screencap. Plus there isn’t all the banding and video-noise in there from a poor scan like the 2004/2011 masters. Even if you apply the same grade to this footage to match a different release, this one will still look better.

Excessive DNR is annoying as hell tho. I like my film movies grainy. Just look at Bridge over the River Kwai on 4K Blu-ray for some beautiful grain.

DNR aside, having better quality source colors makes a huge difference to me. Between these new official masters and 4K77/4K83, it’s getting harder to watch fanedits and preservations sourced from earlier official masters.

Funny how a Star Wars tv show is getting more behind-the-scenes material than one of the new movies. Go figure.

And here’s another test of the AI sharpening without grain.

Makes it look almost like native 4k.

If it wasn’t clear enough on the 1080p blu-ray, the 4K blu-ray highlights how the live action footage in AOTC is full of compression artifacts native to the camera, not the transfer.

Rendering another preview, this time of the podrace. I’ve since done a major revision of the grade again, and I’m very happy with the results, though I find the colors of this section could really use a shot by shot grade, which is outside the intentions of this initial release, but will for sure be taken into account for the later releases.

JEDIT:

Here’s the preview:

https://mega.nz/file/PegmRQxQ#y8eTglgko0gIvgY2BR3304Bzzr4ZEO87ARoldr3JaY0

Here is softer grain, along with colors that are a bit closer to what I see in the print caps above.

Here’s the new preview.

https://mega.nz/file/SbhxQagT#tqxGoSKa__Ux2WHeuUuq29Tl45Ywo08mmWUTbmaaI2c

I’m rendering out another preview tonight. I’ve since redid the whole grade, which is a lot more complex now, although I’m not quite sure I’m happy with it still, or am thinking it’s so much better.

Trying to bring up more shadow detail wasn’t as simple as a small adjustment to the previous grade. Personally those black levels look closer to something you might see with some theatre prints which have a dark filmic punch to them. But I’ve since tried to squeeze a lot more shadow detail in, although it doesn’t necessarily have the results I’m looking for.

Still, I want to see what you guys think about it before I go about working more.

A lot of my knowledge from working with the blu-ray applies here, but I’m new to working with 10 bit HDR-sourced footage, but I’ll say it gives a lot more freedom for color work over 8 bit SDR sourced material.

To clarify again, there are going to be multiple releases for each film, with different intentions. There’s a diverse set of options out there, so I’m trying to make different editions for different tastes, as well as for the fact that some versions will take longer or have more creative license.

This first edition of The Phantom Menace is a film-wide color grade straight from the disc, intended to recreate the look of your average theatre release print. I will release it in 10 bit SDR 4k, as well as 8 bit SDR 1080p. The 4K version will be rendered at a quality similar to a 4K Blu-ray disc, and the 1080p version will be rendered at a quality similar to a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

Later editions will go into shot by shot grading, and detail reconstruction via AI. But those will take a while.

I plan on releasing film-wide color grades of AOTC and ROTS as well after TPM, all before I move on to shot by shot graded and AI-enhanced editions of any of the films.

Here’s a screencap from the render:

To note the grain looks heavier in uncompressed still images, when compressed into video the grain gets smooshed into the image more.

Maaga said:

DrDre said:
Perhaps a tiny bit more shadow detail.

This^

Will do, I was trying to get the light levels just right. The shadows are darker than the original, so I can bring them back up. Should the highlights be brighter too, or are they at a good level?

These all look the best they’ve ever looked officially, but still leave a lot to be desired.

TPM still is DNR’d to hell, which just sucks. And adding grain back doesn’t really fix the waxy appearance. I’m trying to find ways to recover detail lost in the noise reduction, mainly with AI sharpening algorithms.

AOTC looks about as good as it can given the source footage was 4:2:2 8 bit, still the colors could be a lot better. You can tell the grading is lacking the quality that ROTS has.

ROTS looks about as good as a new movie sourced from a 2K DI. Colors are great still for a 2005 digital film, extra detail from the 4:4:4 10 bit source is noticeable.

The OT is the best I’ve ever seen in terms of detail, with the exception of the excessive DNR. Colors aren’t purist, which isn’t surprising, but for non-purist colors they still leave a lot to be desired. Still tho, this is an incredibly disappointing transfer compared to other classic films I’ve seen on 4K or even standard blu-ray. Just imagine how good these films would look if they were done by a company like Criterion.

I’m happy for major improvements, but we are still very far from having transfers that lives up to the legacy of these original three films.

Here’s some test footage from TPM.

https://mega.nz/#!qLxAzCYb!0WnWHc9JtCHjiQIYMe1NZ00JCbKKGfI5C3OkwFXYT8g

This doesn’t have the sharpening/deblocking filter on it as that is a shot by shot process and is VERY resource intensive, and so is reserved for screenshots for now.

I redid the grading again: added a little blue and pink, desaturated the colors a bit. Increased grain and added a bit of flicker.

Much like the previous screenshots, these are first dips into working from the new 4K Blu-ray, so feedback is very much welcome.

I did look at the trailer posted earlier, and I did end up creating a look nearly identical, but I thought it looked too blue and desaturated and was really wondering if that was an accurate color corrected view of the trailer print. Still I pushed a little bit closer to what the colors looked like there, but still kept warmth.

Here’s another one.

Basically all these are this: HDR to LOG conversion, Custom LOG to Kodak 2283 LUT (previously built for TPM Blu-ray based originally intended for LOG footage converted from SDR), AI Sharpen, Film Grain

I still need to tweak the HDR to LOG conversion to better take advantage of the enhanced dynamic range and bit depth, same applies to the KODAK 2283 LUT. AI Sharpen settings have to be tweaked shot by shot. Film grain settings just basic right now, needs more tweaking.

Ok, here’s a sneak peak at TPM.

AveryADiaz said:

Hello, I’m new here! What settings did you use for FilmConvert? I am a aspiring Filmmaker working on a project and I would like to use this for my visuals.

Thanks for your time.

While I’ve tried this program in the past, I currently don’t use it. I primarily use the lumetri color panel found in premiere pro along with film emulation LUT’s made by myself and others. Red Giant products have also been useful.

Although, I just saw that they came out with a new product Nitrate, which I will be checking out.

Octorox said:

emanswfan said:

It works better with close-ups such as this, but as you can see the DVD deleted scenes will look better than ever!

Damn, once you finish these, I may have to update my Revenge of the Sith extended edition. Will you release a version with no alterations other than the upscale?

I plan on releasing ungraded upscales of all the deleted scenes, yes.

Having played around with the Disney+ versions of the PT for my preservation project, I can confirm that they are new transfers with improved color grading and upsampling. They’re not hugely different from the 2011 blu-rays with the exception of AOTC which looks closer to the DVD grading.

stretch009 said:

emanswfan said:

And for all of you who don’t have 4K, rest assured the included standard blu-ray’s include the new 4K masters at 1080p.

How do you know that?

Many people are saying that across forums for people who have recieved there copies.

Here’s a review of A New Hope on 4K:
https://thedigitalbits.com/item/star-wars-a-new-hope-uhd

And for all of you who don’t have 4K, rest assured the included standard blu-ray’s include the new 4K masters at 1080p.

Eventually, I hope to get around to creating proper 4K upscales of deleted scenes using Gigapixel AI, but in the mean time HAL9000 has the best upscales currently around.

From my PT Filmized thread, here’s an example of it. Mind that it also has film grain and a filmic color grade applied to it.

I’ve decided I’m going to play around with editing and regrading the first season, not too sure of what will come out of it, but we’ll see. I’ll post anything I think y’all will find interesting.

If I decide to make some edit or edits out of season 1, I’ll create a separate thread.

Apparently people are saying the bonus content is the same as the previous 1080p digital releases, though I’ve yet to see this confirmed completely anywhere.

If that’s really the case…like what the hell Disney? You’ve got so much behind the scenes footage as well as so many alternate takes and deleted scenes. You’d expect something far better for what’s supposedly the end of the original saga.

Tantive3+1 said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnhqwRQf04A&feature=youtu.be

Gosh, even for virtually no color correction, that’s a beauty.

I’ll be honest, TPM is the hardest one to work on.

Also, while I did get a new job, it’s on hold due to the pandemic, but rest assured as soon as I start having more income I will be saving up for a new machine with which I can actually get decent rendering speeds.

In the meantime, I will still be doing preliminary SDR grades as soon as I get a hold of the new 4K discs.

If that’s legit, I will be beyond excited as Ahsoka is my favorite Star Wars character! Also the fact that Rosario Dawson has been interested in being cast for live action Ahsoka for some time now, she must clearly care about the role.

These colors look fantastic DrDre! Proud to see you doing such good work for the community.

Considering I am doing prequel edits and regrades, I have no choice but to get this boxset. Also, I feel like we will see a 4K OOT fan restoration mixing in appropriate elemnts from 4K77/4k80/4K83 in with these official 4K versions. Also Adywan said ROTJ:R would be sourced off the new 4K version.

I think I’d love to do my own 4K version of SW/ANH with a modern grade and certain elements of the original versions from the 4K77 scan. I would also make the HDR have greater dynamic range, they are too dim compared to the ST HDR grades.