ultrakaiju

Wow, those new captures are incredible. I am really looking forward to seeing what comes from this restoration. I have always loved the film, and while Criterion’s project was a huge leap forward for its time and a valiant effort in film restoration, it is fantastic to see how the opening up of the 4k field is really going to offer yet another improved way to enjoy all these classic films. The Criterion version was the first Criterion I ever shelled out for back in the day (and it was crazy big bucks at the time too), and one of the first DVDs I ever owned. Seeing the amount of detail though with this improvement, especially in the background like in the last shot comparison, I am thrilled for the possibilities. Of course, a properly colour-timed version would be ideal - I have no idea what judgements they are choosing for these samples - but that might still come. I wonder how/if Universal is working this, if there is any collaboration on the title with Criterion and their restoration work/team. Thanks for sharing this, really great to see.

With the site re-design, one thing I would have always liked to have for ease of navigation in the site content (particularly with the current lack of a useable search function) is grouping the fan edits and preservation projects together somehow. To be clear, I don’t mean separation (or union) of the two areas - that is an already well-debated subject - I mean using some form of organisation of the actual subjects of the projects.

When you come to the OT forum now, outside of the Star Wars trilogy of course, this excellent place has become an amazing resource of people’s passion for supporting the viewing of certain films and tv shows in a way that each of them feels is most appropriate. As such, there are naturally going to be a great deal of different interpretations of a single entry (which there already are). Each is valid and should be considered in its own light and purpose. What I think would be beneficial for everyone is seeing these projects grouped together somehow, so that a person coming in could immediately go and find, say, all of the Terminator projects or restorations being undertaken. These could be broken into subheadings for teams or individuals, or the purpose of the restoration/edit.

Now, admittedly, there is a limitless scope to the forum’s subject matter, so any kind of databasing of the films would be an incredible undertaking, but at least if there could be a few subheadings, say for some the ‘key’ films that already have a lot of established projects underway on them here on the forum, or a even a simple breakdown into genres (e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, animation, etc.) would be a huge step forward. In terms of simple browsing and finding projects that are linked to one another or at least finding what you are looking for, this could really help clean up a lot of the ‘clutter’ on the forum. I guess it is just personal preference, but I would love to see a site that is easily navigable and can provide you with an idea of the great content that is contained within the forum. Something to think on, anyways.

The site as now is still a Beta so of course things will change, and this may be something in the works already. I apologise if this topic is redundant, but I read through other sections of the suggestions and features and didn’t see anything mentioned about it.

Great to hear about this project, as Aladdin was one of those films I remember fondly as well. It is often very hard to come by information on these lesser known animated features, especially originally foreign ones (like Toei stuff - the Swan Lake film was another of my favourites). I didn’t realise there were even official DVDs out there, as too often (as is often the case) listings show the wrong image or a very poor artist rendering that has little, if anything, to do with the actual film product. I only ever saw it on VHS, from a recording in the 80s. I unfortunately can’t add anything to help out the project right now, but would like to offer my thanks and good luck with it. I am eager to see what you guys can come up with.

I would still really like love to see a well done release of all of the seasons in their entirety. Another great show that so many people were massive fans of, and even non-comic fans enjoyed as children. Why has such a huge franchise been left to linger in the attic, covered with dust and unloved. Especially with the revival popularity of the MCU these days, you would think Fox would relent and try to snag some of those dollars too. The base is out there, just give us a proper treatment already. [Nice packaging and proper episode order would just be a bonus at this point.]

Anywhow, does anyone know if this, or any other similar restoration project is still on the go somewhere? The TV rips aren't great, and piecing together the series on DVD is difficult and not really much of a payoff either due to the lacklustre quality.

So are you still planning on integrating some of the extra features from the Abrams' book? I would love to see some of those cut scenes restored, even if only as bonus stills as extras on the film.

I have been waiting since the advent of DVD for a better (i.e. proper) version of The Hobbit to come out. I have had the film on many different formats and copies through the decades, but what I really would love is a nice quality version to watch on modern equipment. I was really hopeful when I learned of the "remastered" version coming out, though disappointed it was not going to be on BD. But, of course, I can see why, as it is only the same crap we have always been given. It is so sad that unloved classics like this just get the shit treatment because they think no one will care differently. I would certainly have expected better treatment towards something coming from such a historically important group like Rankin Bass, nevermind all the animation and production studios that came together for The Hobbit.

And really, if they can't even give us proper picture and/or good sound, could you not IN THE VERY LEAST give us some decent cover art?! Honestly, this is one of the biggest travesties for me in all these releases. What makes this film so great (of course Tolkien's story) is the amazing art. To just ignore it and come up with horrid covers slapped on as if these were direct to 1$ bin releases, is honesty so insulting. And no wonder no one knows or cares about this movie anymore, when you see those packages taking up shelf space. Tell me that this wouldn't sell a heck of a lot more copies, if nothing else.

Seems like a real no-brainer to me. Anyways rant /off.  Wish you good luck with this project, and hopefully - for everyone - we get the version of The Hobbit we deserve in the future.

Great stuff man, there is always a desire to see other peoples art compilations for the covers, and there is a specific thread for that over here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/forum.cfm/DVD-Covers-Disc-Labels-and-Other-Fan-Artwork/forum/20/

There are lots of great fan ones made for specific preservation projects or just general ones,and more are always welcome. You might also want to just post some smaller image caps there, so people can get a quick view to decide if they want to DL it or not, just a thought.

Looks really good, kudos on the great cleanup work. The captured stills look kind of digitized, so it is hard to see as much of the considerable effect, but I assume that is just a scaling/compression issue for size. These are the kind of proper restorations we deserve for a film of this historical significance. Like it or not (the movie), it has become a cultural landmark. If Disney were smart they would open up whatever they had in their archives now to start an 'official' one and release it through Criterion in the next 5 years.

I am just really happy that preservations like this are taking place, in spite of all the hurdles in place to do so. 

Happy Birthday! I am sure the newsletter can wait a day or two, even for the most rabid fans. Enjoy yourself!

Just to be clear Tack, I am not laughing at all the 'lolz' in this and other threads. Your reaction was completely justified and paralleled my own.

I guess that I am supposed to be laughing(?), but honestly inane posts like this are just more aggravating than anything. I really don't know anymore, but get off of my lawn anyways.

George, is that you? I swore to myself I wasn't going to let you get my goat anymore. Trolling mission: accomplished.

That was my general understanding poita, but I am glad that you clarified it just the same. I apologise if what I said lead to any confusion. I think by working on full scans on proper sources, like you are doing, your project is going to go a long way to fully preserve the original theatrical prints as best as we have seen or could hope for.

Now as to whether the X0 project comes back/still exists in some form, that would be an interesting discussion.

This looks just fantastic Laserschwert! I have been eagerly waiting for someone to finish up a project like this. It has been far too many years since I have been able to watch my old German PAL Vhs tapes. I really want to relive the experience from the original German transfer. Those caps and title shots are making me giddy. Incredible thanks to you (and Harmy) for working on this and offering to share it with the rest of us.

As you've mentioned repeatedly throughout the development process, going beyond 720p at this point really enters the territory of diminishing returns. Until we have a better source print available, there really isn't a whole lot to be gained from it, and any 'upscaling' is only going to be limited at best. Countered by the incredible work that would be involved for it to be done right, and starting all over from scratch. We have already seen the terrible results from doing poor transfers and handling the definition improperly - just look at the horrible Lowryisation and other things we have to deal with. Digitally upscaling these is only going to increase the amount of artefacts and is not going to add any true definition to the picture. That, and any lesser def-sourced material used to replace the 'specialised' scenes is going to contrast that much more. I think for what it is 720 is the perfect medium and compromise between having a high quality transfer while maintaining a strong preservation of the 'film' and the original theatrical elements of the movie itself. Sure maybe in the future, if a 4K scan comes from one of the 35mm prints (like poita is working on), or if Disney decides to redo a proper remaster, even of the SEs, this might happen, but is really a discussion of a whole new project then.

So yeah, CatBus is right. Another week or so, and Harmy ought to have it done. :P

Five pages of replies and not a single shout out for the Nintendo games? I mean, yeah, the Atari consoles came first, but they were just so limited, it wasn't until Star Wars and Empire that you could really get back into the world of SW, and live the adventures through gaming. For that alone they deserve some respect I think. The NES version of Star Wars was incredibly difficult, and Empire was a close second. 'Course these are in the days where you had to rent games, and it was sure not easy to advance far (*no saving features) in the 1-2 nights you had them. The lack of a sequel caused me no end of sadness. And boy was I waiting every year.

In terms of overall love, the SNES trilogy takes a major part for me. Empire, Star Wars, and then Jedi. I can't even tell you how many hours I lost in those games, and while they may be a bit easy to some folks, playing them through and enjoying every minute of it is something that very few other platform games offered. No matter how many times I played them, I kept (and still keep) coming back.

I guess I am a bit out of the times with the average people commenting here. Being a SW nut my whole like, I bought up copies of X-Wing and Tie Fighter like they were gold in the 90s, even though I could not play them and wasn't a gamer. Just to be able to touch the world of Star Wars in such a crazy period (people can't even relate today) was something golden. I never was into the simulation style games, and sadly the disappearance of scrolling platformers was nigh on the horizon.

While I was able [reluctantly, occasionally] to play DF on my brother's Apple, it was with DF II that I became engrossed in the gameplay. It really was such a huge game, and I feel successfully added a lot of the OT appeal to the franchise.  As mentioned, the dedication to levels, perspective, and the new force abilities, couple with the cusp of FPS development, really set this one ahead. I subsequently played JK II on the Xbox, and while good, it definitely wasn't quite there compared to its predecessors.

I also have to give an honourable mention to Yoda Stories, a small windows adventure game that entertained me incredibly in spite of its simplicity. As a quick game the randomly generated new 'quests' each time, its rudimentary graphics and fun were like an amazing app of its time. Plus I could play it on my home computer, which, no matter what decade, always seems to be several generations behind the technology.

This project is really coming along nicely, I don't get the impatience with it, given what is involved. I am looking forward to seeing eventual updates added in from other sources (unless Poita is working on his own restoration that will remain separate). The clean up work looks quite good, but I still think that there might be some colouring issues (high on the reds and yellows) that are resulting from the imaging method. Something to think about for afterwards anyways, as you/the team mentioned you had done some preliminary colour correction.

Gogogadget said:

whipped these up, I guess they are still unfinished, but yeah.

Is there any chance you (Gogogadget) or anyone else are still working on these covers you posted a sample of a while back? I have also been just in love with the Hildebrandt art particularly since I was a kid, and am eager to get a high res scan of the art for a case insert. Not that the Struzan art isn't equally fantastic, this one just touches off something in me, and I don't see many folks working on covers with it.

Those Japanese artwork ones are some of my favourites. Really beautiful job putting those together Darth Solo.  Although the 'classic' logos works fantastic too, I really like them with the simple OG SW logo too, maybe even a bit more.

I kinda wish they were a bit higher resolution for high quality printing, thought I am not sure if that even exists of the original artwork, but if someone has a higher res captures of any of these, please drop me a PM.

If anyone is interested, you can see the original manga cover art by Noriyoshi Ohrai here: http://felixip.blogspot.ca/2012/12/star-wars-illustrations-by-noriyoshi.html.

I don't own the BDs, so I was never aware of this problem, but boy, those screencaps make it look brutal. I don't think I would be able to sit though the whole film like that. I just have the EE DVDs of each, and, as you can see from the images _,,,^..^,,,_ posted, the picture seems fine, and is a vast improvement over the BD. I also don't understand how anyone could look at that comparison of The Hobbit and tell me they were improving the appearance by shifting the colour timing.

This whole discussion is turning me off Peter Jackson more and more. I am a big LOTR fan, but the films were what they were. But him shadowing Lucas in so many ways now is really making me feel sad for filmmaking.

lordsidi said:

Hi people.  I know it's been out for a bit now,but I just recently became aware of the V2.5.  This question may have been addressed already and if so I apologize,but when I'm using my TSmuxer to convert mkv to blu file it won't let me get the HD dts sound?  I thought I was doing something wrong because I would get the disc ready (a regular dvd-r) and push play the movie would start and just freeze,with no sound at all.   After several attempts I used the option on TSmuxer to click the button and downconvert the sound to regular DTS and "poof" it worked!  Does anyone know how I can get the DTS HD to be able to be burned on the disc?  Thanks in advance.

Although there was some issues discussed a few pages back about the track for the DTS-HD sound, it is more of a concern with the player you are using to load it being able to recognise and decode that stream I believe. Not all media players/software were able to handle it properly.

But it is worth noting here that, unless that is a typo, you will not be able to burn a DVD of the movie from the MKV file regardless. If that is your intent you will have to do a conversion and significant data compression of the file, in which case you are just better off downloading the copy of DEED 2.1 that is already in an AVCHD format. Even then you will still need a dual layer DVD to burn the entire film. The quality on most systems will be comparable, and outside the additional tracks the changes have not been as significant in this iteration, and it will at least be something to hold you over until an authored BD is available, if that is what you are looking for.

Whatever it is, Threepio is sure enjoying it.

As I think moth3r was saying, the screenshots previously discussed on this thread (and the ones on the old thread this replaced) are all of a different generation of restorations projects, and as such, it is not really a fair comparison to add in comparative captures from the currently ongoing preservations. Since a lot now are using different sources, e.g. 35mm film stock, upscaled versions, cleaned up GOUT, or even the BD, comparison shots are really just useful when contrasting like projects. Each of these will be very different from each other and has different goals.

I understand your point, and it is helpful to seen screenshots of the various versions people on the forum are working on, it is just important to compare apples with apples, and for this, the screenshots offered within each of the individual project discussions are the most relevant. The comparison screenshots should be used more as a guide to see the varying restoration work each has achieved on to the respective source material(s), rather than compare each project to one another to see which is the 'best' version out there, as this is no an accurate contrast and at any rate such a view would be entirely subjective.

AntcuFaalb said:

VCD is, hands-down, the worst home video format ever.

Even CED is preferable to VCD.

Hahahaha, now that is a fair comparison.

Congrats on getting this beast to your home poita. And I am glad you could get it in working order. Those resolutions are incredible, I am looking forward to some reports on how the scans turn out.

Hope your health issues improve soon. Stay well man!

Glad to here it Harmy! Anyone that has stared at rontos and those other composite atrocities for as long as you have, definitely deserves a medal. But then, we know not everyone deserving of a medal gets one.

Hi all,

I have been lurking this forum on and off for several years, and especially closely following the progression of Harmy's restoration work. As we get nearer and nearer to the release of the BD/3.0, I just wanted to come forth and express my sincere thanks to Harmy for all of his dedication and endurance to this project. Doing this all voluntarily, on his own time, and without any professional training, on top of school and 'real life' stuff - to achieve the results he has thus far, well it is nothing short of awesome. Harmy you are a god. Too blasphemous? Well, an apostle of the Church of Star Wars then. And we all listen intently to your teachings. What you have done here really cannot be put into words easily. Yes, this is an amazing restoration to the theatrical version of a film, but I think I can echo the sentiments of so many others in saying that Star Wars is so much more than that to us. For those of us who grew up on SW, it became part of who we are. Star Wars was like an older brother; someone that was always there with you throughout your life, a person to hang out with on lazy days, someone who gave you a feeling of pure inner joy and innocence, was there for you in some difficult times, and who you have the fondest memories associated with. And it is precisely because Star Wars means so much to us that we are so passionate about the trilogy in its original scope. To bring that back to us, is a gift we can't easily repay. Yes, it is providing an experience as of being right back in the movie theatres over thirty years ago, but so much more than that; projects like this bring us back a childhood friend long away, a loved possession lost but found again. For that Harmy, I can only say thank you. Largely and sincerely. To you, hairy_hen, You_too, and all the folks who contributed to this project, both in front of, and behind the scenes, Thank You.

I have read through every post on these past 444 pages, and [inane ones aside] am just so impressed with the ingenuity and unifying aspect of people, who are complete strangers to one another for the most part, coming together for the sake of sharing this love, and for a goal of providing the best viewing experience a fan could ask for. I am really looking forward to viewing the BD this Christmas as I never have. The best I could hope for is to return a contribution in some way to the community and spread the love and word (and copies hopefully) of the untouched OT.  "Yeah, yeah, Harmy is great...yadda-yadda...love Star Wars - enough already, we've heard it a million times" -  well here is why this is important beyond just saying thanks. One of the biggest fears I would have is that Harmy, a guy who clearly loves the original movie as much as any of us, might become saturated with it, working on specific scenes and edits well to the point of exhaustion, to which he could actually get to dislike scenes, or the movie itself. Or even just being so frustrated with colours (skintones!!) and effects that he can't enjoy the film as it is anymore as a whole. Now, I don't think this is the case, as he is clearly still passionately slaving away on the restoration after these years and much critiquing, helpful and otherwise. But still, I just want to say Harmy, that we all appreciate your efforts. You've given something to us that will remain a part of history, even if, by some miracle, the Mouse releases a fully restored print in the future. Be proud of what you have done. Once the BD comes out, I am really looking forward to putting it on the shelf as the definitive edition to view at leisure and share with family and friends. I want my kids to be able to enjoy these movies, and hopefully be touched in even just a small way, the way that I was. I want to show the DEED to people who have never seen SW or don't care, and hopefully make a whole new generation of fans. I am not here to bash George. It's unproductive and there are plenty of other forums/venues to vent nerd rage. What's done is done. In this project though, I feel like a major part of the franchise has been brought back to the status it warrants, and restored my faith and love (and pride) in Star Wars.

/Long story short, thanks Harmy, you're the man with the plan. The Czech Císa?. Nerd royalty indeed.