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Project #4K77

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The goal of Project #4K77 is simply to create a version of the 1977 Pre-Special Edition version of Star Wars, that will look good on a 4K Television or monitor. Most of the source material is 35mm film scanned at 4K, processed at 4K and rendered at 4K. When no 4K footage is available, an upscale from either the SSE or the Official Blu-ray will be used.

Learn more about the 35mm sources:

Project #4K77 Sources

Should Disney do the right thing, and release a 4K version of the original Trilogy before this project is completed, then it will probably turn out to be a complete waste of time and effort, but I’m fine with that. Even a straight scan of an original interpositive with minimal restoration would be amazing.

This project will not be cleaned to the same standards as Legacy Edition - not even close. It probably won’t even be as clean as the SSE, but it will be sharper, more detailed and have more consistent colors. The colors in the Teaser video are not final, and I think most people will agree that the contrast and saturation are little too much, but that is easy to dial back. For the shot seen in the teaser I went all out, spent about 5 hours cleaning it up. I won’t be doing that for every shot!

Techniques video:

Project #4K77 Techniques

Because I know some people like the denoised, degrained/regrained look of the Despecialized Edition (and other people hate it) I am working on two versions concurrently. The first will be cleaned and color corrected only, while the second will be denoised too. So you can pick which one you prefer.

Due to limitations of both time and space, the version with Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) will not be completed.

What set this project in motion? Well, after finishing the SSE I took a complete break from Star Wars for the rest of the summer, but then in September I upgraded my workstation to twin Xeon, 10 cores each, 128 GB RAM and a Quadro K2200 Video card. I had tried working with 4K content before, for the Silver Screen Edition, and found my computer to be wanting. It was click, wait 10 seconds, click. Just not practical. So the truth is, that this project began only to test my new system’s capabilities. And, it performs wonderfully. Every bit as fast as working in 2K on the old system.

Here is the latest clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTPU8rY0ZF8

The main project page can be found at:

http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/page/Project-4K77

I will do my best to keep that page up to date with the current progress.

For all newcomers, please register at http://forums.thestarwarstrilogy.com/index.php where this discussion continues. Please use the same username there as you use here. Any registrations for usernames that cannot be found on OT.com will be rejected.

No need to post here that you have registered.

If you have already registered but never received the confirmation email, just send me a PM and I can manually confirm your account.

If you have a question, PLEASE SEND ME A PM, rather than posting to this thread, thank you!

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This is great news!
The next couple of years are going to be amazing for Star Wars preservations with Despecialized v3 and now this coming along.
One question: Will there be a 1080p BD or even a 4K Blu-ray?

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I’ll probably create a 1080p Bluray version (no seamless branching this time!). Not sure that (cheap/free) software exists to create 4K Blu-rays at the moment. Scenarist UHD is a little out of my price range. Do you need special discs and burners too?

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Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

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Excellent! Looking very much forward to this.

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The lettering looks good, and the sample looks very promising. Best of luck!

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Williarob said:

I’ll probably create a 1080p Bluray version (no seamless branching this time!). Not sure that (cheap/free) software exists to create 4K Blu-rays at the moment. Scenarist UHD is a little out of my price range. Do you need special discs and burners too?

I believe so, as 4K Blu-ray discs can’t be played on standard players.

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You mean Disney AND 20th Century Fox. Remeber the first Star Wars is 100% the property of 20th Century Fox.

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fmalover said:

You mean Disney AND 20th Century Fox. Remeber the first Star Wars is 100% the property of 20th Century Fox.

Right, but at this point Disney is clearly in the driving seat.

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Williarob said:

Exclusively for OT Members, for a limited time only: here is a longer 4K preview (H.265, no audio).

https://we.tl/aFQWacjyQp

As you’ll see, the other shots are not quite so clean, but watched on my 1080p monitor it looks pretty good. Less good at 4K I imagine, but I don’t have a 4K monitor or TV 😃

UHD Video sample looks amazing on my Dell 3216Q. The whites are still a bit pink, and the shadows are a bit green, but the overall image quality put a big grin on my face.

If your crop is water, what, exactly, would you dust your crops with?

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camroncamera said:

UHD Video sample looks amazing on my Dell 3216Q. The whites are still a bit pink, and the shadows are a bit green, but the overall image quality put a big grin on my face.

Good! I’m glad. Yeah, color correction is still a work in progress, but don’t worry. I have top men working on it.

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

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Today is the first day I’ve entertained the thought of purchasing a 4k tv/bd player.

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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Did anybody else have trouble viewing the preview clip? I tried opening it but VLC freezes on one of the first few frames and then doesn’t play the rest. But anyway, that one frame I could see looks great!

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Nice to see yet another preservation effort!

Any chance there’ll be a grindhouse version ?

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NeverarGreat said:

So what sources were used in this preview? I know that the Rebel trooper shot was Eastman, but I would have thought that this would have been more grainy. Is this clip denoised? Because I can’t imagine people wanting an even sharper version.

Yes, this clip is the denoised version, which I prefer. The (still noisy?) version is just as sharp, just grainier. I’ll post that soon too so you can decide which version you prefer.

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

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theMaestro said:

Did anybody else have trouble viewing the preview clip? I tried opening it but VLC freezes on one of the first few frames and then doesn’t play the rest. But anyway, that one frame I could see looks great!

Yeah, I have the same problem. Maybe it’s the HEVC codec? And I must agree, the single frame looked really awesome 😉

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quin82 said:

theMaestro said:

Did anybody else have trouble viewing the preview clip? I tried opening it but VLC freezes on one of the first few frames and then doesn’t play the rest. But anyway, that one frame I could see looks great!

Yeah, I have the same problem. Maybe it’s the HEVC codec? And I must agree, the single frame looked really awesome 😉

Perhaps you are missing a codec? I used Handbrake to encode it, but you might find that the latest Divx codecs / player would work.

It could also be your Hardware. Even on my twin Xeon and Core I7 PCs it doesn’t always play smoothly. 4K is a lot of data!

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

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I had trouble playing it with CCCP/MPC-HC but it was fine with MPV.

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Williarob said:

quin82 said:

theMaestro said:

Did anybody else have trouble viewing the preview clip? I tried opening it but VLC freezes on one of the first few frames and then doesn’t play the rest. But anyway, that one frame I could see looks great!

Yeah, I have the same problem. Maybe it’s the HEVC codec? And I must agree, the single frame looked really awesome 😉

Perhaps you are missing a codec? I used Handbrake to encode it, but you might find that the latest Divx codecs / player would work.

It could also be your Hardware. Even on my twin Xeon and Core I7 PCs it doesn’t always play smoothly. 4K is a lot of data!

I tested it again, but this time with MPC, and voila, no problems at all. Shame on you VLC 😉 Again, it looks very promising and beautiful.