DESPECIALIZED EDITION QUALITY CONTROL THREAD - REPORT ISSUES HERE — Page 7

towne32 said:

This shot? http://i.imgur.com/HNimLm8.jpg

Yep, that’s the one: all shots in the scene from that C3PO arm to just before the exterior shot outside Ben’s hut. The scenes just prior (to the arm) look sharp, and the interior of Ben’s hut look sharp as well (well, except for the Luke lightsaber shot, which looks a bit blurry, but that one is blurry in 2.5 as well). BTW, I love the new lightsaber effect here - much more true to the original!

I think I used harmy’s 97SE for the rest of that scene, starting from that shot.

I’m curious: could the bluray source not be used for this scene (i.e. not try to fix the color in 2.5, but color-correct the raw bluray material? (forgive my ignorance if not).

The 2.5 color correction had been pushed so far that there was nothing left
(at least for someone with my skillset) to work with, especially in the final
shot of the scene.

Yes, and the specular highlight on C3PO’s arm in 2.7 looks much more natural. In 2.5 it’s very yellow.

Some of those shots, to me, look super sharpened in 2.5

Hmm, maybe they were. When you look at something sharpened next to something not as sharpened, it sticks out. It’s sort of a judgement call how much sharpening to use, but if the prior scenes were that sharp off the bluray, then keeping the same sharpness throughout probably makes sense. I did not go look at the bluray yet…

There’s nothing particularly bad looking about that arm shot, but you have to keep
in mind that it’s the same shot that pans over to the characters, which in turn
needs to match the other (same) shots of those characters as much as possible.

Yeah, all shots in that scene (from the arm to before Ben’s hut) look about the same softness to me. I agree they’d all have to be adjusted in the same way.

It’s a pain in the ass to color correct shots that are actually two shots, as such.
A huge example is Han getting up from Greedo’s table, walking up to the bar, and the
Death Star shot that it wipes to.

I bet. 😃

Anyway, I don’t think there should be anything wrong with the shot. But I
don’t know the specifics about the 97SE there. If something was done that
would reduce the picture quality or soften the image, or if the encoding was
somehow less quality (but I doubt it). I had the lossless files for that as well,
so re-encoding shouldn’t have been the issue.

Good you have lossless (which would make it possible, for example, to sharpen all 97SE shots you used to match surrounding ones, if that is the right move).

For other shots: If it’s a 35mm shot. Yeah, it’ll probably be softer.
It’s sharpened to a degree, but there’s a point where it starts to look bad.
It’s better than super-sharpened GOUT.

I agree GOUT is WAY over-sharpened. If, when from 35mm, you can sharpen to match both sharpness and grain of the rest of the footage, that might make sense, but I agree you don’t want to introduce too many artifacts if a match cannot be attained.

For the werewolf: Yeah, Harmy used the GOUT for that.
This was before we had super resolution techniques and,
more importantly, a good 35mm source.

Interesting, since I saw it on the werewolf first, and I dismissed it as an upsampled GOUT issue, but when I then noticed it on Leia’s hand, it made me start thinking it was some other effect. Might be interesting to check the bluray.

BTW, thank you for your hard work on 2.7 - there are some very nice enhancements there - it keeps getting better, and I can only hope my feedback is helpful in some way moving forward.

Looking at it a bit more closely (and remembering things better), the surrounding shots are actually all from his 97 release, too. But the sequence in question just happens to be unmodified from his 97 version. So, there shouldn’t really be a difference in sharpness that needs to be corrected for those specific shots. Which also partially answers your other question. The Blu-ray could be used, but I thought Harmy’s take on it looked good. Going to the BD, I would need to match it to the earlier shots from the Ben+Luke scene, which I slightly modified from Harmy’s.

I glanced at the blu-ray, without doing a proper comparison or loading it into editing software, and it doesn’t have the super sharp (almost grainier) look of 2.5. But again, I’m not sure why or how 2.5 is that way. If there’s an issue with the 97 edit, it’s either specific to those few shots or you’re only noticing it there. An enormous chunk of 2.7 uses the 97 edit, more than just a shot here or there. Seems more likely to be something notable about 2.5.

towne32 said:

Looking at it a bit more closely (and remembering things better), the surrounding
shots are actually all from his 97 release, too. But the sequence in question just
happens to be unmodified from his 97 version. So, there shouldn’t really be a
difference in sharpness that needs to be corrected for those specific shots.

So are you saying that all of the Luke/Ben shots, from when Luke meets Ben to the shots inside his hut, are from 97SE? Or are you talking about a shorter part of that. The part that looks “different” to me from the rest is just from approximately the C3PO arm to the end of that scene right before the exterior of the hut (i.e. 00:31:45 to 00:32:13). The part from 00:30:11 (and before that as well) to 00:31:45 looks like 2.5 in terms of sharpness. It makes sense to my eye if 00:30:11 to 00:31:45 or so is from 2.5, whereas just after that is from 97SE. If otherwise (i.e. if you are saying all of 00:30:11 to 00:32:13 is from 97SE), then I am not sure what could be happening.

Note that where I really see the difference is in Ben’s beard, like at 00:32:02.

Which also partially answers your other question. The Blu-ray could be used,
but I thought Harmy’s take on it looked good.

So you mean 2.5 when you say Harmy’s take, right?

If there’s an issue with the 97 edit, it’s either specific to those few shots or
you’re only noticing it there. An enormous chunk of 2.7 uses the 97 edit,
more than just a shot here or there. Seems more likely to be something notable about 2.5.

I’ll see if I notice any other sections where there’s a shift from sharper to softer…

wildlava said:

So are you saying that all of the Luke/Ben shots, from when Luke meets Ben to the shots inside his hut, are from 97SE? Or are you talking about a shorter part of that.

Yes. 28:25 to 38:42. Minus shots that needed to be despecialized.

The part that looks “different” to me from the rest is just from approximately the C3PO arm to the end of that scene right before the exterior of the hut (i.e. 00:31:45 to 00:32:13). The part from 00:30:11 (and before that as well) to 00:31:45 looks like 2.5 in terms of sharpness.

Yes. That part looks different to me in that it looks sharp in 2.5.

So you mean 2.5 when you say Harmy’s take, right?

No, I mean in his 97 respecialized (which is what I used, because 2.5 got too yellow for my taste at the end and I couldn’t find a way to undo it).

Blackout said:
Many of the issues I’ve come across with the DeEd seem to be that in places where the Blu-ray and the GOUT would duplicate a frame, the DeEd often duplicates that same frame a frame later than the Blu-ray and the GOUT.

Not to doubt your general comments on the issue. But what you’re describing sounds characteristic of issues that can occur with video editing software, especially reading compressed video sources. Are you seeing frames duplicated that should not be, in all of the sources? (can’t look at all of your new comparisons at the moment).

Indeed.

I’m not sure why you’re seeing these duplicated frames at all, especially in the 24p sourced material. There should not be any of this a and b or b and c duplication business. What software are you using, and what are your project settings (primarily, your frame rate?).

Using h264 and other compressed sources, I have sometimes had Adobe start to do what you describe, where it fails to render properly synchronized previews of compressed files that are actually synced correctly. It’s rare, but closing and reopening the software took care of it. I saw it more when dealing with that ET special edition thing I was doing, using someone’s TS file.

But between the duplicated frame talk, and that this seems wide spread for all 3 despecialized films makes me think something is wrong in your project file. There are surely some shots that aren’t perfect GOUT sync that slip through here and there. Harder to catch when they end up being balanced out by another nearby shot being one frame longer or shorter. But this sounds… worse.

If you want to eliminate the problem completely, render the files you’re comparing into a lossless format. Adobe will play nicely then.

Videos encoded by different methods can glitch out in different ways. For instance, I’ve tried doing comparisons using DeEd 1.0, and there are certain segments that will just show looped sets of frames, strangely.

Probably best to hold off on sync comparisons until things are working properly in a given timeline if the correct speed, though. Not sure how your software is handling the conversion to 30p…