I just had a look at the reel you posted poita, and wow does it look great! It looks really clean in comparison to other “raw scans”, notably it has a lack of emulsion lines/distortions present in others. Very, very nice indeed!
That is mostly because I paid the exhorbitant, but so very worth it, cost of getting that reel ultrasonically cleaned.
It works out to be about $200 per reel for cleaning, but it means there is practically no dirt, hairs, dust etc. left on the print, so rather than re-creating data behind dust and hair particles, you get what is actually there on the film. The dirt in the preview is the dirt on the master used to make the prints, so it was the ‘dirt’ you would have seen in the cinema in 1980 😃
It also has the really nice side effect of removing dust and debris from the optical soundtrack, so the sound is also markedly improved.
The other reasons are that the scanner used clamps the film on each frame, so it pretty much eliminates warping, and the light source is an integrating sphere, so a lot of small base scratches etc. disappear due to the incredibly diffuse light source.
The project is on hold until I can find a angel investor or 20 to help with the reel cleaning costs, then I can get the rest scanned, there are so few usuable prints left of Empire, and these two will continue to fade as time goes on, it is kind of now or never as far as salvaging Empire goes. The Star Wars Tech IB’s and Jedi LPPs will still look the same in 10 years, but by then, pretty much every Empire print will have faded into unusability.