Info: Rogue One HQ workprint

Disclaimer: I do not endorse privacy, so if you will obtain this workprint somehow, you should buy the DVD or BD of the movie when it will be released!

OK, let’s talk about this HQ workprint: first of all, don’t expect a great quality here… not near DVD, so, when I talk about “quality” here, it’s all relative.

Video is 720/30p, around 2.50:1 AR, encoded in AVC at around 3mbps; audio is AC3 stereo, and includes four different languages (English, Italian, Russian, Spanish); there are also English subtitles.

Video quality, as mentioned before, is quite low, when compared to proper releases; image is really dark, and often a lot of details are lost in the shadows (in particular during Eadu scenes); but during light scenes, like the ones on Skarik, often, at the contrary, is quite good! Don’t expect HD quality here, even if it’s indeed a 720p, but it’s better than SD, of course. There are quite a lot of blended frames, noticeable in particular during fast movements, while when movement is not that fast, video flows smoothly. Color wise, it seems spot on, but, you know, kinda difficult to compare it with the projected movie by memory…

Image is cropped on the bottom, probably due to the fact a counter, a copyright notice, or both, appeared there; I had preferred to see them, along with some more image, but maybe it(they) was so obstrusive that it was preferred to crop the whole part. Along with that part, thought, burned subs and planet names were gone, too, so they was placed in the lower black bar; I’m pretty sure there are one or two instanced not present in the theatrical version, but again, my memory is faulty!

Audio quality is pretty low as well; English seems the best track. Subtitles, at the contrary, are perfect, I think they are a verbatim copy of the dialogs.

So, why it’s called HQ, when it’s really LQ, after all? Well, in comparison to all the screeners that floating around, it is indeed superior to all of them! I’ll write not about audio, because all have bad ones, so they are comparable, if not the same. No subtitles available elsewhere.

Video size and details: workprint is 720p, while all the screeners are 480p; effective image of the workprint is 1280x476, where screeners are usually 720x304 (one is 720x288), and the cropped ones are 704x400; the latter lacks both left and right sides. Of course, with an higher resolution, more details are preserved, and the grain present is welcome, and would help in perceiving better details.

Aspect ratio and distortion: even if the workprint is cropped on the bottom, its image is not distorted as every other ones; it is correct, can’t say perfect, but I did some comparison with the released official clip and, albeit its image size is smaller, when resized it matches pretty well - far from perfection, but the screeners are horrible in this field… almost all suffers of bad distortions, stretches, rotations, due to the placement of the camera I suppose; all of this often is not even noticeable if you don’t know what to look for, but, once compared to the workprint, you can’t live with those distortions anymore!

Colors and contrast: some screeners shows a bit better contrast, so it’s possible that some details in the shadows are visible. But, apart this, that you could notice just in the quite dark scenes, while in the darkest ones all is swallowed by the blacks, in the other aspect workprint excels; very good colors and right contrast (for the upper levels, of course). Screeners suffers all, more or less, of contrast boosts, crushed blacks, clipped whites, some out of focus shots, deleted logos placed in the middle of the screen (that lasts few seconds), and other nice things like those. None of these are present in the workprint.

Flickering and blended frames: there is some residual flickering in the workprint, still a lot less than what is present in the screeners; the blended fields are common for every one of them.

All in all, it could be a valid reference to get, useful to compare it with the DVD/BD when they will be released, to discover eventual differences in the cut, added CGI and other mods, color grading, sound mix etc.

Comparison: top cropped screener, middle uncropped screener, bottom HQ workprint

As you can see, top screener has both the sides heavily cropped, but retain a lot more image on bottom while lose a bit on top; colors are completely off, white clipping, bad contrast, but at least distorsion are not that bad. This screener should be the worst around.

Middle screener has more image on bottom, but a bit less on the top and right side; this have better colors than the cropped one, but contrast is just a little better; distortion is heavy. Probably it is the best uncropped screeners around.

Comparison one: cropped screener Vs HQ workprint
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/197342

Comparison two: uncropped screener Vs HQ workprint
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/197341

Yeah sorry, but the rules say no discussion about bootlegs of current or recent theatrical releases. When this has been out on home video for a while feel free to start a new discussion.