Well, for the 1981 crawl, we have a 1982 PAL source (widescreen version extracted from horizontally compressed rather than cropped source), the 1985 US Special Widescreen Edition, the Japanese Special Collection, the 1993 Definitive Edition (CAV - later rereleased as the Faces CLV set), and the scanned 35 mm element courtesy of TN1. All of the home video sources are washed out and have heavy smearing (they don’t even come up to the GOUT level of quality). The 35 mm scan has crushed blacks. So bad that there are few visible stars and heavy shadows on the Star Destroyer that shouldn’t be there. That right there would require a better source to repair and the only better sources are the 77 and 97 versions.
Also, as this is a recreation using the best sources possible to get as close to the original as possible, and as the small detail is not one that is readily apparent (I had to overlay the two on top of each other in contrasting colors to even detect it), it will be just one more thing among the long list of points where this will be close but not exact. I’m aiming for as exact as I can make it, but it cannot be perfect. So I have accepted this small little flaw. It is off by all of 3 pixels in the 1920x1080 image. I have stars off by more than that in some frames (I don’t have the skill to match the lens effects to put all the stars in the correct location in every frame). What it comes down to is that the 77 version from 35 mm is closer to the 81 version on 35 mm than any of the LD verions are. The 1985 US SWE is the next best in alignment but it lacks the quality. The other 3 don’t even align properly. And two of the main places that I would need to fix on the 81 35 mm scan are the hanger and the engines. I did not check the 97 (or more properly the DVD/BR version) because the entire engine section and engine glow is wrong and would have to be replaced and I would still have to use the 77 version but have to edit it onto a different version. The 77 version is the closest I can get to the original without sacrificing quality. My goal is to have it look right and feel right and to pass all but the most detailed inspection. I want it to be the best available until a better source is found for the original.