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Info Wanted: Which preservations are the best of the original theatrical releases?

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 (Edited)

Hi,

I feel a bit lost between all the projects, versions, etc… Could someone summarize the different versions of the original theatrical releases (of the trilogy) that are worth looking at ?

I noticed the Despecialized ones for all the episodes, and the SSE from Team Negative One for the episode IV.

Thanks

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The early Despecialized were a mix of the 2006 GOUT edition upscaled to 720p and the bluray downscaled. The latest release has switched that over to 35 mm film scans instead of the 2006 GOUT. The next step is to make it full 1080p.

Then there are he 35 mm preservations. Currently we have the Star Wars SSE, the TESB grindhouse and the ROTJ grindhouse. A grindhouse edition is not fully cleaned up. More cleaned up versions are in the works, but nothing final yet.

Several attempts have been made to clean and enhance the 2006 GOUT (which stands for George’s Original Unaltered Trilogy and usually specifically refers to the 2006 DVD bonus disc with the original films).

Preservations of older laserdisc editions are out there. There was the Faces edition in 1995, the Definitive Edition in 1993, the Special Widescreen Edition in the late 80’s, the Japanese Special Collection at about the same time. Most of the older versions are pan and scan and of limited interest. There is a bootleg from back in the early 80’s that Moth3r archived that is probably the earliest version of the film. Then there is Puggo’s 16 mm preservation (Puggo Grand aka ANH, Puggo Strikes Back aka TESB, and Return of the Pug aka ROTJ which is still forthcoming).

There are also project working on the 97 SE, and the blu-ray.

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Thanks !

About the Grindhouse editions, I have read they not “GOUT compatible”. Does it mean that it can be hard to find subtitle tracks for instance ?

And about the Despecialized editions : which ones are from the 35mm scans ? I have downloaded the v2.7/v2.0/v2.5 versions from the instructions on this forum : the READMEs do not mention 35mm films as sources. Are you speaking about more recent versions that have not been publicly released yet ?

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pehache said:

Thanks !

About the Grindhouse editions, I have read they not “GOUT compatible”. Does it mean that it can be hard to find subtitle tracks for instance ?

ESB Grindhouse is not “GOUT compatible” but Harmy’s ROTJ Grindhouse is.

And about the Despecialized editions : which ones are from the 35mm scans ? I have downloaded the v2.7/v2.0/v2.5 versions from the instructions on this forum : the READMEs do not mention 35mm films as sources. Are you speaking about more recent versions that have not been publicly released yet ?

SW 2.7 uses some shots from the 35mm SSE version (IIRC only shots that were completely GOUT upscales were replaced with SSE), ROTJ 2.5 was totally overhauled with a lot of 35mm footage, and ESB is still in a more SW 2.5 state (all gout upscale, no 35mm footage to my knowledge).

If you can find the links to the image comarisons Harmy made, they should say if 35mm footage was used in any given correction.

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OK, got it. I thought you were meaning that some Despecialized versions were using 35mm as a primary source (as SSE does).