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Star Wars: Classic Edition by Ocpmovie (Released) — Page 3

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Here's my thoughts on this disc, which I've already relayed to Garrett.

Barring inherent compression artifats (MPEG2 -> AVI -> MPEG2 for single-layer DVD = no getting around artifacts), this is really the best recreation of the original theatrical edition of first film that's out there, I feel. The laserdisc footage is extremely well integrated into the DVD footage and painted out ronto? What painted out ronto! It was excellent. But perhaps the best part about this disc is how seamlessly the mono soundtrack elements are put back into the soundtrack. They all sound totally clean! I guess that's what you get when you're only using a part of a low-quality soundtrack rather than the whole thing at once. Not only all that, but the commentary track is amazing. I love hearing Tony Daniels speak, and he certainly has his fair share of time on this track. Just all around awesomeness.

Supremely excellent work, here. Reccomended to all, at least until there's a dual-layer version (hint to Garrett: do that when that stuff becomes affordable)... or until the Legacy edition leaks in a decade. Hey, I can hope, can't I?

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Well, my discs haven't arrived yet (let's see if this cry works like the last time and magically accelerates the post service; a long delayed Deleted Magic arrived 1 day after a phrase like this, so I thought I should give it a try).
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Arr matey Alex! Thanks so much for the good review and kind words. What Ronto indeed ... best praise I could ask for. =)

No dual layer version sadly ... I only saved the final edit to DVD, not to any lossless type media. The disc is what the disc is.


Here's a review by [redacted].


----

Once again, fabulous work. The Return of the Ewok Disc was adorable (I
dig Warwick Davis) plus the extras on it are enjoyable (and
cringe-worthy a la Holiday Special... but it's Star Wars, so there's a
geek-love factor there).

Your SW: Classic Edition was seemless. Couldn't really tell when it
was SE and when it was LD. You are very precise in your editing,
innovative with your De-SE'ing, and appear tireless with the hard work
and effort you devote to this. I, and many other fans besides, thank
you from the bottom of our fannish hearts. =D

As for your short films! I watched "Trueheart," and I laughed in all
the right places. The lighting really stood out for me (in a good way)
-- effective in setting the tone. And I love that this is what you did
for one of your class projects. You captured the "Storytellers" feel, I
think.

I also watched "For Science." I gotta tell you, I loved that one. I
watched in three times (once by myself, once with my mother, and once
with my best friend). I cried all three times. Yes. I cried. LOL The
story just went ---> ZING ---> right to my heart. It takes something a)
done effectively and b) I can honestly relate to in order to get me to
that state (i.e., I'm not an overly sentimental bawling fool most of
the time). The combination of the storyline itself, the music, the
acting -- it all came together. I loved the plants/setup with
future-son tripping over past-son (and not seeing who it was). And what
broke my heart is when future-son comes upon his "dead" father's body
because he's too late... ouch. You (and Tim Carrass) did a really good
job in showing a developing story in five minutes. Thanks for making
that one and giving me a chance to watch it.

As an aside, I was thisclose to going to film school, but I decided
against it for more than one reason. Maybe if one of the colleges I'd
visited had showed a film like one of yours, I might have gone after
all. =)

Thanks again for sharing your work.
--[redacted]


------

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Just finished watching it with my 6 year old daughter and we LOVED it.
Looks and sounds great. Thanks for your hard work and effort.

“Good… Bad… I’m the guy with the gun.”

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"Yes, but how did he DO it?"

=)

Let me get technical a moment.

I've said plainly that I'm not planning to do Empire or Jedi, but that I'd love it if someone else was inspired by this project and restored them in a similar way. Restoring the complete O-OT with no Special Edition material, and the original laserdisc soundtrack, from the 2004 DVD and the laserdiscs.

I was talking to Gene Ragan today, who works for Macintosh. He was working on his own version of ANH, and stopped when he saw that I'd already done it! But I gave him a little bit of advice on things I'd learned doing my own version of ANH, that he might want to use in Empire.

So, here you are:

---

You work for Apple, eh? Points. I'm a Mac man myself. I did Classic Edition in FCP and DVDSP3.

When you edit together the laserdisc and DVD footage, you'll find that sharpening the laserdisc shots at about a level of 23, and color correcting them a bit, does wonders in making them register to the eye the same as the DVD shots.

Normally you wouldn't do this of course, but since the laserdisc shots go by so quickly, and need to look, in passing, the same as the DVD shots, it's definitely necessary to sharpen them, and that makes the whole trick work.

It is also sometimes necessary to try and use both LD footage and DVD footage in the same shot. If you color correct and sharpen the LD shot to match, put the feather up to a nice degree on the LD or DVD stuff and crop it carefully, the effect can be astonishingly good.

Add black bars separately over these combined images as a new layer.

You'll often need to apply a slight fisheye effect (.5) to the DVD, or sometimes the laserdisc, to make the new transfer look like the old one. You might also need to do distortion and change the aspect ratio slightly to make the DVD and laserdisc match up as exactly as you can. This takes practice. Place the images over one another with the top image at 50% opacity, and then futz with it until the part of the image you need to match matches.

If the DVD or laserdisc section you're adding moves, you move your crop points using keyframing to match it - you may also have to alter your color correcting with keyframing to make this less obvious. Watch the shot a few times and make alterations or add layers until the difference is no longer obvious.

You will want to go back to the Special Editions for certain shots. In Empire, a lot of the film has been overly blue tinted in the DVD version. Luke in the bacta tank and the surrounding scenes come to mind (visible on Wookiee Groomer's cuts). And you need the original SE anyway to restore the original Emperor and Sebastian Shaw. Sven Brooke collects the Special Editions in DVD quality from satellite TV airings - slbrooke at tiscali.co.uk - and so does my good friend Russ Dawson - Russs15 at originaltrilogy.com.

Hope that helps! Cheers ...
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This is like finding Heaven.
How could I have been so blind for so long?!
I had no idea this place existed until today!!
Thanks for all of your efforts to fix what Lucas has done to the originals....
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Originally posted by: dylanfree
This is like finding Heaven.
How could I have been so blind for so long?!
I had no idea this place existed until today!!
Thanks for all of your efforts to fix what Lucas has done to the originals....


Amen.

I said in an earlier post, I'm grateful I found this site otherwise I'd be getting reamed buying stuff on eBay!

I thought it was time for beers, but it's not. It's time for vengeance!
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Boy, all you guys are really raising the bar. I am so psyched to see this. Can't wait for my copy. I am forever indebted to this site as well!
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OCPMOVIE

You are a true master of the edit ;-)

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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Hey all. If there are no torrents, what is involved in getting this disk? It sounds like what I've been wanting for years! The restored video of the SE dvd with the content and scenes of the original.

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Email Garrett (ocpmovie) at tygerbug at yahoo.com. He'll give you the skinny.
"Give us all your money and a tank of gas. We're taking this bird to Cuba" ~Stimpy
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Davidian please edit your post so that the emailbots wont snatch his email addy.....

Best regards
eDroj
Do, or do not. There is no try.
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All I have to say is WOW...OCP you are the man!!! The Classic Edition edit is amazing, just got it today and finished watching it. Almost a flawless combination of DVD and Lasierdisc. Thumbs up bro

mike
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Okay i'm really excited about this version; hopefully ocpmovie will get my PM soon...
In the meantime, from those who have already seen it (or ocpmovie), how did Han shoot first in this edition? Is the scene from the LD? Likewise which version was used for the duel between Obi-Wan & Vader? Hopefully one with the sabers as they originally were and not the 2004 DVD enhanced ones yes?And finally, i'm sure this will be obvious, but, do tell me that Luke's lightsaber on the ship is not green...

<a href="http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2005/05/i_hates_lucas_i.html" title="www.bynkii.com/archives/2005/05/i_hates_lucas_i.html" target="_blank">.Truth.</a><br /><br />"Mmm....starcruiser crash!"

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I've answered every one of these questions before in this thread, but I'll go again.

Han's shooting first, like the entire film, is edited identically to the original edit.

Han saying "Yes, I'll bet you have" was the most difficult editing job of this project, and required transitioning from laserdisc footage to DVD footage of Han's face during the shot.

2004 footage was used for the Obi-Wan/Vader duel, but the brightness/contrast on the sabers was altered to make them look more like lightsabers. In fact, this brightness/contrast alteration was done for the entire film.

In the first shot aboard the Falcon, Luke's saber was recolored to look more blue.

All the best.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Han's shooting first, like the entire film, is edited identically to the original edit.


Han doesn't shoot first. He's the only one shooting
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Han saying "Yes, I'll bet you have" was the most difficult editing job of this project, and required transitioning from laserdisc footage to DVD footage of Han's face during the shot.


What's wrong with the shot on the DVD? Is it too short?

DE
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Yes.


Lucas cut down the shot of Han heavily in the Special Edition to make room for the shitty wide shot of the laserblasts.

Yep.
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I cannot begin to decribe how excited I am to see this one....
I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the DVD from you!
From what everyone has been saying, I will not be disappointed with your work.
It will be worth the wait....
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I cannot begin to decribe how excited I am to see this one....I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the DVD from you!
From what everyone has been saying, I will not be disappointed with your work. It will be worth the wait....


Ditto!

Power to the people; Star Wars does not belong to LucAss.

<a href="http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2005/05/i_hates_lucas_i.html" title="www.bynkii.com/archives/2005/05/i_hates_lucas_i.html" target="_blank">.Truth.</a><br /><br />"Mmm....starcruiser crash!"

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I just got my copy today. I thought I would point out a few things that stuck out to me. I mean in no way to insult the work you did ocp, there were just a few things that didn't look quite right.

In the shot where Luke pulls up in his speeder and (in the 2004 edition) a Ronto walks in front of the camera.

- You combined the LD and DVD here in such so that when the black guy in a robe walks by the scene wipes from LD to DVD repsectively. The only problem with this shot that I saw (besides the color difference which I assume you couldn't get any closer) was that when the guy walks by, there is white silhouette that also passes through the black bars on the top and bottom. This really caught my attention. You may want to do something about that.

Luke's lightsaber aboard the Falcon (the shot that was green on the '04 ed.)

- I don't mean to get on your back here, but it looks bad. The glowing aura is consistently too short, and it doesn't match the following shots of the his lightsaber at all.

"STAR WARS" through Star Destroyer going overhead

- There is some serious artifacting going on in the hollow STAR WARS and the starry background. It doesn't begin to fix itself until the next shot of the Tantive IV coming toward the screen.

And about this last one, I don't know if you can do anything about it, but...

All of the LD footage is too narrow

- Everytime an LD shot comes up, there is about 1/4" black bar on each side of the screen. I don't know if you can resize to fit the dimensions of the DVD, but I thought I would let you know about it in case you hadn't noticed. It is most noticeable when you have LD shot that "morphs" into a DVD shot.

Oh, by the way, I was pretty much just fast forwarding through the DVD as I didn't have time to sit down and watch the whole thing. So, these are just the things I noticed at a glance. I don't want to be nit-picky, but if you want the criticism, then I can oblige.

I do want to say nice work. I think this will be nice to have for all those purists outthere. I hope you don't go killing yourself over the faults I found. I just wanted to make sure you knew about them. I tend to be a perfectionist, and little things like that would drive me crazy.


Stay cool.
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I too am a perfectionist and I redid certain shots many times until I was happy with every shot in the project.

I suppose everyone will have their own opinion on what looks right and what doesn't. All the shots aforementioned look fine to me.

I wonder if the shot of the lightsaber looking green on the DVD looks worse than "bad" to you, as this is certainly the same shot, just with a slight color change to blue.

The laserdisc shots are placed to match the DVD images. They are very slightly shorter on the sides, which was a decision to not zoom into them too much and lose parts of the vertical image. This area will not be visible on a television set.

That said, the disc is what it is. Those who think they can do better, well, please do - Empire and Jedi, no one's done yet.



And here's a suggestion.


If you want to achieve a DVD quality version of the original, original trilogy ...

Use the DVD for most of it, then for the non special edition shots, take your images from both the widescreen AND pan & scan laserdisc images. Paste the pan & scan over the widescreen, and voila - perfect DVD sharpness.

I would have done this, except that I didn't have a pan & scan laserdisc rip lying around.

Those who think they can do better, you certainly can. And I for one would be first in line to grab a copy of your cut.
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When my copy arrives I'll be projecting it on a 106" screen so I'm looking forward to this version. This seems to be the closest thing out there right now that will come close to my experience in the summer of '77. Can't wait Garrett!