Hi,
Congrats for your work, it seems to be a huge step forward to a full HD theatrical version of TPM.
As you know, I’m currently working on my own HD reconstruction for almost 1 year. It seems that I took a different way to get a theatrical reconstruction in HD quality (some of my sources and tools are different than yours + some “missing” scenes like the arrival on Coruscant or the Senate will be in true HD in my version, not in upscaled SD).Thanks. I wanted to get this out quickly before the 35mm was released.
Yeah looks like your Senate shot is slightly better looking that mine. Im interested to know what sources you have that I don’t have and how you will be getting true HD for the Arrival on Coruscant scene, 35mm scan?
We could definitely consider collaborating on this, I’m pretty much ready to release this as a v1.0 in the next week or so. Ive had it sitting, ready to be finished since mid last year, I hit a stumbling block with audio sync issues and just ended up syncing directly to the LD audio rip.
As for missing or duped frames, I’m pretty sure I’ve “accounted” for all of them, any future (v2.0) release would have them restored and the audio patched to match it but since all the dropped/duped frames are on side/reel changes it’s not the end of the world to me.
Thank you for your answer!
Feel free to release your v1.0 whenever you want, as I won’t finish my version before several weeks.
But IMHO, wanting to get this out quickly is maybe not a smart move, especially as we know that poita will probably not deliver his TPM 35 mm scan before a long time.
IMHO, it would be a pity if, by wanting to be the first to release, the work you propose would be partly incorrect or incomplete.
About the missing frames, there is maybe another issue than just reel changes (there is a global issue in some early digital transfers - maybe the ones you use? - so that every 4000th frame is dropped).
There are also missing frames around “de-subtitled” scenes in some HDTV versions.
Another problem concerns color corrections: there is more than just a general “too much red” correction to do: some scenes (including the entire first reel) were differently regraded than others on the DVD and the HDTV versions. So I guess that a thorough scene-by-scene regrading is necessary to recover real theatrical colors (actually, that is what I’m currently working on).
There is also a difference of framing/cropping for the couple of scenes that were redone or rescanned a posteriori: those scenes need to be recropped and skewed to fit the theatrical original format.
[JEDIT : I removed the paragraph about DTS audio, since Schorman brilliantly detailed everything below 😃 ]
About using other sources, a very good result can be achieved by using ^…^'s PaNup technique (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/PaNup-or-how-to-upscale-PAL-NTSC-capture-and-live-quite-happy/id/15928) and merging as many NTSC and PAL sources as possible (there is a lot more theatrical sources than just LD and ORF1), then using an AI-based cloud service like letsenhance.io and finally precisely rotoscoping the result on a frame by frame basis.
I do not say that to criticize, far from it: I’m really happy that a TPM restoration work is made.
I just want to draw your attention to the fact that maybe we do not have to rush if we want the best result…
About the Arrival on Coruscant scene, I’ll be happy to make a frame comparison between my version and yours if you post one of your frames, you’ll see that my version is in true HD.