I’m 99.99% sure that Phantom Menace is not available in UHD (BD or WEB); yet, I’ve found that someone released a so-called UHD-rip… now, again 99.99% sure it is a mere upscale (and not greatly made, I should add).

So, I can’t resist to make an attempt to clean and upscale the BD - and also regrade, as I was there! 😃

Sadly, no BD player on my PC, so I just took the “UHD”, downscale it 50% with paint (!) and started to develop a suitable script… it took several days of trials&errors, but I think I got a nice result: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/130289

(Note: you can see some details lost in the dark areas, it’s due to my regrade choice, but this is out of the scope of this thread for the moment)

Problem #1: the difference, when zoomed in, is great, but at normal size it is far less impressive…

Problem #2: to render a single frame, my PC takes around 2 minutes (!) - so, at that rate, it will take around 8 months and half, 24/7!!! So, unless someone would kindly give me a powerful workstation as a gift (or more than one) 😉 that will reduce rendering time to a decent amount (“only” one month? two?), the whole project will not happen…

Opinions?