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4K restoration on Star Wars — Page 290

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44rh1n said:

I’ve hated the alteration of colors for various other 4K HDR versions, though. I guess it just depends on the film for me.

Batman (1989) and Terminator 2 have some of the most damaging 4K remasters I’ve seen.

The name’s Lawson. Noah Lawson.

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As someone without strong feelings about color “accuracy” with regard to previous releases who just wants stuff to look good on his TV, I’m digging the hell out of the DolbyVision treatment.

Does anyone here have an Atmos setup? I’m loving the picture, and the new mixes sound fine through the 2.0 setup I’ve got in my tiny apartment, but i’m curious to know how the full experience is.

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I don’t have one either, but I thought I heard a ton of new SFX throughout the Tantive battle.

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^I wasn’t sure how much of that was already in the SE, since I haven’t seen it in a while. I know the extra klaxon isn’t new to this release, is there anything else?

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pat man said:

Fang Zei said:

pat man said:

DrDre said:

pat man said:

nl0428 said:

If anyone here went to go see the 3D release of The Phantom Menace, please tell me what the master and color grading looked like. Did it look like the 2011 Blu-ray, or this new Disney+ version?

I didn’t see the 3d release. But skimming through the movies the Prequels are just upscaled Blu-ray. I.e. nasty teal shift in Aotc.

No, they are not. The color grading is markedly different, more muted like the for the OT, and obviously HDR. I also don’t see any evidence of a blanket teal shift. There are plenty of blue skies, and white clouds in AOTC.

Ah, I’ve only streamed the HD version on disney plus.

The hd version doesn’t look like the blu-rays either, though. Whether you’re watching it in hdr or sdr, the new D+ transfers look like they’ve been made “fresh from the source” and not recycled from the hd masters prepared back in 2011 for the blu’s. I was streaming the beginning of AotC yesterday on D+ in regular hd and the colors looked noticeably closer to how I remember it looking in the theater and on dvd, without the teal cast of the bd.

Time for me to get an eye appointment lol. I’ll do a re-check of the Pt later tonight.

Ok so, as for the Prequels, they do look better then the Blu-rays. They appear to be the digital file that was used to create the Blu-rays however (TPM still has DNR).
The Originals are very apparent to be new scans of the film elements from the SE (Color wise they look like my old SE 97 VHS copies just way better contrast).
I’m not a color expert though.

One day we will have properly restored versions of the Original Unaltered Trilogy (OUT); or 1977, 1980, 1983 Theatrical released versions (Like 4K77,4K80 and 4K83); including Prequels. So that future generations can enjoy these historic films that changed cinema forever.

Yoda: Try not, do or do not, there is no try.

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How do the Hayden scenes look in ROTJ? I’d be interested to see if they’ve improved that or made it worse, and whether the bottom left corner in the wide shot is still a duplicated mess.

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nl0428 said:

pat man said:

nl0428 said:

pat man said:

nl0428 said:

If anyone here went to go see the 3D release of The Phantom Menace, please tell me what the master and color grading looked like. Did it look like the 2011 Blu-ray, or this new Disney+ version?

I didn’t see the 3d release. But skimming through the movies the Prequels are just upscaled Blu-ray. I.e. nasty teal shift in Aotc.

I seriously would like to understand why people who do 4K HDR remasters have such a love for adding unappealing teal filters to their older films. Especially when it’s not the accurate color grading the movie had when released.

Make them look like modern films.

It really doesn’t, it just ruins the original look of the film and almost looks like it’s done by someone to try to modernize something by its look, when you don’t need to do something as unnecessary as that, as these classics will remain timeless and continue to stand the test of time by their quality.

How about as an alternate version that can be seen as the definitive version (with the original theatricals packages for obvious preservation reasons), like how Blade Runner: The Final Cut is seen as the definitive version of Blade Runner (while the original version is packaged)?

The unfortunate reality of the Star Wars prequel and Disney trilogies is that they will always be around. Forever. They will never go away. It can never be undone.

I also prefer to be referred to as “TNT”, not “Freezing”.

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Fang Zei said:

Does anyone have a D+ subscription and the hardware to stream it in 4k (even if it’s only in sdr)? I’d be very curious what the OT looks like at full 2160p res. The compression probably cancels out some of the extra detail, but I would still think this looks better than what we’ve had to live with for the last 15 years.

Rogue One was also finished in 4k IIRC, so there should be some increase in detail, compression notwithstanding. TFA was only finished in 2k AFAIK, but the hdr should impress.

It’s the stuck-in-2k PT that I’m maybe the most curious about, both in terms of the 4k upscale and how it fares in hdr.

I posted my thoughts earlier, watched these 4K LED display with Dolby Vision via an Apple TV device.

ShiftyEyes said:

I sampled the 4K versions of the OT on Disney+ earlier. They share a lot of the same issues as the 2004/2011 masters. Colors are the biggest improvement. Colors are better and they’ve dropped the blue and pink color casts from the SE and previous DVD/Blu-ray releases. Unfortunately, it looks like another job from Lowry/Reliance Mediaworks. Moderate digital noise reduction, edge enhancement, frozen grain. Close ups look pretty solid, if not a bit soft. But anything wider and you start to see the issues. Basically, a huge disappointment if you’re a videophile and have been waiting for these 4K masters for years.

I think they’re fairly poor remasters. Casual viewers may think they’re fine, but technically they’re pretty bad especially compared to some of the stellar 4K releases of “Blade Runner”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, etc. we’ve gotten in recent years. Basically, the remastering team degrained the whole thing and detail was taken off as a result. They then sharpen the image and then add some light homogeneous digital grain so it doesn’t look too mushy. It all results in a splotchy, filtered look with new digital artifacts do to all the noise reduction and grain manipulation. They essentially freeze frame the backgrounds so the film grain doesn’t move. It’s almost as if the actors are standing in front of photographs rather than real locations/sets. If you have any appreciation for how film should look, it’s really weird. These are basically the same tricks Lowry/Reliance has been using for years and it was fine on the DVD days and passable in 1080p, but in 4K, it really shows. Hell, what’s the point of scanning the original camera negatives in 4K if you’re just going to filter off all the detail and mess it up with your own digital artifacts?

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Someone asked about the compositing in the rancor scene a little while ago, and I don’t know if they got an answer, but I’m at that scene now and can give my two cents. I’m not sure if the compositing itself is new or the same as the 97 or the 04, but the color is definitely tweaked (beyond the general tint improvements) to make the composited rancor bits match the wide shots of the puppet more closely.

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ShiftyEyes said:

Fang Zei said:

Does anyone have a D+ subscription and the hardware to stream it in 4k (even if it’s only in sdr)? I’d be very curious what the OT looks like at full 2160p res. The compression probably cancels out some of the extra detail, but I would still think this looks better than what we’ve had to live with for the last 15 years.

Rogue One was also finished in 4k IIRC, so there should be some increase in detail, compression notwithstanding. TFA was only finished in 2k AFAIK, but the hdr should impress.

It’s the stuck-in-2k PT that I’m maybe the most curious about, both in terms of the 4k upscale and how it fares in hdr.

I posted my thoughts earlier, watched these 4K LED display with Dolby Vision via an Apple TV device.

ShiftyEyes said:

I sampled the 4K versions of the OT on Disney+ earlier. They share a lot of the same issues as the 2004/2011 masters. Colors are the biggest improvement. Colors are better and they’ve dropped the blue and pink color casts from the SE and previous DVD/Blu-ray releases. Unfortunately, it looks like another job from Lowry/Reliance Mediaworks. Moderate digital noise reduction, edge enhancement, frozen grain. Close ups look pretty solid, if not a bit soft. But anything wider and you start to see the issues. Basically, a huge disappointment if you’re a videophile and have been waiting for these 4K masters for years.

I think they’re fairly poor remasters. Casual viewers may think they’re fine, but technically they’re pretty bad especially compared to some of the stellar 4K releases of “Blade Runner”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, etc. we’ve gotten in recent years. Basically, the remastering team degrained the whole thing and detail was taken off as a result. They then sharpen the image and then add some light homogeneous digital grain so it doesn’t look too mushy. It all results in a splotchy, filtered look with new digital artifacts do to all the noise reduction and grain manipulation. They essentially freeze frame the backgrounds so the film grain doesn’t move. It’s almost as if the actors are standing in front of photographs rather than real locations/sets. If you have any appreciation for how film should look, it’s really weird. These are basically the same tricks Lowry/Reliance has been using for years and it was fine on the DVD days and passable in 1080p, but in 4K, it really shows. Hell, what’s the point of scanning the original camera negatives in 4K if you’re just going to filter off all the detail and mess it up with your own digital artifacts?

So you’re saying that film grain is a good thing and should never be touched?

The unfortunate reality of the Star Wars prequel and Disney trilogies is that they will always be around. Forever. They will never go away. It can never be undone.

I also prefer to be referred to as “TNT”, not “Freezing”.

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I feel like trying to properly judge stuff like fine detail and film grain via ANY stream is probably a recipe for inaccuracies. Disney+ might have a very good compression algorithm but it’s still going to be very compressed compared to what we’ll actually get on the UHD/BD set next year. Color/Contrast is going to be a much more fair assessment to make.

I just looked at Empire Strikes Back and the very famous “we fixed the opacity during the snowspeeder attack” lie is still a lie - you can still see through the canopies. I always thought it was funny they went out of their way on the LD and VHS documentaries to point out how they “fixed” that, and all they really did is tell people exactly where to look to see it still there when they put the actual movie on.

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I don’t know about anyone here, but I feel like the colors in the 4K Disney+ versions of the Original Trilogy do look a bit similar to the Despecialized Editions in color grading. The only difference I can see is that the Disney+ versions are a slight bit darker than Harmy’s versions.

The name’s Lawson. Noah Lawson.

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Wazzles said:

It looks like the disappearing Y Wings are back.

What about the disappearing TIE Fighters in ROTJ???

Or the stunt person’s arm in the Wampa’s suit in ESB??

Or the side of the screen cut off during the TIE Fighter battle in ANH??

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I decided to say hell with it and make my pre-TROS marathon a viewing of the official cuts as presented on Disney+ (will probably be the last time I watch these versions).

TPM tonight - it doesn’t look like a new scan to me (waxy faces, woo) but it does seem like a new color grade has been done for HDR, so the colors appear significantly better to my eye than any previous home video release of TPM. So there’s that.

JEDIT: Default forced subs suck. I tweaked them to look okay (200% size, depressed font edge, 0% background opacity), but they still alternate seemingly at random between the top and bottom of the screen, which is super annoying. And they are parly in, partly out of the letterboxing no matter what you do.

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I’d like to see a screenshot of the Tantive door right before the imperials blow it up. It’s been used as an example of how much detail was lost in the cleaning process for the dvd/bluray.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Anyone got screenshots of that new TPM colour grade? The Bluray colours are all kinds of awful.

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It seems like the prequels were sourced from the BluRay master but altered a bit from there, and the originals remastered from what the 2004 masters were sourced from but redone from there. 1997 changed are once again carried over, with anything subsequent being redone. A. couple of 2004 fixes seem to have been accidentally omitted, a few more have been done, and the previous 2004/2011 changes have been recreated (some more successfully than others). The originals have a far better color grade but have been processed to a greater degree that may not be desirable.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Oke, having reviewed the new 4K masters I see a much more detailed image with less artifacts, and so a much better source to work from for future fan restorations. However, the more I look at the colors the less I like them. The reason for this, is that this new 4K master seems to have the opposite problem of the oversaturated 2004 master, namely that the color grading for all six saga films seem to be almost devoid of color appearing almost monochrome in several scenes.

To be honest I’ve never seen 4K restorations with so little color. Just for comparison here’s a frame from the recent 4K restoration of 2001: A Space Odyssey:

Here are several shots from the Blade Runner restoration:

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Is this an issue caused by HDR being played on an 8 bit display? When I play any HDR Bluray on a non HDR display then the picture looks grey and dull.

Please note that my country doesn’t have Disney plus yet so I’m just going off the conversations here.

EDIT: No, on closer inspection of these screencaps, the picture is just coloured so it looks dull. Not an issue with HDR.

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Stotchy said:

Is this an issue caused by HDR being played on an 8 bit display? When I play any HDR Bluray on a non HDR display then the picture looks grey and dull.

Please note that my country doesn’t have Disney plus yet so I’m just going off the conversations here.

No, I have a 4K HDR display, and none of the other 4K HDR films on Disney+ have these issues. RO and TFA for example both look stunning in 4K HDR. In any case these screenshots are from the 1080p version of the films, but the 4K HDR versions look very similar.

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Will a single LUT correction for each film fix this issue? 😉