D+80 - Empire Strikes Back - 4K Theatrical Reconstruction (Released)

What is this you ask? This is a “theatrical” reconstruction (mostly) of The Empire
Strikes Back using the UHD BluRay 2160p HDR version as it’s main source.

This is not a pure theatrical reconstruction though. It is very close to theatrical.

I call it D+80.

All my posts and updates have been on the other forum. I just didn’t want to maintain two discussions about it. I’m posting this here for those not on the other site to know what this is.

V2.0 is the latest version available at the usual place.

Edit: v2.1 has been released.
 

Sources used…
The 2160p UHD BluRay was used as the primary source for this project.
Two 35mm theatrical prints were used to restore original shots where needed.
All scanned in and cleaned in 4k.

Audio…
This version is not NTSC GOUT synced. Two frames at the end of reel 5 are added back in. It is now essentially PAL GOUT synced but timed to 23.976 fps. Those two frames were present in theatres in 1980 and belong in the film. This is how the film should be viewed, in it’s entirety. This version has the full theatrical audio restored for this by schorman and hairy_hen. If you have alternate language audio it should work fine since the lips don’t match the words anyway. Please don’t try to NTSC GOUT sync this movie. Instead re-sync the audio you have and shared it back to the community. It’s time to abandon the flawed GOUT standard and keep the film as it was made, as it was seen in 1980 and how this film should only be viewed, in it’s original glorious entirety. It’s time to readopt the original theatrical standard like 4K83 did.

New 5.1 audio track mastered and theatrically synced by hairy_hen for this release.
Other audio tracks newly mastered and theatrically synced by schorman for this release.
Thank you both.

More info about the audio in the Audio files folder.

Colour…
The original HDR grade took advantage of the wider colour gamut. Since I’m working in SDR, rec.709, I needed to tame the HDR grade. What this means is areas that lacked saturation have been boosted but areas that would have gotten oversaturated with that change have been scaled back. I did a saturation rebalance. Other colour tweaks were used to make it the best I could.
Colour is - HDR tonemapped with a LUT provided by age - final colour by me using only curves (sat-vs-sat, luma-vs-sat, hue-vs-sat, and standard RGB curves).
 

More info…

Theatrical but not completely theatrical…
I restored most of the original 1980 shots of the film, removing most of the CGI and other
unnecessary changes. My preference was quality over authenticity though.
My intent was to keep it as theatrical as possible, but I’m willing to sacrifice some
authenticity for quality sake so some creative license was used in the process.

It’s theatrical in spirit.
 

A new version is in the works. A few replacement shots have been redone already.
 

Did you add film grain to this project? Also I would love if you could point me to the right direction to find these edits as they look outstanding! Congratulations on this.

andresfresard said:

Did you add film grain to this project? Also I would love if you could point me to the right direction to find these edits as they look outstanding! Congratulations on this.

v2.0 does not. I left the grain layer off when I rendered it. The next version will have one.
D+77 v2.1 does have a 35mm grain overlay.

It looks like someone has put them on public torrent sites already. I can’t tell you where but a search and you should find them.

Awesome! I look forward to that next filmgrained version. Keep the great work!

oohteedee said:

andresfresard said:

Did you add film grain to this project? Also I would love if you could point me to the right direction to find these edits as they look outstanding! Congratulations on this.

v2.0 does not. I left the grain layer off when I rendered it. The next version will have one.
D+77 v2.1 does have a 35mm grain overlay.

It looks like someone has put them on public torrent sites already. I can’t tell you where but a search and you should find them.

looks absolutely amazing, but I only see star wars and empire strikes back on here. Any plan to do the same with jedi?

edit: had a look at your post history, glad to see that it’s being worked on by someone

oohteedee said:

andresfresard said:

Did you add film grain to this project? Also I would love if you could point me to the right direction to find these edits as they look outstanding! Congratulations on this.

v2.0 does not. I left the grain layer off when I rendered it. The next version will have one.
D+77 v2.1 does have a 35mm grain overlay.

It looks like someone has put them on public torrent sites already. I can’t tell you where but a search and you should find them.

I prefer to not have any grain added in.

Can this be burned into a regular Blu-Ray?

Someone told me about this and provided a link here. And they said that they thought this version looked better than harmy’s Empire Despecialized Edition.

What terms should I use to search to find this download? And can you burn this on a regular Blu-Ray or do you have to watch it off of a hard drive? I only have a regular HDTV and Blu-Ray player.

Ryan said:

oohteedee said:

andresfresard said:

Did you add film grain to this project? Also I would love if you could point me to the right direction to find these edits as they look outstanding! Congratulations on this.

v2.0 does not. I left the grain layer off when I rendered it. The next version will have one.
D+77 v2.1 does have a 35mm grain overlay.

It looks like someone has put them on public torrent sites already. I can’t tell you where but a search and you should find them.

I prefer to not have any grain added in.

Well you can go ahead and make your own version then with no grain.

andresfresard said:

Did you add film grain to this project? Also I would love if you could point me to the right direction to find these edits as they look outstanding! Congratulations on this.

I was wondering. Why would someone want to add artificial grain to this?

Three reasons:

1. The SE replacement shots are from a release print which has grain. To make these blend better with the disney main source you add grain to the whole film.

2. The movie was shot on film. Disney went crazy with the DNR to the detriment of the movie. Add some grain back and it looks better and more authentic - this is a theatrical reconstruction after all.

3. Grain is good generally (I’m talking negative grain not print grain - that is totally subjective).

If you don’t like grain then stick to watching the prequels. Or as I said earlier, make your own version with no grain.

I’m not seeing this on torrent sites under the name d+80. Have ones been created under another name?

edit: found it. Thank you for making this!

This looks so good. Couldn’t spot the seams in shots of folks walking around Cloud City before 3po gets snatched.

V2.1 has been shared in private in both 1080p and 2160p. I’m sure someone will post them on the spleen sometime in the near future.

I have redone a bunch of shots to make them more seamless and colour corrected a few shots too.

This shot has been totally redone and is “near perfect” now. The original 35mm source was very grainy so it took some effort.

sanjuro_61 fixed the colour of the left side of this shot which still had light shining on it from the SE window that was removed. I improved the rest of the shot.

Other shots redone are the oven shots where Chewie finds 3PO. Two other SE window shots were redone. The final wipe is much better now and the final credits are properly stabilized and cleaned up. Maybe something else I’m forgetting too.

edit: nvm

Dek Rollins said:

(Apologies in advance for the off topic question, I just can’t find a better place to ask right now)

Is TheStarWarsTrilogy down? I’ve checked two sites, one says it’s down, the other says it’s up. Yesterday I just got an error message that mentioned server maintenance, so I assumed the forum was being updated or something. Now it still won’t load the site, but instead of an error message it asks for me to sign in. I assume it’s asking for an administrative sign in or something, because putting in my own sign in info doesn’t do anything.

I figure it’s nothing to worry about, but I wanted to check if anyone else knows what’s up.

I’ve also been wondering about this, it’s been down for a while

Looks like the webhost (HostGator) issued a temporary ban due to overuse of shared resources: https://www.blogtechtips.com/2016/02/05/hostgator-temporary-block-has-been-placed-on-database-access-fix/

Site Owner needs to contact the host to get things resolved.

DVD-BOY said:

ahughes03 said:

Looks like the webhost (HostGator) issued a temporary ban due to overuse of shared resources: https://www.blogtechtips.com/2016/02/05/hostgator-temporary-block-has-been-placed-on-database-access-fix/

Site Owner needs to contact the host to get things resolved.

It looks like probably the attention from the recent HelloGreedo post has cause the traffic to spike outside the TOS.

Thats what i thought too. Hope it will be back soon.

Dek Rollins said:

(Apologies in advance for the off topic question, I just can’t find a better place to ask right now)

Is TheStarWarsTrilogy down? I’ve checked two sites, one says it’s down, the other says it’s up. Yesterday I just got an error message that mentioned server maintenance, so I assumed the forum was being updated or something. Now it still won’t load the site, but instead of an error message it asks for me to sign in. I assume it’s asking for an administrative sign in or something, because putting in my own sign in info doesn’t do anything.

I figure it’s nothing to worry about, but I wanted to check if anyone else knows what’s up.

It’s now back up.

alexp120 said:

Dek Rollins said:

(Apologies in advance for the off topic question, I just can’t find a better place to ask right now)

Is TheStarWarsTrilogy down? I’ve checked two sites, one says it’s down, the other says it’s up. Yesterday I just got an error message that mentioned server maintenance, so I assumed the forum was being updated or something. Now it still won’t load the site, but instead of an error message it asks for me to sign in. I assume it’s asking for an administrative sign in or something, because putting in my own sign in info doesn’t do anything.

I figure it’s nothing to worry about, but I wanted to check if anyone else knows what’s up.

It’s now back up.

Yeah, but been getting high CPU errors all day when I try to look at any threads.

ThrowMeTheWhip said:

alexp120 said:

Dek Rollins said:

(Apologies in advance for the off topic question, I just can’t find a better place to ask right now)

Is TheStarWarsTrilogy down? I’ve checked two sites, one says it’s down, the other says it’s up. Yesterday I just got an error message that mentioned server maintenance, so I assumed the forum was being updated or something. Now it still won’t load the site, but instead of an error message it asks for me to sign in. I assume it’s asking for an administrative sign in or something, because putting in my own sign in info doesn’t do anything.

I figure it’s nothing to worry about, but I wanted to check if anyone else knows what’s up.

It’s now back up.

Yeah, but been getting high CPU errors all day when I try to look at any threads.

Down again, curse you HelloGreedo fans! 😦

I knew it had something to do with that extra attention. This happened right when I decided to download the new 2.1 of course haha