First, to clarify that there are two versions of "our" pre-ANH disc. The
first has a recreated crawl and three sound mixes: mono (from a VHS boot),
matrixed Dolby stereo (from the late 90's widescreen laserdisc), and the
Definitive Edition mix, which we believe to be a mixdown of the 1977
six-track 70mm mix. At the time we were unaware of Burtt's 1995 home video
remix, so we thought the widescreen LD track was identical to the 1977
stereo and labeled it as such. This first disc was encoded straight from
the Beta tapes using the multipass feature of the Sonic and thus retained
the not-quite-black letterbox bars w/ burned-in subtitles and did not enjoy
frame-by-frame cleanup of film and video artifacts. Whenever we encountered
a dropout on the tape, we'd have to re-transfer the affected portion from
the LD to another tape, lay down new timecode to match the master with the
error on it, and reencode that section. Quite a laborious process.
That is from an e-mail posted on the Editdroid thread from the DVD creators.
If you have the 4 Rowman extra's disks there is not a lot of point in getting the Dr Gonzo discs too unless you are a completist.
The Cowclops version has been getting mixed reviews with some people hardly liking it at all.
As far as the Holiday Special, the best (in my opinion) is any derivative of this......
- Source - alleged 1st/2nd generation "broadcast" tape from KCCI Channel 8 Des Moines, Iowa
first has a recreated crawl and three sound mixes: mono (from a VHS boot),
matrixed Dolby stereo (from the late 90's widescreen laserdisc), and the
Definitive Edition mix, which we believe to be a mixdown of the 1977
six-track 70mm mix. At the time we were unaware of Burtt's 1995 home video
remix, so we thought the widescreen LD track was identical to the 1977
stereo and labeled it as such. This first disc was encoded straight from
the Beta tapes using the multipass feature of the Sonic and thus retained
the not-quite-black letterbox bars w/ burned-in subtitles and did not enjoy
frame-by-frame cleanup of film and video artifacts. Whenever we encountered
a dropout on the tape, we'd have to re-transfer the affected portion from
the LD to another tape, lay down new timecode to match the master with the
error on it, and reencode that section. Quite a laborious process.
That is from an e-mail posted on the Editdroid thread from the DVD creators.
If you have the 4 Rowman extra's disks there is not a lot of point in getting the Dr Gonzo discs too unless you are a completist.
The Cowclops version has been getting mixed reviews with some people hardly liking it at all.
As far as the Holiday Special, the best (in my opinion) is any derivative of this......
- Source - alleged 1st/2nd generation "broadcast" tape from KCCI Channel 8 Des Moines, Iowa
Apart from the Holiday Special, there is a bit of info and menu shots of all the other titles you mentioned on a site I have been working on.
I think that it covers all the known versions of the OT and SE as well as a few of the projects mentioned here on ot.com. Any I have missed out, please let me know.