We’ve just passed the £1000 mark in the donation drive. Thank you everyone who has donated so far. We’re a third of the way to the £3000 goal already. I really couldn’t do these edits without the amazing generosity of you guys, so i am eternally grateful for all your help.
First render passes ( 1 standard and one reverse) on the ESB:R upscale have been completed . I’m about half way though replacing the first 2-3 frames at the beginning of every shot to combat the issues with the upscaler bleeding frames from a previous shot. It’s a long process but this stage should be completed by the end of next week. So far i have counted over 100 shots that need to be either replaced , because the upscaler didn’t do a very good job, so it won’t be a 100% upscale. These will either be re-rendered in 1080p from the original project files, some native 1080p from the original blu-ray & some shots replaced using the new 2020 blu-ray versions. I’m hoping the video side of things will be finished by the beginning of May 2021.
Now the audio side of things for the 1080p releases . I’m not sure if rendering a 6.1 or 7.1 track is even worth it TBH. The 6.1 audio track on the 2011 blu-rays for the OT are a bit of a con. The extra track contains silence for about 99% of the film. There are very quick sound effects in about 6 places throughout Empire . And the 2020 7.1 just duplicate this track to give the extra track. So anyone that complains if i just do 5.1 audio is really complaining for no reason. But the main reason why it may just be 5.1 is because i do not have any software that can encode DTS-MA let alone encode a 6.1 or 7.1 audio track. The DTS software suite is ridiculous price and now only seems to be available for Mac. If i were able to create a 6.1 DTS track then i would need to remake the extra channel(s) from scratch and i only have a 5.1 setup so i couldn’t really test out the extra channels anyway.
But one thing i have decided about the audio tracks for the 1080p versions of ANH:R & ESB:R is that these will have duel audio tracks…
ANH:R -
Track 1 - New audio mix without the “Battle of the Heroes” music during the Vader / Obi-Wan duel
Track 2 - Same audio mix as above but with the “battle of the Heroes” music added to the sabre duel
ESB:R -
Track 1 - New audio mix featuring Jason Wingreen’s original Boba Fett dub.
Track 2 - Same audio mix as above but with Temuera Morrison’s Boba Fett dub.
So, for these two films, you will get a choice of audio track. Jedi will likely just have one.