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AOTC 35mm historical preservation (WIP) - scan complete, fully funded, entered final processing tweaking stage

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FULLY FUNDED
[x] Print purchased.
[x] Print in hand.
[x] Scan data HD purchased.
[x] Print and scan data HD at scanner.
[x] The scan/tape backup/secondary transport has been fully funded during first funding stage. I covered print, the rest of the transport and some storage cost so far.
[x] scan completed and tape backed up
[x] scan data back in hand
[x] initial stage funded
[x] second initial stage funded
[x] full project funded

Main thread is over at the forums (link to the forums can be found on this page https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/4K77-Released/id/60815).

At this point, it is expected to be paired with audio from U.S. theatrical DTS discs (I’ve already mostly processed this, will need to be trimmed between reels and timing matched to print), the U.S. optical audio on the print as well as Spanish theatrical DTS discs. Most to all of the associated trailers will also feature Cinema DTS audio as well as the theatrical optical audio.

Scan will be 6.5K (enough for true 4K of the image area (scans include borders, optical audio area and much of the sprockets so actual image area is only a part of each captured frame), not that this has 4k detail, but the grain should be very well and naturally captured and fine and the 6.5K should overcome the Bayer sensor of the scanner and give essentially true color per pixel).

This project also includes on the side, 6.5K scans of the following trailers to be paired with their optical audio tracks:
U.S. Star Wars teaser
U.S. Star Wars trailer
U.S. TPM Trailer ‘A’
U.S. TPM Trailer ‘B’
U.S. AOTC Trailer ‘A’
U.S. AOTC Trailer ‘B’

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Scanning has begun. First reel is done and the rest are now gonna be done.

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a couple of random, first reel quick and dirty sample scan frames, may not be accurate color and tonal curve, no cleanup:

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Resilio link to the GrindyGrindhouse version of the complete reel1 (with built-in Minority Report trailer as well) put up in the donors group PM chain.

Kinda cool to see it even if it comes from such a rough bit of data! It is kinda neat. And kinda looks better, much better than expected from the rough sample source!

I guess the print has a bit more dust spots than I thought and a decent bit more white specks, otherwise it looks fantastic.

I really have no idea how close the colors, saturation and tonal curve are to correct here, probably gotta be somewhat off, won’t know until I get the print back to reference since I don’t really have any knowledge of how this scanner reacts and what sort of standard grading makes it true to print, so just guesses and only working from an 8bit ultra compressed mp4 that only had 1440 res across and since the image itself wasn’t side to side since the scan includes a lot of the perfs and borders so the actual image was built from even far less horizontal resolution than that.

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MonkeyLizard10 said:

Resilio link to the GrindyGrindhouse version of the complete reel1 (with built-in Minority Report trailer as well) put up in the donors group PM chain.

Kinda cool to see it even if it comes from such a rough bit of data! It is kinda neat. And kinda looks better, much better than expected from the rough sample source!

I guess the print has a bit more dust spots than I thought and a decent bit more white specks, otherwise it looks fantastic.

I really have no idea how close the colors, saturation and tonal curve are to correct here, probably gotta be somewhat off, won’t know until I get the print back to reference since I don’t really have any knowledge of how this scanner reacts and what sort of standard grading makes it true to print, so just guesses and only working from an 8bit ultra compressed mp4 that only had 1440 res across and since the image itself wasn’t side to side since the scan includes a lot of the perfs and borders so the actual image was built from even far less horizontal resolution than that.

That’s great to hear. Is there a thread on Wilrob’s site?

Luke astro-projects himself to Salt Lake Planet, gets shot at by gorilla walkers, has a non-lightsaber duel with Darth Millennial, then dies of a broken heart, inspiring broom boys throughout the galaxy to get creative with their sweeping. - DuracellEnergizer

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J0E said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Resilio link to the GrindyGrindhouse version of the complete reel1 (with built-in Minority Report trailer as well) put up in the donors group PM chain.

Kinda cool to see it even if it comes from such a rough bit of data! It is kinda neat. And kinda looks better, much better than expected from the rough sample source!

I guess the print has a bit more dust spots than I thought and a decent bit more white specks, otherwise it looks fantastic.

I really have no idea how close the colors, saturation and tonal curve are to correct here, probably gotta be somewhat off, won’t know until I get the print back to reference since I don’t really have any knowledge of how this scanner reacts and what sort of standard grading makes it true to print, so just guesses and only working from an 8bit ultra compressed mp4 that only had 1440 res across and since the image itself wasn’t side to side since the scan includes a lot of the perfs and borders so the actual image was built from even far less horizontal resolution than that.

That’s great to hear. Is there a thread on Wilrob’s site?

Thanks!

yeah

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The AOTC 35mm feature has now been entirely scanned as well as the associated trailers for this project.
Funding for the gigantic HD needed for the temp rendering for the main feature would be helpful.
A few quick samples of the feature will likely be provided first, including a a 4K still of the infamous skin job hand at the wedding (that major change between versions has probably not been seen in any quality by all but a few in like two decades). Then the trailers will likely get finished first (although bring back the color and all the color in the two Star Wars trailers might be the last part of the project).

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Some great news! I just got back a little while ago with all of the scan data and prints!

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$947 = funding initial stage 1
$1202.89 = funding initial stage 2
$1437.89 = full project funding (as of this week’s pricing)

so far:
(pledged $1010)
collected $960

need $242.89 more for initial stage 2 funding to be completed and need $477.89 more full project funding

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Currently refining color calibration of scan data for the TPM Trailer A (Teaser).

Have colors quite close to matching the 35mm print viewed on D56 CRI 95 lightbox side by side. I believe the teaser trailer has a noticeably different color grading for many scenes than the final release print (don’t have one of those, but I remember the colors being a fair bit different on it, especially the reds and oranges). I have not yet looked at the main release trailer for TPM:

Sample frame in 4k from 6.5K scan of the trailer mentioned above (very close to looking what the actual 35mm Trailer print looks like, not absolutely exact but the color and saturation level are dialed in pretty close here) with initial direct side by side color calibration and zero DNR applied:

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To join in supporting this project DM me here or at the related forums.

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I just posted a Reslio Link to a complete betahouse of the complete The Phantom Menace Trailer ‘A’ (the original U.S. teaser) in 4k REC709 Gamma 2.4 SDR in the AOTC contributor’s PM thread in UHD REC709 primaries Gamma 2.4 SDR at 95 bitrate h.265 (HEVC). No dirt cleanup and such and not quite fully tweaked, but the colors are already pretty close now to the actual 35mm look (compared on screen side by side with the actual 35mm frames on a D56 CRI 95 lightbox).

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grindhouse versions for (all U.S. versions):
Star Wars 1976 Teaser (in open matte but converted to B&W due to major magenta)
The Phantom Menace Trailer A (Teaser)
The Phantom Menace Trailer B (Main)
Attack Of The Clones “Black Eyes” Trailer A (Teaser)
Attack Of The Clones “Black Eyes” Trailer B (Main)

now all posted to the private contributor’s thread at the other forums

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Funding is getting close now, but still a couple hundred or so away so still open for new contributors. Need mega storage to render out main feature TIFFs.

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First general public sampler of the feature itself is up now on the other forums in one of the most recent posts in the main public project thread.

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Project final total is now known to be $1432 and is close to fully funded, now at 94% collected.
Just $83 short of being fully funded now.

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I think I may have finally found a working base for the scanner machine’s calibration! And it also seems likely that the feature and trailer will now use the same WB/tint (or at worst maybe +/- 1) as the rest on the same stock. It will probably take up to ten working days to fine-tune it and verify it across tons of frames across a few trailers and bits of a couple of features. But if it all works out, finally I should have a 1.0 of the calibration ready and can start processing final 1.0 versions of everything. I hope!

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Just now came across this and wow! I’m so excited to see this.

I’d love to donate as well!

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DylanDrew said:

Just now came across this and wow! I’m so excited to see this.

I’d love to donate as well!

Thanks! This one (AOTC) is already fully funded but see the sister site to this one for more info.
But I also have a Jurassic Park project (closed access to funders only as with most non-SW projects, trailers are usually open access on Youtube but higher quality, less compressed versions, wide gamut (assuming Youttube gets rid of that) mostly donor’s only links) plus tons of trailers that still needs a lot of funding as well as a small, single reel 20+ min segment of ROTS plus a bunch more SW trailers (four ROTS trailers, ROTJ SE trailer, TPM 3D trailer, original ESB unfaded trailer (German), original ESB trailer (only modest color fading), etc.) project that needs funding. I may also have a (most of, one reel, I think the second reel, missing) scan project for The Sure Thing coming after, most likely. And have TONS more trailers coming, that could also always use a lot of funding, have literally dozens upon dozens of trailers, lots of 80s and 90s in particular to get scanned. (Later on, possibly also The Bounty (1984). Maybe eventually Pretty Woman (open matte) but it has molds and would need some deal with a scanner worked out and to see if the mold removal works.)

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Most to all of the associated trailers will also feature Cinema DTS audio as well as the theatrical optical audio.

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Working on a specific color calibration for this feature alone as it seems to need a slightly different tweak than most of the other stuff scanned.

A few samples comparing 35mm to the DVD, BD, HDTV broadcast.

The blue (Pantoran?) girl on the left is INSANELY hyper saturated on the actual 35mm, finally seeing what I recalled in the theater and what fell so flat on the DVD, BD and HDTV broadcasts (didn’t get to check yet whether the UHD with the wide gamut palette restored her colors or not).

However, this part at least, with the blue girl, is not the fault of altered color grading (although it still is a bit) but more that her colors are simply way beyond anything regular sRGB/REC709 standard gamut colors can show. I posted the 35mm in both sRGB and ProPhotoRGB wide gamut and you can see how the sRGB clips her saturation right back to the basic home versions.

Note that you can only see her proper colors if you are viewing on a wide gamut display set to wide gamut mode and with a proper display profile and FULLY color-managed viewer. Otherwise it will just look the same as the 35mm standard gamut version or completely incorrect one way or another.

It turns out the her colors seem to be too intense for the scanner used to be able to pickup so I had to manually adjust her colors (shows that it can be important to have the reference print in hand when dealing with scans, if I did not, then either she (as well as the “A Long Time Ago…” intro title, would be way undersaturated, either that or they would have been fine but then lots of more neautral and low saturated stuff would have picked up too strong of an aqua cast. No matter what I do I can’t get the calibration to produce the intense enough colors for her and that title without then making lots of other stuff too saturated. I think it means the scanner just could not see those colors or that the software in the scanner unfortunately remapped the raw data to a somewhat too small colorspace.

It turns out that the home versions are maybe so much tealified in some scenes as more that they were magentified actually. And then lack of wide gamut clipped a few colors badly like her and the “A Long Time Ago…” intro and, to a lesser extent, some other aqua/blu/cyan/teal/turquoise shades and to an even lesser extent a few dark reds and such, throughout. In this scene they seem to have made the Twilek a more wild and intense green though, at least compared to this particular 35mm print. Maybe to make up for lack of blue richness in the Pantoran??

AOTC comp:
35mm ProPhotoRGB wide gamut:

35mm sRGB:

BD REC709 Gamma 2.4:

DVD: REC709 Gamma 2.4:

HDTVD REC709 Gamma 2.4:

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One interesting update is that, Reel 1 at the least, has many scenes that have a color palette extending beyond REC709 standard gamut colors. I know that there had been speculation that the title having been shot on REC709 digital cameras might not feature any wide gamut colors, but it clearly does. In fact, it is has been breaking the REC709 boundary more than a much of the stuff I’ve had scanned so far. Even the intro text “A long time ago…” actually is in a color way beyond standard REC709 gamut.

In fact, it goes so wide gamut color for some aquas/turquoise type colors that the scanner used seems to be color blind to those colors so it is going to need manual correction for some scenes. Luckily some other scenes where it goes past the scanner machine’s gamut can just be assigned a new calibration that goes wild with saturation and such to push them into the proper wide gamut colors since they don’t have any other similar colors that need to stay tame. But it will require a bit of a mess of special calibrations for this scene and that scene and some where manual adjusting with masks will need to be done. So a bit unfortunate pain that is also slowing the project down.

But it is also cool in that there will be some pretty wild colors that don’t show up at all on DVD or blu-ray (didn’t get to look yet whether the UHD has them intense, even if so, they will likely be too magenta pushed anyway).