AOTC 35mm historical preservation (WIP) - scan complete, fully funded, entered final processing tweaking stage — Page 2

I may have made an interesting finding. I’m getting a weird feeling that the official releases for the prequels accidentally got locked into sourcing from a standard gamut REC709 source at some point.

I’ve read that sometimes home releases were given a slight magenta push to try to counter the apparent yellow-green push that apparently the average consumer CRT TV had back in the day. I wonder if that is why the DVD for AOTC got a bit of magenta on some scenes. And then I wonder if they have not stuck with the HD master made for the DVD as the starting point ever since? Or some early master work done in REC709 as the basis (back then with no consumer wide gamut home formats around). And thus even the blu-ray ending up still with a magenta tint? And then even the UHD.

But the really new thing, the more shocking thing than just some home releases having some different tint or grading (which I think is very common), but I have a weird feeling that someone forgot to realize that at some point the main masters for the prequels got handled in REC709’s limited gamut colors and so when presented on the UHD… they still seem to clip away stunningly rich colors to REC709 even though UHD has full REC2020 gamut capability (although it is often aimed more at P3 a bit smaller wide gamut).

The reasons I say this are:
I just compared some scenes of AOTC 35mm side by side with AOTC UHD/BD/DVD and ALL of the home discs, not just the DVD/BD which would have to clip, but even the UHD which does support wide gamut colors, seem to show the same muted aquas/turquoise/deep cyan/deep intense green-blue (like of the blue girl, a Pantoran maybe?, in the early scene in Palpatine’s Senate office or the laser field along the floor of Padme’s bedroom near the start or the aqua rectangular the probe droid opens up in the force field on her bedroom window when it drops those poisonous creatures in or or some lighting on Coruscant cityscape or some of the heads up display items on Obi-wan’s ship, etc.) and even the intro title “A long time ago…” all look relatively similar on all home formats but then are often wildly more intensely saturated (or even a different shade of color that does not even exist in REC709) on the 35mm print and then if you digitize a frame of the print and mess around until it looks the same as the 35mm side by side on a calibrated wide gamut monitor and then convert the frame to standard sRGB/REC709 gamut all those colors in those scenes suddenly become muted in exactly the same way as they look on all the home formats.

Also interesting is that looking at the “A long time ago…” intro on say the ROTJ UHD it does have at least some of the intense weird slightly turquoise blue as scene on the AOTC 35mm print intro and the OT were fresh scans seemingly treated in wide gamut workflow.

So it almost seems like a mistake was made at some point and maybe the prequels official post-theatrical working masters got locked into limited gamut REC709 colors at some point! Either that or somehow the transfer from digital master to film simply boosted some of those shades wildly and the original 35mm prints never looked like the digital masers or the theatrical digital versions. I sort of feel like it might be more likely that they simply ended up bogging their modified working master into REC709 at some point and got stuck with that limited palette (and didn’t try to bring it back by hand at some later point once wide gamut home formats and digital P3+ projection came out), at the least for AOTC, but perhaps for 1 and 3 as well (since a quick glance at those also showed the “A long time ago…” looking a pale, muted blue on the UHDs).

Anyway, for whatever reason, I see some really wildly intense blues/aquas in some scenes on the 35mm print, stunning colors, that are simply not there on any home version (not that DVD or BD would be capable of showing them but not even on the UHD which is). So it seems to be a lot more than just a bit of a magenta tint or teal tint. It is interesting since AOTC was said to be shot on a camera that only did limited gamut REC709, but it would seem that they boosted up some colors that film can handle well intensely (stuff in blue-green intense range) in post, either that or somehow the transfer to film just made those colors go wild naturally.

It is also wild how completely absolutely different the color and saturation of “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” looks on the AOTC 35mm print than on any home release. And that Pantoran(?) shown in the post above.

Hal 9000 said:

Fascinating. Who would have thought that a film print would be such a uniquely valuable thing for AOTC?

Yeah, it is interesting. Whether it is just an artifact of how print film picks up those colors or intended and then later lost by getting stuck in early REC709 work flow post theatrical release there do seem to be colors that get chopped off by standard gamut for AOTC.

Here are some more examples of how it extends beyond standard gamut where I compare the 35mm left in wide gamut (ProPhotoRGB in this case) and then compare with the same frame converted down to standard sRGB gamut (same color palette as REC709 although different gamma tonal curve in the standard, but the latter part is not relevant here):

Here are some demos that show the differences between how AOTC looks when you have wide gamut color palette available vs. when it is restricted to sRGB/REC709 color palette (of course you need to use fully color-managed browser/viewer and have a wide gamut display set to wide gamut display mode with proper display profile installed in order to see the differences, and in some cases, to even see the WG labelled images properly at all). For each pair SG is first and WG is second (should be obvious on a properly set up wide gamut display):

Hopefully processing of a non-beta 1.0 version can start in around a week or so. It will still take considerable time even once that is going as some parts, especially reel 1, will need a lot of scene by scene tuning to bring back the full aqua/wild blue type colors by hand as well as each reel is like 20,000 frames and it will take my PC ages to process 20,000 DNG to intermediate stills (especially since Photoshop seems to crash out overnight after only doing like 2000 frames or so, hopefully that issue can get resolved so a much longer time each night can be spent having it render frames out).

When will the 35mm be allowed to download.

Apparently mods on the other site have requested that a grindhouse be released, which he has yet to do. This project is beginning to whiff of something.

Rendering out the final TPM ‘B’ trailer as I type as a test to make sure everything is working (especially after the huge crash wiped out my computer and lot of settings (but not the color calibrations which I thankfully had done a manual back up on recently enough). After that then will start rendering out the AOTC feature. Will do it reel by reel since the rendering takes a LONG time so final stuff can be seen before the entire feature is done. A number of seconds per frame for the intermediate PNG outs and there are 24,000+ frames per reel. It’s a maxsize 6.5K DNG based project not a quicker 2k or 4k ProRes scan based project. It’s tons of terabytes of scan data. I’ll also put out the first 10 minutes of reel 1 once that is done to get something out there sooner. Anyway, the feature will finally start rendering out this month (August).

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Rendering out the final TPM ‘B’ trailer as I type as a test to make sure everything is working (especially after the huge crash wiped out my computer and lot of settings (but not the color calibrations which I thankfully had done a manual back up on recently enough). After that then will start rendering out the AOTC feature. Will do it reel by reel since the rendering takes a LONG time so final stuff can be seen before the entire feature is done. A number of seconds per frame for the intermediate PNG outs and there are 24,000+ frames per reel. It’s a maxsize 6.5K DNG based project not a quicker 2k or 4k ProRes scan based project. It’s tons of terabytes of scan data. I’ll also put out the first 10 minutes of reel 1 once that is done to get something out there sooner. Anyway, the feature will finally start rendering out this month (August).

I thought you finished reel 1 a long time ago and that copy was distributed among donors, isn’t that right?

anaconda said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Rendering out the final TPM ‘B’ trailer as I type as a test to make sure everything is working (especially after the huge crash wiped out my computer and lot of settings (but not the color calibrations which I thankfully had done a manual back up on recently enough). After that then will start rendering out the AOTC feature. Will do it reel by reel since the rendering takes a LONG time so final stuff can be seen before the entire feature is done. A number of seconds per frame for the intermediate PNG outs and there are 24,000+ frames per reel. It’s a maxsize 6.5K DNG based project not a quicker 2k or 4k ProRes scan based project. It’s tons of terabytes of scan data. I’ll also put out the first 10 minutes of reel 1 once that is done to get something out there sooner. Anyway, the feature will finally start rendering out this month (August).

I thought you finished reel 1 a long time ago and that copy was distributed among donors, isn’t that right?

The donors had gotten a 3-ish GB render of Reel 1 in 2022, then a 856 MB render for Reel 2 this month.

Schilkeman said:

Apparently mods on the other site have requested that a grindhouse be released, which he has yet to do. This project is beginning to whiff of something.

It whiffs of envy and distrust from your part.

Hello!
Is this project already ready and able to be downloaded somewhere? If yes, where? Is that BD ISO file of it on Myspleen the same as this, just downscaled to 1080p or just a preview version or a complete other scan?

The user was banned from TSWT Forum for failing to communicate with donors and moderators and failing to release any kind of full preview after 2 years. As far as I know, he is currently working on it privately with no timeline for release.

There is another scan that has been done by desertfox on TSWT, with a full preview being available, which is likely the one on Myspleen you are talking about.

skywalker89 said:

Hello!
Is this project already ready and able to be downloaded somewhere? If yes, where? Is that BD ISO file of it on Myspleen the same as this, just downscaled to 1080p or just a preview version or a complete other scan?

Hey! Great to hear from you!
Sorry, not just yet.

Reel 1 would have been out already some weeks ago though if not for the recent goings on which ended up with the side effect of delaying something that had been just about ready to go, another couple months, a sad useless shame, but whatever. I had been giving slews of updates and samples.

Anyway, I know nothing about some supposed other version other than someone claimed it exists a couple months ago. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with me but it sounds like they have their full ultra grindhouse which is all they seemed to care about. And it sounds like TN1’s TSWTF own fully funded original project never did even the scan done after over 5 years and then they seemed to declare it abandoned…

My version is still coming and will have been directly graded side by side to an actual print and one of the (seemingly few for this title) printed on the highest quality Kodak 2393 stock. It turns out each stock seems to need a different calibration and creating the calibrations was an unbelievably time consuming and manor labor job (and even before it could be scanned I first had to work out all sorts of new findings with the scanner that alone took a couple months). With this stock seeming to need one with some of the most extensive side tweaks. And will custom by hand bring back some of the ultra intense aqua/teal/turquoise that was beyond even what the scanner seemed able to capture. I have TPM main trailer already out. And will in time have all the prequel trailers out as well as original 1976 SW trailer (have a temp version already out from a lightly faded Fuji print) and ESB US and German versions (German one is even unfaded Fuji print) and all the special editions trailers.

AOTC Reel 1 rendering test started to verify black levels. If the black levels are good then it’ll have outright started rendering. Just gotta verify them on OLED and in motion and see if that needs to be tweaked so just about there.

Looks like Reel 1 has Kodak 2383 stock for the attached trailer spliced to Kodak 2393 stock for the main feature and seems they each need a slightly different calibration. Also the main feature on reel 1 needs a different calibration than the other reels for one reason or another (maybe since only that had the proxy .mp4 created along with the DNGs during the scan and that changed how it did the colors; the 2383 trailer stock made it do some under the hood base calibration different than when fed 2393 during that step; something set or read in during initializing step differently; etc.?).

Reel1 also will need some insanely intense aqua/turquoise/mint colors brought back by hand so will be a pain, especially for the second half of it. For one reason or another the scanner wasn’t able to capture their true intensity and if calibration is set to make them look correct then the rest of the movie picks up way too much teal saturation and if the rest of the movie looks correct then those look muted.

Current progress?

How is it going?