I’m choosing to lean on the side of this being legit, the leaks look a little too detailed, in my opinion, to be faked, but of course stranger things have happened. I guess you could say I’m cautiously optimistic, but if is real it looks promising, especially seeing that they’re restoring the original mono and 6-track mixes…I also love how in the 2004 and 2011 masters are listed as rejected sources LOL.
“Bring my shuttle.”
On the subject of these pictures though… they look nice? I’m not expert but it’s newly graded and the old magenta is gone and the new Disney+ de-saturation is also gone. There’s a bunch of technical stuff in text form which is odd, and so is the lack of real watermark other than a tiny text thing underneath. Is someone on the site that’s been working on their versions over the years around to comment?
I mean, the fact the leak exists in the way it does is odd, full stop (an automated process breaking and accidentally revealing some part of the restoration team is using private YouTube uploads to share quick clips for QC with other parts of the team, complete with chats/transcripts), but the fact the pics look clearly different from the Reliance stuff, AND clearly different from any of the 4K projects, makes it seem pretty clear to me this is the goods.
To add to the mystery, the company that the redditor claims posted these has a private Vimeo page with this one upload publicly visible.
To add to the mystery, the company that the redditor claims posted these has a private Vimeo page with this one upload publicly visible.
It’s from the deleted scene with Luke and 3po.
They also have these 3:
https://vimeo.com/1114746661
https://vimeo.com/1114758654?from=outro-local
https://vimeo.com/1114770007?from=outro-local
At this point, with actual video clips publicly viewable, Lucasfilm might as well just start intentionally teasing us over the next couple years.
To add to the mystery, the company that the redditor claims posted these has a private Vimeo page with this one upload publicly visible.
It’s from the deleted scene with Luke and 3po.
They also have these 3:
https://vimeo.com/1114746661
https://vimeo.com/1114758654?from=outro-local
https://vimeo.com/1114770007?from=outro-local
I thought it looked a little Tunisia-ish but I didn’t want to hope in vain! At the risk of getting burned, this is starting to seem like it would have to be a very elaborate hoax at this point.
(And as an aside, that shot of the lone asteroid hurtling away is giving me big Eraserhead vibes)
Well that’s the thing that makes this so alternately confounding and frustrating: Lucasfilm (or the company being hired out to help restore all this stuff for Lucasfilm for 2027) IS basically teasing us, intentionally or no. And I can’t believe that, by this point, nobody at either the company, or at LFL, doesn’t know about this. But it seems like even in the circles where these leaks and teases would have been massive news just a couple years ago, people are doing one of two things
Both of which combine to make this feel like a big fat “so what.” If these sorts of things don’t spark anything off at the spoiler forums, if the people who hawk those places for cheap/easy “content” at Geek outlets online don’t really care, and if they can’t even gain traction in the place literally NAMED after something like this finally happening, it makes me wonder whether it’s simply too late for this to make the sort of impact many of us have been presuming it’d make when it finally happened.
Definitely seems too elaborate to be a hoax at this point. Not just because of those peculiar Vimeo clips, but also the internal documents the Redditor posted on Imgur seem WAAAAY too detailed to be fake, imo. Whoever wrote them clearly knows what they’re talking about in terms of film restoration, and I can’t imagine someone going through all that effort to fake it just for some internet points in a niche community.
“Bring my shuttle.”
I can’t speak for the people that logged far more hours here than I have, but if this is what it looks like, then I feel like it’s kind of fulfilling the stated mission of this site to a degree. Not to say the myriad fan edits and restorations would be unnecessary or outmoded, but finally having a high-quality, official release of the original cultural touchstone is the ultimate victory for people that have been here for 20+ years, isn’t it?
I agree that it’s weird nobody seems to be noting it right now (I am myself a mostly a lurker who’s been away from here for half a decade, and I was shocked to see nobody had posted about this before me) but I have to believe that the real Yub Nub would start once there’s an official announcement.
It’s still pretty early. If this is, in fact, real (which it looks like it is), hype will almost certainly start building as it comes closer and we get official announcements and whatnot.
“Bring my shuttle.”
To add to the mystery, the company that the redditor claims posted these has a private Vimeo page with this one upload publicly visible.
It’s from the deleted scene with Luke and 3po.
They also have these 3:
https://vimeo.com/1114746661
https://vimeo.com/1114758654?from=outro-local
https://vimeo.com/1114770007?from=outro-localI thought it looked a little Tunisia-ish but I didn’t want to hope in vain! At the risk of getting burned, this is starting to seem like it would have to be a very elaborate hoax at this point.
You can see for yourself. It’s from this deleted scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSTr1usny3E
If I wasn’t at work right now I’d probably see if I could figure out which asteroid that is from Empire Strikes Back, LOL. And then I’d step frame-by-frame through 4K80 for like 3 minutes before I got bored and gave up
For some reason i cannot access any of these “leaks”, pictures or the videos, but i did what the eckharts ladder video where he was talking about the leaks he had seen and showed some of the screen captures. Although the colouring was slightly different, i resized the screencap to the 2020 bluray and , apart from cropping, they overlay perfectly. If they were indeed a new scan of the theatrical then this would be impossible. Even a new scan of the SE negative would throw up differences. So , if he did see leaked footage, are they using the original pre graded scan of the SE that was done for the Blu-rays and then just scanning in the missing footage to make a “theatrical cut”?
EDIT: I’ve just found out the main why i can’t access anything :
For some reason i cannot access any of these “leaks”, pictures or the videos, but i did what the eckharts ladder video where he was talking about the leaks he had seen and showed some of the screen captures. Although the colouring was slightly different, i resized the screencap to the 2020 bluray and , apart from cropping, they overlay perfectly. If they were indeed a new scan of the theatrical then this would be impossible. Even a new scan of the SE negative would throw up differences. So , if he did see leaked footage, are they using the original pre graded scan of the SE that was done for the Blu-rays and then just scanning in the missing footage to make a “theatrical cut”?
EDIT: I’ve just found out the main why i can’t access anything :
Conversely I haven’t seen the EckhartsLadder video and can’t immediately find it among the dozens he’s posted in the last few months, so I can’t speak to whether his screenshots are the same as the reddit post.
Eckhardt also chimed in on that reddit thread to say this is what he saw. Or rather, what he said was “told ya so.” LOL.
I’m not sure these caps share any of the UHD’s same framing decisions. This shot from ESB is cropped in WAY tighter on the UHD than it is on these caps, for example:
Eckhardt also chimed in on that reddit thread to say this is what he saw. Or rather, what he said was “told ya so.” LOL.
I’m not sure these caps share any of the UHD’s same framing decisions. This shot from ESB is cropped in WAY tighter on the UHD than it is on these caps, for example:
I remember that being a thing - all of those Falcon shots are cropped much tighter on the blu/4k, I believe.
I’d like to give some clarity about this leak, and I’m not the leaker from the Reddit thread, just someone who is in the know of the happenings surrounding this event and to provide context:
I was alongside a group of people who knew about the OOT restoration leaks before this got unceremoniously leaked online on Reddit and has unfortunately gained alot of traction. Initially, we thought it was cool for us to share them around because we thought it was uncomfirmed, until we started pixel-peeping and matching alongside the 4K77 sources and other versions of the film, in which we realized it WAS the real deal.
The reason why we “gatekept” this in the first place was out of fear that the absolutely pristine restoration work that these people were doing of the Original Trilogy would be publicly leaked, and be pulled out of release by Disney and Co., and that these projects wont ever see the light of day. It would put the fansites (us, TSWT, etc.) in jeopardy as they might go on banwaves trying to silence us, or finally break that “legal gray area” that we’ve all been operating on for years in terms of restoration projects and fan-edits. It wasn’t really out of hoarding or keeping them to ourselves, we knew the implications if this would leak (given this is some very high level technical stuff involving teams of people working across different departments, allegedly) and we wouldn’t want these people to lose their jobs because of a shoddy autouploader that was posted to a random YouTube account.
Ultimately, it’s a bit saddenning for us because we didn’t want this to leak out the way that it did, and now the people who were involved in this effort (their names were literally on some of the clips) would now be at risk of being blacklisted by the industry even though they weren’t even part of the reason why this was leaked in the first place.
I’d like to give some clarity about this leak, and I’m not the leaker from the Reddit thread, just someone who is in the know of the happenings surrounding this event and to provide context:
I was alongside a group of people who knew about the OOT restoration leaks before this got unceremoniously leaked online on Reddit and has unfortunately gained alot of traction. Initially, we thought it was cool for us to share them around because we thought it was uncomfirmed, until we started pixel-peeping and matching alongside the 4K77 sources and other versions of the film, in which we realized it WAS the real deal.
The reason why we “gatekept” this in the first place was out of fear that the absolutely pristine restoration work that these people were doing of the Original Trilogy would be publicly leaked, and be pulled out of release by Disney and Co., and that these projects wont ever see the light of day. It would put the fansites (us, TSWT, etc.) in jeopardy as they might go on banwaves trying to silence us, or finally break that “legal gray area” that we’ve all been operating on for years in terms of restoration projects and fan-edits. It wasn’t really out of hoarding or keeping them to ourselves, we knew the implications if this would leak (given this is some very high level technical stuff involving teams of people working across different departments, allegedly) and we wouldn’t want these people to lose their jobs because of a shoddy autouploader that was posted to a random YouTube account.
Ultimately, it’s a bit saddenning for us because we didn’t want this to leak out the way that it did, and now the people who were involved in this effort (their names were literally on some of the clips) would now be at risk of being blacklisted by the industry even though they weren’t even part of the reason why this was leaked in the first place.
The Star Wars iceberg just got deeper… did not expect this on my 2025 bingo.
I’m just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe.
Star Wars has 3 eras: The eras are 1977-1983(pre Expanded Universe), (1983-2014) expanded universe, or (2014- now) Disney-bought version. Each are valid.
My movie reviews aren’t AI, they’re just written by someone who’s Neurodivergent. If you don’t like them, then simply don’t read them.
Did anyone have the sense to download the vimeo clips before they were taken down?
I’d imagine anything that went up that anyone knows about got downloaded almost instantly, LOL. The clips we’re talking about today, went up (and back down) months ago, according to the leak.
The work itself apparently has been ongoing since 2022? Which makes the care being taken by the folks who knew for months all the more admirable. It does seem there’s likely zero chance the project was ever going to get full-blown canceled because of a YouTube leak (this would mean LFL/Disney knew five years before release they were going to be doing this in 2027, and had scheduled accordingly) and while I can very much understand not wanting people to get fired for an automation mistake - it really doesn’t seem likely to me that would be in the cards, either?
Especially considering the leak, even now fully leaked, isn’t really making a lot of noise anyway, or at least any that would call down that level of thunder, internally. It’s hard to say, I guess. But the excess of caution is very admirable and thoughtful.
That said, once it’s out, it’s out, and this was always going to happen, LOL. It’s a fundamental part of Star Wars fandom online. To be real, large swaths of how news ITSELF is disseminated online is rooted in how leaks became a pillar of the internet in the late 90s because of Star Wars.
fallenorder0392 said:
The reason why we “gatekept” this in the first place was out of fear that the absolutely pristine restoration work that these people were doing of the Original Trilogy would be publicly leaked, and be pulled out of release by Disney and Co., and that these projects wont ever see the light of day. It would put the fansites (us, TSWT, etc.) in jeopardy as they might go on banwaves trying to silence us, or finally break that “legal gray area” that we’ve all been operating on for years in terms of restoration projects and fan-edits. It wasn’t really out of hoarding or keeping them to ourselves, we knew the implications if this would leak (given this is some very high level technical stuff involving teams of people working across different departments, allegedly) and we wouldn’t want these people to lose their jobs because of a shoddy autouploader that was posted to a random YouTube account.
I’m still not convinced an automated system accidentally created a youtube account and shared clips tbh. Does such a thing even exist, does it happen to other YT users? Is there a ghost in the machine at LFL? It seems more likely this leak was a test gage who much niche interest (and therefor profit) might be gained from such a release. Ironically the release of the real OOT would “silence” fans doing their own work… because the lack of any official release is the reason for the bootlegs.
fallenorder0392 said:
The reason why we “gatekept” this in the first place was out of fear that the absolutely pristine restoration work that these people were doing of the Original Trilogy would be publicly leaked, and be pulled out of release by Disney and Co., and that these projects wont ever see the light of day. It would put the fansites (us, TSWT, etc.) in jeopardy as they might go on banwaves trying to silence us, or finally break that “legal gray area” that we’ve all been operating on for years in terms of restoration projects and fan-edits. It wasn’t really out of hoarding or keeping them to ourselves, we knew the implications if this would leak (given this is some very high level technical stuff involving teams of people working across different departments, allegedly) and we wouldn’t want these people to lose their jobs because of a shoddy autouploader that was posted to a random YouTube account.I’m still not convinced an automated system accidentally created a youtube account and shared clips tbh. Does such a thing even exist, does it happen to other YT users? Is there a ghost in the machine at LFL? It seems more likely this leak was a test gage who much niche interest (and therefor profit) might be gained from such a release. Ironically the release of the real OOT would “silence” fans doing their own work… because the lack of any official release is the reason for the bootlegs.
Yes, as ridiculous as it sounds, the automated uploading system is true. It was confusing to us at first, but we soon came up and developed a couple of theories to explain the craziest discrepancy in all of this.
Our most likely theory is that it’s an auto-uploader system that allows them to quickly review the restored footage and we assume whoever handled this restoration was probably outsourced by Disney and not necessarily by LucasFilm themselves. Therefore, with work being outsourced to restoration artists in different parts of the world, they might’ve found it convenient to quickly share files and previews of the restoration work through YouTube (ideally unlisted, but their script did otherwise).
Another theory is that this might be some haphazard AI-vibe code from someone in the IT department, mandated by some executive board member who wanted to constantly monitor the restoration work.
They certainly have internal viewing software for ingesting and exporting their raw 6k files, but for reasons only God and the people pouring in that room now, they’re using YouTube to do the previews.
It’s still the most confusing part of all this, but we just chalked it up to some incompetence and negligence that ended up wrinkling themselves into the otherwise robust pipeline of the restoration work, given how theres some pretty professional work going on in the leaked documentation, involving move the film reels around and having them cleaned physically through a myriad of methods. But that’s all I can say as I don’t want to become a leaker in the process and just sharing what I can to give a clearer picture of the scenario.
It absolutely sucks that the leaker got their 15 minutes of fame trying to get reddit karma over this restoration leak, and now the talented people and minds who were deeply involved in this project and took great care in restoring the trilogy is going to suffer from it.
Seems legit to me, looks like the same master as the UHD one but without the crap processing on top of it. No power windows for any silly 3D conversion, apparently better DNR but hard to tell, and far better color processing. As for it becoming a nicely packaged UHD of the OUT, being the OUT at all and coming to a theater near you… hard to say, seems like a lot to ask, lol. But those images definitely have my curiosity, or more than that, my attention.
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and…
…
And very well put too, mate. Especially these sections of your two posts…
Ultimately, it’s a bit saddenning for us because we didn’t want this to leak out the way that it did, and now the people who were involved in this effort (their names were literally on some of the clips) would now be at risk of being blacklisted by the industry even though they weren’t even part of the reason why this was leaked in the first place.
and…
It absolutely sucks that the leaker got their 15 minutes of fame trying to get reddit karma over this restoration leak, and now the talented people and minds who were deeply involved in this project and took great care in restoring the trilogy is going to suffer from it.
💯
Though obviously many of us hope that won’t be the case - and that’s not just because these are some impressively accomplished and dedicated people who have done some truly breath-taking work with this stunning restoration so far.
Now that the cat is well and truly out of the bag due to the leaks on the OOT Restoration, this ‘Info Post’ below may be of some help…
The Aurora Light Imageworks (ALI) OOT Restoration Leak : An Introduction…
• An Introduction / Overview
• Image Screenshots & Comparisons
• Video Clips
• Media Coverage & Content
• FAQs
• News & Updates (tba; for when we hopefully get an official announcement on the ALI OOT restoration for the 50th anniversary)
Around June of this year, Member X had a recommendation pop up in their youtube feed for a relatively obscure Aurora Light Imageworks channel - featuring some videos which appear to be snippets of restoration work being undertaken on the unaltered theatrical cut of the Original Trilogy…
Impressed by the quality of the featured work - and that the clips featured were seemingly beyond the reach of even the most talented fan preservationists (as dedicated and innovative as they are) - Member X then shared this info with a few preservationists and other members from both here and like-minded sister sites. The authenticity, quality and detail of the content displayed over time on this ALI channel… leads many of us to believe this is indeed a genuine and high quality restoration for the OOT.
Members pooled all their knowledge and experience together… and created scripts to download the clips, organised them, and shared the files with other researchers, fact-checked all the data in the text, collected the pastebin texts, provided screenshots, crop comparisons, and other analysis etc. As a wise member recently said: it took a village to do all the above, and more.
In an effort to protect the individuals involved with the ALI OOT restoration, the discussion became private with an understanding that spreading the word at this point could potentially cause harm to the restoration team. Despite promises made that nobody would leak this info kindly provided by Member X… someone broke that trust and promise… and information did indeed leak out to the likes of reddit, Eckharts Ladder, and a quickly deleted thread earlier here in mid-June. There is now a further leak (as of 12th October) on the Star Wars Leaks reddit 👎… The cat now being well and truly out of the bag.
Sometimes the ALI youtube channel is ‘down’ / unavailable, then occasionally set to ‘private’, and whilst videos pop up… they also then disappear. Member X also learnt that Vimeo is being used by ALI to host some restoration work for ‘deleted scenes’ & ‘raw elements’ of the OOT… which likely means the ALI restoration is for a physical media / streaming / archival project - and not just for theatrical screenings (DCPs). The status of the ALI restoration is that it is still ongoing - a Work In Progress (WIP).
Note: Such a restoration of the OOT does NOT necessarily mean there will ever be a release of this project.
Yes, of course there is the 50th anniversary in 2027, the announcement from Lucasfilm having around a theatrical re-run for that 50th anniversary… and Kathy Kennedy’s comments at the BFI IB screening for Star Wars… and yes, we are all obviously hopeful it will lead to a physical media release (or even made available on Disney+)… yet we should also caution this project could also be an internal archival restoration that will end up sitting in the vaults of Lucasfilm for a good few years.
The use of AI for this ALI restoration has also been ruled out - along with this being shenanigans, a ruse, or trolling. We believe the content from the ALI youtube channel is being used to share progress with certain individuals across the globe associated with Lucasfilm & this restoration. It is unknown if these ALI youtube & vimeo channels are… an intentional or accidental leak… especially as using an unlisted youtube channel to share updates is quite rare (though not unheard of for restoration projects).
The ALI videos uploaded to youtube are from restoration work taken using a 6K scan undertaken in 2022 (6144x2570) from the OCN (Original Camera Negative). Sometimes other high quality sources are used when required (CSMs, CRIs, VVIs, IPs, etc). The video uploads to the ALI youtube channel were then rescaled to 3840x2160 for youtube - so along with the usual youtube compressions… the comparison images below from ALI are not shown in their fullest quality.
For more information please read the two clear and concise posts made by fallenorder0392 above - or here, and here. 👍
As it stands, there has been no comment or official announcement from Lucasfilm or Disney…
Edit: It is also worth highlighting… even IF this ALI restoration project does see a release (theatrical re-run, physical media, Disney+ etc) it does not necessarily mean all of the Original Trilogy films would be released / made available in 2027… it could just be Star Wars for 2027, Empire for 2030, and Jedi for 2033… staggered releases to ‘maximise the return on investment’ (ROI) for the 50th anniversaries of the Original Trilogy. Followed by a deluxe boxset in 2034 etc (just a possibility worth consideration).
A Key…
OCN: Original Camera Negative
CSM: Colour Separation Master
VVI: Vista Vision Intermediate
CRI: Colour Reversal Intermediate (sometimes aka Interpositive)
IP: InterPositive
IN: InterNegative
IB / IBT: IB Technicolor
^ Wikipedia or film preservation channels are your friend for looking for more information on the above terms. 👍
A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…
Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
‘How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com - includes info on how to ask for a fan project and how to search for projects and threads on OT•com.
A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)
Take your time to look around this site before posting… Do NOT just lazily make yet another ‘link request’ post - or a new thread asking for projects.
