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Post #1668959

Author
bloop
Parent topic
❗ #ReleaseTheOriginalTrilogy | OriginalTrilogy.com’s enduring goal | How you can help ❗
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1668959/action/topic#1668959
Date created
25-Nov-2025, 10:39 PM

Hey, long time lurker. I just registered because I never had much to post about. I saw the supposed “leaked restoration footage” on youtube and wanted to share some observations and thoughts. Here’s the link to the footage:

[[NOTE: Since I’m a new member, I can’t post website links yet, so I had to add spaces in between the . and the com in these links. I know it’s a pain, but if you want to go to the links, you’ll have to copy and paste them without the spaces.]]

youtube. com/watch?v=4Z6TpkT-6AY

I grabbed a few frames and did a comparison on another website forum, so I’m reusing those pics here. I’m comparing the “leaked restoration footage” with the Star.Wars.4K77.2160p.UHD.No-DNR.35mm.x265-v1.4 version:

therpf. com/forums/attachments/leaked-20th-century-fox-logo-png.1992607/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-00-05-858-jpg.1992590/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/tantive-iv-blurry-png.1992608/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-02-35-185-jpg.1992592/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/tantive-iv-clear-png.1992609/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-02-35-193-jpg.1992593/

Now, I realize the YouTube converts and compresses video when you upload, so there might be some detail loss, but I grabbed screens from the 4K version, so it should be pretty good, at least for the points I make.

So, I don’t think the restoration looks all that good. Here’s my issues, which you can see in the above pic links:

  • The “restoration” footage looks like they used way too much noise reduction, to the point to where most of the film grain has been lost. Losing grain means losing detail, and you can see it in my examples. The 20th Century Fox production logo animation is almost free of grain and looks to be digitally sharpened. They left in the hair on the top of the frame, which I could understand leaving, since you can see the hair in other footage of the 20th logo (I found it on a 16mm clip online and in 4k80). But the fact that they scrubbed the rest of the grain and details away along with the blemishes but left the hair seems odd. Maybe they aren’t done, but it seems almost like they just used AI or an automated filter to “clean” the frames, but the hair is big enough and remains constant throughout the opening that the AI/filter assumed it was supposed to be there. The cloud background and light beams from the spotlights especially look too free of detail. The whole thing just looks very flat, very “CG.”
    In the droid pics on the Tantive IV, the walls especially have been scrubbed of grain and detail, with missing panel lines and barely visible panels. I used a blurry shot and a clear one so you can see how much detail the blurry 4K77 screenshot still has in comparison. You can see the loss of detail in the droids as well.

  • The colors are too saturated, not representative of the original theatrical release of the film. Also, the 20th logo background is practically purple, and the walls of the Tantive IV should have a slight brownish tint, as in the 4K77 version. Instead, the colors are too blue. The walls in the “restoration” look more like a low saturation gray tone. I’ve seen lots of posts on color grading over in the Star Wars Restoration subforum here, with posts by user Dr. Dre being especially researched on getting colors more accurate to the original, theatrical release, so I’m pretty confident that these “restoration” colors are NOT accurate.

  • The footage has been cropped - see that C-3PO’s head is significantly cut off in the “restoration” footage, and R2’s lower panels are cut off at the bottom of the frame. I don’t see any reason for cropping that much, unless the film was in such bad shape along the edges that they had to crop the damage out, which I doubt, because 4K77 has no cropping. You’d expect an official restoration would use the highest quality sources, better than what Team Negative 1 had to work with. I can only think of one other reason to crop, and that’s if they applied too much digital sharpening, so that the frames look as if they have double lines around the edges.

All in all, it just looks bad for a supposed “restoration.” If this is an official restoration, sanctioned by Disney, maybe this isn’t representative of the finished product, but I don’t think that digitally removing detail and messing up the colors and cropping are things that a competent video editor should do, especially with a high profile project like this. Or maybe someone at Disney directed them to do it this way, I don’t know. It just seems like sloppy work. It bugs me that so many people are gushing about this “restoration” in the comments on YouTube. I realize most people don’t have the same eye for detail and knowledge about the way the film originally looked, or they just don’t care and want everything overly-smoothed, over-saturated and overly sharpened.

I’m just glad I have the Team Negative 1 editions.