Originally posted by: ronlaw
This grain issue is really odd. That shot of the back of the stormtropper makes it very obvious.
Speculation:
- this is too much grain to be film grain
- it looks like single-pixel noise, "as if" added in post
- my guess is that the Telecine was quite crappy, and added this noise for one reason or another
- and that the LD mod-demod smooths out the fine noise because it can't resolve single pixels from the D1 master.
This grain issue is really odd. That shot of the back of the stormtropper makes it very obvious.
Speculation:
- this is too much grain to be film grain
- it looks like single-pixel noise, "as if" added in post
- my guess is that the Telecine was quite crappy, and added this noise for one reason or another
- and that the LD mod-demod smooths out the fine noise because it can't resolve single pixels from the D1 master.
What is so odd about film grain? I have seen now the GOUT, and I must say that the grain is very predictable. In shots with special effects, it is worse, in shots in the desert, it is also worse due to the filming conditions, and in most other shots, it is normal. The special effect shots in space are not grainy, because they were shot in VistaVision. Other special effects movies behave exactly the same way.
The truth is: we are not used anymore to watch Star Wars this way. In the SE´s, they have recomposited everything with the computer, so all the grain which comes due to heavy optical printing is lost.
And the Laserdiscs were most probably created with heavy DVNR, and you can clearly see that on the examples i posted in another thread. And I´m afraid that it is one HEAVY drawback if you want to remaster these films using the LD sources.