Have had to rip the movie 3 times due to some frame rate issues.
The color correction I'm doing is actually similar to color correction I did on the original Star Wars Classic Edition, except done smarter and in PhotoJPEG format this time. It really brings out the darker areas of the image - sadly the 2004 transfer really crushed the blacks and you can't get them back, but it does look much better this way.
What I like is that this time I'm correcting the 2004 DVD to match the laserdisc, rather than the other way round, or finding some midpoint inbetween.
There's a shot of the Falcon in the Death star, a wide matte painting, which was changed for the Special Edition. I would love to restore the original matte painting but due to the low quality of the GOUT laserdisc transfer, it would stand out (the shot needs to look really clear), so I've never touched it before. This time round I found a hybrid - I've left in the redone Falcon, but the walls of the Death Star are now the darker, less detailed versions from the 1977 version.
This gives the feel of the original shot but in high quality, and that's what we're doing here, giving the feel of the original.
Some missing frames at each VOB breakpoint. This has always been a problem with these edits. Hmm. What to do ....
MORE:
Again in the spirit of de-"Specializing" this cut more than the previous one, I'm going through the painstaking task of changing the hallways in the Death Star ("This is some rescue!") back to their original versions. Although this sequence exists in the very clear 1997 TB and Gkar editions, I'm just using the GOUT again, because I don't want to deal with the PAL frame rate conversion and the hallways are out of focus anyway.
It's difficult to match this material and make it seem seamless - a lot of frame by frame color correction and cropping is being done - and again I'm running into frame rate issues. MPEG Streamclip has done a slightly odd job of ripping the 24 frame video from the 2004 and 2006 DVDs. I'm noticing the occasional dropped or repeated frame. This is so subtle that you wouldn't notice it watching the DVD, but it does require me to carefully reedit when I'm matching the 2006 to the 2004 DvD. Hm.
I don't know why this is.
I'm going for a more seamless look this time round, trying to hide any places I've done work, make it all invisible. Proud of how I did this in the censored "imperial officers getting shot" scenes.
Yes ....