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Star Wars - The Vintage Edit (* unfinished project *) — Page 4

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Yep, the star field is definitely not black. I wouldn't have seen this on my other monitor either though.
If you're using an lcd/tft monitor and can't see the difference, try altering your viewing angle: eg try sitting to high (or standing up) and look down to your monitor: if the black of the bars and the star field were the same black you shouldn't see a difference in contrast, but there clearly is one.
So far this edit is looking really good. Keep it up!
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OK, i turned the room light monitor on my display and i can now see the grey starfield that has been mentioned. It's easily fixed though. just adjust the black levels slightly. I was wondering how the starfield black levels have changed but the matte bars have remained black. Were the matte bars added during encoding because you did mention that you were working with the HD footage which had the black bars cropped.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

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It's only very slight I wouldn't worry too much about it.
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Aww vbangle, I'm not mad at you, I'm just disappointed in myself . With everything that's going right, I'd hate to think I've done something where I need to start over again, especially when the footage you're working with takes literally 30 minutes to line up your Greedo subtitles correctly. I guess I just need to go back and readjust my monitor, the brightness I found out was a little on the dark side, don't know when I decided the monitor should be darker, but whatever.

The black letter-boxing is not actually part of the source file. When the HD broadcast was encoded, they cropped it off, so the black bars are the black from the empty space as I decided to still work in a standard 16:9 ratio. So it is a true black, and thusly a good reference source for the black levels to match to, even if my monitor is wrong.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Hey, quick question - what will be done about the newly rotoscoped lightsabers? WIll they be washed out to match the original, or left in like I think OCP's did?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Hey, Paul. I know this is mostly off-topic, but in this thread here you stated that Premiere coould be tricked into taken in the Lagaryth codec by using an Avisynth file somehow. How does this work?

P.S. The link won't work for some reason, though the thread page does exist. Sorry. Here it is long-form: http://www.originaltrilogy.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=9&threadid=1434&STARTPAGE=17
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Probably by using the directshowsource("filename.extension") command in an .avs file. If you have avisynth installed, and have the import plugins for avisynth installed in the Premiere plugin's directory, then it will take an .avs file, and by proxy anything that avisynth will take, which is anything, really. I think my email is interpreting my forum updates as spam, so sorry for the belated response.

Sorry for the lack of updates, but the good news is, as of right now, the film has been completely excised of special edition footage, and I have something like four wonderful audio tracks to put onto the final DVD, so things are pretty kosher. I took a break from Star Wars to work on an edit of Batman Begins. The idea was to learn about encoding in an HD format (I've always just made DVDs, with MPEG2 encoding). I've been spending the past two weeks or something just trying to export this damn little fan edit in HD. Using several different programs and encoders.

MEGUI: I use debugmode framserver to export my timeline and import it into this encoder. Gives me a radio drama of my fanedit, with blank video and intact audio.
Windows Media Encoder: I use debugmode framserver to export my timeline and import it into this encoder. It causes Premiere to crash half way through
Xvid/Divx: Export it straight from Premiere. Crashes Premiere very early. Although it worked one time...with sketchy looking video.
ffdshow encoder: Crashes Premiere...or maybe this was the one I got to work...not Divx.

I don't know, every failure muddles together, I'm not sure what the real problem is, I'm sure it's something simple, like maybe a broken codec package or something, then again I just updated to the latest K-lite codec package. Anyway, I was thinking of asking somebody around here with experience in encoding HD files...wookiegroomer, you might have a PM soon...Anyway the point is that once I release my edit of Batman Begins, not only will it be the first ever fanedit in HD (me awesome!), but I'll have the know-how to export a sort of "work print" of my Star Wars edit so I can really start moving this thing along.

OT all the way,
PaulisDead2221

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Hey, no problem with the late reply. Thanks for the lesson. Sorry to hear about the HD encoding problems; it might not be any help at all, but have you tried exporting an "M2T" file (MPEG2 file muxed as a "transport stream") from Premiere? We've done this at work, and you can go as low as 13Mbps (audio and video) with decent results. The file plays on powerful PCs and works really well on Playstation 3.

Exciting to hear that you're venturing into the HD territory! I hope you find something that works soon.
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is this out yet?

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Paul how is this project going? This is probably the most important project on these boards, despite what X0 and "Revisited" fans may believe, since this may very well be the highest-quality completion of the OT.com mission statement. Don't let this one slip away...
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Thanks for encouragement. I've managed to get it to encode 99% through the first pass before the screen goes blank in the preview window. Ugh. Since my speakers went dead recently, my Batman vs Superman project is going to take a break for a little bit, so I can dedicate some computer time to trying again.

I found something on the time-line approximately where it stopped working that I thought might've bugged it, so I'll let everyone know today or tomorrow.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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I agree with zombie, this thing is bitchin'. Good luck.
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Those screens look pretty amazing. However I think any correction from the 2004 colors will never look perfect because a lot of detail was lost in crushed blacks, detail that actually is on the Gout. The colors are accurate but I don't think it's possible for anyone to remove the digital shiny look that flattens everything out. It's like boosting the shadow on a digital photo that turned out too dark. Everything comes out brighter like it should be but the subtle different shades of dark grey areas are all the same. The 2004 versions just don't have the film texture and natural grain which the gout and other versions do.
It's not that I think you're doing a bad job or should stop, it looks like you have made an amazing improvement. I just wonder if LFL is actually going to do a release of the ot that is a competant transfer at all (for any version). If these projects along with the Close Encounters and Blade Runner sets don't embarass them into getting it in gear, I don't know what will.

I'm not sure if the starfield should be completely totally black as the bars. I don't know if this is true but wouldn't all the stars so far away that they aren't visible still contribute a tiny bit of light so that the black space is extremely, 99.9% to total black, dark grey.

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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Knightmessenger said:

Those screens look pretty amazing. However I think any correction from the 2004 colors will never look perfect because a lot of detail was lost in crushed blacks, detail that actually is on the Gout. The colors are accurate but I don't think it's possible for anyone to remove the digital shiny look that flattens everything out. It's like boosting the shadow on a digital photo that turned out too dark. Everything comes out brighter like it should be but the subtle different shades of dark grey areas are all the same. The 2004 versions just don't have the film texture and natural grain which the gout and other versions do.
It's not that I think you're doing a bad job or should stop, it looks like you have made an amazing improvement. I just wonder if LFL is actually going to do a release of the ot that is a competant transfer at all (for any version). If these projects along with the Close Encounters and Blade Runner sets don't embarass them into getting it in gear, I don't know what will.


That may be true, but its a hell of an alternative to the GOUT. I can't forsee LFL cleaning up the OOT within the next few years because as far as Lucas himself states the SE itself won't be available in HD until at least a while longer.
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Glad to hear you're still trying to get this done, Paul. Looking forward to seeing it.
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 (Edited)
PaulisDead2221 said:

Thanks for encouragement. I've managed to get it to encode 99% through the first pass before the screen goes blank in the preview window. Ugh. Since my speakers went dead recently, my Batman vs Superman project is going to take a break for a little bit, so I can dedicate some computer time to trying again.

I found something on the time-line approximately where it stopped working that I thought might've bugged it, so I'll let everyone know today or tomorrow.


Were you able to fix this? Thanks, this project is very exciting!!
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 (Edited)
Paul - I don't know whether or not you ever managed to sucessfully complete the encode for this project. Since I've recently acquired the facility to watch 720p MKVs in HD, I've just re-read this entire thread. A couple of points struck me. Maybe it's too late now, but you could always keep in mind for V2... :-)

After using the colourlike filter and histograms to match the colours in the HD source to the GOUT, you say you made some further manual tweaks. Most people agree that the GOUT needs a little more colour saturation and deeper black levels - are your tweaks along these lines?

Most of the negative criticism of your ESB Vintage Edit, and ocpmovie's Classic Editions, centre around the GOUT/laserdisc video 'standing out' because: a) it wobbles around, compared to the stablized 2004 video, and b) it shows a lot more film grain than the sanitized 2004 image.

For 'a', G-force has developed an AviSynth script to help stabilize the wobble in the GOUT (thread HERE). Maybe this would help.

I had an idea to deal with 'b' - this might seem nuts, but how about adding more grain to the 2004 HD source? (There is a discussion on the GOUT grain issue HERE.)

You could just use fake grain, however someone above mentioned Close Encounters. I've not seen it, but from reading reviews apparently the Blu-ray release shows an excellent transfer complete with authentic '70s film grain. In theory, if you could obtain a rip of the blu-ray (to be deleted after use, of course) you could extract the grain from it (by using AviSynth's 'subtract' to get the difference between the original and a de-grained image - i.e. the grain itself) then overlay this onto your HD source. Voila - Authentic '70s grain added back in to Star Wars HD!

Edit: Just wanted to add that, like everyone else who's posted, I'm keen to see this project completed.

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This is a very intriguing idea. Of late, I've been racking my head on this damn encoding crap, and also the difficulty in manual color correction. I ended up giving up on automatically color matching 2004 to the GOUT because the results weren't coming together very well. That's until Adywan's Star Wars Revisited was released.

I neglected to bring it up in any threads yet. Adywan spent a year carefully correcting the 2004 DVDs for his edit. The issue with matching 2004 with GOUT or other laser-disc transfers was the quality of the transfers you were matching to. But with Adywan's hard work finally completed, I, as well as others, can rip it off for their own selfish use (hehehe). I created three separate histograms from Adywan's early xvid release, and the results I got were amazing. I'll eventually post the histograms in the correct thread.

To address your other suggestions, I did get a copy of the stabilizing script for the GOUT footage, I haven't implemented it into any encodes yet, as it causes GOUT to go very slow, so I hope it doesn't cause any crashes. I'm also very interested in adding film grain, I remember the consensus developed that the natural film grain was truly part of the original release, and would be an important addition to a true preservation. This is something I hadn't thought before, and I believe I will pursue.

I'm going to give the HD a little more time before I nix it completely. It's just too damn slow to do what I need to do. I have a few more options left that I'd just be kicking myself over if I didn't give them a chance, but just in case I give up on this bullshit, I have a 480p equivalent project in production.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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 (Edited)
Personally, I don't think the GOUT needs more saturation at all. In fact, I would say it looks like it already has had contrast and saturation tweaking.

I was going to recommend using Adywan's source. However, I don't think its entirely accurate, to me it seems like there are instances where he took some libertys, for instance in Luke and Obi Wan's first encounter the rocks are a bit too white. IMO, the GOUT is actually the most reliable source of color information available. The one good thing abut Adywan's cut is that he got the starfields and the laser blasts and engine glows right, because the SE totally desaturated them but the GOUT has jaggies, so Adywan's cut is probably the most reliable source for those elements.

Adding grain is an interesting idea, and it would certainly help smooth over the Laserdisk patches. You have to be really careful though, not only in amount, but because fake grain doesn't look the same as real grain, its not just a "mask" thats dropped over the image like digital grain, its actually part of the image itself and changes and fluxuates depending on the exposure and levels. Maybe I'm just a stickler for these types of photographic things. Anyway, there is grain as part of the SE image if you look at it, not much is needed to be added because those are from the original negatives with digitized comp-shots, a lot of the grain we are used to seeing is just dupe grain and would not be there if we were to go back to the original negatives. But its true that Lowry minimized some of the natural emulsion grain.
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Paul, as for artificial grain; be careful about that. Not to be a negative nancy, but the last time you used histograms (ESB anyone?) it turned out plenty grainy without it. Maybe find a middleground; blur the GOUT just a little, and add some grain to the '04. Grain is good, but too much is distracting.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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What about using a 1997 DTV rip?

(in before Slowpoke)

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Hello,

Just wondering but does anyone know of a torrent thats still availible for this or the Empire Strikes Back vintage edit. Would very much like to get these. If someone would be willing to send me a copy I would pay for shipping and send the blank dvd.

Thanks

SnakeStorm
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There has never been a torrent for this - it's still "in production".

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Molly said:

What about using a 1997 DTV rip?

(in before Slowpoke)


Is this the rip?

http://www.thx-trailer.com/2/Star-Wars/episode4.htm

I'm not sure. The Tantive sequences seem pretty accurate, and I like the shot of the Falcon's cockpit, but Mos Eisley has a bit of a purple cast over it (though that would be a quick fix), and a lot of the Death Star sequences seem to have the same color issues as the 2004 DVDs. Then again, I'm only looking at the thumbnails.

[update]

So, I think I almost got this thing together. I don't know what I did different, but my encoder went all the way through the first pass, and was even encoding video right up until a little after Greedo, when the video started flickering and went blank for the rest of the film. I'm not sure what this symptom denotes, possibly has to do with the interlacing in the original broadcast (fine time to remember that the HD broadcast was interlaced). Regardless, I watched the first 40 minutes or so convinced I can actually pull this off, most GOUT came and went surprisingly well, and most work left to be done seems to be tweaking and correcting the changes I've already made.

I know some are concerned about the use of a film grain lifted from another film, as well as concern of using Adywan's edit as a color source rather than the GOUT, but I'm taking the time to measure each decision and decide on the best direction. I must point out that I've been the one tempering this thing for almost a year, I've spent a lot of time trying to cheat my way to color corrected Star Wars nirvana using the GOUT with less than favorable results, and the results in accuracy and consistency with Star Wars Revisited is what I really feel is bringing this together (props, Ady).

Jesus, I'm actually quite pumped, I think I'll go out for some more RAM and an external hard-drive, perhaps the failure in encoding is coming from the frame-server within Premiere, and perhaps a huffyuv saved to a large separate partition before encoding and muxing is what is needed.

BTW, happy upcoming 31st birthday for Star Wars, and a happy 1st anniversary of my seemingly endless tenure with this damn thing.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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That looks like the laserdisc of the 1997 versions. I remember the death star hallways were SO blue in that one. (keep up the good work dude)