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Post #336138

Author
caligulathegod
Parent topic
Wookie Groomer's 1080p Star Wars Saga project (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/336138/action/topic#336138
Date created
12-Nov-2008, 12:23 AM
Dunedain said:

Actually, The Phantom Menace has far more resolution than Episodes II and III. The Phantom Menace was shot on real film, which has enough detail to easily support a 4k scan, even tough they only scanned it in at 2k at the time. The other two prequels were shot on a HD camera with it's fixed resolution of only 1920x1080 (you can think of this as sort of the rough equivalent of what we might call a 1k scan), so they are stuck with that. You can try to upsample that, of course, but you can't add in resolution that wasn't filmed.

On the other hand, Lucas can go back any time and scan in The Phantom Menace master prints at 4k and double the res and detail of their scanned copy, which then is down-sampled for use on VHS, laserdisk, DVD, HD, etc. for home video. But Episodes II and III will always be stuck with the fact that they only have 1920x1080 worth of resolution in their source picture. This was a really dumb thing to do, but that's what Lucas decided to try. So, ironically, it's the first Star Wars prequel that will always look better than the latest two prequels. :)

Just a nitpick, but isn't 1920x1080 actually 2K, more or less?  2K is (2048×1080) and 4K is (4096×2160).  The higher resolution might make a difference for the month or two a film is in the theater, but it lives forever at ~2K in our homes.