Orinoco_Womble said:
The X0 team have stated many, many times that they are using material from a number of LD sources, not just the Def Col. The whole reason for doing this was to get rid of that poxy DVNR smearing that we all hate. They have also posted a number of pics (which I can't find at the moment) which show the results of combining together multiple captures from different LD sources.
Don't worry it's no biggie but what I pointed out was that the raw X0 capture is probably about even with the Gout. Now removing scratches and combining it with X0 footage of the Special Collection to remove DVNR will yield much better results than the official Lucasfilm "bonus" discs. (although the Gout is probably a pretty good source to use for any oot restoration)
I do believe there is one thing a little different on the Gout. It appears they did a very quick fix to lower the black levels on the picture. This made the black bars actually black and fixed what had been a pretty washed out picture in some parts. However I think this accentuated the grain and made it stand out more. So the battle in the snow on Hoth and the Tantive IV showed this the most. Still I have to imagine it wouldn't be hard to filter out with todays technology.
I really hope they haven't given up on this though. I'm sure the work they did could be carried on by someone else. What we need to know is how far along the X0 team got. Was it ever in a format that could easily be burned to a dvd?
I mean this in absolutely no disrespect to the X0 team. I hope they all are doing well and in good health. But it has been about almost 4 years since I believe they started this. I know they wanted to wait until it was complete to release it to the community but I think they should seriously consider making whatever they've got available. (Even if they still want to continue with the project.) I believe that while a perfect video restoration would be ideal, I think that it would be no shame in having an intermediate stop-gap release so we can have something at least be better than the Gout. This is too promising to just let go and I think the X0 team has spent plenty of hours that they deserve to have a product to show. It was the previous laserdisc bootlegs that finally convinced Lucas to allow the unaltered release in 2006. I think that having a higher quality OOT transfer floating around would push Lucas a little to do a better transfer of the originals for the blu-ray. I'm certain that plenty of LFL employees are looking at gushing over Adywan's versions and might feel pushed more to fix the really bad mistakes from 2004.
I have many of the screenshots and other captures posted by the X0 team. I'd be willing to repost them (as long as they don't mind) but they're on another computer and I've had trouble getting images to imbed here ever since the new software. (see my recent post on "Shroud of the Darkside")