!!! These versions are now obsolete. !!!
My new Despecialized Editions of STAR WARS, TESB and ROTJ and are now available. The new Despecialized Editions are of higher quality in all aspects:
Picture quality: Although the PDE is 1080p and the DeEd is only 720p, the DeEd actually contains more detail due to using higher quality sources and having less compression artefacts:
Sound quality: Some of the sound mixes in the DeEd are encoded at higher bitrates from higher quality sources than the PDE.
Quality of Despecialization: Where all the original shots in the PDE were only upscales of low quality souces, in the DeEd the original shots were painstakingly reconstructed in order to better fit within the HD footage:
Click for bigness:
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STAR WARS TRILOGY - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
When burned to a DVD9, this should play in PS3 and most Blu-Ray players.
After Adywan made his TESB theatrical reconstruction DVD I thought: "Hey, this would be a cool thing to have in HD," and asked Adywan if there's gonna be an HD version. The answer was no, and quite understandably, too. We all know that Ady's a perfectionist (and we love him for it) and he wasn't satisfied with how the original scenes (recreated using a cobination of GOUT, Ady's AVCHD and hi-res matepainting scans) blended with the HD ones and he wouldn't want to release anything that he felt to be half-arsed :-). While I must agree with this to a certain degree, I personally don't mind a few shots being a slightly worse quality, if I get a good cut of the movie with an over-all great picture. So I decided to do it myself and since some other people expressed interest in it, I decided to let you know that using the recreation DVD and Ady's AVCHD I made a partly despecialized HD version of TESB and than proceeded on to make partly despecialized versions of SW and ROTJ, which I decided to make available because Adywan gave me a green light and enough people expressed their interest even after they've heard the BUTs...
...So, there are two BUTs to this:
1st BUT is the version: It is not a recreation of the theatrical realease but only a partly despecialized version, i.e. I just removed the IMHO most offensive changes. You can read the full description bellow. This is why I wasn't sure whether this should go to FANEDITS or PRESERVATIONS but I feel about it as being more of a preservation.
2nd is the quality: As I said before, the reinserted OOT shots do not blend perfectly. But they blend OK, unlike obvious CG in an othervise non CG movie. You really only notice the difference in quality if you're looking for it. I played the scenes to my friend and asked him afterwards if he thought there was something wrong with them and he didn't notice anything.
NOW TO THE FILMS:
STAR WARS - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
I used the 2.0 soundtrack from GOUT and adjusted and trimmed Adywan's AVCHD to fit to it, so I virtually recreated the theatrical cut. Then I also replaced some of the most glaring CGI and other offending changes with the GOUT.
Most of the despecializations done can be seen in this video: SW:PDE
Although there is a quality difference, I still prefer watching this over any other version out there as it’s HD for the most part and it’s a lot closer to the original.
I also adjusted the original Czech dubbing to this because I want my little brother (and some time in the future my kids, although I'm hoping that by that time there will be a proper Blu-Ray release of the OOT) to be able to watch STAR WARS in a better way than the old fullscreen VHS.
I used the same fox logo as for TESB (see bellow) even though it is not the right one but it's close, it's high quality and at least for me it gives it the vintage feel all the same. And also it will then be the same for the whole trilogy.
In v2.0 I fixed the framerate issues and I used a different way of upscaling the 2006 DVD than for the first version and I think it looks a lot better (you can check for yourselves here, there are basically all the changes that I made in that video, exept for very minor stuff like trimming a few frames here and there). This time I used only Adywan's AVCHD and the 2006 DVD. For v2.1 (now avaiable on RS, if you are interested PM me - check out the sample video) I did some very minor tweaks like sharpening the GOUT shots a bit.
In addition there are 5 different audio tracks.
and here's an nfo.
[RELEASE TiTLE ]..[ Star_Wars_1080p_PARTLY_DESPECIALIZED_EDITION_v2.1_Harmy ]
[ FiLE SiZE ]......[ 7.9 GB -- DVD9 ]
[ RUNTiME ]........[ 121 mins ]
[ GENRE ]..........[ SCI-FI | FANTASY ]
[ RESOLUTiON ].....[ 1920 x 1080 ]
[ SCAN TYPE].......[ Progressive ]
[ FRAME RATE ] ....[ 23.976 ]
[ ViDEO ]..........[ AVCHD @ 7448 Kbps ]
[ AUDiO 1 ]........[ AC3 6ch @ 448 Kbps 1977 70mm English 5.1 (Hairy_Hen's 70mm reconstruction 5.1 upmix) ]
[ AUDiO 2 ]........[ AC3 2ch @ 256 Kbps 1993 English 2.0 (2006 Bonus DVD sourced) ]
[ AUDiO 3 ]........[ AC3 1ch @ 96 Kbps 1977 English 1.0 (The mono mix restoration thanks to Belbucus and Moth3r) ]
[ AUDiO 4 ]........[ AC3 2ch @ 192 Kbps Descriptive Commentary for the blind (VHS sourced) ]
[ AUDiO 5 ]........[ AC3 2ch @ 256 Kbps Czech 2.0 (VHS sourced dubbing) ]
[ SUBTiTLES ]......[ English -- not hardsubbed ]
[ SOURCE ].........[ Adywan's colour corrected SE AVCHD (HDTV sourced), 2006 Bonus Original Theatrical Release DVD (Sourced from 1993 Laserdisc master) ]
I used the 2.0 soundtrack from 2006 BONUS DVD (GOUT) and adjusted and trimmed Adywan's AVCHD to fit to it, so I virtually recreated the theatrical cut. Then I also replaced some of the most glaring CGI and other offending changes with the GOUT. Han, ofcourse, shoots Greedo in cold blood.
Version 2.1 improves on the first version in several aspects: It is a 23.976 AVCHD, there are no more framerate issues, the upscale of the GOUT footage is superior, there is more different soundmixes available in this version and it contains English subtitles.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
Version 1 was never released due to framerete issues, so I'll just give information on v2.0: Here's a video of the changes. I made v2.0 the same way as the others - adjusted Adywan's AVCHD to fit to the GOUT sound, only for Empire of course I used Ady's reconstruction DVD for the original footage.
Thanks to using Ady's reconstruction instead of GOUT, the difference between HD and SD isn't as obvious as in the other two. I think that to someone who wouldn't know about the changes it would be practically unnoticable (not invisible, but if they were following the story and not focusing on picture quality, they simply wouldn't notice).
I tweaked the colours of the reconstruction footage in two places: Deblued the Wampa cave shots to fit with the AVCHD colours and returned the pinkish/orange tint to the Cloud city mate after Luke leaves Dagobah, I know it doesn't make sense in the context of the story but it was like that in both the 1980 original and 1997 SE and I simply like it that way.
Also I found out that Ady's reconstruction 5.1 mix syncs perfectly just as I demuxed it from the DVD. So there will be Ady's 5.1, GOUT 2.0 and Czech 2.0.
RETURN OF THE JEDI - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
RETURN OF THE JEDI - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION 1080p AVCHD v1.2
VIDEO:
Resolution: 1920x1080p
Codec: AVC
Frame rate: 23,976 fps
Bit rate: 6795Kbps
AUDIO:
1) 5.1 EN 448Kbps
2) 5.1 EN 448Kbps
3) 2.0 EN 384Kbps
4) 2.0 CZ 256Kbps
SOURCES:
Video:
HDTV (1080p broadcast of the 2004 version)
DVBt (anamorpic PAL broadcast of the 1997 version)
DVD (2006 nonanamorphic DVD of the 1983 original version)
Sound:
1) hairy_hen's 5.1 custom mix based on the 1993 mix, with the Special Edition LFE chanel added, and deleted music restored to the Obi-Wan scene
2) hairy_hen's 5.1 purist mix based on the 1993 mix, with the Special Edition LFE chanel added, but without the restored music
3) Belbucus' 2.0 1993 LaserDisc PCM capture
4) Harmy's 2.0 1992 Czech VHS dubbing capture
What has changed:
The whole cut was conformed to be in sync with the soundmixes of the original 1980 version.
Over-all basic colour correction was done with special care to restore the original look of the lightsabres.
Lapti Nek, the original Sarlacc pit scene and the ending celebration (including the Anakin ghost) were restored very close to the original version.
Here are some videos:
Lightsabres test and a splitscreen comparison
Sarlac (it's a bit different in the final version)
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Please note that due to YOUTUBE compression the samples are not a true representation of the actual quality.
PM me for the links.