Editdroid's SW 1977 DVD (Mysterious 720p Anamorphic LD Preservation?) (Released) — Page 6

The improvements aren't necessary but they aren't unnecessary either IMO. The way I see is that it's just different flourishes and accents but the song remains the same. Burtt used to say that because a lot of the mix was actually done "live", each time they did a pass it was its own performance, and that's sort of the attitude I take towards the mono vs stereo. It's like when you see a band perform live, each concert you go to the songs will be technically different than the last time and with little improvs and modifications and even some mistakes, and some you like and others you miss from last time. If I had my pick I'd go with the stereo mix but I have the strong suspicion that it is purely because that's the only version I knew until about 4 years ago, so it's weird to me when stormtroopers have slightly different voices and there's sound effects where there weren't any before. Also, the recording quality of the mono version is obviously not as good as modern official remasters of the higher-fidelity stereo, so I think it creates an unfair advantage for the stereo mix as it is aesthetically more pleasing to the ear.  

I put in the 2004 dvd yesterday to remind myself what it sounded like.  It's just as bad as I remembered--in fact, being able to hear it now in full 5.1, it's actually worse!  Sure, some of the surround effects are interesting and it's got some good bass, but most of the movie just has this muffled, distorted quality that really ruins it.  The foley tracks are consistently mixed way hot, far louder than they should be, and most of the time the music is practically buried, except for a few parts where it suddenly gets really loud.  You can practically hear the faders going up and down, and it sounds ridiculous.  And on the same subject, Neil S. Bulk was not kidding when he pointed out how badly the imaging was ruined by the swapped music in the surround channels.  Violins coming from the front left and the back right is completely disorienting and wrong, and the people who laughed him off really demonstrated their ignorance.

I nearly laughed aloud several times at how terrible the whole thing sounded, though it was followed by the bitter reflection that over 90% of people either don't notice, don't care, or think it is actually an improvement.  But then most of them are the ones who think they are getting good sound from lofi mp3's on their 10x overpriced Bose systems, so who cares anyway . . .

Obviously I haven't heard this one so I can't say for sure, but I will point out that if you aren't listening to the 2004 in 5.1, you would never know if the swapped music problem was there or not.  It is very obvious in surround, but downmixing to stereo hides the problem just well enough that you won't notice it.  Dynamic range compression during downmixing also obscures the problems with fluctuating volume levels.  Personally, I find it hard to believe that any fix could be all that great, because the sound effects are not swapped and trying to separate them from the wrong music isn't going to work well.  But then, I ain't a pro, so who knows.  Still, the whole mix is so flawed that trying to fix it is a futile business; honestly, for all its problems, the GOUT video is still at least a vague representation of the original, while the 2004 mix isn't even marginally similar.

Anyway--as much as the prospect of watching the film with the 2004 audio horrifies me, image-wise this project does sound very interesting and worthwhile.  Can anyone verify that it has the same frame count as the GOUT?  If it does, then any GOUT-synched soundtrack could be used instead for those sufficiently motivated to re-mux it themselves.  I do think the stereo and 70mm mixes got it much more right than the mono version in terms of balance, but the mono is at least a '77 authentic and still worthwhile.

Anyway--as much as the prospect of watching the film with the 2004 audio horrifies me, image-wise this project does sound very interesting and worthwhile.  Can anyone verify that it has the same frame count as the GOUT?  If it does, then any GOUT-synched soundtrack could be used instead for those sufficiently motivated to re-mux it themselves.  I do think the stereo and 70mm mixes got it much more right than the mono version in terms of balance, but the mono is at least a '77 authentic and still worthwhile.

 The running time is 2:01:00.

I don't know if that's exactly what the GOUT is, but I would love for someone to add the stereo mix and replace the 5.1 with your 70mm recreation. What's funny is the disk is only 6.7GB, so ED could have included at least the 2.0 from the GOUT itself, no idea why it was decided to leave it out. You could probably include every single sound mix plus the 5.1, actually. Maybe someone will do a re-author...

Yeah, they probably should have included the 2.0 track; aside from the 4 db reduction in average volume, probably caused by AC3 Dialnorm, it sounds exactly the same as the laserdisc (a drop in fidelity from lossy compression is harder to hear than volume differences).

My computer lists the exact runtime of the GOUT as 2:01:07 (the soundtrack is 348,831,343 samples at 48 khz, if I remember correctly).  Don't know how many frames the GOUT video has, but it seems likely this would be the same.

Hey, anyone wanting to use the 70mm version has my vote. ;)

Editing to add: I agree with msycamore that the trend of not including original sound mixes is disturbing, especially since the remixes are often made by people who had nothing to do with the film's original production and think they are "improving" the film with blatant and unnecessary changes.

msycamore said:

zombie84 said:

The improvements aren't necessary but they aren't unnecessary either IMO. The way I see is that it's just different flourishes and accents but the song remains the same. Burtt used to say that because a lot of the mix was actually done "live", each time they did a pass it was its own performance, and that's sort of the attitude I take towards the mono vs stereo. It's like when you see a band perform live, each concert you go to the songs will be technically different than the last time and with little improvs and modifications and even some mistakes, and some you like and others you miss from last time.

That is what is said everytime the film is changed basically. And I can appreciate that, if we always have an alternative. (in this case the mono mix have ironically been restored by a fan;) that's one of the reason why I went to see it in the cinema '97. Don't take this wrong, I love the mono mix of SW and I appreciate a well made mono mix far more than a flashy modern made 5.1 mix made for just the sake of it as many films are made today. I just think it wasn't necessary when I compare it with the stereo mix. IMO. it was already perfect.

I think it's scary when movie enthusiast are very concerned about authentic color-timing, picture-quality etc. and forget that the sound of the film is half of the experience. Just look at every blu-ray on the market today and you can count the original mixes that went with them on one hand, compare that with regular music CD's. You would have an uproar if it were the same.

Very true, although I'm not sure how that relates to the mono-stereo mix issue since they are both original sound mixes from the original theatrical release and are therefore equally important from the standpoint of posterity.

I would assume they would base it on the most elaborate (the 70mm, with surrounds and baby booms), but really who knows. I don't think they would have changed their minds if they saw it in mono or 70mm though, so perhaps the question is moot...

Many of the additions to the '97 SE were things that originated in the mono mix, but hadn't been heard since the original release, since home video versions were always based on the stereo mixes.  Things like the "deceleration" sound when the Falcon comes out of lightspeed, the beeping of the gun turrets, the .44 Magnum laser, and "Close the blast doors!" all came from the mono, as well as others I can't think of at the moment.  The greater prominence of the music in the '97 mix also reflects the mono as well.  Of course, there were many other added sound effects in the SE that had never been in any version of the movie before, and some that made their first appearance in the '93 mix.

But the majority of the differences in the mono mix have still never appeared in any other version--the cantina music heard before they go inside, the alternate dialogue (Aunt Beru, stormtroopers, Death Star intercom voices, different takes of some of Luke's lines, and the complete lack of comm static and radio scrambling during the Battle of Yavin), the beeping of the intercom that starts almost as soon as Luke and Han start shooting in the cell bay, and the stormtrooper in Mos Eisley saying "How long have you had these droids?" about a second earlier, which makes it sound like Luke has to think of a good lie before replying, instead of answering immediately as he does in the stereo version.  Some of these little details add to the aural immersion, giving it a more complete and unified feeling, though some of the changes come across as strange and heavy-handed to me.  To each his own, I guess--as long as we've got them all to choose from.

If you want to be really picky, a mono downmix from stereo isn't the same as a mix that is made for mono from scratch. The levels are never the same. Which is why they didn't just pull a mono version from the stereo master but mixed it from scratch all over again. Fudging the discreet stereo channels into a single channel isn't the same as making a mix with one channel in mind IMO, although I'm sure this is done all the time simply because it's easier. Back in 1977 the mono mix was arguably the more important one since most theatres weren't stereo equipped, so they spent a lot of time on it.

I just got done watching the DVD. Really good stuff in terms of picture (better than the GOUT I think) but there's something bothering me. I'm not sure if this was the case before '97, but the music seems to be extremely low in the mix most of the time. For instance, when the stormtroopers storm the blockade runner, you can barely hear the score.

Also, I think I found a mistake; when the stormtroopers are searching Mos Eisley I believe there is still the sound effect of the probe droid flying around from the SE. I might be wrong.

Haven't seen the whole thing, but I'd just like to verify that it's working. Ya did good kid, ya did good. ;)

Now that people are actually watching this, rather than using screenshots to judge picture quality, how does it compare with G-Force's latest offering?

hairy_hen said:

My computer lists the exact runtime of the GOUT as 2:01:07 (the soundtrack is 348,831,343 samples at 48 khz, if I remember correctly).  Don't know how many frames the GOUT video has, but it seems likely this would be the same.

I just checked both in Gspot - the GOUT (or rather Dark Jedi's upscale) is 2:01:09, 174,25 frames, this new version is 2:01:08, 174,24 frames. Close enough that sync shouldn't be an issue?

I can only compare it to the LFN Pwnage (what's the G-force, sorry?). Thus far, despite lacking the (vintage) Stereo mix option, it looks very similar. So in much the same way that the LP looked sharper, clearer, etc. than the GOUT, this does too.

I will have to do some in depth comparisons of my own (haven't watched it straight through yet, just skipped around).

The Greedo subtitles look very natural (even on our old school TV).

The picture looks less grainy than the GOUT. The four eyed stormtrooper thing is still there.

The one complaint I had about the LFN Pwnage was the "horizontal shaking" that sometimes happened (noticeable in the Obi-Wan vs. Vader sequence especially). Check that scene and compare (and I will too later today). My sound setup isn't cool enough to do any sort of real comparison there (and I'm not an audiophile anyhow).

Kurgan said:

I can only compare it to the LFN Pwnage (what's the G-force, sorry?).

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/GOUT-image-stabilization/topic/9038/page/34/

This is the thread where G-Force's scripts/versions are discussed.  G-Force's offering already surpasses the Pwnage, in my opinion, so I'd like to see how the two compare.  I guess I'll have to wait until it becomes available through some other service than torrent.

Just watched this DVD. My 2 cents:

Since it's really the GOUT sharpened up, the nasty layer of artifacts caused by the denoiser (on the master tape for GOUT) and also the aliasing is much more visible. This, together with the compressed shadows creates a starker image, but it's not really detail, just dirt. The shadow compression helps the image in certain scenes, but it hurts in others (by making the faces too dark - see the cantina scene).

The making-of text in the Extras menu is confusing. Why doing the upscale & sharpening in Photoshop, why not use a video app? It probably also explains why they did the "color correction" with one setting for the entire movie instead of addressing problematic scenes on their own. "Great pains were taken to retain the look of the 1993 telecine...": then why did they alter it in the first place? :)

I watched it with mono audio so I cannot speak of the 5.1 track. The two things I really like in this DVD is the menu intro animation and the fact that the shadow compression made the faces look better and less "flat" in some scenes. (Also the Greedo subtitles look good.)

I think this DVD is a nice addition to the line of GOUT based custom DVDs but the G-Force-enhanced version looks better. Also, the levels settings in G-Force's script retain the proper amount of shadow detail without hurting anywhere IMO (and it's also just one setting for the entire movie :)  ).

csd79 said:

I think this DVD is a nice addition to the line of GOUT based custom DVDs but the G-Force-enhanced version looks better. Also, the levels settings in G-Force's script retain the proper amount of shadow detail without hurting anywhere IMO (and it's also just one setting for the entire movie :)  ).

That's a good detailed report, csd79.  I suspected that G-Force's release would be hard to beat. 

Thanks to whoever uploaded this to the usual place.

If G-Force's script is the same as dark_Jedi's DVD releases, and unless I am mistaken I believe it is, then I would have to seriously object. They are terrific efforts and marvels of amature programming and present a very clean image, but that's the problem. Even a scan from the negative shouldn't look that clean, but that's the lesser issue. The greater issue is that all the detail is scrubbed off and the image is terribly, terribly soft, and the GOUT was bad enough as it was. It's a real problem in modern home video, especially with HD now, companies are applying softening filters to get rid of the grain because people seem to be afraid of film or something and all they actually do is get rid of all the detail and make the film look worse. It's the reason why the Blu Ray release of LOTR sucks compared to the HD broadcast--yeah, the grain is softened, but so is the image, all the detail goes away. The GOUT had a lot of problems, but the grain wasn't the most pressing because film is grainy, the main issue was the lack of detail because it was a Laserdisc with DVNR already applied, and most of the G-Force scripts just made this worse by soft-filtering everything further, at least judging from what I have seen. It's basically a more sophisticated version of DVNR; much more effective, to give g-force credit, but you still end up with a reduction of picture information and a blurrier image, and the GOUT can't really tolerate that. Which makes The 2010 Editdroid the most detailed version of the 1977 theatrical release of Star Wars, since LFL Pwnage is single-layered. The G-Force scripts are pretty good for some of the VFX shots, especially in Empire (i.e. Hoth) where the grain really was super-heavy and the softness is a worthwhile tradeoff (Adywan should have used these versions for his ESB re-construction, as they are more effective than his filtering), but overall these seem to be a manifestation of a major problem in home video that has been created by the mainstream success of high-def where people don't want to see grain and would rather lose a great deal of picture detail instead, which is almost self-contradictory. But I guess it's good that there are multiple treatments out there for the differing tastes. Personally, I'm very happy with this version, although the sound options leave some to be desired.