ChainsawAsh said:
Part of what sold Dark_Jedi's transfers to me was the image stabilization. From what everyone here's been saying about this EditDroid release, image judder is still an issue. If there were a good combination of EditDroid's overall picture quality (based on the cap above, much more detail is present than Dark_Jedi's) and the G-Force/Dark_Jedi image stabilization, I'd be a very happy person indeed.
The Editdroid release has a stabilized picture. There was one or two shots where I noticed a bit of instability, but only because I was looking for it; overall it looks fine.
Hairy_Hen:
I'll admit I don't know nearly as much about video as I do audio, but I was under the impression that film grain was generally too small to see in standard definition. The 'grain' in the GOUT has always looked like video noise to me, it doesn't seem like it belongs there.
There's video noise too, like in the shot of the sandcrawler (where some of the grain also gets smudged into noise-like artifacts) and the shot of the binary sunset, but the majority of what you are seeing is grain. In the aforementioned examples it is extremely bright colors (the sky--blue in the sandcrawler, purple/red in the binary suns) that 1990s telecines could never handle. There's also multiple layers of grain because this is at least third generation in quality. And because of this, some of the fine grain isn't totally apparent and may seem noise-like because it's not fully defined, it gives the image a texture (probably this is the negative layer). But there is most definitely fully apparent grain as well, its very obvious and coarse and this is probably the duplicate layer from the IP itself because it is so coarse. This is what people had a problem with, because we weren't used to seeing it--it's basically appropriate considering the source, but also there is legitimacy about wanting this gone because it's probably not on the negative itself. Personlly, it's not a huge deal to me, its just grain and I like the tactile quality, but it would be preferrable to get rid of it. Unfortunately, no one has yet done this.
And even if it is actual grain, isn't it more likely to be excessive dupe grain owing to the films having been copied and transferred so many times?
Yes, a lot of it is dupe grain, most of it in fact, although how much depends on whether you consider the negative the "true" source (since it is the Interpositive that actually represents the final, completed film). A lot of it also is dirt and scratches, in both positive and negative layers.
Also that kind of noise wreaks havoc with mpeg image encoding, causing compression artefacts even at high bitrates. Just going by those screenshots, the Editdroid does seem slightly sharper, but might even be the same kind of illusion caused by turning the sharpness control up on a tv set--it adds stronger edges throughout, fooling the eye into thinking there is more detail when there actually is not. Turn up the sharpness too far and the picture takes on a fake and hideous appearance, but at moderate levels it could cause what's being seen here. The description of the Editdroid, strange as it is, does say that the fine detail was sharpened artificially, does it not?
Obviously since all the projects are working from the GOUT, you cannot create picture information where there was none before. However, the GOUT is pretty soft, and can stand to be artificially sharpened by a tiny bit, it does make fine detail and texture more apparent. The reason artificial sharpening is bad is because it creates it own noise and brings out all the flaws in the image. However, the Editdroid version seems to have avoided this, as the grain and noise appears improved over the raw GOUT, the picture looks a bit smoother to me.
I'm not any kind of expert, but that's how it strikes me, looking at them together. Even if the G-Force version is slightly softer, the application of anti-aliasing outweighs it for me, because the GOUT's jaggies are fairly horrific, and the difference is clearly evident on the droids in those screenshots.
Well, when you look at them side by side, you can see the huge difference in picture information on the g-force versions, all the fine detail is just gone, and its all smoothed out. But the problem with g-Force in addition to its softening is that the film should not look that clean. It looks like it is shot on video or something, it has that smooth, soft, airbrushed quality that is becoming more and more of a problem in consumer trends. Film has texture, and it's part of the image. The Digital Bits had a lengthy rant about this today; it's referring to HD releases, but it directly applies here:
http://www.digitalbits.com/#060710
Which is why I said, even if the g-Force versions didn't have any softening at all, they still have a major, major obstacle, and its more philosophical on the part of the people making the scripts, and THAT'S the problem. Star Wars is a film from the 1970s. There should be grain, and image texture. Not as much as the GOUT, very true, which was grainier than most standard-def transfers, but there should never be zero grain at all, the grain removal on dark_jedi's release makes the 2004 SE look conservative. It doesn't look like a movie any more, as it's not just de-grained, but also smoothed out. The softness is a huge issue, but the grain issue is almost as big, and they are related--if people weren't so concerned with getting a "perfect" image the softness wouldn't be there in the first place. So by not understanding the way a film should look in one aspect, you create a by-product that makes the film look even worse in yet another aspect.
Also,
I have nothing against film grain, and I like seeing it when it belongs there, but the GOUT's resolution is too low to reveal 'real' grain in my opinion.
This isn't correct. You can definitely see grain in standard-def (have you really never seen grain until high-def?). It is only really in the first 20 minutes of Star Wars that the grain is really bad--basically the blockade runner sequence. I suspect this is a complete reel. Certain individual shots are also worse than surrounding ones. And unfortunately it is a white environment, so it is most noticeable. But IMO with the exception of this sequence (and the 3P0-R2 desert scene which follows, which IMO shows more dirt than grain) the GOUT actually doesn't look all that grainy, it is mostly at appropriate levels for an interpositive made from a really abused negative ten years after being shot and from an unstable film stock no less. When people speak of GOUT grain, they usually refer to the blockade sequence, but visually that sequence is a bit exceptional in comparison to much of the rest of the film. Of course, the GOUT is still grainier than anyone would like.
That said, it's quite possible that the G-Force script removed a bit too much, and that a lesser approach to the grain reduction could give more pleasing results.
Yes, I hope future efforts are less extreme. I would say that the g-force scripts need to reduce their grain removal by about close to 50% for it to begin to look like film again, and I hope that they eventually do this. I don't know much about the scripting process, but from what I understand it is possible to basically dial it out to whatever sort of level you want. But as I said, it is basically a philosophical problem on the part of individuals--first, that people making these would rather have a soft picture without fine detail that nearly looks like video, and second that people watching them would want it too. It's impressive that people got the image that clean, to give them credit, but not only did it come at the expense of detail on a transfer that already was lacking, but they went way too far to the point where it ceased resembling a film, and there needs to be more people keeping ourselves in check and pointing this out. It's the reason why our community kicks ass, you know. :p
Again, I don't want to sound like I am ripping on dark_jedi or g-force, because they've done a lot of really good work in other areas and I appreciate all of it, and I also want to encourage them to keep getting better at what they do. And it's not like I have any sort of attachment to the Editdroid release, I neither know the guy who made it nor was involved in the production in any way. But it's a good example to open up debate about how the films should be treated and how they should look.