I just grabbed the workprint but haven't gotten the chance to even spot-check it yet Harmy. I'll give you my opinion sometime soon.
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
Thanks :-)
Just looked at the sub clip you posted, and it looks MUCH better! I'd be perfectly happy if that's how they look in the final release.
And I've started downloading the workprint, but it's slow going on my shoddy jury-rigged Internet. I'm going to my parents' tonight, and they have proper Internet, so I should be able to get it in its entirety by Monday, so I can watch it next week.
Great, I'm happy you like the subs. I thinks it's the slight shake that helps the authenticity, because when you've got subs burned in film, they always have a bit of a shake.
I just took a look again, fullscreen and 720p this time.
Not a bad idea with the shake, but I think it's just a little too much. Other than that, they look very good.
Will the final version be pitch-corrected Harmy? A particular pet peeve of mine, I must admit... I'll go into more detail on the edit itself once I do more than spot check it
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
bkev said:
Will the final version be pitch-corrected Harmy? A particular pet peeve of mine, I must admit... I'll go into more detail on the edit itself once I do more than spot check it
Which final release are you talking about: the PAL or the NTSC? Harmy has said that there will be both.
If you are talking about the pitch correction that is sometimes part of a PAL to NTSC conversion, then I doubt it will be necessary, as PAL source material is almost never pitch corrected in the first place, so slowing down the PAL audio will restore the sound of the original audio.
If you are talking about something else, then my mistake! :-)
Plus, if the NTSC is synched to the NTSC GOUT, you can just use one of the PCM audio tracks synched to the GOUT from laserdisc transfers.
ChainsawAsh said:
Plus, if the NTSC is synched to the NTSC GOUT, you can just use one of the PCM audio tracks synched to the GOUT from laserdisc transfers.
That's true, and it would be better than re-encoding the PAL audio. I seem to remember Moth3r saying at some point that the PAL and NTSC GOUT DVDs for ROTJ had the same number of frames, so it should be possible.
If hairy_hen releases his new NTSC GOUT synced Jedi 5.1 I'm actually gonna be using that, so it's rather gonna be an NTSC to PAL conversion. And yes, NTSC GOUT synced sound fits PAL when sped up, so it should work the other way round as well. I'm not gonna be doing any pitch correction either way, because I have no idea how and frankly have no interest in learning but if someone wanted to make a pitch corrected PAL sound from hairy_hen's 5.1 and upload it somewhere for me, I would appreciate that.
I wouldn't use that, as it contains music not present in any previous version of the film, which wouldn't be in keeping with this being a theatrical restoration.
Harmy regarding the expanding nature of this project, I imagine if all that was achieved with this project was colour correction, burnt in subs and a re-edit of the Jabba Palace, sail barge/sarlaac and end celebration sequences to match the theatrical this restoration would satisfy most people.
Of course they're are the additional cg shots like DSII blowing up, Vaders eyebrows Sarlaac and Banthas that will be addressed.
All the recompositions of the fx shots for various ships etc aren't that big of a deal if time and school are an issue. Adywan's TESB restoration should be the template and everyone loved that (including me) although it's not 100% theatrical version.
On a personal level, for me the shake in the burnt in subs makes my eyes hurt a little. Otherwise the samples uploaded to youtube look great.
And if you want one more set of eyes to look at the workprint send me a pm. I've been moving but I've now got the spare time.
"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt
With the recomposites it's not so much an issue of time as of the necessity of having a lower quality shot where the SE change is practically unnoticeable. I did of course reinstate the original Sarlacc, Vader's eyebrows and the DS explosion. I even reinstated the original Rancor composites where they were tweaked in 2004, it is one of the few SE changes that I feel actually benefited the film but it is a glaring change and it would feel wrong not to have the original in a theatrical reconstruction.
Harmy, the Vader shot looks pretty good, definitely the best I have seen attempts to composite the original pieces in there.
I don't know if you are open to suggestions on it but one thing I would do is just re-colour the eyes using the 2004 footage. Its very easy to change brown to blue just using something like After Effects (which, I know, you don't like). That way, you would only have to composite the eyebrow piece. It would look much better, and probably be invisible. If you think this will be too much work then thats fine, the version as is looks pretty good, but even on Youtube I can see the quality difference and some of the seams, because the focal point of the shot is the mans eyes, which are from a different source. That example tends to draw a lot of attention to the OOT-area, unfortunately, so leaving the eye footage as is and just changing the colour would definitely make it less noticeable.
It doesn't stand out so badly when watched on it's own, but when watched after the 2004 HD, it kinda does. I did that shot in AE (while I'm not particularly fond of it, because it's a bit too complex for me, it's still the best software for things like that.) It would be a lot of work to recolour the eyes, because I'd have to animate the mask very precisely, frame by frame. With a wider area I was able to use just a few keyframes. But it was just an experiment. I am gonna put it in the reconstruction since it's already done and it should be much less noticeable there because the resolution will be the same for both sources (GKAR is PAL anamorphic and the HD footage will also be downscaled to that). But I'll consider doing it the way you suggested for the Blu-Ray sourced version of PDE. Or maybe as that is partly despecialized edition, I'll just reinstate the eyebrows and leave the eyes blue.
If I read that right, you're simply replacing the 2004 Anakin shots with the ones from the GKAR set, correct?
If so, good. :-)
Well, I'm gonna put in that one shot that I already made but I'm not gonna make the other shots that way, the rest of the shots where you can see Shaw's eyebrows is just gonna be from GKAR.
For the purposes of the theatrical reconstruction, I think it would be better to go with the complete gkar shots instead of doing a composite.
You know of the rebellion against the Empire?
I agree. The Anakin comp looks good, but not quite perfect. And since you already have a very good-quality source for the whole shot, why not use it?
Yeah, I just compared the two side by side in SD and I think I will go with GKAR after all.
So, has anyone else had a chance to check out the workprint?
Oh man, I can't believe I only just now saw this thread. Awesome work so far, Harmy! Can't begin to tell you how excited I am about this project, as Return of the Jedi was, in my opinion, the most botched of the Special Editions. Keep up the good work, man.
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Thanks, work is going pretty slowly now, cuz I just started school and it will take a while for things to settle down but I hope to resume the full tempo soon. :-)
Gotcha. Take your time, and good luck with both the edit and your studies. :)
Every 27th customer will get a ball-peen hammer, free!
That is why I would suggest rotoscoping the eyebrows alone and re-colouring the eyes using After Effects. I don't know if you would be able to see a composite is even there if it was just the eyebrows. But if you are using the GKAR for the whole shot, I don't know if the cross-cutting between Luke and Vader switching between two clearly different sources would work. Of course, I guess you would have to see it to judge it, I know GKAR isn't as bad as the GOUT, but to me in theory I would expect the cross-cutting to be a little jarring. It is, of course, much easier than doing AE work, so I guess it depends on how much time you are willing to invest.
I've skimmed through the workprint a little bit, and so far my #1 suggestion is this:
Make sure you replace ALL the letterboxing! In skimming through, I noticed that the letterbox bars alternate between being black (as it should be) and various shades of dark-to-less-dark gray depending on the shot. This doesn't really matter for a workprint, but for the final product it needs to be consistently black, otherwise it's going to be incredibly distracting.
Other than that, I watched the Vader unmasking scene, and it's not that jarring. You can tell the non-GKAR shots are clearer, but it could be much, much worse.