Complete Comparison of Special Edition Visual Changes — Page 10

msycamore said:

I really have to double check the '86/'92 releases again, the dot pattern on the '85 LD was hard to notice due to the low quality

msycamore said:

The first Laserdisc release of Empire was in 1984 according to the Laserdisc Database, don't know if it has been preserved by someone here?

Darth Mallwalker said:

 

I'm not set up for capturing video, but I could capture individual frames directly from my own laserdiscs if it might help. No MPEG2 artefacts that way. I don't have any of the time-compressed LDs, but I've got most all the others.

That would be great, I find this scanline compositing very hard to capture on a single frame but in motion you can really see the differences between these versions, one of the reasons I wanted to double check the '86/'92 transfers is that the interlacing artifacts and missing/blended frames makes it hard to be 100% sure and the other reason is that I still cannot understand that so many video variations really exists.

Darth Mallwalker said: 

dark_jedi's 1425-80 posting now...

You really have a vast digital library :) and dark_jedi have done a damn good job preserving all of these. :)

doubleofive, I noticed you got this wrong again:

SW comparison 3: "While the font is the same in all versions, the preface was rendered thinner with wider spacing in 1997 (middle) and yet again in 2004 (bottom)."

correction:
The preface was rendered thinner with wider spacing in 1997 (middle) and yet again in a different font in 2004 (bottom).

I guess they changed the font in the 2004 DVD to match the preface of the prequels, the '97 looks almost identical to the '77 original but if you look closely you can see it's a different rendering, closer in appearance to the sequels, that's why I think they didn't change the preface for Empire and Jedi in '97 but I may be wrong.

1977 original - this wasn't simply reused in '80 and '83, it was slightly differently rendered for every sequel

1997 SE - slightly thinner with different spacing, very close, probably a modern digitized version of the same font

doubleofive, can you check if the preface was slightly different in the '97 Empire and Jedi than in '80 and '83?

msycamore said:

doubleofive, can you check if the preface was slightly different in the '97 Empire and Jedi than in '80 and '83?

I have finally solved this Emperor scanline-mystery, it was as I initally thought could be the reason, the bad vertical detail caused by blurring in the GOUT. I got the idea to check an old copy of DrGonzo's Empire which are an old preservation of the Definitive Collection LD set from 1993, and behold...

It is quite sad when this old single layer DVD preservation of the Laserdisc that uses the same master as the GOUT have more vertical detail, and now we're only talking about the NTSC LD.

Awesome! I guess...

What about the other scanlines? Any more light on the subject for the Generator shot?

Everything else in it is identical to the GOUT, also double checked my '95 PAL VHS and the Emperor scanlines are clearly defined in that transfer also, the other shots are still a mystery, that is perhaps until Mallwalker or someone else check their LD's for better image quality... 

Does this mean that the Emperor always has scanlines, we just can't see them in our examples? Or does the 70mm/8mm truly not have any.

The 35mm version definitely have them, the 70mm footage on Puggo's 8mm doesn't look like it have them, but I'm not so sure about it due to the low quality of that video.

Darth Mallwalker, can you or someone else for that matter, check these two shots below on the '86 JSC LD or its later pre-THX US LD counterparts? The '92 VHS release also uses the same video-master, I guess. And check if the screen-display have just horizontal scanlines instead of the more familiar dots, and horizontal scanlines on the hologram instead of vertical ones? I'm still not entirely sure about this, it surely looks different in these two caps I've posted but I'd like to have it double-checked to be sure, at this point these two are the odd ones out of all the transfers I checked.

The other mystery of course is this shot of the Shield Generator in the '93-video master, I thought I would check the DrGonzo-transfer again and compare it with the GOUT, and I don't know if you can notice it on these screen-caps or not but even though his transfer is much softer you can actually see some traces of scanlines in it, though they are hard to notice. (you can see them better in motion) But it's still very weird, you would think the scanlines would have been more visible when the difference between the transfers in the Emperor-hologram was so clear. It's still possible it could be an earlier version of the shot but I'm leaning towards a glitch of some sort in the '93-master, the detail that is gone along with the similar flaws of missing color that happens on several occasions in these transfers makes me believe it's a glitch.

'93 DC LD (DrGonzo DVD)

GOUT

'86 JSC LD

Here's all my ESB laserdiscs, in order of release:

1425-84 (Pioneer, USA)




JSC




1425-85 (Pioneer, USA)

(first frame isn't shown because it's telecine on that CLV/CAA disc)


1425-84 (re-release by Mitsubishi, Japan)




DC (without Leia welding)




Capture card is OEM for Gateway with Bt878 chip.
Player is LD-V8000

The text is red and the scanlines are less. It has to be deliberate!

Thanks for the many screen-caps, Mallwalker! the traces of scanlines are much more visible in your DC - captures.

Still planning to look at the two scenes you asked about in Post 236.
Wanting to compare apples with apples, can you or Five tell me which GOUT frame numbers you're using for those two shots?

The choking Admiral looks like it might be 34139. Am I close?
The 'conference call' scene has so little motion that I won't even try to guess which GOUT frame it is...

Not sure on frame count numbers (or how to check), but "conference call" doesn't move enough to make a difference. I judged my comparison in Ozzel's death by the location of his elbow against the controller guy's face.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Still planning to look at the two scenes you asked about in Post 236.
Wanting to compare apples with apples, can you or Five tell me which GOUT frame numbers you're using for those two shots?

The choking Admiral looks like it might be 34139. Am I close?
The 'conference call' scene has so little motion that I won't even try to guess which GOUT frame it is...

Oh, I have no idea. I'll try to check that for you...

Yeah, this is real geeky obsessiveness alright, but it's strangely fashinating at the same time. ;)

The choking Admiral is: 34123

The 'conference call' scene is: 75235

msycamore said:

The choking Admiral is: 34123

The 'conference call' scene is: 75235

doubleofive said:

I'm way too inaccurate to do what I do. I always go by visual cues. Is there a way to get VLC to show the frame numbers?

I don't think that's possible with VLC, I actually cap them in the same way as you do, doubleofive, it was just this time I checked the GOUT frames in HCenc to help him out. And to be honest, I'm not even sure if my JSC-caps are exactly the same as my GOUT-caps.

This was posted on the ESBR thread:

euroherbal said:

Ady, are you going to fix 3PO's head's back side (actually, Anthony Daniel's "face") when Chewbacca is fixing him in the prison cell at Cloud City?

They tried to sort of fix it in 2004 DVD, but they left the job unfinished...

Screen captures here and here

msycamore said:

The choking Admiral is: 34123

It looks to me that maybe its ALWAYS been dots, just bad laserdisc transfers before.

We seem to be eliminating a lot of these change/change backs. The only one that is obvious is the direction of the scanlines in the Conference, which still blows my mind.