Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 41

Agreed Zombie84.

Harmy said:

It was probably kind of unthinkable to store tens of terabytes of data in 1999.

 Yeah, exactly. I mean, the film was released in 1999, but the scan took place in 1997. I think we forget how absolutely primitive data storage was back then. My computer from 1998 had something like 4 GB of storage on it. Can you imagine suggesting 500 GB drives? And can you imagine suggesting, "So, this digital master is gonna be about 16 TBs in size...." Probably they would have said, what's a terabyte. Which is why probably what happened is each shot occupied a drive of a few GBs and it was printed out individually onto 35mm negatives and then cut together. Maybe they migrated it all to increasingly larger servers over the years, but the film would have been on a server farm of hundreds of drives, and not necessarily all in one centralized place, so they might have just wiped it all clean when the film came out. But who knows for sure.

Zombie84 if they did this for TPM why not the OT or the SE's of the OT?

The SE there def was not DI. It was 100% photochemical from the get-go. Select shots were digitized, but they were printed back onto film for a celluloid master.

Thanks very much for the info Zombie84. Did you also worte that article on the star wars restoration on the secrethistoryofstarwars website or was that someone else?

Yeah, that's my website.

Nice article Zombie84 good read.

kenkraly2007 said:

Zombie84 if they did this for TPM why not the OT or the SE's of the OT?

Because Lucas, for whatever reason, is happy with the 1080p digital master made for the 2004 DVDs.

Making a new DI costs a lot of money.  Lucasfilm could easily do it, it's not like they don't have the money (they do), or like they wouldn't make the money back in sales (they would) - it's just their excuse, because George doesn't think there's anything wrong with the previous 1080p master.

I agree with that LFL has the money to make a new DI they just don't want to because to them it's expensive. But the puzzling thing is other studios can restore the classics and great films but why not Lucas with the OT? I support LFL and GL but me this is  puzzling.

Remember that scene in CASINO where the millionaire high-roller businessmen still feel the need to swipe towels from the hotel?

kenkraly2007 said:

I agree with that LFL has the money to make a new DI they just don't want to because to them it's expensive. But the puzzling thing is other studios can restore the classics and great films but why not Lucas with the OT? I support LFL and GL but me this is  puzzling.

Because he doesn't want to.  That's it.  He doesn't want people to watch the original versions, he only wants people to watch the new ones.  Which is why he released the GOUT in such appalling quality, and why he never released the 1997 SE on DVD.

Same goes for THX 1138 and American Graffiti.  He doesn't want people to see the studio-tampered theatrical cuts of those, just the restored cuts he got to release in 1977 after Star Wars became big.  Now, with THX, he doesn't even want people to watch that version - only the CG-ized "Director's Cut" he released on DVD in 2004.  He even CG'ed the opening shot of Graffiti for DVD, and I'll guarantee you he never lets the original version of said shot be seen again.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant.  My bad.

avoidz said:

Baronlando said:

(Also, on the subject of using TV broadcasts to predict possible future blu-rays, Raiders is on USA this week, if anyone is curious to see if that new CGI cliff is still in there.)

I've seen Raiders twice now on TV recently, and both times I'd swear that cliff scene looks different (and I liked the original vfx). I don't recall it ever being mentioned as a change in the film, other than the boulder poles, snake reflection, truck pole that were digitally removed. Damn. More LFL meddling...

 That's because it's new.  That's a new change for the HD version.

Also, wouldn't it be possible, that the reason Lucas isn't really changing anything to do with the original trilogy is because he is saving that for his later 3D release which will require the most work?

And so, if the HD documentary screens are any indication, and if my above statement falls to be true, then it's extremely possible that we are to get 2004 ported HD content for the Blu-rays. In that case, Adywan, you really are our only hope.

xD

digitalfreaknyc said:

avoidz said:

Baronlando said:

(Also, on the subject of using TV broadcasts to predict possible future blu-rays, Raiders is on USA this week, if anyone is curious to see if that new CGI cliff is still in there.)

I've seen Raiders twice now on TV recently, and both times I'd swear that cliff scene looks different (and I liked the original vfx). I don't recall it ever being mentioned as a change in the film, other than the boulder poles, snake reflection, truck pole that were digitally removed. Damn. More LFL meddling...

 That's because it's new.  That's a new change for the HD version.

Are there any other changes to the HD edition? Or is it now like the OT; an ongoing exercise of CG "improvements" by the increasingly senile Spielberg and Lucas...

Raiders definitely has had some tweaks. There are some HD broadcasts circulating that show a new CGI truck falling off the cliff. But Raiders is a different beast altogether, as it hasn't really had any major alterations over the years except for the digital restoration work on the picture for the DVD release by Lowry, whereas the OT has had a lot of work done to it already.

I disagree with the premise that LFL had a problem with the 16 or so terabytes required to save one scan of the movie in 1997.  Raiding harddrives has always been key to large storage facilities. They had experience from the Special Editions two years prior, and they planned out these technological hurdles a year or so before even beginning work.

The idea of cost cutting could be the reasoning which would support why when they finished a shot they printed to film and made room for more production files.  But since there's always new things emerging from the LFL archives, I don't think they did this.  Maybe on Jurassic Park in 92-93, but not by this point.

Here's an article about TPM: (1999.06.01)

"Using the Force: How ILM's Army Conquered The Phantom Menace"

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mil/features/video_using_force_ilms/

picked out a bunch of quotes here and there, good article worth reading the whole thing.  This quotes about the editing side of the process:

All of the live-action film was processed and immediately telecined to be dealt with on the Avid."

ILM's FX Editorial department then functioned as the "funnel" for the OMF files that flowed from Lucas' editors. ILM actually used three Avid systems-one for each of the film's visual effects supervisors. On Tanaka's computer screen sat icons showing faces of Lucas and ILM's supervisors. "We used their heads to represent the hard drives where we stored their shots," says Tanaka with a smile. "By SW2, maybe their heads will be animated!"

Here's a clue about them archiving the original scan which for me shows they were saving every step along the way:

Even so, they calculated that they would fall behind. The process of preparing frames involved dirt removal and color timing, as well as an archival process.  *OMIT*  In scanning it, we can't forget what it was originally.

Here's a quote which alludes to the Special Editions frame scanning:

When the system was done, we could scan closer to 3.5-times faster than when we started Star Wars." In the end, the scan tally was a half-million frames.

No reference to what's being upgraded, but if individual machines were getting quadrupled, the server farm was probably huge.

Dailies on the Desktop What is truly striking about SW1 is how much decision-making happened right at artists' desks. The entire facility got a processor upgrade, and disk space and memory were tripled and quadrupled

Here's a reference to data transfer and it mentions terabytes:

The Network Glue Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, ILM's Gigabit Ethernet provided the connections that held SW1 together through all phases of production. "We've averaged about five terabytes of data a day," says network operations director Raleigh Mann, who joined ILM from AOL. "At peak, we actually pushed 16 terabytes through in a day. Though our network is small in terms of the numbers of computers on it, we maintained a percentage of traffic close to the size of AOL's."

LFL has been at the peek of data production since the early 80s, they most likely worked with HD manufacturers always having the most up to date storage facilities.  So I lean more towards they've got it backed up.  What they did once production was done to wrap things up, don't have a clue.

Bottom line, the BDs except for TPM is going to suck because of Lucas' inability to see anything wrong with the 04 transfers.

At this point it'd be more productive for Lucas to just make all the movies over again than trying to enhance what isn't there.

I hope the BD's are not bad but it is a consern if the same hd masters that where made in 2004 are used. As far as extras goes we all know most of the special features from the past dvds will be used however I was reading a article on IGN.com that a new doc for ESB was being made that has interviews with almost everyone who made the film.

assuming kenkraly2007 is alluding to the ESB doc pieces which were shown at Celebration V, this could be the article:

http://movies.ign.com/articles/111/1112085p1.html

That's the one.

Did we ever find out if Lowry is actually working on this set in any capacity? There was one vague second-hand thing someone mentioned, but I think that's it. I just saw this old 2004 quote from them in the changes thread, about eliminating the grain when a lightsaber is switched on:

"They flow very nicely now and, frankly, in the original movies, there was a distinct change. We were able to eliminate that change, and to me that's a very strong contribution to the storytelling process--removing something that prevents an audience from being drawn in."

I wonder if they said that before he saw what the sabers actually ended up looking like. The guy is so proud of eliminating the grain change but who really cares when the sabers are so messed up most of time? I would think Lowry would want that fixed, whether it's their fault or not, it reflects on them.