You could put the shirts and hats on Ebay. ;)
Could we see what they look like in any case?
Where were you in '77?
I'll take some photos.
My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]
Thanks for the info Zion. Like zombie84, I don't remember hearing some of those details before, but in any case it's nice having them repeated here.
I think releasing those two completed shots could be very helpful to a lot of the fan editors here, who, at the very least, could use them as benchmarks against which they can evaluate their own edits.
“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers
Luckily, those are two of the shots that needed the work the most! Thanks, Zion. I still hope one day we'll see a raw capture, at least, but I think these two shots are more important to the community.
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
Zion since the thread is yours, might want to update the first post with the recent 'here's where things stand post' link.
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-X-Project-Laserdisc-on-Steroids/post/461494/#TopicPost461494
and if you can find the Laserman post alluded to.
It's not going to make the bumps go away, but it'll make the explanations easier, "go see first post".
I'm curious to know how the untouched capture compares to the GOUT, both pre and post g-force script.
Zion, any comments?
“I love Darth Editous and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” ~ADigitalMan
A laserdisc capture off an X0 machine is of interest even without the post-processing. Definitely, releasing those raw captures would be exciting.
"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars
I'm glad to hear the news on this project. Like boba feta and Puggo, I too think that a raw X0 capture would be of interest: processing or not. It definitely would be one of the definitive laserdisc preservations. Maybe untouched it would still be better than the GOUT...
It would be great to have those two shots available especially, since they were the ones most affected by horrid DVNR smearing. Undoubtedly they would be invaluable for various preservation projects, and the raw X0 captures would certainly be interesting to many also.
It would be amazing to get the finished scenes
BTW guys do you plan to put your website back online ? Or post it to some free webhosting service ?
I think there could be no greater tribute to Laserman than to have the raw captures shared or the torch passed so that this project can see some proper closure.
It would be an awesome thing for sure.......
Zion, anything you can give us from the X0 project will be appreciated.
You know of the rebellion against the Empire?
"I want it all, I want it all, I want it now!!!"
No seriously, these two shots would be awesome to have, especially this one:
In GOUT this shot looks like sh*t (possibly the worst shot in the whole thing), so it would be extremely valuable for any future reconstruction (I would have loved to use this in my SW PDE to get rid of the stupid dinosaur but the GOUT quality was too bad) so maybe in v.3.0...
That picture looks so good. Its really sad of what could have been.
looking for HDTV of the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Also HDTV of The Lord of the Rings trilogy
At least not until some sort of black magic-like software comes available that will allow us to combine the LD captures together (XØ and Japanese DefCol) that I spent hours pouring over, manually IVTCing, matching up frame for frame, and noting where any and all frame differences occured.
If i remember correctly Zion the X0 team had come up with a solution in software to the garbage mattes and i wonder why no one else has thought of that. Just wait until the blu rays come out of the special editions. You will have black boxes around the tie fighters at 1080P and messed up colors.
Why fix it, too expensive for a poor billionaire. Better off pretending its his original vision and a deliberate creative decision.
I mean Lucas is a starving artist right, what will he do he does not have enough money people, so go out and buy all his star wars junk.
“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.
Out of curiosity and forgive me if this has been discussed before but has anyone tried using the black magic-like software to combine the GOUT and the Japanese Definitive Collection, thereby reducing the GOUT's horrid DVNR? Alternatively, could the GOUT, XO, and Japanese Definitive Collection be combined with this software to make the best image?
The "black magic" software is nowhere to be found. Don't know if Laserman developed it himself or what, but nobody else seems to have it... the closest to that is Laserdisc Revived, but the guy working on that keeps disappearing
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
Does Zion or the other members of the XO team have a copy of the black magic software? It would prove handy in so many future projects.
It's my understanding that Laserman was the only one who ever had access to the software, and, well...
my guess is that they don't, for i'm sure they would have released it to us
Thanks for the info, guys! It's unfortunate that such a useful software isn't available.
Sorry for dropping off the map the last couple of weeks. My internet went down at home and my modem still isn't working. I'm actually posting from a Kinko's right now because my cable modem is currently running at the blazing fast speed of about 56K. :|
Now, to answer a few questions:
bkev said:
Luckily, those are two of the shots that needed the work the most! Thanks, Zion. I still hope one day we'll see a raw capture, at least, but I think these two shots are more important to the community.
This is exactly the reason Laserman chose them. The worst shots are the easiest to demonstrate what a great job the black magic process could do.
none said:
Zion since the thread is yours, might want to update the first post with the recent 'here's where things stand post' link.
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-X-Project-Laserdisc-on-Steroids/post/461494/#TopicPost461494
and if you can find the Laserman post alluded to.
It's not going to make the bumps go away, but it'll make the explanations easier, "go see first post".
Done.
boba feta said:
I'm curious to know how the untouched capture compares to the GOUT, both pre and post g-force script.
It's much better than the untouched GOUT. I'm not sure how it compares to the g-force script, as I have yet to take a good look at the output of the script, but you'll soon be able to judge that for yourselves.
pittrek said:
BTW guys do you plan to put your website back online ? Or post it to some free webhosting service ?
I've archived it to my personal site, but that's down right now as well. Once I've got it back online, I'll post the link.
Harmy said:
"I want it all, I want it all, I want it now!!!"
No seriously, these two shots would be awesome to have, especially this one:
In GOUT this shot looks like sh*t (possibly the worst shot in the whole thing), so it would be extremely valuable for any future reconstruction (I would have loved to use this in my SW PDE to get rid of the stupid dinosaur but the GOUT quality was too bad) so maybe in v.3.0...
Sadly, this is the shot I'm having trouble locating at the moment. I'll have to do some more digging on my other drive and see if I maybe saved it to a different location than the other one. If I can't find it, it means I never actually got it from Laserman, or that he never actually sent it to me in the first place, which would suck.
Darth Editous said:
Zion, can you give any more detail as to what such a piece of software would specifically need to do?
DE
A little history on Black Magic:
As far as I know, "Black Magic" was the name of the workstation (yes, a workstation, not just a software application) Laserman was able to borrow from his office. If you guys didn't know, Laserman used to work for Weta Studios in Australia, so this had to be built on some sort of cutting edge in-house software that the public didn't have access to.
Obviously, since it wasn't just a piece of software, Laserman couldn't copy it and send to anyone. And I'm assuming he eventually had to take the workstation back to the office, so I'm guessing it's back in the hands of Weta Studios.
What Black Magic actually did was take several different sources of the same video (e.g. different LD captures of Star Wars), analyze them for similarities and differences, and output a new pristine version of the video mostly free of any analog noise or other nasties, and with outstanding detail.
I recall one of the last things Laserman suggested on our private forum was to try and use an application built on MatLab to emulate the output from Black Magic. I downloaded it once upon a time, but I never had the time to devote to teaching myself another programing language to get the thing running, much less learn how to use it. I'll try and see if I can find some more specifics on that and post them here.
And for your viewing pleasure, Laserman's Black Magic version of the "Look sir, droids" shot:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=82CNJW13 (This is an AVI either uncompressed or in HuffYUV. I don't know for sure because this machine won't tell me.) Enjoy. And here's hoping I can find the other one.
At some point soon (probably in a couple weeks), I'll try to see if I can't upload ANH to a.b.sw.
My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]
Zion said:
Harmy said:
"I want it all, I want it all, I want it now!!!"
No seriously, these two shots would be awesome to have, especially this one:
In GOUT this shot looks like sh*t (possibly the worst shot in the whole thing), so it would be extremely valuable for any future reconstruction (I would have loved to use this in my SW PDE to get rid of the stupid dinosaur but the GOUT quality was too bad) so maybe in v.3.0...
Sadly, this is the shot I'm having trouble locating at the moment. I'll have to do some more digging on my other drive and see if I maybe saved it to a different location than the other one. If I can't find it, it means I never actually got it from Laserman, or that he never actually sent it to me in the first place, which would suck.
Oh, yeah, that would suck major ass, because while the 4 eyed stormtrooper shot looked like shit, it isn't beyond salvation because it is mostly the same in the SE, so it could have been restored though some compositing. The shot in the picture is altered so much for the SE and looks so shit on the GOUT that getting rid of the new additions through compositing would be next to impossible.