The Aluminum Falcon said:
Fritz, I know that earlier you said that it seemed like the ESB bootleg was a transfer from a 35mm print. How do you know of this and are you sure that it's not a 70mm one? Did you check if it has any of the differences listed in this thread? Sorry I'm just curious. Oh and I echo Sluggo's sentiments: thanks so much for sharing your collection with us.
Well, it's mostly conjecture on my part. As you now know, the Falcon's dish is present in the Luke-on-the- weather-wane-shot.
Also, the likelyhood of a 70mm print going astray, and that some fly-by-night operation would have the equipment to scan it is improbable. I am also unsure if any 70mm prints were shipped to the UK (The print has a UK rating card lead-in).
In the new Making of Empire book, I read that due to the film only being shown in 70mm the first couple of weeks(?), the usual pirating of 35mm prints was staved off. I was not aware that copying of 35mm film was a common mode of piracy at the time. That opens up the possibility that what I have is a telecine of a pirated print, one generation removed from an actual exhibition print.
Progress report:
I've finished my second transfer of ESB, greatly reducing the wobble and finetuning the analog tracking in the process. I've mixed and matched my two transfers to keep the best of both. I am left with some intermittent interlace artefacts in the encode to DVD, but will have to let that pass. If I ever intend to get this out the door I'm going to have to stop fiddling with it.
Jedi suffers from extreme blocking when encoded at 4-5 mbps, due to the extremely noisy source. Doing a dual-layer release would avoid this, but I don't see the point. I have tried a half D1 encode, removing much of the blocking but also softening what little detail was there in the original. At this point I'm leaning towards just releasing it as-is.
Covers are done, menus are done, (The most enjoyable part of the process to me).
You know, I'm sympathizing more and more with people like Harmy and Puggo who have done several releases. It takes forever to get these things done.