.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *) — Page 90

I'm not really a torrent guy, but anyone is welcome to do that once it's uploaded to usenet.

OK, that shot does look amazing, compared to the GOUT. Here's a screenshot:

Is this all you have of that shot though? Because as it is it is completely unusable: First and foremost it's not the complete shot and it only shows the part of that shot that is identical in the SE (which actually makes me a little suspicious to be honest) and second it's a weird resolution of 720x280.

To me that "Look sir, droids" shot just looks like it could be color corrected 2004 DVD footage, nice nevertheless. Thanks for sharing, Zion. Hope you locate the other one.

msycamore said:

To me that "Look sir, droids" shot just looks like it could be color corrected 2004 DVD footage. 

That's what I thought too and the fact that it is cut off on both ends at exactly the time which would reveal it as an SE shot (just after the digital Dewback would be out of the frame at the beginning and just before the wipe to the new SE sandcrawler at the end) only supports that theory.

However, there is some dirt in there that is not present on the DVD. Fake or not, as you already said Harmy, in this form it is useless anyway. :(

OK, I'm not saying that's how I necessarily think it is, but what if this screenshot is a fake too:

I did that in photoshop. And since no-one seems to ever actually have seen that black-magic clip as video...

I don't think they would have bothered with that. Let's wait and see the raw captures before we make any judgments...

Was the X0 capture from the 1993 laserdiscs?

I thought it was from one of the releases from the 80s.

Hmm...

I was going to say you guys are getting a bit too paranoid...but after watching this clip, I see what you mean. This looks way too good to be true.

If the raw captures look HALF this good, I would be completely ecstatic.

strangelove said:

Minor sidetrack: In my opinion (previously stated long long ago, somewhere on this thread) the Mos Eisley shot has so much wrong with it I'm not sure what a restoration could accomplish, short of working from the camera original. It's not just color balance and grain-- the concept of the effect is flawed.

The filmmakers obviously weren't satisfied with the way the practical landspeeder photographed, and it appears that the orangey 'force-field' area is actually the vehicle's real shadow, painted out frame-by-frame. I get that they wanted to see some daylight beneath the supposedly hovering craft, but there are too many visual cues indicating its true position relative to the ground. The result is that the shadow appears cast towards us, consistent with a light source coming from the background, while every other shadow on location is cast away from us by sunlight from behind the camera. I mean sure, two suns, but still.

I'm confused... are you saying that the original isn't worth restoring because it couldn't correct the flaws in the special effect?  That's a necessary byproduct of a preservation - it preserves everying... including the flaws... inherent in limitations of the time when the movie was made.

strangelove said:

But if we're going to be picking and choosing individual shots that 'could look better', I feel that the Mos Eisley drive-by is a low priority.

With respect to the GOUT, when people talk about making it "look better", they aren't talking about fixing the red glow... they are talking about how it is the probably the most poorly-transferred segment of the laserdisc master. It is blurry with color bleeding all over the place, whereas the original film was sharp like the other Mos Eisley scenes.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

... they are talking about how it is the probably the most poorly-transferred segment of the laserdisc master. It is blurry with color bleeding all over the place, whereas the original film was sharp like the other Mos Eisley scenes.

 Maybe it's just me, but I notice the "ghosting" throughout the entire film...though it is a lot more noticable in -those- scenes.

So the trick was basically noise averaging?

Here's a little experiment of mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Timirt67zMQ

It still needs some work but it was just an idea I got when trying to do it in photoshop.

Something like this should actually be quite easy with the "look sir droids" shot, as the quality of that isn't actually that bad in GOUT.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Just saw your little experiment Harmy. I'm impressed to say the least, especially since you think it still needs some work. Perhaps we can get rid of ALL of the badly DVNR-ed shots with your process, which is what Black Magic would have accomplished if it was carried out on all shots.

This is just a theory / rambling out aloud, but you might get a better result if you only composite the luma channels from the GOUT/04SE and then merge this luma composite with the chroma channels from the GOUT.

Ideally what you need is a filter that can detect the DVNR smear, so that it will only do compositing where needed that way you're keeping the amount of the 04SE used to a minimum.

I thought that as it was that shot, it had some relevance here but we're getting too far off topic and I don't wanna hijack the thread, so I'm moving this discussion to my PDE thread, where it is more relevant, as that's where I'd theoretically be using it.