GOUT, Automated Theatrical Colouring, and a Reference Guide — Page 9

These are getting good; adywan's screenshots in particular really caught my eye.  It's very cool to see a brighter and more vivid image without the lobster skin tones popping everywhere.  Combining that with the G-force script would give great results for sure.

His rendition does look rather like the '97 SE, which makes sense since they had the Technicolor reference in making that version.  That won't apply to the other two movies though, since there were no Technicolor prints of those.

If a hybrid project were to be attempted, I'd say the '04 version could be used anywhere that crushed blacks are not an issue, but that would probably only leave half the movie at most.

rockin said:

 

I think what we would need is a hybrid version of all the best parts taken from the best sources to achieve what needs to be done getting it to look as close to the original as possible. So we could have a mixture of GOUT/04SE/97SE for particular parts but not too much that it becomes jarring between sources. As we know, that working from one source has its limitations, and in this case the GOUT source doesn't have all the colour information in parts that would be needed to recolour time it.

I've been thinking about hybridizing DJ's GOUT V3 and 97 SE V2 sets.  That way, you don't have the immensely drastic difference in quality you get when combining the GOUT and the 04 DVD, but you still get better-than-GOUT quality for most of the movie.

This is not an "I'm definitely going to do this" thing, I'm just thinking about it.  I would also do a full color pass at least scene by scene, if not shot by shot (depends on how much time I want to sink into working on this).

Oh, and csd79 & Adywan, your color tweaks both look absolutely amazing.  That's how I want Star Wars to look, man ... fucking GL ...

I really like what Ady did there; looks fairly similar to my own second test on that page. It's amazing how much nicer the GOUT looks when you just restore the colours. It's like how when sick people lose all the colour in their skin and look grey, once you see them healthy again you realise how bad they looked.

For what it is worth, I would recommend a light contrast bump in addition to the colour restoration. The GOUT is a bit flat, probably due to the age of the tape and the fact that this was intended for 1990s television. If they were to transfer the print today the contrast would look different. Nothing too serious, because SW has a high-key pastel look, but just a few points of increased contrast I feel it gives the image a little something.

ChainsawAsh said:

rockin said:

 

I think what we would need is a hybrid version of all the best parts taken from the best sources to achieve what needs to be done getting it to look as close to the original as possible. So we could have a mixture of GOUT/04SE/97SE for particular parts but not too much that it becomes jarring between sources. As we know, that working from one source has its limitations, and in this case the GOUT source doesn't have all the colour information in parts that would be needed to recolour time it.

I've been thinking about hybridizing DJ's GOUT V3 and 97 SE V2 sets.  That way, you don't have the immensely drastic difference in quality you get when combining the GOUT and the 04 DVD, but you still get better-than-GOUT quality for most of the movie.

This is not an "I'm definitely going to do this" thing, I'm just thinking about it.  I would also do a full color pass at least scene by scene, if not shot by shot (depends on how much time I want to sink into working on this).

Oh, and csd79 & Adywan, your color tweaks both look absolutely amazing.  That's how I want Star Wars to look, man ... fucking GL ...

That's sounds great. I think though, the more people behind it the better really. Since seems like a lot of work for one person, but if you are up for it then I am all for it.

I think there is real potential with the sources we have. I certainly think that using some of interior death star scenes could be recolour timed using the 97SE source moreso than the GOUT, due to their being more to work with. I also liked Harmy's approach of the GOUT/04 hybrid for the landspeeder. There is just so much there, that I think it would be real waste to focus on the GOUT only and not take advantage of other sources.

I don't know what other people's thoughts are on this, but I think this could work.

One of the few fixes that the X0 Project produced was a landspeeder shot, I don't know if they ever released that (Zion said he would), but that could be another source.

Also, I'm not totally convinced that the 2004 DVD cannot be used for donor parts. You would have to filter it to match--softening and probably some light grain--but I don't think it would be so jarring if you just need a shot or two. Of course, if you are starting with the 1997 SE then this becomes unnecessary. Are there screens of the 97SE V2? I don't believe I am familiar with it and I'm curious what the detail level is.

There are a lot of ROTJ shots on this page.  Not sure if DJ did more post-processing to them, but he used the GKAR as a base for Jedi, and the Flunk as a base for Empire and ANH.

I think there are some caps of the Flunk ANH earlier in the thread, but I know the caps in the first page or two (or three) are all laserdisc caps, none of which were used in the final discs.

Harmy said:

But like I said, while these screenshots look nice, these versions (and specifically GKAR Jedi) are totally f'ed up by DVNR. I'd post some screenshots but I'm too lazy right now, maybe later.

Really?! Aww that's a shame. Perhaps for ROTJ it will require a combination of more GOUT/04SE/another source. Does anyone know how the ESB fairs in comparison to ROTJ, 97SE broadcast wise?

I don't know what it is with ROTJ... seems to be great difficulty in finding a decent version to watch that doesn't have colour/picture smearing problems LOL (frustrating) in terms of watching the original version(except yours of course Harmy ;-p)

Could anyone recommend monitor calibration tools/techniques?  Has anyone who's created pics, calibrated with someone else?  Would like to comment but this monitors is at least 8 years old...  What kind of monitors is everyone using?

and VLC does have output capabilities.  (never had much success but it's there)

  'Advanced Open File' -> Steaming/Saving Settings

People interested in this topic can check out an improved version of my initial page here, with a lot of extra-GOUT source comparisons.

http://www.savestarwars.com/goutcorrect.html

adywan said:

Here's my attempt at colour boosting the GOUT:

 (warning it's a very large image)

http://img573.imageshack.us/i/goutcolourboost.jpg/

Now every shot has the same settings. All i did was this in After effects:

First i added the levels filter & very slightly lowered the white level (this eliminates blown out high levels that can be caused by the next step), then added the colour correction filter & very slightly lower the red highs & midtones to make the white point white instead of having the red tint.  Next i added the hue/saturation filter & boosted the saturation level to +26. last step was to add another hue/saturation filter and lower the red saturation to -23.  Boosting the saturation levels any more in step 2 and the colours are just too oversaturated  and it looks horrible.

This worked for the entire move apart from one scene which was the lars homestead sale. This already seems to have the blues boosted so all that would need doing for this scene would be to drop the blue & cyan saturation to equal levels (about-11 each). there is already some nasty video noise in the sky tones for this scene in a few shots so not much can be done about that. I have made a preset that can be loaded straight into after effects is anyone is interested in it.

Can I get that preset you mention? OH, and which version are you using or does it matter?

Harmy said:

Cool, I'm interested in this as a way of finding out what the colours should be for colour correction.

Btw, I noticed this:

 

One drawback of saturating the GOUT is that it sometimes brings out the flaws in the master. Although difficult to see from a still, this shot has a lot of video noise and artifacting in the sky, because the original negative is very grainy and also because the video master has a hard time with strong primary colours. This noise is on the uncorrected GOUT but it becomes more noticeable when saturated. The 2004 master had the same problem with this shot as well, and you can see it in the Puggo 16mm too.

The 2004 master can't possibly have the same problem with this particular shot as it's been replaced by a completely new one for the SE.

 D'oh! In my defense it was 6 am when I wrote that and I hadn't been to bed yet.