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Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 3

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Yeah, I'm going to try and recreate the original wipe where Jabba is in the SE but if I can't pull it off convincingly, I'll just leave it.

As to Ben's lightsabre, I didn't rotoscope it, I just increased brightness and contrast, just like I did to fix the lightsabres in ROTJ.

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Hmm. Well it looked pretty good to me, anyway. So that's cool. 

Just curious how you got the shot with the orange blob under the speeder. Was it just GOUT upscale, or what? That shot looked really bad in the GOUT, but it looked pretty good here.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Like most of the other shots, rotoscoping the SE part out of the HD scene using GOUT and various other different sources.

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Harmy, the latest clip is awesome! I'm glad you posted it, since I was starting to have withdrawals.

In the scene where the stormtroopers are looking for the droids behind the locked door, will you be tweaking that any more? The background around the corner (where people are walking) seems a bit blurry. I understand it may be as good as it gets though.

I can't wait to watch this on my HDTV.

 

 

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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Erikstormtrooper said:

Harmy, the latest clip is awesome! I'm glad you posted it, since I was starting to have withdrawals.

Thanks :-)

In the scene where the stormtroopers are looking for the droids behind the locked door, will you be tweaking that any more? The background around the corner (where people are walking) seems a bit blurry. I understand it may be as good as it gets though.

Yeah, that shot was actually quite a challenge and I'm afraid there's not much more I can do about that, because the droid sort of hovers up and down in front of that area, so it's either replace the whole background with GOUT like I did, or have a blurry blob hover up and down all over the place.

I'm also quite proud of the shot where Falcon leaves the dock, because there was a camera movement added to it, so I had to undo the movement, stabilize it, replace the whole background and add the bottom part that was missing due to the camera movement and add the original Falcon and also reconstruct first 5 frames, which were cut off in the SE.

This was a test to see how the shots work when put in the film and it helped me find out which shots still need some tweaking but over-all I think it works pretty well.

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What sort of colour correction will you be doing?  Since from the Technicolor photos we know about the Death Star interiors actually being blue in some shots, it would be good to see that preserved, but I do think the '04 is the often the wrong shade of blue and makes it too strong sometimes.  And then of course there's the other rubbish like heavily oversaturated reds, dark/weird skin tones, laser blasts being too pink or missing colour altogether, and all that.  (And the crushed blacks, but those aren't fixable.)

Mike Verta's site has a lot of good notes on colour correcting the opening scenes of the movie.  (This is where I first learned exactly why the image looked so messed up--before I couldn't really describe what I was seeing.)  http://www.starwarslegacy.com/

I'm also wondering whether you'll be using the G-force'd GOUT for the beginning crawl and Star Destroyer or not, along with msycamore's subtitles (since they are very accurate to the originals).

The Mos Eisley test looks quite good.  I'm really looking forward to this.  :)

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hairy_hen said:

What sort of colour correction will you be doing?  Since from the Technicolor photos we know about the Death Star interiors actually being blue in some shots, it would be good to see that preserved, but I do think the '04 is the often the wrong shade of blue and makes it too strong sometimes.  And then of course there's the other rubbish like heavily oversaturated reds, dark/weird skin tones, laser blasts being too pink or missing colour altogether, and all that.  (And the crushed blacks, but those aren't fixable.)

I'll be doing the same kind of colour correction as I did on Empire i.e. I'll be using colour boosted GOUT as a reference (with some restraint of course, as the GOUT colours are not completely accurate either). I'll also use the technicolour print photos wherever possible.

Mike Verta's site has a lot of good notes on colour correcting the opening scenes of the movie.  (This is where I first learned exactly why the image looked so messed up--before I couldn't really describe what I was seeing.)  http://www.starwarslegacy.com/

I checked that out and there definitely is some interesting input there.

I'm also wondering whether you'll be using the G-force'd GOUT for the beginning crawl and Star Destroyer or not

I'm not quite decided on that yet. I think I'll try using the GOUT crawl but rotoscope in the SE stardestroyer and Tantive IV and see how that works.

along with msycamore's subtitles (since they are very accurate to the originals).

Not sure about that one either. I managed to erase the yellow subs from the HD footage of the Greedo scene using the 04DVD and I'll definitely try making more screen accurate subs. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to use msycamore's subs. It would actually be awesome if someone could encode a video with msycamore's subs on plain green background

The Mos Eisley test looks quite good.  I'm really looking forward to this.  :)

Thanks, I'm working on some more tweaks right now to make it even better. Also, did you notice that the NTSC DVD version of Empire is now available?

 

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I did see that the dvd for Empire is out, but haven't had a chance to do much with SW stuff lately.  Feel free to PM me with the links and I'll check it out as soon as I can.  ;)

Since you seem to be very good at lining up frames from different sources, I had an idea about the problematic transition in the Mos Eisley test where the Jabba scene would be.  Would it be possible to dissolve between the '04 footage and GOUT before and after this takes place?  (Maybe using the '04 dvd instead of the HD for some of it so it's not as big a jump in resolution?)  So dissolve to scripted GOUT as the big-nose guy starts towards the camera, allowing the original optical transition to take place, and then dissolve back to '04 before the Millennium Falcon is seen.  Would this work?  The colour would have to be matched exactly, and the '04 would have to be cropped to match G-force's framing, but it seems like something worth trying.  Or, alternatively, a more lengthy portion of GOUT for the whole thing if that wouldn't work.  The only other thing I can think of is slowing down the footage to match the original number of frames, but I don't think that would look right at all.

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I think I already figured out how to do it using the HD footage only but I'll have to test it to confirm. I want to avoid using the GOUT footage as much as possible but slowing the footage down considerably seems even worse, so if it doesn't work, I think I'll just keep the straight cut.

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That would be awful, the Jabba scene represents everything that is wrong with the SE.

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Hal 9000 said:

I guess you could just leave the Jabba scene in.

 And then when it's put on a DVD it'd make a good coaster.

Harrison Ford Has Pretty Much Given Up on His Son. Here's Why

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Hal 9000 said:

I guess you could just leave the Jabba scene in.

 And then when it's put on DVD it'll make a good frisbee.

 That's payback for lifting my Ritz cracker manhole bit Dinkins, paper plates my ass, that was so gay.

HARMY RULES

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The problem with this project IMO is that you're just creating another "SE" no matter how good the intentions are... I know, quite hypocritical coming from a guy that have re-constructed the burned in subs... I must admit what you're doing is damn good looking though, and done in very good taste. :)

Could you make anything from the video-clips I sent you ? just curious.

Also did take a look at your Mos eisley-clip, and noticed that the smeared parts is still left from the GOUT-footage, unfortunately making the fixed surrounded footage fall flat on the nose IMO. With your skill, I think it would be worth to upload another clip your way.

Stay tuned... maybe you can do something with it.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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hey harmy,

How did you handle the part where han chases those storm troopers in the death star and is forced to retreat when he comes around the corner?  Will you be using gout?

"I will laugh my ass off a hundred years from now when the only version of STARWARS people remember are harmys despecialized editions.  They will project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality."

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@msycamore: I tried, but unfortunately the graininess of the V8 made the transition look even worse. And also it's one thing looking at it as separate clips and then watching it as a movie, that way these things don't seem to stand out far as much as when you're specifically looking for them. And in most shots, the GForced GOUT that I'm getting from DJ is the closest to HD I'm gonna get.

@joshdv: I don't know yet, didn't get that far.

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Nevermind, the clip I planned to upload for you was from the '82 pan & scan LD but it had to many compression artifacts to be of any good use, maybe if someone could upload a good capture of that LD you would have something great to work with.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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Harmy said:

@msycamore: I tried, but unfortunately the graininess of the V8 made the transition look even worse. And also it's one thing looking at it as separate clips and then watching it as a movie, that way these things don't seem to stand out far as much as when you're specifically looking for them. And in most shots, the GForced GOUT that I'm getting from DJ is the closest to HD I'm gonna get. 

Ok, I thought that would be the case. You're right of course, you tend to be overly critical when you know what flaws to look for, as a complete film experience these versions you make will certainly be fantastic for most viewers, don't let my comments dampen your spirit, I'm just a stubborn purist. What you're able to achieve here is quite awesome.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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Thanks. I quite understand your stance as well, I'd also prefer a proper restoration of the original but for the time being this is better then nothing for me because it bothers me that the shit SE version is out there in HD and I couldn't watch SW in that quality because it's ruined by CGI.

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msycamore said:

Ok, I thought that would be the case. You're right of course, you tend to be overly critical when you know what flaws to look for, as a complete film experience these versions you make will certainly be fantastic for most viewers, don't let my comments dampen your spirit, I'm just a stubborn purist. What you're able to achieve here is quite awesome.

 I've watched Harmy's ESB close to 20 times in the last couple of weeks, and if you're not satisfied with that masterpiece, you're not going to be satisfied with anything short of perfection (which we'll never see). We've all waited nearly forever for the Original Trilogy, and now thanks to Harmy, we'll have it. Harmy's cuts are so damn good, I think they're the first versions that are above nitpicking. They're so beautiful I'm not going to waste my time searching for flaws.

HARMY RULES

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Rob said:

msycamore said:

Ok, I thought that would be the case. You're right of course, you tend to be overly critical when you know what flaws to look for, as a complete film experience these versions you make will certainly be fantastic for most viewers, don't let my comments dampen your spirit, I'm just a stubborn purist. What you're able to achieve here is quite awesome.

 I've watched Harmy's ESB close to 20 times in the last couple of weeks...

Nerd alert. :p

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@Rob: Wow, thanks, you make me blush ;-D

Just a fair warning though: While ESB was like 99% the theatrical cut, SW will only be like 95% and Jedi maybe even just like 90% theatrical cuts, because there were some scenes, which will have to be recut slightly to get rid of most of the SE while keeping it HD quality, unless the GOUT upscales prove to be better than I expect. In Jedi for example I'll have to recut the ending celebration and in SW I'll have to cut around the Luke and Biggs scene before the battle of Yavin. I'm going to do both of those scenes similarly to their PDE versions, which you can see here and here, although I'll try to recut the Jedi ending in a way to keep away from creating continuity errors. And there are other smaller things here and there.