Gaffer Tape said:
Good Lord. What is with this company's dogged insistence on sticking almost everything from the OT into a cramped little corner?
Luke Skywalker? Who's that?
Oh, just some random bit part in, I don't know, maybe two films, was it?
Still, Endor has that pinkish hue to its clouds... :(
I have to say, I like the 2004 gamma levels better a lot of the time. In half the shots, you don't get any more real detail but more importantly the blacks just look milky and you have this thin haze on a lot of stuff. As was said, even the black bars are greyer. This isn't the solution--you aren't doing a new D.I. and timing it brighter, you are just turning up the brightness on the TV basically.
The sad truth is that this is the best they can do if they don't want to do a new scan. Unfortunately, since they are starting with an already-colour-corrected source, the detail is "baked in," and so are the shadows. It's not the same as working with the negative and re-timing it to have brighter levels. Instead they just did the same thing as turning up the brightness on the TV, but it doesn't always look good, in fact in some cases it looks worse.
I'd say it was rather stupid doing the color correction BEFORE having Lowry clean up and restore the image. If they did it the other way around, they could always go back to the original color (on the cleaned-up master), and make a new color-correction from there. Now, once they want to change the color-timing considerably (and most importantly fix the crushed blacks), Lowry would have to re-do their clean-up as well, I guess.
Short-sighted and incompetent...
adywan said:
so you have now been banned at blu-ray.com cowboy for posting the exact same rants that kenkraly constantly posts, yet he gets no ban? Figures. Very one sided over there.
Blu-ray.com - you will never find a more wretched hive of apologists and childish Lucas lovers.
“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”
I could never understand the workflow they did. 1) Scan, 2) Colour Correct, 3) integrate new FX, 3) Dirt cleanup. It's pretty much the opposite of how normally things are done as far as I understand it. First you scan. Then you clean it. Then you colour it. Then you integrate the new footage and match it to what you have.
If I was Lucas, knowing I would return to the films, I would have also saved each stage. Have a pure raw scan, just in case you need to start over; you can always re-comp the new additions back in. Have a backup of the new scan with colour correction, just in case you want to do a new cleaning pass from scratch. Why wasn't this done? HDD space is so cheap and Lucasfilm is worth so many hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, okay, you would have to spend money on having Lowry clean it again, but with all the finicking with the baked-in scan, the difference can't be that huge, you would save time by simply returning to the source.
Unfortunately it probably comes down to the fact that Lucas himself supervised the 2004 scan (sad isn't it?), and he can't be bothered to do this for every scene of every film all over again and would rather just have them bring up the brightness levels if it looks sort-of right, at least to a not-very-discerning level. I mean, he thought the 2004 version was great after all, I gather that it is his cronies that are attempting to respond to criticisms. I read some response a few pages back by one of his employees that attempted to lay the cause on the way HD video responds to film; it was so ludicrous it made me laugh sadly and shake my head, fully out loud. Are they fucking kidding me? But probably most people reading that statement don't know any better, and buy it. But the moron saying that knows full well that he's lying to everyone's face and hoping that his audience is too stupid to realise they are being had. That's the sad reality of Lucasfilm these days.
Wasn't someone in this thread in contact with one of the guys who did the color-correction? We should congratulate him on crushing the blacks... if that wasn't the case, you could give it almost any color-timing you want... only now you can't restore the detail in the darks...
Laserschwert said:
I'd say it was rather stupid doing the color correction BEFORE having Lowry clean up and restore the image. If they did it the other way around, they could always go back to the original color (on the cleaned-up master), and make a new color-correction from there. Now, once they want to change the color-timing considerably (and most importantly fix the crushed blacks), Lowry would have to re-do their clean-up as well, I guess.
Short-sighted and incompetent...
Yeah I think that says it all.
The fact George ignores and likely hates the OUT theatrical releases, is what leads to his downfall, that and stupidity in decision making.
If he was to release the movies we all want, you would do what anyone does. Go back to the OCN. if that isn't an option, you go to the next best option etc, like they do when restoring all old movies, whether that be prints, seperation masters, or IPs or whatever.
Instead, because HIS versions are forked from what was released in 1997, they need to keep building from there as their starting point. Then on top of that, they decide to do things backwards, and also cheat and do things in house.
I don't like people bashing Lowry digital. They do nothing wrong. Even though I hated what I saw on the colours of some of the Bond movies, like all their work, the people who make the final decision are the filmakers etc, not Lowry. They are the ones who rubber stamp and say "i'm happy with that".
The fact they allow and permit these new audio guys to make creative changes is a joke. But again this just stems from George's need to change things.
I'm so tired of this subject. lol
see you auntie said:
Now I'm no expert or professional and apparently this man is but why recreate a footstep or what not that couldn't be found in the archive? Is it feasible to isolate the lost sound effect from the digitalised original mix and use that as the source?
TV's Frink said:
I don't recall seeing this one yet...
<a href="http://bluray.ign.com/articles/119/1190282p1.html" target="_blank" title="bluray.ign.com/articles/119/1190282p1.html">http://bluray.ign.com/articles/119/1190282p1.html</a>
or this:
Before you head to the comments to ask, yes, Greedo still shoots first in this version (although you may still see an original version of that scene in the set – hint, hint).
RATLSNAKE said:
I don't like people bashing Lowry digital. They do nothing wrong. Even though I hated what I saw on the colours of some of the Bond movies, like all their work, the people who make the final decision are the filmakers etc, not Lowry. They are the ones who rubber stamp and say "i'm happy with that".
To be fair, the color correction for SW was done at ILM, not Lowry. And they did a marvellous job of cleaning it up.
I start to imagine if I would speak up, if I was the guy doing the color correction... "Uhm, George, we're losing detail in the darks." - "Just do as I tell you." - "You do realize that could be called a 'flaw', right?" - "No, I'm a perfectionist, there are no flaws in my movies anymore, it's a creative decision!" - "Well, my job is to do a great color timing, and that excludes crushing the blacks. I quit!" :D
BTW, doesn't "crushing the blacks" sound extremely racist? I guess I won't use that for a while...
Gaffer Tape said:
Good Lord. What is with this company's dogged insistence on sticking almost everything from the OT into a cramped little corner?
Luke Skywalker? Who's that?
Oh, just some random bit part in, I don't know, maybe two films, was it?
I can't tell if Leia is happy or about to murder someone. And what the hell is up with the evil eyed Jawas? Did some of those undead dwarfs from the Phantasm movies get in this by mistake?
Where were you in '77?
Using MS Paint, I traced over characters introduced in the OT with blue, then I traced over characters introduced in the PT with green.
(the ones I didn't trace over are ones I don't know)
Seriously, look how much green (PT characters) there are than blue (OT characters). Notice how they made Vader, R2, and 3P0 huge compared to the other characters just to try and make the OT seem a bit bigger. roflmao
Has anyone considered that George Lucas does not hate the original theatrical movies, but actually wishes he could release them again?
Consider that when the SE was being created, he told his 'yes men' to go and clean up the movies, create some new effects and replace the old footage, but by accident or misinterpretation that they lost or destroyed the original footage? Surely he isnt as cruel a man as everyone makes him out to be, and above all else, he is about making money.
Surely with the few million it would take to remaster the theatrical versions (if existed) to make hundreds of millions, he would swallow his pride and release all that he could.
It just could be impossible to recover even if he wanted to, so hes making himself out to be a grinch instead of a fool.
LegendaryPOO said:
It just could be impossible to recover even if he wanted to, so hes making himself out to be a grinch instead of a fool.
Members here (that know a lot more about film preservation than I do) will tell you that there are any number of sources (mostly involving acronyms I don't understand) that could be used to do a Blu-ray transfer equal in quality to other movies from the 70's and 80's.
Laserschwert said:
I've made an image comparison between the shots from that Star Wars Blu-ray Up Close at LucasFilm: Part 3 of 3 and the HDTV-broadcast, and guess what? Nothing has changed, except for a little more brightness (and even that done so badly, the black bars aren't black anymore, but dark grey). For a better comparison I've also brightened up the HDTV-shots, and they look almost the same after that:
TESB 1: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)
TESB 2: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)
TESB 3: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)ROTJ 1: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)
ROTJ 2: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)
ROTJ 3: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)
ROTJ 4: Blu-ray (?) / HDTV / HDTV (levels changed by me)Just open them in different browser tabs and compare.
The article specifically mentions that Lucasfilm wants them to be called "HD Stills"... not "Blu-ray Screenshots" or anything, so maybe they're still not finished doing the color corrections? On the other hand it's pretty stupid to promote a Blu-ray with stills that don't represent the product...
Thanks for the work. Looks pretty much the same. I am looking forward to see the faces of the guys still believing we don't see real blu-ray snapshots, like it's all WIP or mockups.
The problem I see with reusing the 1080p transfer, done for the 2004 DVDs and HDTV broadcasts, that digitally you can't get back lost video information .
The production order for the 2004 masters was the following
1. Negatives --> 1080p transfer --> FILE001
2. FILE001 --> color correction --> FILE002
3. FILE002 --> Lowry clean up --> FILE003
4. FILE003 --> HD Encoding --> FILEHD
FILE003 --> SD Encoding --> FILESD
I am sure the 1080p transfer could hold up quite okay, but the big problem the 2004 OT DVDs had happened in step 2 during color-correction. There they lost basically most of the information from the picture: due to crushed blacks and we did not get the original colors - due to bad color-timing. The color correction happened before the Lowry clean up which was step 3.
Now let's move to the blu-ray production:
Lucasfilm choses not to rescan the OT.
They chose not to go to Lowry again for the blu-rays.
What we will be seeing on the blu-rays is a tweaked FILE003. Why? They can't use FILE001 without going to Lowry again, because FILE001 is full of dirt and scratches.
They can't get back information in FILE003 that got lost between FILE001 and FILE002. Step 2 did output less picture information, due to crushing blacks and bad color correcting.
These are the logical reasons why this blu ray release can't look that different than the 2004 HDTV broadcasts. The more you re-color correct digital images the more information you lose at the end of each range.
To sum it up, this is how the video got onto the blu-rays:
1. Negatives --> 1080p transfer --> FILE001 [2003]
2. FILE001 --> color correction --> FILE002 [2004]
3. FILE002 --> Lowry clean up --> FILE003 [2004]
4. FILE003 --> re color correction --> FILE004 [2010]
5. FILE004 --> HD Encoding --> FILEHD [2011]
Mistake 1: decision not to rescan the OT at higher resolution
Mistake 2: decision not to reinvest in a 2nd Lowry clean, even at 1080p (in order to use FILE001 and not have crushed blacks/wrong colors again.
No press release no matter how good it is written can deny these facts. Why do you think the press releases concentrates on such small things like the wampa arm, or ONE cross-lightsaber fix?
I'm pretty sure more people will notice the milky white substance over the entire film than crushed blacks. TVs will be adjusted all over the world to bring the white down to manageable levels.
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Is there any site featuring the blu-rays that doesn't have Ken commenting on it (other than the German one mentioned earlier...go Ken go!)?
I'd hate for him not to get the full set.
It's like an even easier version of "Where's Waldo?"
zombie84 said:
I have to say, I like the 2004 gamma levels better a lot of the time. In half the shots, you don't get any more real detail but more importantly the blacks just look milky and you have this thin haze on a lot of stuff. As was said, even the black bars are greyer. This isn't the solution--you aren't doing a new D.I. and timing it brighter, you are just turning up the brightness on the TV basically.
The sad truth is that this is the best they can do if they don't want to do a new scan. Unfortunately, since they are starting with an already-colour-corrected source, the detail is "baked in," and so are the shadows. It's not the same as working with the negative and re-timing it to have brighter levels. Instead they just did the same thing as turning up the brightness on the TV, but it doesn't always look good, in fact in some cases it looks worse.
these screenshots are using the studio scale (16-235) that is standard from DVD & Blu-Ray encoding. The HDTV shots are using PC scale (0-255) . The official shots should have been converted for viewing on a PC/ web site and this is why the blacks will look grey. Now i these are supposed to be from the digital files and not the blu-ray then surely they should be 0-255 scale, which really makes me think that these are indeed direct from the blu-rays. And nothing really has changed with the colour timing.
1Shouta said:
Using MS Paint, I traced over characters introduced in the OT with blue, then I traced over characters introduced in the PT with green.
(the ones I didn't trace over are ones I don't know)
Seriously, look how much green (PT characters) there are than blue (OT characters). Notice how they made Vader, R2, and 3P0 huge compared to the other characters just to try and make the OT seem a bit bigger. roflmao
You colored Palpatine and Chewie with green. :)
(Granted, the images of them are prequel ones, but that's beside the "introduced in" point. ;) )
zombie84 said:
Unfortunately it probably comes down to the fact that Lucas himself supervised the 2004 scan (sad isn't it?), and he can't be bothered to do this for every scene of every film all over again and would rather just have them bring up the brightness levels if it looks sort-of right, at least to a not-very-discerning level. I mean, he thought the 2004 version was great after all, I gather that it is his cronies that are attempting to respond to criticisms. I read some response a few pages back by one of his employees that attempted to lay the cause on the way HD video responds to film; it was so ludicrous it made me laugh sadly and shake my head, fully out loud. Are they fucking kidding me? But probably most people reading that statement don't know any better, and buy it. But the moron saying that knows full well that he's lying to everyone's face and hoping that his audience is too stupid to realise they are being had. That's the sad reality of Lucasfilm these days.
I've heard before that colorspace conversions - 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 can mess up video, the problem with the 2004 masters really reminds me of when Dario Argento's Suspiria was restored a couple of years ago, it was a complete mess just like Star Wars, it was a HD Master processed by Technicolor and supervised by DP Luciano Tovoli, but on reliable and important forums of Italian Cinema it is said that Tovoli himself is not quite satisfied and doesn't appreciate the color of this HD Master. One theory was:
Weird that he supervised it but "didn't like the color". I don't know what Italian Cinema forums this poster was referring to (and since I don't speak Italian I wouldn't be able to read them anyway), but my guess- and this goes back to something I've theorized since you first posted images from the DVD versions of this master- is that something went wrong during a conversion. If SUSPIRIA was an actual 2K scan with full film 4:4:4 color space (essentially, a Digital Intermediate), something could have gone wrong in the conversion to "standard" High-Definition 1080P 4:2:0 color space. We've seen similar issues on some Blu-rays of DI-sourced films already in terms of color values going out of whack. I can't imagine Tovoli sitting in that transfer suite, supervising something he didn't like all along. What I can imagine is Tovoli supervising something that looked right uncompressed with the full 4:4:4 color space, and then something went terribly wrong when it was downconverted to 4:2:0.
And a reply from a guy working in the industry:
It's almost implausible for 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 to go wrong in this way. That stuff is clipped to hell, 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 is a change in chroma resolution, not range.
What is possible is that there's been some sort of bungled colour gamut conversion. Perhaps the master was designed for the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) colour space for exhibition in that standard, and out-of-gamut values were simply clipped when going to Rec.709 (HDTV standard colour). Whatever's happened, it's a total balls up and it's hard to guess what's happened without knowing the full story.
Source: http://www.landofwhimsy.com/archives/2010/01/suspiria-the-good-the-bad-and-the-downright-ugly/
One of the big differences is that in the SW case I've heard that the 2004 master looked identical when projected in cinemas as on the DVD's and broadcasts. I don't know the exact details behind the SW-remaster but is it not a possibility that something like this happened to the Star Wars trilogy in 2004?
I have a hard time believing the horrible transfer wasn't made by some accidental technical issue after studied it, there's no way a human being can make such deliberate choices when colortiming a film as what was seen in these DVD's, even a child or an amateur would have a really hard time to succeed with some of the things I am seeing.
I'm definitely not trying to defend Lucasfilm's actions here, (I wouldn't touch this ridiculous release even if all the technical issues were addressed) it's just that the problems with the SW-DVD's are much more extensive and complex than different colored lightsabers and crushed blacks/clipped whites for being just a sloppy colortiming, I am still amazed how unstable and inconsistent all the levels are from shot to shot throughout these transfers.
Whatever happened, it's just sad that it took seven years with several DVD re-releases and a promotional article for an upcoming blu-ray to utter such a vague explanation for the problems on those discs.
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
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/
???
I mean, Yoda doesn't count?
lol, on the blu forum someone posted a suggested drinking game, including this gem:
Take 12 shots every time kenkraly2004 posts his daily rant about the complainers.
No more changes, except they recomposited a bunch of stuff. Those count, guys.TV's Frink said:
<a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/" target="_blank" title="www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/">http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/</a>
???
I mean, Yoda doesn't count?
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doubleofive said:
No more changes, except they recomposited a bunch of stuff. Those c*nt guys.TV's Frink said:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/" target="_blank" title="www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/">http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/23/actually-ilm-told-me-the-star-wars-films-on-blu-ray-havent-been-altered/
???
I mean, Yoda doesn't count?
fixed that for ya ;-)
