Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 123

frank678 said:

Jaitea said:

OHHHH this could go on forever!!

I used the image Harmy posted from the DVD and mucked about with it....dunno looks a bit warmer...maybe too warm

J

Definite improvement

What happens to the colors when you make the white balance is taken off Luke's outfit?

Isn't his outfit supposed to be white? not yellow or grey or pink?

SilverWook said:

mverta said:

This screening was done with 70's era bulbs on a 70's era screen to recreate the experience of its actual projection when it first came out.

Where does one acquire 70's vintage 35mm projector bulbs in the 21st century?

 Probably the same place one goes to acquire 70's vintage film prints, and 70's movie projectors in the 21st century: collectors.

_Mike

Luke's costume:

Midnight_Trooper said:

Thanks for posting those shots Mike. The desert shots are much warmer than would have expected.

Now the question is can the blu ray source be made to look anything like it?

 

Well the warmth issue is precisely why I wanted to see the images on vintage equipment.  The print itself isn't necessarily as warm - the color temperature of the light source changes everything about the image.  I wanted to see -as far as possible- what environment the filmmakers were judging color in.  Older bulbs were warmer by nature than we're used to today.  Our computer monitors have a far cooler white than projector bulbs from the 70's and 80's did - they were more yellow.  But the coloring from those light sources is what was driving decisions in color timing.  To my eye, the film is "too" yellow when viewed that way; but that eye has been tainted by 30+ years of getting used to increasingly cool/pure whites.  If you compare the two shots below, all you're seeing is the difference between the warmer bulb of the 70's (top) and the average xenon bulb in projectors today (bottom).

I would be willing to bet that to most of us, the bottom image looks more correct, and the top polluted with reds, but the top image is actually how it appeared in theaters (more or less).  In a projection environment, there is much more luminance in the image that can be captured by a camera, and our eyes white balance naturally, so it doesn't "feel" as red as it does in this comparison, but if you know the images well, you can't miss the prevailing warmth when seeing it projected.  Most arresting is how warm the opening Tantive sequence is.  The floor is basically tan throughout much of the sequence, instead of gray.

One thing I would like to put to bed, though: 3PO is not yellow.  He's gold bordering on copper.  The bright golden yellow he's morphed into over the years and in transfers is not representative of the costume.

_Mike

Thanks Mike for all the info and the kind words :-)

I don't know, I think Jaitea's picture is a bit over the top. But yes, what you'd need to do is to increase saturation. Unfortunately whenever I increase saturation over the original value in Premiere, it creates these weird colour artefacts as seen very clearly in this picture (though it affects all the shots to a certain degree):

I'm gonna try and pull the scene into AE and correct it there. Would you guys agree with me that it looks good in the WP until the point where the sand people attack Luke and that it need saturation boost until the wipe top Ben's hut?

Hey there Harmy, I just finished watching the 2nd workprint and I think you've done a fantastic job!

The colours

One of the problems I felt the first Despecialized version suffered from was colour timing and contrast/black level issues.  I consider myself a nitpicker when it comes to colour, and personally I think the colours and contrast in this latest version look spectacular.  From the whites of the Blockade Runner's hallways to 3PO's golden exterior, everything looks just right to my eyes.  I was especially happy to see the binary sunset scene receive a little extra love :)  It now looks absolutely gorgeous with its brightened sky and orange sun.

There are only two scenes where I thought colour might still be an issue.  One, as others have pointed out, is the scene between Luke and Ben following the Sand People attack, which may lean a bit too much to the monochromatic/sepia tones -- Luke's skin, in particular, reminds me of what Leia's previously looked like during her conversation with Vader in the Blockade Runner's hallway (too brown/tan).  I'm undecided as to whether Jaitea's sample is a little too warm, but I think it's an indication of what might still be done with this scene.

The other possible colour issue pertains to the last few blaster flashes we see in the initial Blockade Runner hallway shootout (occurring between 00:04:18 and 00:04:20).  These seem to possibly be still too pink (as opposed to being more desaturated/white), but I'm not sure if I'm just unused to seeing a more correctly colour-timed version of the film.

One last question regarding a colour-related issue: what was the problem again with recolouring the sky in the background in the scene where Luke sells his speeder?  Originally it appeared to be a purplish-blue on top which faded into white at the bottom, but since the SEs it now appears as white on top and light blue on the bottom.  Was creating a mask for the portion of sky visible through the archway problematic?  I can't remember.

The stars

Regarding the stars during the opening crawl, although I appreciate their improved visibility as compared to such sources as the GOUT or the SEs, when comparing them to subsequent outer space scenes, the stars appear to be noticeably "fatter" (for lack of a better word).  In the crawl, they are uniformly quite large whereas in other shots they are more varied in their size and none appearing as more than pinpricks of light.  I'm still curious as to how theatrically accurate this latest starfield is.

Anyway, let me conclude by saying that, at the outset of this project, I was very skeptical as to how theatrically accurate one could make the SE of A New Hope.  I truly believed the only way to achieve an authentic viewing experience lay in restoring the GOUT.  However, following this latest workprint, I must say that you've made a believer out of me.  I can't wait to sit back some night in the future and watch a pristine version of the Star Wars I grew up with.  I'm also eagerly looking forward to giving my nephew a copy of this, who's only version of Star Wars is still the old Dr. Gonzo LD rip from years ago... I'm sure seeing Star Wars at this level of clarity would blow his socks off :)

Thanks for all your hard work Harmy... it's greatly appreciated.

Edit:

Yes.

Yeah it definitely is an improvement. I wonder how they do that? Just change the brightness? Pretty amazing stuff.

Well, it's a question of finding the right balance between brightness and contrast.

Yeah sorry for the obvious point. I just think it makes a big difference is all.

Harmy -

Obviously, boosting saturation or changing hue in any way immediately reveals compression artifacts, but in AE you might have better luck using Color Balance and Levels.  Color Balance can often produce results with far fewer artifacts, but you have to adjust Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights separately.  I use it all the time.  Give it a shot.

_Mike

No no no, those are not compression artefacts! They are some kind of weird colour separation and it only happens when I increase saturation in Premiere, when I increase saturation to the same level in AE, these artefacts don't appear at all.

Perhaps a direct comparison will better show what I mean:

And of course, I do use colour balance, adjusting shadows, midtones and highlights separately; that's how I do most of the colour correction. But sometimes you really need to adjust the over-all saturation, though after some experiments I decided against the saturation boost in this case, because I really don't like what it does with the skintones.

Premiere and AE are obviously processing the effect differently.  Well, as you know, whatever works :)

...unless these are shots BEFORE the effect processing, in which case, welcome to the wonderful world of codec management. They're not all as bad as Quicktime, where no two applications handle the same material the same way, but every one of them makes a case for frame sequences.  :)  Personally, I use .exr for all my work, converted from .dpx or .cin scans.   When ripping DVDs/Blu-Rays, I immediately convert them to frame sequences in .exr or .png (if 8-bit) for processing.

_Mike