Star Wars OT & 1997 Special Edition - Various Projects Info (Released) — Page 116

jbracciante said:

Thanks for the quick response. So the V1 blu-rays were never available publicly. (Just as the V2 DVD's never were)

So the main advantages of the blu-ray V2 would be:

Lossless audio (In the form of dts-hd and pcm tracks?)
better quality video (720p and additional tweaking?)

otherwise it's going to be fairly similar to the V3 DVD's?

Edit: Super glad to hear your computer problems are being resolved.

Fairly similar I guess, but the 720p video even on V1 Blu-ray still looks way better than the V3 DVD, but that is just me, but his new BD version will be the last and final, no more SW I will do, I am getting pretty close to starting to hate all things SW lol.

My new PC will be way, way more powerful than my last one, with a new i7 Intel CPU, 16GB's RAM, new faster hard drives, way better video cards, and water cooled.

Sounds like a pretty serious rig. Skyrim should run great on it (if you have the pc version.)

It sounds like when you're done with these blu-rays you'll have pretty much wrung every ounce of detail out of the existing sources for the theatrical version and created the new "Definitive collection" for pretty much everyone one on this forum and the world. Hats off to you dude. I can understand you being sick of the films though, I do simple video editing for school and I get sick of a film after just doing cuts for a few hours. Hang in there.

Ok, with the blessing of DJ, here's a little update/teaser for you guys.

Me and DJ decided to work on this together, and during the time his computer has been broken I wrote a new script from scratch, which I've worked with a lot lately.

What V2 will most likely feature is a color corrected, carefully upscaled, slightly shake-stabilized, slightly anti-aliased, dirt-cleaned and grain-preserved GOUT. I've spent many hours on perfecting the dirt-cleaning part of the script, which removes a lot of dirt in all three films but preserves all detail. Still needs some more testing though.

In the style of Harmy's earlier comparison, here's a new one:

Before someone judges this as "edge-enhanced", compare it to the raw GOUT upscale on top, and know that detail has been dug up carefully on grain-level. Also keep in mind that the script may not be final.

Harmy said:

That looks awesome! You realize I'm gonna start begging you for clips now, right? ;-)

Thanks!

Haha, you'll at least have to wait until me and DJ has decided if this will be the final script. :)

The jaggies sure does stick out a lot to me as well. I've tried lots of methods to reduce them, and found that the methods that would completely smooth them out would result in the picture having much less detail left. (And looking very "DVNR"-like)

The key was to find a balance between reduction of jaggies and preservation of detail. After a lot of work I think I've found a great balance. Some jaggies CAN be seen here and there but they are reduced a lot, and they need to be left there to keep detail intact.

Check this comparison, raw GOUT vs the script:

Wow the panel's on that R2 look so sharp and defined. Great work.

Every time I visit the forum, someone works another miracle to wring some more quality out of either the GOUT or the '04/'11 master. I'm so glad that DJ and Y_T are collaborating on this - the final product will probably make my head explode like Belloq's (figuratively, of course). :)

You_Too said:

Ok, with the blessing of DJ, here's a little update/teaser for you guys.

Me and DJ decided to work on this together, and during the time his computer has been broken I wrote a new script from scratch, which I've worked with a lot lately.

What V2 will most likely feature is a color corrected, carefully upscaled, slightly shake-stabilized, slightly anti-aliased, dirt-cleaned and grain-preserved GOUT. I've spent many hours on perfecting the dirt-cleaning part of the script, which removes a lot of dirt in all three films but preserves all detail. Still needs some more testing though.

This looks utterly amazing! To think that V1 already looked great... wow... the script you're using truly does preserve detail. This made my day. Great job, you two!!!

(by you two, I mean: Dark Jedi and You_Too) :-)

I have said this before but I feel I need to say it again, these will never look perfect, there is just no way, you can only filter these files so much, and there will be no release of this looking full of DVNR and waxy looking, so if anyone wants that you will have to make your own I'm afraid.

This is why I have the disclaimer in the first post of this thread, this set is not for everyone, we are trying to get this new set to look and sound the absolute best we can, no more, no less.

*now for a PC update, all parts are here, just waiting on the case and I should be up and running early to mid next week, can't wait to try out its power!

1 more thing, We(You_Too and I) do want to hear all your suggestions, but please keep them real lol, we all know very well what we are working with, there is no miracle cures for these transfers.

Yeah when you’re working with a 480i Analog (Laserdisc) or Digital (DVD) source you can only squeeze so much out. What the pro's here are doing is very complex up scaling and filtering, which believe it or not is done on some commercial blu-rays today. Unless you can produce some 2k negative scans of the 70's/80's masters (Which are said by Lucas to be destroyed) the work these men are doing is to be commended.

I know your not trying to slam on the guys, but keep your expectations real as they said. Everyone has expectations on what they feel blu-ray is and I get that, but remember blu-ray is a medium, not a criterion of quality. When i create blu-rays I can either have 4-6 hours of 480i DVD source material to put an entire season of a show on one disc, 2 hours of video at 1080p for today’s standard of "HD", or if i had the resources probably 30 minutes or less of 2000p material.

When you upscale a 480i or 480p source your adding lines of data to increase the resolution to give an impression of smoothness, but it’s an extrapolation of what that data (or video in this case) would be IF the information was there.

I don't like all this "HD" "Blu-ray" buzzword stuff that the mass market has propagated on us. It just confuses people. If 1080p is HD... what will 2000p be XHD... or when they can actually reproduce the filmstrip...HD "REAL"

Ha ha my rant is over... just wanted to drop in and say good job guys you take as much time as you need. I’ve waited 15 years for a decent release of GOUT (Which i received with v3) I can continue to wait, because unlike Lucas you have nothing to gain by holding it back. Having a 720p copy will just be the icing on the cake :-)

P.S. I hope people remember that a single layer blu-ray is 25 Gigabytes to download at most. I bet when the torrents flood the net for the BD-25's people will ask for them to be scaled down to MKV's and or converted to DVD cause "The files too big" If there are some Laserdisc Raw PCM audio in there along with DTS-HD thems going to be some very very large ISO's

I agree with DJ, it should be taken in account what the source is. In SW for example, the resolution of the film itself without black borders is 714x274. Some of those pixels have to be cropped for the shake reduction, and because the left side of the image contains desaturated/discolored pixels I had to crop just a couple more pixels there, otherwise the shake reduction would shake those pixels back into the picture sometimes due to horizontal movement stabilization.

What we're left with is something with a horribly low vertical resolution, and the jaggies in the picture is following the vertical pixel lines somehow. (Probably a result of some very bad deinterlacing done by Lucasfilm or something similar.)

I also agree with Sharkiesf: Just because blu-ray is a larger medium doesn't mean it has to contain higher quality material. Anyway, I don't think anyone here is expecting some miracle either!

Erikstormtrooper: I understand you're just curious! Anyway, when looking closer on completely removing the jaggies, I found that it would require a vertical blur to completely do it. They can be reduced a lot more though, but it also results in a less detailed picture. Considering how low the vertical resolution was to begin with, the result would be lower than youtube quality if you completely remove them.

Nevertheless, here are some comparisons of greatly reduced jaggies vs the latest script, so you can see for yourself:

Here's a closeup comparison of 3PO's arm from that last shot: