Just when you thought you were finally free of mouse droppings, this thread appears! Yep, the discussion of my telecine transfer of a 16mm widescreen (“scope”) print of the RETURN OF THE JEDI. Unless someone comes up with a better name, I plan to call this edition “Return of the Pug”, or “ROTP” for short.
I have actually already been secretly working on this, to the point where I have completed the raw captures of the audio and video from the film. As was the case for the Puggo Grande and for Puggo Strikes Back, I expect this to take a while to finish – at least a few months. But I will post regular updates and screencaps here and on my website as work proceeds.
I have added an ROTP page to my website (see link in my .sig) containing an initial set of raw (unprocessed, uncorrected) screen grabs.
The print was again provided by Jaxxon, the same individual who provided the prints used for the Puggo Grande and for Puggo Strikes Back. I’ll leave it up to him if he still wishes to remain anonymous.
The quality of this print is excellent - similar to the print being used for PSB. Color on all three reels is superb. There is a fairly deep scratch on the left side through much of the movie, but it is not overly bothersome, in my opinion. It may even be possible to repair. Other than that, there is very little patching that will be required.
As was the case for the PG and PSB, I am using a WorkPrinter-16 to transfer the video. For those of you unfamiliar with the PG or the Workprinter, it is a very clever machine manufactured by Roger Evans of MovieStuff (www.moviestuff.tv), that enables frame-by-frame capture. It isn’t scope, however, so I cheat on that, adjusting the aspect ratio in post and then setting the anamorphic flag to fake scope projection (same as I did for the PG). I also will use the pulldown flag rather than doing pulldown in post. The capture is SD, and I am still using the Sony TRV900 camera that I used for the PG. Yes it’s old, but it has very good low light performance which is helpful for this sort of application.
No I can’t afford to do an HD capture. And no, pointing an HD camera at the WorkPrinter doesn’t work. There are more expensive products that can do that, this SD capture is all I can do and all I am going to do.
I am also still using the ELMO 16CL for capturing the audio. Synching the sound with the workprinter capture is painstaking, as the slightest variations in speed on the elmo make it lose sync quickly. It has to be stretched and shrunk by hand scene by scene. I haven’t done that yet, but the audio is strong and will sound great, albeit in mono. The audio will require a few very brief and minor patches.
Here is what I have done so far:
- transferred the raw audio from each reel into .wav files.
- transferred the raw video from each reel into .avi files.
I made one capture each of reels 2 and 3, but I made THREE captures of reel 1, since that reel includes both the Jabba scenes and the Sarlac scenes, with radically different brightness levels. There will be a lot of cutting between captures to get a decent, moderately-even watchable brightness level throughout.
As always, I will warn everyone that captures like this will be loaded with scratches, grunge, mud, dropouts, hangnails, shakes, dead flies, fuzz, crinkles, holes, HEAVY grain, lousy cropping, and as promised… assorted mouse droppings. It cannot compete even with a stabilized GOUT, much less a despecialized HD multi-layer Harmy-ized blu-ray. However, much to my surprise, some of you honestly seemed to not only tolerate but actually enjoy watching the Puggo Grande, and I think those folks who still have functioning vision after watching that may enjoy this one too. Or at least it will finish off what few diopters you have left, and keep your optometrist in business!