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Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 27

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Harmy said:

Um, you mean would be equally problematic to despecialize, right?

 I guess that would be a better way to describe it, yes.

Harmy said:

I knew these were recomposited the first time around and chose to leave them and nothing's changed.

Well, I didn't come in here to say you didn't know.

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:

Sorry, man, didn't mean to get snappy :-)

It's cool, man. You have all the reasons to get snappy sometimes. :)

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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It was pointed out earlier that there is a problem with the lightsabres in this version, and I have to agree.  In the cave scene they look fantastic, but in every shot of the Bespin duel it's clear there's something wrong going on.  The blades often seem to have a huge 'halo' or something around them, which neither the original nor the SE ever had.  Sometimes the edges of the blades are too sharply defined as well, and the colours are not correct: Luke's is pushing almost into purple territory at times, and Vader's borders on orange.  The sabres on Bespin in adywan's theatrical version do not have these issues; most of the time he got them exactly the right shade and brightened up the dull cores while still keeping them looking the way they are supposed to.

This is really the only significant flaw I can spot in the whole thing—everything else about it is extremely well done.  In particular, the colour timing for most of the movie is so good that I wouldn't hesitate in saying you got it exactly right.  A couple shots on Hoth still revert to having a bluer look than I think they should, and are inconsistent with the surrounding footage, but most of the time it seems spot on.  It's nice seeing Hoth as a shade of dark blue with low saturation, rather than that ugly aqua look that the '04 version plastered over everything.

You should be very, very proud of the work you've done here.  If the problems with the sabres could be fixed for the next version, it would be practically perfect.  :)

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Thank you :-)

I know about that lightsabres issue and I really tried to do it differently but it just wouldn't go. I was using Ady's 97SE HD version as a basis (which had the same colours as his reconstruction) and the sabres were definitely too dim there, making the cores dull. But when I increased brightness and contrast to compensate, it created this haloing issue, so there's not much I can do about that. I agree that the colours of the sabres could use an improvement though, I'll definitely work on that.

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Harmy said:

Thank you :-)

I know about that lightsabres issue and I really tried to do it differently but it just wouldn't go. I was using Ady's 97SE HD version as a basis (which had the same colours as his reconstruction) and the sabres were definitely too dim there, making the cores dull. But when I increased brightness and contrast to compensate, it created this haloing issue, so there's not much I can do about that. I agree that the colours of the sabres could use an improvement though, I'll definitely work on that.

 I would much prefer the dull cores to the haloing issue. This is the only scene that really bothers me in any of your Despecialized Editions, it also happens to be the best scene in the Trilogy. The dull cores have to be closer to the original presentation than the halos, and they would be much less distracting. It's my opinion that many preservation efforts and edits nowadays are placing to much emphasis on brightning the sabers, often to the point of oversaturating the colors. Except for ROJ, I remember the sabers being much more dull in the theater, on tv, and vhs.

HARMY RULES

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What’s up with the SD of ESB. JDownloader is looking like a broken Torrent. [Photobucket And the file is huge. Looks as big as an HD file. ANH and ROTJ where like only 4.28 GB Is this Normal ?

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red5-626 wrote: And the file is huge. Looks as big as an HD file. ANH and ROTJ where like only 4.28 GB Is this Normal ?

Yes.  the 'Total size' is all the versions of all the files you are attempting to download.  The grey ones will be subtracted from that total as they are figured out to be redundant.  So if a 4gb dvd was uploaded to 5 services, it would say 20gb to be downloaded.  But at the end, you'd only have the 4gb dvd.

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none said:

red5-626 wrote: And the file is huge. Looks as big as an HD file. ANH and ROTJ where like only 4.28 GB Is this Normal ?

Yes.  the 'Total size' is all the versions of all the files you are attempting to download.  The grey ones will be subtracted from that total as they are figured out to be redundant.  So if a 4gb dvd was uploaded to 5 services, it would say 20gb to be downloaded.  But at the end, you'd only have the 4gb dvd.

 

OK thanks I did not want to waste hours on some thing that would not work.

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I extracted all 11 files and they seem to be ok but

I have one unnumbered 7z file that’s 231,032 KB

It will not open? Do I need this file?

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All of the .7z files are part of the same archive. If you extracted one file you extracted them all, because if you didn't have all the appropriate files your extractor would have complained. If you really want to find out if you needed it, you can move that file elsewhere on your hard drive and try extracting again to  see if your extractor complains or not.

In any event, now that you have successfully extracted the files from the archive it doesn't matter anymore whether or not you know you needed the file (though I'm sure you did.)

BTW, Good job Harmy. I downloaded the SD version and it looks great.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

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In an attempt not to further pollute another thread, I'm referencing MySycamore's post here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/regrading-editing-original-trilogy-using-blu-rays-and-german-hdtv-streams-to-remove-bad-but-not-all-specialised-blu-ray-changes/post/553819/#TopicPost553819

Harmy, if a Laserdisc rip would be helpful to get more "out the window" detail than is available via other sources, PM me.  I may not have the best source available, but I've got something.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Yeah, I don't know if I'd want to go that far. Besides, I'd really rather focus on SW right now.

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That's fine.  Keep it in mind for later though.  As for "going that far", aren't you the same guy that added a vague rectangular block around the Greedo subs to simulate the compositing elements?  You've already gone that far and back again, I'm afraid ;)

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Not really, because putting that matte around the subs took about 5 minutes, rotoscoping a new background into numerous shots from a low quality source, just to make something that is already there more visible and which would take hours, perhaps days for each shot is a whole different league. If I did that, why not go through the films and rotoscope out all the crushed blacks as well? Because it would take ten years, that's why ;-)

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Harmy you are a hero worthy of the Rebel Alliance!  Any plans to re-upload the files for ESB and ROTJ to an alternate host?  Now that Mega Upload is gone, they are no longer available (at least via tehparadox).

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I was wondering about this too. I have v1 of all 3, so is there anything I am missing, aside from v2 of Star Wars?  It'd be nice if they were all in one place again.

It’s really sad when the “creative minds” behind something we hold dear are also guilty of its destruction.

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I'm currently waiting to see how the whole thing goes with the SOPA and AKTA things before I start uploading anything. To be honest, the fact that they shut down MU like that scares me a little bit. At the moment, there are some well seeded (or so I'm told) public tracker torrents (not uploaded by me), so anyone who does a Google search can find them there.

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Please, could you upload the three covers of SW despecialized version?

 

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pmc2 said:

Please, could you upload the three covers of SW despecialized version?

 

If you're referring to these, Harmy just posted a link to them recently in the Star Wars Despecialized thread:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-AVCHD-DVD9-and-NTSC-DVD5-AVAILABLE-see-1st-post/post/561548/#TopicPost561548

“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers

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Harmy, any chance I could get a link to the HD & SD versions? Thanks in advance!

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Harmy said:

Not really, because putting that matte around the subs took about 5 minutes, rotoscoping a new background into numerous shots from a low quality source, just to make something that is already there more visible and which would take hours, perhaps days for each shot is a whole different league. If I did that, why not go through the films and rotoscope out all the crushed blacks as well? Because it would take ten years, that's why ;-)

Harmy, I have actually achieved this to some degree using the same method I used for correcting the highlight clipping in Star Wars. It involves keying the crushed area within each colour channel and replacing it with the brighter of either (or both) of the other two channels. It's a little more complicated than that but that's the basics of it. Because it's a selective process you just need to pick a few of the worst affected frames and adjust for those.

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Harmy said:

Did you do that in Photoshop or After Effects?

After Effects.