So for the original trilogy will it still be a lossless soundtrack, is there even a lossless for either of the Hairy_Hen's mixes or the GOUT audio tracks?
I'm planning to use either Hairy_Hen's mixes or the GOUT audio tracks themselves, most likely the later because they are the original audio tracks.
The GOUT audio tracks are not the originals. They are the remixes made in 1993, and the first movie in particular has very significant differences in sound effects from the theatrical release. The other two were not fiddled with in this manner but are still not exactly the same.
While my versions are not the exact originals either, they approximate what was heard on 70mm prints as closely as is reasonably possible, and therefore 'feel' more like them. Also, all the GOUT tracks are reduced in level by 4 db due to DialNorm, and in ESB there is significant dynamic range compression for some reason (my theory is that it was taken from a vhs master); but the levels of my tracks are exactly the same as the laserdiscs.
Naturally, the edit would have to be GOUT-synched for them to work. If there are places where the special effects from the SE are retained, then the audio won't always match up to the image. In such cases the only decent option would be to splice in brief sections of the 1997 mix to compensate.
So for the original trilogy will it still be a lossless soundtrack, is there even a lossless for either of the Hairy_Hen's mixes or the GOUT audio tracks?
The 1993 PCM tracks have been around for a while, and hopefully my new versions will also be released available in lossless. ;)
hairy_hen said:
The 1993 PCM tracks have been around for a while, and hopefully my new versions will also be released available in lossless. ;)
Awesome news hairy_hen!
When might be the release date for your lossless versions?
Will they be in 5.1 and are the PCM versions in 5.1?
hairy_hen, I meant no offense, the parts from your mixes that i've heard are great. You did a fantastic job with those 70mm mixes. I was just honestly answering DoomBot's question. I don't want to mislead people into believing that i'll automatically be using your mixes and creating false expectations.
Unlike Harmy I'm not trying to make a 100% accurate theatrical recreation of the original trilogy, so how it sounded when it came out in the theatre and recreating that on blu-ray is not my main concern.
I'll just listen to both the GOUT audio tracks and your mixes, see which appeals to me more and use that one (the most emphasis will be put on how the score sounds on each) . Hell, i've left around 6GB for audio on each film so I probably could even include both with lossless pcm audio if I wanted to.
And like everybody here hairy_hen, I must say that i'm very much looking forward to hearing your new lossless tracks. Hopefully you'll have them finished soon enough that they would be available to put them on these OT blu-rays.
You realize you can't just use any existing tracks as they are, right? Any sound you'll decide to include, you'll have to edit the same way you'll edit the video. So for example, when you keep the SE additions in Mos Eisley but cut the slapstick, you won't be able to use either any original mix, nor any SE mix. I'm just saying this because to this day I still don't get sound editing myself, it seems really difficult.
Harmy said:
You realize you can't just use any existing tracks as they are, right? Any sound you'll decide to include, you'll have to edit the same way you'll edit the video. So for example, when you keep the SE additions in Mos Eisley but cut the slapstick, you won't be able to use either any original mix, nor any SE mix. I'm just saying this because to this day I still don't get sound editing myself, it seems really difficult.
Hey Harmy, thanks for the heads up, yeah I do realise, i've done the audio editing for the original trilogy with all these changes before (excluding all the extra blu-ray changes of course). Around the start of last year, before the blu-rays were announced, I created audio tracks for the original trilogy, using the sky hdtv streams as the video source, mixing the SE 2004 dvd audio tracks with the GOUT audio tracks.
Its quite tricky at first to make it fairly seamless at the cut points but once you get the hang of it, there are a few tricks you can use and its actually a lot easier than video editing and colour correcting IMHO and FAR less time consuming. I'm actually really looking forward to the audio editing part of this project.
Omen, just curious as to what you're currently working on? Sounds like you've done a lot on all three movies. Are you going to release them together?
Again, really looking forward to seeing these.
“In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” - George Lucas
Hey Cobra, I currently taking a break from the original trilogy and trying to improve the incredibly DNRed Phantom Menace transfer from the blu-ray. Unlike AOTC, The Phantom Menace german hdtv stream doesn't help at all to improve the transfer. While it has a lot more grain than the blu-ray and therefore looks more like 'film', its not fine grain but very coarse, the details and colours are very soft and blurry and its filled with spots and dirt everywhere. Of course, theres also the fact that the german hdtv has been massively cropped relative to the blu-ray.
I have found a very interesting way to get more detail out of the TPM blu-ray transfer but the encoding really is taking an AGE (this is on a powerful workstation I built only a few months ago), which is to be expected I suppose because I'm trying to create detail out of nothing and am therefore setting all the encoding settings to maximum quality to try to suck out as much detail as I can. I'm pretty pleased with the results i'm getting (a clear improvement on the blu-ray transfer IMHO) but its going to take a few more days to encode the whole film.
Talking of the DNRed TPM blu-ray transfer, I was looking on google and came across what look like screencaps here: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/star-wars-the-phantom-menace/images/27341708/title/phantom-menace-screencaps-screencap .The quality of these look nice and filmic, with clearly noticable grain. They were uploaded two months ago. Does anybody know whether these screencaps are taken from a blu-ray version of the film in another country that i'm not aware of or are they just part of the promotional material of the 3D release of The Phantom Menace in the cinemas?
Incidently, from what I have read, it seems the cinema transfer is identical to the blu-ray and has been DNRed to high heaven. I'd imagine that that DNR must be pretty painful to watch all enlarged on the cinema screen, especially in 3D...
Getting back to your second question though, i'll be releasing these one at a time as I get each one uploaded. The first will be the LOTR films in order (mostly due to it having been released first on blu-ray and FOTR EE being the film that needed its transfer modified the most), then the Original Trilogy in order and lastly the Prequel Trilogy in order.
OMEN!-_-! said:
Talking of the DNRed TPM blu-ray transfer, I was looking on google and came across what look like screencaps here: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/star-wars-the-phantom-menace/images/27341708/title/phantom-menace-screencaps-screencap .The quality of these look nice and filmic, with clearly noticable grain.
Except this shot: http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27300000/Phantom-Menace-screencaps-star-wars-the-phantom-menace-27341714-1280-720.jpg
That's some heavy DNR and EE all over the place.
OMEN!-_-! said:
Incidently, from what I have read, it seems the cinema transfer is identical to the blu-ray and has been DNRed to high heaven. It'd imagine that that DNR must be pretty painful to watch all enlarged on the cinema screen, especially in 3D...
Unfortunately, the mainstream doesn't care about it. Many people seem to think it looks good when all detail in a picture is smudged. Sad but true.
I remember when reading about Predator ultimate hunter edition on blu-ray. (You probably know it's one of the worst cases.) One customer on a site here in sweden wrote "The DNR is in my opinion a fantastic solution which I would love to see in more movies/releases."
You_Too said:
OMEN!-_-! said:
Talking of the DNRed TPM blu-ray transfer, I was looking on google and came across what look like screencaps here: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/star-wars-the-phantom-menace/images/27341708/title/phantom-menace-screencaps-screencap .The quality of these look nice and filmic, with clearly noticable grain.
Except this shot: http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27300000/Phantom-Menace-screencaps-star-wars-the-phantom-menace-27341714-1280-720.jpg
That's some heavy DNR and EE all over the place.
ha ha, true, there is some DNR, but its looks much better than the massively DNRed blu-ray transfer, believe me. I can see fine grain and extra detail in basically all those shots that just isn't there on the blu-ray.
Take this shot for example: http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27300000/Phantom-Menace-screencaps-star-wars-the-phantom-menace-27341683-1280-720.jpg
There isn't a frame like this with that fine grain and detail in all the blu-ray. I'm not a big fan of the colour grading of a lot of the screencaps though, too green, that would definately need to be corrected IMHO.
Yeah, and those screencaps are overexposed and the black level is higher than zero. I wonder what the source is?
You_Too said:
Unfortunately, the mainstream doesn't care about it. Many people seem to think it looks good when all detail in a picture is smudged. Sad but true.
I remember when reading about Predator ultimate hunter edition on blu-ray. (You probably know it's one of the worst cases.) One customer on a site here in sweden wrote "The DNR is in my opinion a fantastic solution which I would love to see in more movies/releases."
Yeah, I remember the whole business with the predator ultimate edition. God, that picture of arnie with his cigar at the beginning of the film that was going round was absolutely awful, like a waxwork from Madame Tussauds. I had never seen anything quite like it again until I saw Liam Neeson and Natalie Portman in some scenes of The Phantom Menace blu-ray, just as bad as Arnie was. Absolutely awful. So much for LF three levels of QC.
As for that comment from the customer on the swedish site, one can only shake ones head. Really leaves you speechless.
You_Too said:
Yeah, and those screencaps are overexposed and the black level is higher than zero. I wonder what the source is?
True but that can be fairly easily fixed IMO. The detail scrubbed away by the blu-ray is there for the most part which is what matters most. Is that a rhetorical question you're asking there You_Too? Do you know what the source is?
OMEN!-_-! said:
Is that a rhetorical question you're asking there You_Too? Do you know what the source is?
No, I have no idea. I'm just wondering what the source is, if now both the blu-ray and the 3D version has the DNR.
You_Too said:
OMEN!-_-! said:
Is that a rhetorical question you're asking there You_Too? Do you know what the source is?
No, I have no idea. I'm just wondering what the source is, if now both the blu-ray and the 3D version has the DNR.
Yeah, me too.
As I said before, they could be promotional shots for the 3d phantom menace cinema release, only the screencaps have got the black bars on the top and bottom included, suggesting they are actual screencaps from a hd encode formatted in the correct ratio for blu-ray.
Okay, quick update on the HQ phantom menace screencaps of origins unknown. I was looking around on for more of those HQ TPM screencaps and came across this site: http://ninfo.eu/category/star-wars/
It has all the previous TPM screencaps from fanpop and a lot more, including screencaps from episode 2, 3 and 4. The AOTC screencaps are also much more detailed than the DNRed AOTC blu-ray so I did a little bit of investigating, trying to match up the screencaps to the blu-ray/hdtv transfers.
What I found pretty much seals it for me. Some of these screencaps are impossible to match with the blu-ray or hdtv transfers because they seem to be taken from longer cuts of the same shots. What this leads me to believe is that these are taken from an unedited (or at least less edited) digital intermediate, making it impossible that they are from an actual blu-ray release somewhere. Damn.
Interesting. And it's also weird how bright all shots are. Even ANH looks much less crushed in the shadow detail.
I found one shot with a lot of compression artefacts though: http://ninfo.eu/wp-content/gallery/StarWars/Episode.4/StarWars.Episode.4.39.jpg
So all of them can't be from a digital intermediate.
Maybe some kind of pre-release promo discs?
You_Too said:
Interesting. And it's also weird how bright all shots are. Even ANH looks much less crushed in the shadow detail.
I found one shot with a lot of compression artefacts though: http://ninfo.eu/wp-content/gallery/StarWars/Episode.4/StarWars.Episode.4.39.jpg
So all of them can't be from a digital intermediate.
Maybe some kind of pre-release promo discs?
Perhaps. I'm pretty sure that TPM and AOTC are from slightly unedited digital intermediates though, there are definately screencaps from both those films that don't fit any releases. Seems only the Prequel Trilogy screencaps are taken from HQ digital intermediates, which would make sense because they are so recent and the last two were shot digitally.
Those Star Wars shots just look like they were taken straight of the 2004 lowry masters (they have the same fake looking frozen grain) that are brightened and have reduced contrast relative to the blu-rays, nothing special there IMO. I'm pretty sure the blu-rays have all that shadow detail as well if you brighten them and reduce contrast. The blu-ray releases look exactly the same image quality wise. I would love to see LF in future do a proper 2k or even 4k master of the star wars original trilogy, I think it would add a lovely 'filmic' feel to these films from all the natural film grain that would appear.
haha, I found it! For all those not yet fully aware of the evils of DNR, here's the Arnie screenshot from the predator ultimate edition that I was talking about earlier with You_Too:
http://www.darkrealmfox.com/film_reviews/wp-content/images/predator_ultimate_pics/predator_7.jpg?9d7bd4
That movie should be entered in Guinness book of world records for the most excessive use of DNR ever.
You_Too said:
That movie should be entered in Guinness book of world records for the most excessive use of DNR ever.
It certainly is a very fine specimin of DNR.
I've never seen anything quite like it and that includes very strong showings from Padme and Qui Gon in TPM.
That Arnie pic was like that CGI Arnie from T4 but I think below is the best ever use of DNR in StarWars for George Lucas ;]
^
Dont get it?
Interesting find with those TPM screenshots; it's frustrating to see images that aren't ruined by edge enhancement (as for the DVD & HDTV sources) or DVNR (the blu-ray) and to not know where they're from. I'm imagining some kind of promotional trailer.
And BTW there's more on that Predador release here:
http://www.avpgalaxy.net/website/articles/predator-blu-ray-comparison/
(play spot the contradictions in the final conclusion!)
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Yeah, you've got to laugh at that article. Also, looking at it, it seems they didn't even do a new transfer for the Ultimate Hunter edition at all, they just took the old transfer, brightened it selectively, upped contrast and saturation and applied tons of DVNR and then released it as a remastered edition. That's got to be the worse double-dip in the history of ever. I'm really glad I managed to find the old Blu-Ray release, although similarly to the TPM situation of BD vs HDTV, it has it's own issues.
