3D STAR WARS for the masses...has ARRIVED! — Page 40

pat man said:

Looks like R2 is just about an all CGI mess,  bad CGI at that.

They got rid of the robo-piddle and added steam coming out of his holoprojector for no definable reason.

Ah, somehow I'd forgotten completely about the changes done for the blu-ray release in 2011.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if LFL decides to do an ultra-thorough, frame-by-frame 3D conversion from fresh 4K scans. Look at what happened with Titanic. From what I've heard, that conversion was so thorough that it looked as if it could've been shot in 3D. Granted, Cameron's only ever used spherical lenses to shoot his movies, so that's one huge advantage the anamorphic OT doesn't have (Clones and Sith will benefit immensely from their spherical origins, whereas TPM was shot with anamorphic lenses just like the OT). But if Lucas really wants to wow us, he'll do a Titanic-level conversion and blow people away with a 3D trailer for Star Wars "like you've never seen it before."

doubleofive said:

I'm looking forward to R2 freaking out and EVERYTHING COMING RIGHT AT ME!



(Truthfully, I'm not giving any more money to Lucas unless its for the OOT)

(And yes, they replaced his chest area panel with CG so it could flip out better)

Is that a photoshop job or is that the 2011 BD? No, seriously.

Oh it's real. With the blinking ewoks, "nooo", hi-def Anakin head, JEDI is more haphazard than ever. In honor of Tony Scott I will quote DAYS OF THUNDER and say it all looks like a monkey fucking a football.

I'll actually be immensely satisfied if the OT doesn't get a 3D conversion. I don't want any more money being made from the garbage that the current ''definitive'' version of the OT is.

KazolOrajia said:

I'll actually be immensely satisfied if the OT doesn't get a 3D conversion. I don't want any more money being made from the garbage that the current ''definitive'' version of the OT is.

I wouldn't mind a good conversion. The OT has some great scenes that would look fantastic in 3D if it's done right. But I wouldn't pay money to see the conversion done on the Blu ray version. That's just not worth it.

I'm bumping this thread in light of last week's Disney announcement. Several weeks ago we learned that Clones and Sith would be hitting theaters only a few weeks apart next Fall. With Episode VII hitting in 2015, we'll obviously be seeing all three of the OT-SE installments hitting theaters much earlier than originally expected (late 2014 / early 2015 at the very latest).

I bring this up not out of any interest in the 3D versions, but out of interest for what this might mean for the OT in general. Will Lucasfilm spring for 4K rebuilds of the OT now that money is no longer an object? The current Lowry masters are stuck at 1920x817, which is just fine and dandy for hdtv and blu-ray, but the standard digital cinema resolution for a cinemascope film is 2048x872. Jim Ward called the Lowry masters a "digital negative" back in '04, saying they could use that for theatrical if they wanted to.

Well, it's been eight years and (correct me if I'm wrong) that master hasn't been projected theatrically anywhere.* That says to me that, no, hdtv resolution for a 'scope film is not a "digital negative."

*Was that special screening of Empire a couple years back (with Ford in attendance) the '04 version or was it a '97 print??? That's literally the only time I can think of where the lowry master might have been theatrically projected.

They didn't want the film butchered so as a silent protest they tortured and humiliated it before butchering it?

It's a theory.

That was the theory for those random extra visual changes they did for the blu-ray. "Oh, I bet they did that for the 3D version." It didn't make sense to me at the time, because I was like "why would they be adding the changes now (in 2011) when they're not hitting theaters until 2015-2017???" Obviousy, this Disney news changes things a bit, but that doesn't explain why they would've added the changes last year when they weren't (at the time) gonna hit theaters until years later.

Plus, ya never know. George might've just wanted to make those extra changes for the hell of it, just for the sake of changing things because "it's the big blu-ray debut." He took the same opportunity with the dvd in '04. The "Noooooo" certainly didn't have anything to do with 3D.

Fang Zei said:

I'm bumping this thread in light of last week's Disney announcement. Several weeks ago we learned that Clones and Sith would be hitting theaters only a few weeks apart next Fall. With Episode VII hitting in 2015, we'll obviously be seeing all three of the OT-SE installments hitting theaters much earlier than originally expected (late 2014 / early 2015 at the very latest).

I bring this up not out of any interest in the 3D versions, but out of interest for what this might mean for the OT in general. Will Lucasfilm spring for 4K rebuilds of the OT now that money is no longer an object? The current Lowry masters are stuck at 1920x817, which is just fine and dandy for hdtv and blu-ray, but the standard digital cinema resolution for a cinemascope film is 2048x872. Jim Ward called the Lowry masters a "digital negative" back in '04, saying they could use that for theatrical if they wanted to.

Well, it's been eight years and (correct me if I'm wrong) that master hasn't been projected theatrically anywhere.* That says to me that, no, hdtv resolution for a 'scope film is not a "digital negative."

*Was that special screening of Empire a couple years back (with Ford in attendance) the '04 version or was it a '97 print??? That's literally the only time I can think of where the lowry master might have been theatrically projected.

No offense to Michael Kaminski, but the Star Wars films were scanned at least 2k resolution which for a scope film is at least 1828x1556. It was more likely scanned at 4k since 1828 horizontal pixels is less than 1920.

LFL used a Cintel C-Reality film scanner which scans at either 2k (at 6-15fps) or 4k (2 seconds per frame). The C-Reality cannot, however, natively output in either 2k or 4k. It only outputs in HD and lower resolutions. The full squeezed anamorphic scope frame was scanned at a higher overall resolution than HD and downconverted then output at 1920x1080 10bit color (4:4:4 RGB). Whether it was anamorphically squeezed at the full 1920x1080 or was letterboxed on output to 1920x817 is not known. The only source is Lowry saying it was "HD" and Videographer magazine saying it was 1080p, as far as I can tell so it's hard to say.

Since the C-Reality doesn't store images, the cost between 2k and 4k probably isn't much as it only comes down to time. It would be interesting to find out whether they opted for 2k or 4k. I would hope they did 4k. Even though fans don't like the colors, the overall image on the blu ray is pretty detailed. They look more detailed than Raiders and Raiders had a 6k scan with the restoration work done at down-converted 4k. LFL color 'corrected' the 1080p version and gave this to Lowry for restoration and de-graining. I would suspect they did not use the OCN either and opted for the 1997 SE internegative.

Star Wars was shot on the same film stock as Raiders except the composites and wipes/dissolves used a different film stock (among others) which faded so they re-did them either digitally or with an optical printer. Because of the generation loss with them and the effects and also if it is the 1997 IN, a 2k scan would have captured all the detail, a 4k scan would have definitely captured all the detail. The only way to make it better would be to scan the OCN parts that are salvageable, preferably at 6k or 8k. 

Atilla the Hut said:

Fang Zei said:

I'm bumping this thread in light of last week's Disney announcement. Several weeks ago we learned that Clones and Sith would be hitting theaters only a few weeks apart next Fall. With Episode VII hitting in 2015, we'll obviously be seeing all three of the OT-SE installments hitting theaters much earlier than originally expected (late 2014 / early 2015 at the very latest).

I bring this up not out of any interest in the 3D versions, but out of interest for what this might mean for the OT in general. Will Lucasfilm spring for 4K rebuilds of the OT now that money is no longer an object? The current Lowry masters are stuck at 1920x817, which is just fine and dandy for hdtv and blu-ray, but the standard digital cinema resolution for a cinemascope film is 2048x872. Jim Ward called the Lowry masters a "digital negative" back in '04, saying they could use that for theatrical if they wanted to.

Well, it's been eight years and (correct me if I'm wrong) that master hasn't been projected theatrically anywhere.* That says to me that, no, hdtv resolution for a 'scope film is not a "digital negative."

*Was that special screening of Empire a couple years back (with Ford in attendance) the '04 version or was it a '97 print??? That's literally the only time I can think of where the lowry master might have been theatrically projected.

No offense to Michael Kaminski, but the Star Wars films were scanned at least 2k resolution which for a scope film is at least 1828x1556. It was more likely scanned at 4k since 1828 horizontal pixels is less than 1920.

LFL used a Cintel C-Reality film scanner which scans at either 2k (at 6-15fps) or 4k (2 seconds per frame). The C-Reality cannot, however, natively output in either 2k or 4k. It only outputs in HD and lower resolutions. The full squeezed anamorphic scope frame was scanned at a higher overall resolution than HD and downconverted then output at 1920x1080 10bit color (4:4:4 RGB). Whether it was anamorphically squeezed at the full 1920x1080 or was letterboxed on output to 1920x817 is not known. The only source is Lowry saying it was "HD" and Videographer magazine saying it was 1080p, as far as I can tell so it's hard to say.

Since the C-Reality doesn't store images, the cost between 2k and 4k probably isn't much as it only comes down to time. It would be interesting to find out whether they opted for 2k or 4k. I would hope they did 4k. Even though fans don't like the colors, the overall image on the blu ray is pretty detailed. They look more detailed than Raiders and Raiders had a 6k scan with the restoration work done at down-converted 4k. LFL color 'corrected' the 1080p version and gave this to Lowry for restoration and de-graining. I would suspect they did not use the OCN either and opted for the 1997 SE internegative.

Star Wars was shot on the same film stock as Raiders except the composites and wipes/dissolves used a different film stock (among others) which faded so they re-did them either digitally or with an optical printer. Because of the generation loss with them and the effects and also if it is the 1997 IN, a 2k scan would have captured all the detail, a 4k scan would have definitely captured all the detail. The only way to make it better would be to scan the OCN parts that are salvageable, preferably at 6k or 8k. 

No, they used the OCN. That's why the '04 master still holds up in full HD: the scan Lowry was working with was capturing all that detail of the original source, even if the scanner was only 2K.

But you're still missing my original point, which is that Lowry was only working at HD resolution (whether it was 1080 anamorphic or 817, either way it was only 1920 horizontal). That's an hdtv master, not a cinema master. The prequels had actual 2K masters (Clones and Sith were shot at 1920, but the effects shots and everything else in the movie were rendered and finished at full 2K). I somehow doubt even Lucas would want the OT looking even worse than the prequels.

Harmy said:

Even if it was so, the current version is still stuck at 1080p plus it isn't really all that detailed to begin with:

720p has approx. half the resolution of 1080p, yet when scaled down to 720p and then upscaled back up to 1080p, the BD master definitely doesn't lose half the detail, so that effectively means that the 1080p master doesn't really use all the resolution 1080p has to offer.

Interesting...

I can tell the 720p image is a lower resolution than the 1080p image from the grain structure, BUT the detail appears identical. For the longest time I used to be under the impression a 35mm release print had some sort of amazing resolution. After I got a blu ray player and saw a few films then went back to the local cineplex, I started to question that. Then I found out that a release print was sub 720p on average due to the generation loss in contact printing. That and most new films used a 2k DI meaning if the HD version was sourced from the DI it would be hands down better than the release print (unless heavily compressed). Now the local cineplex has 4k DCI equipment so that's not a problem (and comfy seats... and a full bar)

Seeing this comparison makes me wonder how much extra detail could be extracted via a modern higher scan (with the OCN). For a film like SW, I would hate to see them not try.

Fang Zei said:

No, they used the OCN. That's why the '04 master still holds up in full HD: the scan Lowry was working with was capturing all that detail of the original source, even if the scanner was only 2K.

But you're still missing my original point, which is that Lowry was only working at HD resolution (whether it was 1080 anamorphic or 817, either way it was only 1920 horizontal). That's an hdtv master, not a cinema master. The prequels had actual 2K masters (Clones and Sith were shot at 1920, but the effects shots and everything else in the movie were rendered and finished at full 2K). I somehow doubt even Lucas would want the OT looking even worse than the prequels.

I knew what you meant. :) I would like to see a new scan too, for peace of mind, preferably at 8k. I've also read they scanned the OCN, but I also read (on this site I think, links in archived posts) that OCN=1997 SE which is an internegative two generations from the OCN. I know secret history of star wars says the OCN was disassembled and reassembled with SE footage, but that contradicts what Rick McCallum said in an old interview. The OCN was disassembled, but I don't think it was re-assembled with SE footage like Kaminski wrote. All the sources conflict with themselves and since we're not in the loop, who knows?

I just wanted to point out that the 2004 source was indeed scanned in at least 2k. The de-graining stuff was done at 1080p, but the scan was not 1080p like I've seen several people on the internet claim. Can't scan a scope film at 1080p. Well I guess you could, but it would be 1200x1080p or something like that