TServo2049 said:
Russ and I have been corresponding about the 1991 PAL widescreen VHS, and I've viewed some video clips of it. It does seem to be transferred to PAL from NTSC, and it has the exact same "shrinking ratio" problem as the U.S. SWE LD - and I mean "exact", I can see the black bars get bigger at the reel changes, and the before/after difference seems *identical*. HOWEVER...it doesn't have the weird blobs or the splice glue marks from the JSC/SWE!
Same shrunken ratio, no glue marks. What is going on here? Is it a different film source that happens to have the same variations as the JSC/SWE one (no Tantive burn marks, cloudy X-wing takeoff composite), but none of the weird blobs or glue marks? Is it the same source but with something like Filmguard applied?
Yeah, I've seen those clips from Russ myself now. And it's really, really weird. The only thing I can think of is that the source was cleaned up in a last attempt to make this old master presentable. It had been in use for 10 years at that point, with new fancy packaging in order to sell basically the same thing over and over again. When they finally dug up that first generation source as the base for new video releases, we really had a winner on our hands. Star Wars have been treated like shit on video right from the beginning.
TServo2049 said:
If it was a new transfer, why was it sourced from NTSC instead of being native PAL? If was an existing transfer, why was it never used on any NTSC release? In either case, why does it have the shrinking ratio problem? I thought that was due to a problem covering up the JSC's Japanese subtitles and repositioning the up-shifted image to the center. If this is a different master, it means that the same framing mistake was repeated.
Why do two different video masters have the same issue, and why do the film sources look identical except for the presence or lack of certain damage?
What is this, I don't even...
I don't believe the "shrinking ratio" is a problem caused by covering up Japanese subs. I strongly suspect this was intentionally done in order to covering up damage on the master. The SC and SWE uses the same film elements yes, but they are different telecines, the same with the sequels.
You can actually see some small amount of shrinking in the SC telecine as well, see the first wipe in the film to Tatooine for example, the bottom border gets a little larger as it progress. Another thing to watch unrelated to this is the last shootout scene right before Vader makes his entrance on the blockade runner, it actually looks like they spliced in a different source for that short sequence.