You_Too said:
Ok, another little update on what I did today. Like you know if you've read the last couple pages of this thread, me and DJ decided to focus on only correcting color errors in the GOUT, instead of a full cleanup.
As some of you might know, there's been discussions before about Luke's lightsaber in the wide shot inside the Falcon right after Alderaan's explosion.
There's been a discussion over at Mike Verta's forum as well, where he stated that the lightsaber was in fact blue in the original. It was also proved by a screening photo he posted in some other thread around here sometime.
There are two of these wide shots, and while the lightsaber color is faded in both, in the second shot the whole tint of the picture is wrong. The second shot is purple/pink in its tint and blue colors are shifted to magenta.
We decided to fix both of those shots and I've finished the first one today.
With the GOUT being sourced from an interpositive that was quite faded when they scanned it, the lightsaber color in that shot was very faded, appearing as white in the raw GOUT, and as "dollar-green" when increasing the saturation.
I've fixed the lightsaber in the first shot, by handpainting it in two passes. The first pass being the color of the blade and the second pass being the hue of the glow around it. I chose the color by sampling Luke's lightsaber in the "It controls your actions?" shot. Most sources point against the saber in this wide shot being as saturated as in that other shot.
Here's a comparison of what it would've looked like in our release had I not done this, and how it looks now:
Damn, and I thought it was always just a mistimed rushed optical like the slightly later shot where the saber is left white.
You_Too said:
Tyrphanax said:
Your dedication is admirable.
I completely identify with your reasoning, as well. I feel like I would do the same thing myself, were I involved in a project like this.
Thanks. I'm glad you appreciate it!
Small update: I've finished fixing the practice orb (or whatever it's called) now. Here's a comparison between the raw GOUT upscaled to 720p and the fixed version:
This really does show off the deficiencies of the IP used because of the original DVNR riddled transfer and that being blown back up for the upscale. Fantastic work overall guys, this feels more like a professional transfer where the opticals and transitions are dirty and a bit soft only to click in to the restored feature.
You_Too said:
SS4DarthPayne said:
Well no one else has posted, so here goes. I just grabbed the 97 sample and watched it. I think it's pretty much what you'd expect it to look like, an upscaled version of one of the broadcasts (that's the TB, right..?) Visuals-wise, that's exactly what it looks like. Let's be honest here, it isn't miracle-level like what you guys have done with the GOUT, but from what I can understand you've put in 5% (10%? Less?) of the effort in on it as you have put in on cleaning up the GOUT.
Yeah, it's the TB since that was the cleanest version. Flunk was oversharpened and had crushed shadow detail, Gkar had edge enhancement and hardcoded german subs, Reivax had the frames blended into each other.
And yeah, it's a pretty simple upscale but with the same upscale-treatment as the GOUT, making sure all detail is preserved. And no miracle-level on the color correction either (actually that wasn't possible because the colors were pretty screwed up) but seeing the raw TB together with ours, it does look a bit better. Especially the Mos Eisley part since I did some additional correction there. Here are some comparison samples:
EDIT: Sorry for the pixellated reds, that's media player classic's fault.
Now THAT is more like it!! The SE had bad color timing issues on the video versions, with the VHS being perhaps the most accurate despite a contrast boost. This actually recalls the theatrical. Well done!!
You_Too said:
Yeah, it proved a nice solution to fill out the missing frame parts. Though at the reel change part where a guy is standing on an X-wing, waving his hands while an R2 unit is being lowered into the ship, MVFlowFps made his hands look weird in the generated frame so I had to fix that one manually.
Yep, that's the same as the side break on the US LD set. With the missing frames, would it help to use lesser sources as placeholders or is this generation process a better fit?
As for complete cleanup on ESB and ROTJ, that would be an insanely massive undertaking especially with these being as much of a turd as they originally were. I agree that the big ones like glue smears, splices and light flashes should be looked at but otherwise I don't foresee problems.
