Doh! So simple. I guess I've just never tried to use Plex Media Server with an alternate audio track. Here's me trying to overcomplicate things. Thanks!
after watching 2.1 all the way through I have to say that watching Star Wars this time reminded me of how I felt watching Star Wars on VHS on my old tv when I was 12 years old with my dad.
it just looked and felt right. how it used to look. and for some reason even though I have seen this movie many times before... my brain registered this as different.
Thank You Harmy. You brought back memories.
Looking forward to ESB and ROTJ.
^exactly how I felt.
Harmy, I just watched 2.1 and it really took me back to when I was a kid. This is my favorite movie, but I haven't watched it in many years, because I've been frustrated by the lack of a good quality version, and the special edition is simply unwatchable for me.
My daughter is now almost old enough to watch it, and this will be the version I'll show her. Thank you.
“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
That's nice to hear, guys :-)
OK, I realized that I never really responded to the questions about what kind of bonus material there will be on the disc. The reason is that while I do have some things in mind, I don't want to give away too much, because I'm not sure I'll be able to do them all.
What I definitely want to put on the disc are several galleries:
This v1.0 changes gallery
An updated version of this v1.0 vs Remastered gallery
An updated version of this gallery of all changes showing BD vs GOUT vs v1.0 vs. v2.1 (or2.5, depending on whether there is a v2.5).
An updated version of this v2.0 vs. v2.1 gallery with some descriptions added.
There will probably also be a video version of the third gallery, showing the changes in movement.
I'm also working on a commentary for the whole film, though I'm 30 minutes in and already running out of ideas for things to say, so we'll see :-)
There's some more stuff I have in mind but I'm not sure I'll be able to pull it off.
All of the Tatooine sequences have been much improved, with much better contrasts. Mos Eisley looks totally solid. It looks like you did some work on the Yavin launch as well, as it seems to be clearer than in the previous version, as do several of the model shots.
Colors seem stronger and more natural throughout. There is a very nice “filmic” look to this edition, much more so than on any of the official discs.
The chapters are kind of all over the place, but that's already been mentioned.
The very head of the shot with the Falcon blasting out of Docking Bay 94 looks a little strange, like the footage was looped. This wouldn't be so noticeable except that one of the commentaries points out a gaffe in the following shot (somebody leaving the cockpit behind Han), prompting a quick scan back to check it out, which puts that shot under a bit of scrutiny.
I'll keep looking for things to point out to you, but at the moment I'm just bowled over by how much this version “pops.” It looks like a photochemical process, just like it should. Call me old fashioned, but I like it when films look like films.
Very eager for the Blu-ray version with the lossless audio tracks, especially the 1985 mix option! The commentaries are a really nice touch — whenever the Special Edition changes are mentioned, the absence of them on the screen just makes me smile.
“That’s impossible, even for a computer!”
The video is very dark on my system, I'm going to burn a disc and pop it in the PS3 to see if it still looks dark there.
Nearly everything looks pretty seamless so far, I haven't been popped out of the viewing experience by anything jarring due to SD sources or anything. It's all very well done.
As a total nit-pick, the comped in Dewback outside the cantina looks a little video-green in tone, it is the only thing that jumped out at me as an obvious comp. I had a play with it and pulled the green secondaries down a bit and it seemed to blend into the plate a little better.
This is the shot I mean
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37624864@N08/8562447974/in/photostream/lightbox/
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First I want to say great Job Harmy.
I like it very much. Watched snippets on my 55 TV Screen and even for 720p it looks very good.
What me bothered was that you used fixed chapters every 5 minutes.
So I grabbed my Original PAL-GOUT DVD, extracted the chapters converted them to 23,976 fps and remuxed my copy with correct chapters and german audio :)
For everybody interested and for the future Harmy BR here are the chapters.
00:00:00.000
00:00:19.561
00:01:51.319
00:04:52.834
00:07:28.322
00:08:55.076
00:11:21.430
00:15:23.547
00:19:19.700
00:23:12.766
00:25:12.219
00:27:25.060
00:28:52.272
00:32:13.473
00:34:32.570
00:36:33.774
00:38:45.197
00:41:16.182
00:42:10.361
00:43:59.678
00:47:00.609
00:49:05.943
00:50:21.727
00:51:40.555
00:51:48.313
00:54:30.809
00:56:43.817
01:00:42.805
01:03:47.365
01:05:52.907
01:10:03.240
01:11:43.590
01:14:44.688
01:16:40.262
01:19:00.277
01:22:31.112
01:24:33.068
01:27:27.075
01:31:19.265
01:34:10.770
01:35:37.690
01:37:07.988
01:38:55.679
01:40:08.252
01:42:07.746
01:46:48.068
01:52:24.028
01:54:52.510
01:55:33.760
01:57:19.574
02:01:06.801
Is there a quick way to put these new chapter marks into an MKV, or do I have to add each one manually?
Used XBMC to watch a few minutes of this while seeding at myspleen.
My God.
This concludes my intitial review.
poita said:
guiser said:
Thanks for checking. Must be the years I spent watching old fuzzy VHS recordings.
I went back and noticed the stars disappearing early in Puggo Grande as well, but they seemed to actually get brighter if they were on the edge of a letter and as they appeared right at the bottom of each letter (strangely no spacing below). Not sure what would cause such a thing to happen, but I'm done obsessing over titles now.
I can't wait to enjoy 2.1, thank you so much for all your hard work Harmy and to everyone else in the community that helped out with this amazing project!!!
I think is mainly due to the brightness of the text washing out the starfield that it is composited over, and the telecine gear (and reduction prints) not having the dynamic range to cope with it.
Thanks, I assumed there was a technical reason for this that had something to do with the transfer process, but have exactly zero experience with physical film :-)
The five minute chapter has something to do with AVCHD.
TV's Frink said:
The five minute chapter has something to do with AVCHD.
It's the default chapter setting in tsmuxer, if you forget to/don't add your own chapter list. Harmy does already have real chapter stops for the Blu-ray.
Does anyone know why every big scale set (I mean: the Death Star and spaceships) that was neutral gray in the GOUT was toned toward turquoise in Harmy's version? I'm just curious what's the background of this decision. I seem to recall them to be gray or a little blueish gray, but not green the least. Am I wrong?
(It's very likely discussed before, but searching on this forum...)
The GOUT transfer is generally pink-shifted, desaturated, and overly bright compared to the better color references Harmy used. This is due to the GOUT being based on a different print on different filmstock, the fading properties of that filmstock, and just the way it was scanned so many years ago.
Also Harmy tried to adjust the badly mangled Blu-ray colors to match his references, and sometimes he was less successful than other times. He wasn't starting off from a clean, good scan, so there are occasional imperfections. Not that it didn't still result in the best-looking transfer I've ever seen.
CatBus said:
The GOUT transfer is generally pink-shifted, desaturated, and overly bright compared to the better color references Harmy used.
It's not the GOUT I'm talking about, but my memories about the theatrical version. Are my _memories_ wrong? I just mentioned GOUT because that's a well-known old print which happen to show those things in neutral gray (which could be wrong).
Like everyone else here I'm sure, I loved Star Wars as a kid; watched my taped-off-TV VHS recordings endlessly. Then later when DVD technology emerged I waited and waited for these movies to become available in the new digital format. Finally, when the DVD set was released I sat and watched and something just didn't feel the same. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time but somehow this just wasn't the Star Wars I knew (even without all the SE stuff). I figured at the time that I'd just gotten older and that was that.
But when I sat and watched this version, it all came back :). All the same excitement I had from before that kept me coming back again and again that had somehow been boosted and crushed and oversaturated out of those awful DVDs. This was MY Star Wars as I remembered it.
Thank you for this Harmy. A thousand times thank you. :)
George creates Star Wars.
Star Wars creates fans.
George destroys Star Wars.
Fans destroy George.
Fans create Star Wars.
In some of the comparison shots, there are instances of the greenish tint still being present, zee944. See Compar.m2ts.m2t_snapshot_13.25_[2012.09.25_12.49.22] for example. Some of the Vader fight scene shots also show some of this, as well as Obi Wan's cloak not quite being brown (12.59.40), but rather a green/grey tint.
Some of this is, I suspect, due to brightening, filtering, etc., and the bits of color that get interpreted in the world of digital approximation (especially fine gradients of colors like grey, brown) gets confused, resulting in sometimes odd choices. ...In other words, to correct one section of the scene, other elements sometimes get affected in unexpected ways, and sometimes, there isn't much that can be done without even more detailed work on those specific elements.
Grey, for example, is probably the most difficult for most LCDs. Add software to the mix that, when bringing up levels of some other colors, affects the bits on another part of the scene, and it's probably scaling the bits that make up grey - which, technically are all colors (Red, Green, Blue), and it makes up choices of its own that can't be helped.
In other words, to correct for this, it might be more work than it's worth, though I do not know. It may also be a matter of re-rendering with a slightly different couple of settings for a couple of scenes. Either way, it'd probably add a lot more work ;)
In all, now that I've had some time to sit down and view more of this, the flow is smoother in this latest version. There are some great corrections in other areas of color which I'm quite happy to see. The other little tweaks I'm seeing in the comparison shots is awesome!
As for commentary, my only advice would be that, if you really want to do it, don't rush through 30 min. of talk - stretch it out. It doesn't have to be two hours of constant talking ;)
Maybe make a few notes for every 10 min. section or so of the entire thing - write down a small note for one thing every 10 min. or so, and if that turns into two or three sentences of actual talking, you'd have a lot added up quickly.
Still have to pinch myself sometimes to realize that this is real, and exists, and is ever closer to the original, in excellent quality!
Can't wait for the Blu Ray and your commentary. I grabbed the AVCHD but will also get the BD when it hits.
There are some flaws inherent to the process of course. The green tint, where it appears, is not one of them and is completely intentional and confirmed by other sources beside the IB prints.
zee944 said:
CatBus said:
The GOUT transfer is generally pink-shifted, desaturated, and overly bright compared to the better color references Harmy used.
It's not the GOUT I'm talking about, but my memories about the theatrical version. Are my _memories_ wrong? I just mentioned GOUT because that's a well-known old print which happen to show those things in neutral gray (which could be wrong).
The death star interiors were never neutral grey, but had a green/blue tint. Harmy's color reference is from an original unfaded technicolor print. The GOUT on the other hand is sourced from a faded interpositive, and is thus very desaturated from its original appearance. Check out Dark Jedi/You_Too's project. They have color-corrected the GOUT and were able to bring out a lot the colors which were not visible on the official disc.
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Original-Trilogy-Theatrical-Editions-Info-ALL-versions-SEE-FIRST-POST-FOR-INFO-AND-AVAILABILITY/post/626585/#TopicPost626585
“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
Laserschwert said:
Is there a quick way to put these new chapter marks into an MKV, or do I have to add each one manually?
No you have to remux as far as I know.
Laserschwert said:Is there a quick way to put these new chapter marks into an MKV, or do I have to add each one manually?
Put them in a text file and open it with MKVMerge's chapter editor.
Harmy...All I can say is... What a wonderful job you've done! The Luke meets Obi-Wan scene looks very nice now. The light saber battle between Darth and Obi-Wan looks fantastic! All the hard worked you've put into this project, has really paid off! Great job!
Thanks for the listening to all of us giving you hints and suggestions, and putting them into there proper prospective. You've really given this whole movie, new life!
Best to you & Thank you again!