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Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 329

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Harmy said:

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.

Ah yes, very true! And... I forgot about this quote:

--- from http://savestarwars.com/technicoloribscreening.html

The balance of light, balance on the film stock, and timing of individual shots produced an environment that, even if it were actually painted pure grey (some colour photos from the set look suspiciously grey-green as well, which becomes blue under certain lighting conditions) is tinged. This should be considered a valid element of the film's original cinematography. I confirmed this by taking the 2006 DVD/1993/5LD and pumping up the saturation to the Technicolor levels and then dialing out the pink shift (which means adding green and some yellow) until skin tones looked natural as they do in the Technicolor print--the result was identical color balances. Below are examples of the blue and green tinting on the Technicolor print. You can see that the print and camera is responsible for some of it, but by the natural colour of the skin tones you can tell that it could not possible account for the entirety of the tint.

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Harmy, I was trying to download your comparison shots you posted on that paradoxical site, and I got the following message from the file hoster:

 

"The file you attempted to download is an archive that is part of a set of archives. MediaFire does not support unlimited downloads of split archives and the limit for this file has been reached. MediaFire understands the need for users to transfer very large or split archives, up to 10GB per file, and we offer this service starting at $1.50 per month.

We have informed the owner that sharing of this file has been limited and how they can resolve this issue."

 

Can this be corrected?

 

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Just a couple of pictures of it on my projector to show Harmy how great his version is. Thanks again Harmy and helpers, cant wait for the Blu ray version.

 

 

 

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That is awesome! If I may ask, what kind of projector is being used there? DLP based? CRT based? It looks pretty good either way :)

I just watched a few scenes on an old CRT based rear projector HD set that I have. ...my LCD cannot do the colors nearly as much justice... Sadly, I don't know how much longer I can keep this TV, as it's a huge pain to move, but every time I question something potentially weird, it's interesting to see on a CRT based set.

Death Star scenes are so much different. The balance is damn near as perfect as it should be. The desert scenes have a special kind of warmth. The bits I just checked were excellent. I think I'll shut up now and go watch the whole thing from the top.

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Wow, lpd, those look great. I wish I could watch it like that. Thanks for sharing.

It would be fun to see pictures taken from projection of the same frames as the IB screening photos and see how they compare. It wouldn't of course be quite accurate as it depends greatly on the camera but it would just be fun to see :-)

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nos402 said:

I downloaded the AVCHD from myspleen. So far just tested it by streaming it from my laptop to my TV via Plex Media Server (unfortunately I think that causes a little audio lag since it's being transcoded on the fly...there was no lag when played directly on my computer in VLC). This is all a brave new world for me but it's worth it for the Despecialized versions! Still learning and sorting all this out. I'm hoping to keep the best quality files I can on an R2-D2 USB drive for playing at a friend's home theater.

You can try encoding the AVCHD to an MKV (or M4V if you have iTunes/AppleTV) to see if that alleviates the audio lag.

Use MakeMKV to convert to MKV. This should keep the entire contents of the film/audio/subtitles intact, and create a file that's the exact same size and quality as the originally included data.

 

One thing I do is run the movie through Handbrake, which compresses the file to something a lot more manageable (eg. putting files on my PS3 requires them to be less than 4GB).

If you're concerned that Handbrake is going to ruin the picture quality, I'd recommend setting the Constant Quality slider to 21 (HD sources should be between 21 and 23, with 21 being best quality and 23 being smallest size).

Oh, and keep in mind that Handbrake doesn't play well with Bluray subtitles (PGS files), so you'll have to import SRT files from Project Threepio (also available on the spleen) into Hanbrake instead of using the subtitles which were included in the AVCHD.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

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Its an Optoma HD65 which is a 720p native dlp projector, it has a smashing picture, they can be found on fleabay for a good price. The pictures I uploaded seem to have not fitted on the page sorry chaps, never posted pictures before.

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Harmy said:

Wow, lpd, those look great. I wish I could watch it like that. Thanks for sharing.

It would be fun to see pictures taken from projection of the same frames as the IB screening photos and see how they compare. It wouldn't of course be quite accurate as it depends greatly on the camera but it would just be fun to see :-)

Will have a go at it later. How do I shrink the pictures to fit better on the page?

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@chyron: 21 is way too low, you need at least 18 for any decent result.

@lpd: When putting the pics on here, you can set the width to 720 and leave the height empty - that way it will automaically adjust the aspect ratio and make the pics fit the forum layout.

You can also edit your previous post and do this retroactively by clicking first on the picture and then on the little green tree icon.

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@Harmy: 18 is above the high end for DVDs (SD sources are 19 at the high end, 21 at the low end).

There's a difference between my watching it from a file on my PS3, and keeping a copy of it on disc. I'm keeping a full-blown direct copy on disc. But I don't need all the file conversions of all the movies in my entire library to be fricken huge in size. I just don't have the hard drive storage space for it.

Given that you, Harmy, are so intimately familiar with all the nuances and details of the film's picture quality, I'm sure you could point out any differences. But I'd bet real money that setting it to 21 for a Bluray would make most people (even most people who frequent this thread) hard-pressed to tell the difference, especially any differences which come anywhere close to remotely meaningful.

EDIT: I'm not saying you wasted your time with being so meticulous about the HD quality picture, nor am I saying that AVCHD is perfectly good enough to make  the Bluray version moot. I'm saying is that 7.9GB for the AVCHD alone--nevermind 13GB for the main m2ts on the Bluray--is a lot of MKV to deal with for just one film when one has dozens of others which are similar in size. I'm saying nothing about the (obvious to me) need and importance of having a full-blown HD copy on disc.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

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Personally, I prefer to use Avg Bitrate with 2-pass encoding on most of the encodes that I do for media devices.  I adjust the bitrate based on the video content and the intended viewing device.

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I just scanned through the 2.1 movie, and many parts look very good. The sunset in particular looks better than I've ever seen it look before.

There are some color problems that I noticed. In the dinner scene, the colors look off. Compare the colors of the flowers and foliage behind Owen to the still of the Senator Technicolor print. The greens are less bright, the purple in the flowers is too gray. It may just be my screen, but the reds (especially the skin tones) look too dark or gray, and the image often has a cyan push. This is very noticeable in the Death Star council room and in some shots in the escape from Tatooine, and the searching of the Falcon on the Death Star, to name a few. The faces have a green cast, which makes them look rather sickly. It may be that the original had a lot of cyan, but in the Senator print, especially in the "the Force will be with you" image of Ben, his face has a lot of red, which is missing from 2.1.

I wish I had a properly calibrated monitor to view these colors, but if a side by side comparison of two sources on the same screen shows different results, then I must assume that there is a very real difference between the two sources, or that VLC is not handling the video correctly.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Right, just finished the whole film and...

WOW.

I watched 1.0 not too long ago (my wife hadn't seen them since she was really young and you were still in the process of making 2.0) and I remember watching it and thinking that it was great but that there were still flaws that popped up every now and then and the transitions from the SE to non-SE were not as seamless as one could have hoped.

But this - this just absolutely blew it out of the water. A glass raised in your honor, Harmy! To a job well done and were I in the Czech republic, I would be getting you silly drunk.

In all seriousness, the colors were so wonderful and filmic, the transitions to non-SE were extremely well done (one would really need a microscope to really catch the seams) and and and... Well I think this is definitely my go to version for Star Wars.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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@Neverar: Those are photos taken from a screen, I was referencing an actual professional scan of two different IB Technicolor prints and a scan of some scenes from an LPP print. It doesn't match perfectly but it's pretty darn close.

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Based on those screen grabs i wish this were the official blu ray.  How much would it have cost them to do a 4k restore of just star wars 77 from the ocn and also a reference scan of George's IB tech print?

And if they can restore Raiders which according to Mr Robert Harris did not need restoration what about star wars which is in very dire need of one.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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The quality of this restoration is fantastic! I can't wait for the BD! I'm so happy right now ;p 

 

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Harmy said:

@Neverar: Those are photos taken from a screen, I was referencing an actual professional scan of two different IB Technicolor prints and a scan of some scenes from an LPP print. It doesn't match perfectly but it's pretty darn close.

I see. Or rather, I don't see. But those photos of the 2.1 above look very different than what I see on the screen, so perhaps it just needs a saturation boost on a screen or projector for the colors to come out.

I wish we had access to those references though! ;)

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Hey Harmy,

 

I just wanted to give you a standing ovataion for all your hard work. I just got through watching 2.1 and I must say that Star Wars has not looked as good since I saw it in 77 and 78 in the theater! I am really excited now for The Empire Strikes Back update! Keep up the great work and again thank you!

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@lpd: I envy you for that awesome projection setup. It looks great! It's one of my biggest dreams to have a huge projection screen someday. I don't know what it is but film just looks better when projected.

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Are there any projectors out there that will display the intended colors of the DVD? Don't get me wrong or anything, it just seems that a lot people have trouble with them. =\

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@animemaakuo: If searching for pro-reviews of projectors, there's usually a lot of info to find about which ones are better than others and can be calibrated closely to the reference, which means you'll always see everything the way it's mastered.