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Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 332

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A couple of people mentioned/questioned about a possible usenet upload.

The AVCHD is in the process of uploading to usenet at this moment.

 

 

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msycamore said:

'04 master which looks like a cheap hooker

LOL.

Thanks for all your hard work Harmy.

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Excellent.

 

Many thanks to those responsible for their efforts!

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b0bafett said:

Hey Harmy,

I'm holding out for the blu ray, so I can't comment on the 2.1 yet.  But I gotta ask you something.  People keep commenting on a possible 2.5 release of Star Wars.  IF you decide to go that route, can you please hold it off until after you bring ESB & ROTJ up to a 2.0?

If there is a v2.5 (which so far, I have been given no reason to do yet) it's going to be just tiny little fixes done for the BD release, not a full fledged new effort like v2.0 or even anything close to the amount of work on v2.1.

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Harmy, you've work here has been nothing short of a miracle and I'm looking forward to the blu-ray version and your completion of the rest of the trilogy.

As a side note, anybody worried about what to do with the blu-ray file or looking for a great media player that plays everything thrown at it, I highly recommend getting a WD TV Live media player. They run about $100 and play almost everything thrown at them, including Blu-Ray .iso and folder files.

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analog said:

NeverarGreat said:

Harmy said:

@NeverarGreat: So, I take it you did not look at the comparison gallery, containing like 350 screenshots from v2.1?

Where is that?

Page 328 - this post: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-v21-AVCHD-is-now-out/post/627643/#TopicPost627643

This link: http://uloz.to/xCAaaEE/compar-gallery-rar

 

Thanks!

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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Remember guys, this is not an "official" release, it's a fan revisit:  referring to it as an official release might attract official studio attention (and not in a good way).

There has been a lot of argument on forums about teal colour timing of some Bluray releases and how obvious it appears when viewing screengrabs in a browser or desktop.  What is interesting is that, when viewed in a darkened room, like in a cinema, teal-tinted movies do not look as teal as on the desktop.  The reason seems to be that human vision performs a sort of auto-white balance in the absence of any other reference.  Consequently, viewing in a dark environment should result in perception of a teal tinted movie not appearing as teal as with a screengrab on a desktop (where there is usually pure white reference).  In fact I have noticed that viewing tinted material in dark environments actually seems to shift the whole thing towards the chromatic opposite of the tint.  So, perhaps when we see a teal-tinted screengrab and it looks wrong, perhaps the studio actually means for us to see a more golden appearance to the movie in the dark cinema for which it is intended to be viewed.

Whilst it may be perfectly okay to colour match screengrabs of an IB print and the material being worked on, both on a desktop, the final result is supposed to be viewed in a cinema-like environment, so I would hope any decisions on whether the desktop version looks too green or whatever are made in the end environment for which the material is intended.  Indeed, the bonus Bluray disc for "The Hobbit" makes it quite clear that colour grading is performed in a darkened environment, similar to a cinema.

A write-up of the Senator Theater screening of an IB print of Star Wars is quite interesting about colour tinting:

http://savestarwars.com/technicoloribscreening.html

where it talks about "a tiny green shift in the I.B. print, indicating it is actually slightly warmer".

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njdevil254 said:

I highly recommend getting a WD TV Live media player.

I don't. The firmware is shite and unsupported. You will have audio synch problems with multiple a/v combinations.

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True, but there is some great custom firmware for it. That said, it is still not the best media player - all of them have different pros and cons.

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I'm watching parts of 2.1 now and it looks amazing. A couple of questions:

Will there be any updates to the disc or box art for this release?

Harmy, how much "PR" do you want on other forums? I post quite a bit on another tech forum and I'm sure many folks there would be interested in this release, but I don't want to advertise this project in any way that is against your wishes.

As always, thanks Harmy and everyone else who contributed to this fantastic release.

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doubleKO said:

I don't. The firmware is shite and unsupported. You will have audio synch problems with multiple a/v combinations.

I have to disagree with you on that one. From my experience, the firmware is frequently updated and I've had no experiences with audio sync issues. Usually audio sync is an issue caused by a television or projector's video processing, further complicated when you have it connected to a receiver. It took a home theater calibration disc for me to get my system in check since my Sharp LED LCD has a terrible amount of lag when it's in movie mode.

As far as the WD Live goes, I've tried it with every file type I could find to include Blu-Ray iso and folder files, and it played them all. The only thing it doesn't support that I've found is MLP for DVD-Audio files. I'm merely throwing it out there since it plays the V2.1 file with no issues, including all audio tracks, and it should play the Blu-Ray file just fine. The other alternatives are burning it to a BD-R (expensive), a HTPC (not practical for everyone), or perhaps streaming the stream file through a PS3. There may be other media players out there that do the same stuff, but the WD TV is the only one I have experience with and I know it does the job well.

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yoda-sama said:

The right speed color wheel can do a lot to get rid of the rainbow effect, and admittedly my W1070 is 2000 lumen, but it is as bright of a home projector as I've seen, it can be seen pretty well in a lit room, and I'm throwing around 140" - 150", and could easily see this going beyond 180" without looking shabby...

BTW, which anime convention are you referring to?

Otakuthon. Our experience with 2300-2700 lumen single-chip DLP projectors on 180" screens was... suboptimal.  They were 4:3 projectors and screens, though. The limitations of what we've got have stopped us from trying anything larger with our 4300 lumen projectors. Our new Epsons might be able to push it a bit bigger, though... If memory serves, we are looking at getting some 16:9 screens in the 200-220ish range this year, we'll see.

I've got 290" screens in my main events room, but we don't buy the projectors for those, we rent big 14,000 lumen units that take two people to move :P

There's this wall of price, for projector brightness. Once you hit around the 4000-5000 lumen range, the price stops increasing linearly and jumps up. For example, I can do 4200 lumen for under a thousand bucks, but to double that brightness it might cost me ten times more.

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@Pheran: Yes, there will be an all new cover-art to go with the BD release.

As to promotion, other forums are fine :-)

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 (Edited)

 

Harmy said:

chyron8472 said:

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).

@Chyron: How large (or rather small) is the resulting file?

 

I posted about the resulting size a bit earlier:

chyron8472 said:

Harmy said:

That's strange - I've used the exact same settings for the AVCHD as for v2.0 and it came out quite a bit smaller (by like 600MB). This on one hand means, that I'll be able to add a few extra audio or subtitle tracks but it's a bit worrying.

Harmy, I ran v2.1 through Handbrake (while, for the audio, only using track 1) at the same settings that I had used for v2.0 and the resultant M4V came out larger.

v2.0 is 2.54GB; v2.1 is 2.58GB

 

 

Nevermind that the file says"2.5" in the screenshot. It was a typo, obviously.

Files from DVD (SD) sources are about half this size (often less), and Blurays can be twice as large. The file size for this looks small to you, but it seems about what I would expect for encodes from Handbrake.

Besides, from what I understand, if the software takes enough time on the encode, it can really get good quality despite the compression. Plus, I've searched high and low on the net for what people, who are in-the-know about this sort of thing, think the best of this type of software is--and everyone who wasn't a mere salesperson seemed to say Handbrake was hands down the best. If Handbrake's manual and forum community is telling me that RF21 is the high end of the scale for HD sources and to be higher reaches well into diminishing returns, then I put stock in what they're telling me.

 

But again, as I said, I'm going to burn a full blown copy as well. I'm going to watch your (remasters? restorations? preservations?) an inordinate amount of times, believe me. I feel like a kid again as far as Star Wars is concerned, and it's all thanks to you and Adywan.

TV’s Frink said:

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

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 (Edited)

You can of course watch this any way you choose :-) But 720p video around 2GB, is only marginally better than DVD in terms of detail - most of the detail gets scrubbed away by the compression. I used to watch those kinds of rips too but now I can spot compression artefacts too easily (I can now even clearly see the difference for example between a 12GB 1080p and a 20GB 1080p) - they both look nice but 12GB will look much worse in comparison. And especially on a pretty grainy source like this. And that is only on my 27" screen - anything bigger would of course make the difference even more obvious. Unless of course handbrake is using some kind of futuristic compression algorithms. Could you maybe post a few screenshots from your encode from some of the darker scenes and maybe the first shot of the sunset?

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 (Edited)

I'll post them tomorrow morning (ie. in about 7 hours) when I get back to the computer the files are on.

 

Out of curiosity, what size and resolution of screen are you using to go through and check the film for errors as you work on it? I'm only asking because a larger screen would likely make it easier for the human eye to spot problems, and viewing HD source files in actual size would seem to me to require lots of panning around for each and every frame, as the whole thing likely wouldn't fit on the screen--especially when said frame is surrounded by video editing tools.

TV’s Frink said:

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

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I'm just getting mine now along with a 1972 McDonalds training video I found whilst on Myspleen. Now if someone could restore that it would be awesome!!

Jokes aside I have some invites to give out for Myspleen, Just PM me!

P.S.

Thanks Harmy!

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Is there a way to tell which version I am on? Maybe I should keep this question and it's answer to private messages?

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Yes, there's a way. It's in the credits at the end.

 

TV’s Frink said:

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

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Just wanted to throw my two cents onto the congratulations pile. 

Even just flipping through v. 2.1 it is obvious that it is superior even to v. 2.0. Mos Eisley looks fantastic, and the whole film looks unbelievably seamless. I'd never have guessed OT.com could have come this close to presenting the film like this. 

Tremendous work! It really comes across as if Lucasfilm remastered the original version to a high standard and then only released it over Netflix at 720p. (That's meant as a compliment.)

My stance on revising fan edits.

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 (Edited)

Is there any chance that someone could upload the Official Blue Ray's Audio vs 2.1 Audio comparison on YouTube? - Preferably the intro.

 

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In regards to the WDTV Live above (and any other device people have struggled with) look into purchasing Mezzmo. It is by far the best streaming server I have ever used, with amazing transcoding capabilities tailored to each device, updated constantly. I have a Netgear NeoTV Max that has AWFUL firmware support, but works great running Mezzmo. Despecialized played flawlessly :)

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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Cool, didn't know about the custom credits at the end!

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 (Edited)

Hey Harmy, I had a question about the shot where the Falcon takes off from Mos Eisley.  As pictured, part of that stormtrooper's armor stands out to me as very unnaturally white.  I noticed this was in 2.0 as well.  I don't have the GOUT or 1.0 on hand at the moment to check if it's there as well.

I'm guessing the crew just forgot to put dirt/dust on that part of the armor, but something about it just looks so odd to me, that I wondered if it was some kind of weird coloring error or something that Lucasfilm made along the way.

And yes, I realize I'm posting a picture of a stormtrooper with his crotch circled. :)

Anyone remember different camera angles from ROTJ?