Info: The JSC thread

Since I just watched the JSC for the first time and couldn’t find a proper place to comment, here’s a new discussion thread just for this 1986-1987 trilogy from Japan that we all know well but doesn’t get much mention anymore.

I was floored by how good this looked on my CRT. It may be the most balanced color of any home release, and I’m one of those who likes the Technidisc saturation best.

And noo motion smearing!

BTW the 1985 remix here is very very clean with only a couple very minor instances of damage on the high end. There is also a very natural layer of tape hiss that suggests direct transfer of elements without noise reduction.

It seems the Pioneer/Mitsubishe SWE USA releases used this master, which at first created the shrinking aspect ratio due to covering up the Japanese subs. I’ve seen some of those and seeing this is like pulling the wool off your eyes.

My questions are: Where the heck did the source come from? Where did it go? Why did they do a new 1985 mix?

And are the ESB and ROTJ JSC releases as impressive as SW? If so…my wallet is disturbed by lack of contents.

captainsolo said:

My questions are: Where the heck did the source come from? Where did it go? Why did they do a new 1985 mix?

I believe that a sans-Greedo-subtitles IP print was made prior to doing the IP prints for the theatrical run.

There's a lot of evidence besides (a lack of) Greedo's subtitles to support this. For instance, the JSC lacks the "Tantive Orange Errors" (http://tx0.org/6jd) that were present in every theatrical print, including the IB Technicolor prints.

captainsolo said:

And are the ESB and ROTJ JSC releases as impressive as SW? If so...my wallet is disturbed by lack of contents.

IMO, yes!

IMO, ESB and RotJ are better.

They've still got their brightness and color timing tweaked with for home viewing, but they don't have the chroma shift/bleed/smear/whatever that ANH has.

Asaki said:

IMO, ESB and RotJ are better.

They've still got their brightness and color timing tweaked with for home viewing, but they don't have the chroma shift/bleed/smear/whatever that ANH has.

Are you sure that's not a 3D comb filter artifact?

I haven't seen any smearing with my JSC ANH and my eyes are pretty sensitive to that kind of artifact.

The source is an International negative, all films for international release usually require a neg that is free of any subtitles so that subtitles can be added in the required language.

The Derann Super8 print uses the International master and is a straight print from it, so it is lacking *any* subtitles, so the poor viewer has to guess what Greedo might be saying.

This does make it a great colour reference though, as it is straight from that neg.

I don't see any smearing on the JSC ANH, and I have been over it a frame at a time more times than I would care to admit. I would suspect it is the player or comb filter as AntcuFaalb has suggested.

If you have any frames with smearing I'd like to check them against mine.

poita said:

If you have any frames with smearing I'd like to check them against mine.

 Here's a bunch: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/STAR-WARS-V8-A-Final-Attempt/post/335898/#TopicPost335898

To save you some time, out of that batch, these three are the most noticable. Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology, but all of the colors "bleed" to the right:

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/8128/190pe9.jpeg

^ note especially the blue and red buttons/lights on the control panel

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/7114/130ht0.jpeg

^ the colors on his badge (medals, I guess?)

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2913/50ap9.jpeg

^ almost everything

I know some of you guys have talked about trying to fix it before, but I don't think anyone got too far with it yet.

poita said:

The source is an International negative, all films for international release usually require a neg that is free of any subtitles so that subtitles can be added in the required language.

The Derann Super8 print uses the International master and is a straight print from it, so it is lacking *any* subtitles, so the poor viewer has to guess what Greedo might be saying.

I don't know, the Technidisc & THX LD's sources doesn't contain subtitles either, there are however clear indications that both of these sources might have contained them - Technidisc takes on a different (correct) aspect ratio at that point and switches back as soon as the scene is over and IIRC the JSC have an editing point there with a few missing frames.

This JSC-source also contains what is assumed to be the opening day Yavin X-Wing takeoff matte shot. But who knows, that matte-shot along with the other credit roll might be an international print variation but the IB Tech-prints tell us differently. I've seen that the Derann Super8 prints just like JSC does contain the "opening day" Yavin X-Wing takeoff matte shot, I assume they also have the more common credit roll found on all home video versions?