There are a ton, I mean a TON of problems even with the DVD images.. scenes like the Tantive jump all over the map in terms of color timing - very poor work. On our calibrated displays (and consumer displays, for that matter) the Tantive interior, for example, is extremely blue-shifted. And then there are things like the complete over-chroma boosting of R2's blue that has such horrific implications for the rest of the picture... Have you seen the glowing escape pod hatch, yet? We've already been able to correct much of that, and for certain scenes, we're prepared to treat them like visual effects shots, and take the time to roto specific areas for more complete control.
We're going to correct the garbage mattes once and for all, even if it means rotoing every single ship in the movie... bottom line, I don't have any faith that an OT version is coming, so we're going all out on this one.
You may have noticed that on the DVD, the receeding Star Wars title card moves way too fast... first time we've seen that in 27 years, and it's correct on the DVD for the alternate languages. Today we created the new title crawl by seamlessly combining the title card from an alternate language with the English language crawl. Fortunately, the background elements were identical, pixel for pixel, so creating a composite was no problem.
This will truly be a labor of love. We already have both the first pressing CLV LD and the Definitive LD online, and we are doing 3 way frame-by-frame comparisons, along with pouring over an ungodly amount of references to best determine the color timing for each shot. We've been preparing for the arrival of the DVD for 2 years, and have everything ready to go. Progress will probably be slow - we're only going to do this once, but we feel it's worth it.
And it is good fortune that we have state-of-the-art facilities, and time, at our disposal.
Naturally, this is of course just a project we're doing in-house to practice the art of compositing and color correction, as no exhibiton or distribution of such a project would be legal.
But we appreciate input, and will be documenting the process extensively, so if you're interested in hearing about what we're doing, you can always email me!
_Mike