Joel said:

team_negative1 said:

A couple of weeks will clean a few seconds of film.

Team Negative1

Argh - forgive my frustration here, but this vague, grammatically-challenged proclamation doesn't even address my question, it just re-states what I already said - in essence, "This is taking a long time."

My question is: WHY does it take a couple of weeks? I'm curious as to why it's taking so long, that's all.

Since physically cleaning a few frames takes less than 1 second, we must be talking about digital cleanup.

I'm a digital media guy, so I'm having a hard time understanding why it would take someone with a modern computer *weeks* to do anything. Photoshop, After Effects - is the "team" using these? If not, why not?

Am I grossly oversimplifying?! Probably!

The team is using a program that I've worked with quite a bit. (PM me for the name.)

The reason it takes weeks is that:

(1) Despite the fact that this particular program has an incredible state-of-the-art automatic dirt/dust fix tool, you have to examine each frame individually to guarantee that the tool didn't produce any unwanted artifacts (e.g., "cleaning" someone's pupil). Furthermore, you have to modify the settings to work best with each and every shot.

(2) If you're careful and the automatic dirt/dust fix tool doesn't produce any unwanted artifacts, then you're most likely left with dirt/dust that you need to clean manually. This takes a long time.

(3) Other kinds of damage (e.g., scratches and tears) are much harder to fix.

(4) Each member of the team has a life outside of OT.com. They're only working in their free time.

In conclusion, it's not just about pushing buttons and waiting for progress bars to finish. The team has to painstakingly examine and restore each and every one of the ~175,000 frames in Star Wars.

If you want to better understand what's involved in digital film restoration, then please PM me and I'll hook you up with everything you need to try it out first-hand.