Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 50

n00b said:

Feallan said:

Maybe it was always there, but became noticeable only on Blu-ray due to high resolution.

 Of course, it was always there. Otherwise, it wouldn't be identifiable as garbage mattes. The problem is that the contrast of those garbage mattes was increased by the remastering.

So maybe the best solution is for Harmy to not remove them, but to lower the contrast significantly in his color-correction.

Does that sound like a reasonable compromise?

Harmy: What do you think?

yoda-sama said:

Well, what source are you even comparing this with?

Me or n00b?

n00b said:

AntcuFaalb said:

So maybe the best solution is for Harmy to not remove them, but to lower the contrast significantly in his color-correction.

Does that sound like a reasonable compromise?

I guess he already did that but lowering the contrast has its limitations, especially if the damage was done during the transfer from analogue to digital material.

It would probably be best to lower the contrast in a non-linear way (e.g., lowering the contrast more in "dark" parts of the image and "less" in light parts). This wouldn't be too hard to accomplish with Avisynth.

n00b said:

AntcuFaalb said:

It would probably be best to lower the contrast in a non-linear way (e.g., lowering the contrast more in "dark" parts of the image and "less" in light parts). This wouldn't be too hard to accomplish with Avisynth.

Sounds good, but I thought the light parts are affected as well (considering there's a star destroyer in the background).

They don't have to be if you design your Avisynth function correctly.

n00b said:

@ Harmy

Is there any chance to get rid of those bright boxes around the Falcon and the TIE fighters at 00:36:42 - 00:36:44? This problem was much less prominent before Lowry "restored" the material though your workprint is already an improvement over 2004.

The problem here is, that the garbage mattes are actually visible in the bright areas of that shot (on the star-destroyer) - slightly crushing the dark areas in space shots (actually increasing contrast - lowering contrast makes the mates more visible) usually takes care of the garbage mattes on the black backdrop of space but there is no practical way I know of to get rid of them from bright areas.

AntcuFaalb said:

I've never had a good understanding of what exactly Harmy's intentions are with his Despecialized Editions. That is, is he shooting for (1) "what's on a theatrical print" or (2) "what would have been visible to the audience during the original theatrical run(s)"?

A good example of my confusion is illustrated by the fact that:

1. Harmy restored several compositing errors that were scrubbed away by Lowry's process for SW DeEd 2.0/2.1/2.5. Some of these were anomalies in a single frame that were likely not noticed by many during the original theatrical run(s).

2. Harmy did not restore all of the original wipes in SW DeEd 2.0/2.1/2.5 and, in many cases, left in the optical wipes that were created by Pacific Titles for the 97SE.

Harmy: I'm not trying to talk-down your work. I'm genuinely confused and I hope you can clear this up. As I've always stated: you do fantastic work and I'm consistently impressed with the quality of your output.

Well, I'm shooting for recreating the look, or rather the experience, of the original version in high definition - in other words, I'm trying to strike a good balance of restoring as much of the original as possible, while keeping it a congruent high quality watching experience.

So, restoring the wipes would definitely introduce some very noticeable quality drops, due to my best source being the GOUT and it would do very little to make it visually more like the original, because unless you're comparing them frame by frame, most of the wipes look pretty much the same in both versions, so the look and mainly the feel of the shots aren't really altered, whereas those compositing errors I did restore, while consciously unnoticed, do alter the feel of the shot and most of the ones I restored were possible to restore without losing any significant amount of picture quality - like this, this, this or this. Restoring those kinds of mistakes is also a kind of a nod to the people who know about them and will be looking for them :-)

Thanks for the detailed reply, Harmy. I understand now! :-)

No way, you'd never get the edges right.

Here's what I've been working on for the past couple of weeks:

http://uloz.to/xryMPWu2/167-168-compar-mp4

Top is v1.0, bottom is v2.0.

The detail on the Falcon is Stunning!  Great work.  Maybe I am wrong but it looks like the original pod cars as well. 

HOLY SHIT!!  I forgot.  the matte painting!!  I am blow away.  There is alot more detail in there.  I forgot that was also changed.  I am really speechless.

I want to see more.  I thought I couldn't be more excited about DS Emipre 2.0.   You just up it for me.   Amazing work Harmy.   Amazing!

Sorry to be such a fan boy.

It also seem the Falcon is in a slighly diffrent position in you pause it as well.  Very cool.

OK, so how's this?

I decided to ditch the mate-line, because it gave away the mask and it wasn't all that accurate to the original anyway and I redid the rotoscoping from scratch, because the old mask has become too much of a mess to keep tweeking it.

That's fantastic.

Well, it hides the horrible GOUT quality. And yeah, it's still far from perfect but I think it will do for now and then I can make it better when I have some actual 35mm sources.