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StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 35

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Good stuff. Thanks for sharing. And making me a little more depressed about George Lucas and Star Wars. ;-)

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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mverta said:


When you degrain an image and do noise reduction, it tends to look very soft - smooth, but soft.  When you add grain back - it's the wildest thing - it suddenly looks sharp again.  It's like your brain has something sharp to focus on, so it just rethinks the image.  I'll show this in action too, before/after.  It'll blow your mind how adding grain suddenly makes a soft image seem sharper.


_Mike

That's so absurd, you'd think that if they didn't like the noise reduction they would just revert back to the original instead of degrading the image twice! It sounds about like what they would do though.

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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Nice stuff.

Looking at the frame though, the detail lost in the door trim might not have anything to do with Lowry.

Measuring that door frame @ 1080P there are very few pixels available to convey the detail (4x less than at 4K), and when you factor in dropping to Bluray standards (8bpp and 4:2:0 chroma compression and h.264 compression) this is exactly the sort of detail that would get smeared out by the lower resolution and BD compression rates.

Not defending Lowry et al. but the loss of that detail could just be down to the limits of BD especially if there is gate-weave giving the compression algorithm headaches.

It would be an interesting experiment to take 20 frames of that sequence from your scan, and compress it to BD specs and see what is lost even in the most careful conversion possible.

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Also, the scan was done in 2004 for DVD and it has been repeatedly demonstrated, that it actually doesn't resolve much beyond 720p.

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Too much Noise Reduction

I did this in about 30 seconds.  Just took a raw frame, applied a standard but robust de-graining algorithm, and added grain back.  Looks a lot like Lowry to me.  I'm sticking with this theory because if nothing else, it is 100% certain that noise reduction was used on every shot.  But whatever... however it happened, it happened, and is just 1 of a billion travesties in the results.

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That video...wow. Just beautiful. Some day, I hope...

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

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mverta said:

Too much Noise Reduction

I did this in about 30 seconds.  Just took a raw frame, applied a standard but robust de-graining algorithm, and added grain back.  Looks a lot like Lowry to me.  I'm sticking with this theory because if nothing else, it is 100% certain that noise reduction was used on every shot.  But whatever... however it happened, it happened, and is just 1 of a billion travesties in the results.

I'm just interested as to wether it would even be possible to maintain that detail on a BD release no matter what you did, if you want to leave the gate-weave in.

I tried it, and it smears out, just like the BD release.

I don't think it would be possible to keep that detail, and the gate-weave, due to the resolution and compression on a standard Bluray.

BD is still quite limiting with the resolution being relatively low for cinemascope movies, and the compression method (H.264 is pretty damn lossy, and over 10 years old now) results in a lot of detail being lost. Not all of the woes on the BD are due to the methodology used in the reconstruction of the film, or at least, in some cases, like this one, it would make no difference in the end result as it would happen in the encode anyway. e.g. the missing detail in the door seal, some of the macroblocking on the red lights, the burned out highlights mentioned also appear to be burned out on your scan as well etc.

That isn't to say that the Lowry noise-reduction didn't wipe the detail before the encode, but even if they hadn't, I can't see some that detail making onto a BD release. I guess I'm just trying to point out that some of the problems with the BD release are inherent in the medium. Of course a lot of other problems with it are just poor choices, or choices due to economic realities when working on a commercial release. As fans we can take as long as we like, at a company as you have said before, it is a very different story, especially if you know that the final product is a BD and know that format's limitations.

I'm glad you are doing this at 4K and keeping a losslessly compressed master, as a lot of the restoration work would be lost anyway if made into a BD.

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I've done a lot of asset prep/encoding for commercial releases, so I've definitely lived the encoding nightmare....   that said, commercial encoders are often leaps and bounds above consumer options, especially if you're willing to tweak settings, which is common.  When I get some time, I'll give it a shot, but I'm confident that these details would survive a ~20 Mbit encode.

Not that we have to give a shit about that :)

_Mike

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Cool, I'm always interested in the differences between encoding solutions, it is a pain to do painstaking restoration only to have it lost in the encode.

I've been unable to keep the detail of the doorframe in my testing at 1080P. Even at 4K resolution, the bands that make up the alternating light-grey/dark-grey inside the doorframe are only about 2-3 pixels in height, (I could be counting wrong) which only leaves around 1 pixel at 1080P.

The lovely thing at 4K uncompressed, is that when the image is moving, because your brain effectively averages the frames and cancels out the grain for you, the detail of that door is much clearer when watching it at 24fps.

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mverta said:

For the haters and lovers alike! :


http://www.mikeverta.com/Posts/Legacy_Secrets.mp4

 



Brothers, can you spare a checksum?

I downloaded it twice and the two files were identical, but it won't even play in VLC.

Legacy_Secrets.mp4
430374683 bytes
MD5: d27808aecaa75f690a47541e910ded89
SHA1: 837149d084af07a4fea7eda2d856d4f272fad126
SHA256: 0ef58982149df0b3448278600e8424102fcec34da7effe365154674b0f98769f

Do these checksums differ from the file any of you may still have?


We haven’t been staying away so much as not coming here. -Ron Nasty

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First of all: Film is amazing.  I am constantly shocked by what's "in there," even when it pulls the curtain back a little too far, and spoils the illusion. 

Case in point:

The original Falcon/Hangar shot was done by compositing a photo of the top of the model with the live set, blended by a bit of paint work.  Here you can clearly see the delineation between the three layers - a delineation which was actually quite obvious in the final composite.  This would obviously never pass muster today, yet it didn't seem to stop Star Wars from making a couple-two-three dollars...

_Mike

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Could you share a slightly differently edited video?

Let's say top left corner Kodak print, top right corner IP, bottom left corner 2006 DVD and bottom right corner the 2011 BD? And of course each of them with the corresponding frame number? That would be VERY helpful

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I'm on my phone and didn't manage to watch the whole video but I saw the first part and I definitely remeber the BD missing one frame (I think second or third to last) in the flyover shot and I had to recreate it to keep it i  sync with both the GOUT and the '97 SE (which BTW is the same composite as the BD and '04 DVD version and different from the '81  version).

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I recall there being confusion about this a while back until we finally got it sorted out.  As Harmy indicated, what's going on here is that there are three different composites of this scene that were made over the years.  The first being the original from 1977, with no episode number or title; the second was the 1981 version, in which 'Episode IV A New Hope' was added and the starfield background was changed to one that had been used in The Empire Strikes Back; and the third having been made in 1997 for the Special Edition, which retained the 1981 version of the text but returned to the original 1977 starfield.

Assuming I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, Mike, it appears that all the elements of the 1981 version were reused for the SE (aside from the starfield background), including the timing of the laser blasts and explosions relative to the beginning, and also the total number of frames in the shot.  Both the 1981 and 1997 versions appear to be missing one frame compared to the original (the 'STAR WARS' title card must come in a frame late, and both the Technicolor print and the Bluray are missing an additional frame at the end of the shot, accounting for the total 2 frame discrepancy).

Undoubtedly this timing difference was a mistake introduced in 1981 when the shot was redone for the first time, and not intentional; the error would then have been unknowingly carried over into the special edition since no one knew there had been a mistake there in the first place.  Any discrepancy in audio synch would probably have been small enough to have gone unnoticed since the tracks were not remixed in 1981.  Due to the aural character of the sound effects used in this scene, being somewhat drawn out in duration and of unusual timbre, small timing errors with respect to the picture would be harder to pick up on than might be expected.

Going from these logical conclusions, it is then easy to assert that only the 1977 original, as agreed upon by both the Kodak print and the 2006 DVD, should be considered an authoritative representation of the timing for this scene.  The 1981 and SE versions can be safely disregarded.

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hairy_hen said:

Assuming I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, Mike, it appears that all the elements of the 1981 version were reused for the SE (aside from the starfield background), including the timing of the laser blasts and explosions relative to the beginning, and also the total number of frames in the shot. Both the 1981 and 1997 versions appear to be missing one frame compared to the original (the 'STAR WARS' title card must come in a frame late, and both the Technicolor print and the Bluray are missing an additional frame at the end of the shot, accounting for the total 2 frame discrepancy).

That's not the case though, the elements of the 1977 version were reused for the 1981 version except the starfield but the 1997 version does have different elements in it but reused the 1977 starfield. One example is different laser impacts.

Something is definitely not right here as all three versions should definitely match framewise. I'm surprised Harmy says the BD is missing a frame in this shot, the 2004 DVD didn't. Do we have a 4th version of this shot on our hands or is it just Lucasfilm seal of quality?

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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OK, sorry guys, the frame actually isn't missing on the BD, I made a mistake there. Sorry for the false alarm. However, I put the 2006 DVD, '97SE and the BD all side by side (I unfortunately don't have a usable file of the '81 version at hand, so I can't speak to that) and synced them by the first frame of the first shot of the inside of Tantive IV (with 3P0 and R2) and everything else seems to be in perfect sync too - the crawl starts on the same frame, all the  laser shots and flashes appear in the same frames, so the audio should be perfectly in sync as well.

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Well the crawls can't start on the same frame - they're different crawls.  But as for the rest of it, there is still a mystery here regarding the actual film elements.

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Sorry, I meant the SW logos, not the crawls, the crawls are of course different but the SW logo appears on the same frame in all three.

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Maybe it's better to do it this way - does everyone agree that if the first frame of STAR WARS is frame #0001, then the first frame of R2 & 3PO is frame #3032?

_Mike

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Well, that's a big problem when you're taking video sources into account - in video sources, there are usually additional or missing black frames at the beginning, which would be accounted for by a simple audio delay, so it's hard to say what is actually frame #0001. That is why I synced all three at a cut from shot to shot and then you can start comparing frame differences, because a frame difference, which is there from the very first black frames and continues to be the same throughout is practically inconsequential.

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Oh, right, sorry, I see what you mean now - I thought it was weird that you wouldn't realize that :-) And yes, in both the 2006 DVD and the BD, when frame 0001 is the 1st frame of the logo, the first frame of the 3P0 and R2 scene is 0332.