kk650's Star Wars Saga: Regraded and Semi-Specialized (Released) — Page 15

@_,,,^..^,,,_ : I've had a look at all three versions of Star Wars and yes I was right, the retro release is the one that looks most similar to your screencaps.

@Octorox: There is a blanket green tint over ROTS, its pretty subtle though so i'm not surprised that most don't notice it. Annoyingly it seems that imageshack has deleted all my comparison shots, i'll see whether I have the ROTS ones still lying around on my harddisk still.

kk650 said:

@_,,,^..^,,,_ : I've had a look at all three versions of Star Wars and yes I was right, the retro release is the one that looks most similar to your screencaps.

@Octorox: There is a blanket green tint over ROTS, its pretty subtle though so i'm not surprised that most don't notice it. Annoyingly it seems that imageshack has deleted all my comparison shots, i'll see whether I have the ROTS ones still lying around on my harddisk still.

 Do you know if that green tint was there in the theatrical version? If it's slight, that may be a hard thing to figure out. Wonder if there were DVD screening copies floating around back then.

kane1138 said:

pittrek said:

The regraded prequels sound interesting. Would somebody upload it to a certain spleen ?

I'm seconding this request.

So far, only the 8gb version of ANH is on the 'spleen.  I would love to see the 16gb versions.

 thirded, specifically for the prequels, do they sync to the blu-rays?

Forth'd.

tehparadox and my wifi don't agree and it keeps dropping the longer downloads. However, from the first segment of TPM, I could already see that the subtle grain did bring back the surface detail.

I think he expressed interest in using that site in the future. Even if he doesn't, I'll be happy to re-host myself, or someone else can. But I won't be grabbing every version of every title. And I don't have the prequels.

I agree that the upload sites disagree with my internet. But I managed to get his V1s after a little bit of persistence. 

towne32 said:

kk650 said:

@_,,,^..^,,,_ : I've had a look at all three versions of Star Wars and yes I was right, the retro release is the one that looks most similar to your screencaps.

@Octorox: There is a blanket green tint over ROTS, its pretty subtle though so i'm not surprised that most don't notice it. Annoyingly it seems that imageshack has deleted all my comparison shots, i'll see whether I have the ROTS ones still lying around on my harddisk still.

 Do you know if that green tint was there in the theatrical version? If it's slight, that may be a hard thing to figure out. Wonder if there were DVD screening copies floating around back then.

I suspect that it was originally there in the theatrical version. I believe the popularity of the green/teal look had already started at that point. I'm sure AOTC in the cinema didn't have that green/teal tint present on the blu-ray though, i'm pretty certain it looked like the dvd and hdtv in terms of colour, which both look much more appealing.

Octorox said:

kane1138 said:

pittrek said:

The regraded prequels sound interesting. Would somebody upload it to a certain spleen ?

I'm seconding this request.

So far, only the 8gb version of ANH is on the 'spleen.  I would love to see the 16gb versions.

 thirded, specifically for the prequels, do they sync to the blu-rays?

I'm 100% certain that The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith do. Attack of the Clones had a few shots moved around compared to the theatrical release/dvd/hdtv stream, I can't remember what I did there, whether I moved round the audio or the video so it synced correctly, I'll have a quick look now.

EDIT: Okay, I just got round to comparing my release to the hdtv stream and I moved the video round to fit with the audio on the blu-ray, so the answer to your question is yes, all three prequels should sync to the blu-rays.

StarmanSkywalker said:

Forth'd.

tehparadox and my wifi don't agree and it keeps dropping the longer downloads. However, from the first segment of TPM, I could already see that the subtle grain did bring back the surface detail.

I'll see what I can do about getting the 16gb prequel releases onto myspleen.

I certainly find TPM a big improvement with grain added but the bitrate has to be pretty high to capture satisfactorily the fine grain from the regrained bd-50 TPM master I created a year ago (that took a week to encode...).

I'll probably create a new 22-23gb release of TPM, should be a noticable improvement on the 16gb release I created a year back.

Sweet, can't wait.
I watched the opening again today. The grain is very subtle most of the time, but it really does wonders to bringing back lost detail.

Hal 9000 said:

Not that any of them are necessarily meant to, but which version do you think is most similar to Harmy's De/Re-specialized versions?

From what I have seen of harmy's star wars despecialised version comparing it to my latest semi-specialised releases is like comparing apples and oranges, they are very different from each other and trying to achieve totally different things.

In terms of colours and image dynamics, his star wars despecialised release is very inconsistent compared to my releases, often varying a great deal from scene to scene, like when Ben and Luke first meet, which is overly bright and overexposed to my eyes. I imagine this reflects the inconsistencies of the theatrical print hes recreating the colours from, using the frames from the prints that he has been provided with.

From what I have seen of his latest Empire Strikes Back workprint it has a lot of colour/saturation/hue inconsistencies as well but image dynamics seem more consistant than with his Star Wars despecialised release. It has fleshtones that are too reddish for my liking and orangey fleshtones during cold external shots on Hoth that seem a bit strange and not right to me. I don't know what colour reference he's using for Empire Strikes Back or if he has frames from an unfaded print that I haven't seen, but I personally don't like watching colours changing saturation/hue from shot to shot in the same scene (the lights in the cryogenic chamber during the duel between vader and luke comes to mind), and characters faces being very reddish, looking almost sunburnt a lot of the time, it takes me out of the film, regardless of whether the theatrical print looked like that or not.

My semi-specialised releases however are all about maintaining colour/fleshtone/image dynamic consistency throughout the whole film, not about recreating exactly the look of the theatrical prints and their inherent inconsistencies. They have a single overall master setting to remove the blanket blue tint and correct the fleshtones so they are less red. The few 'rogue' shots with noticable colour inconsistancies, like in Star Wars where there are quite a few, I adjust the master settings to make that shot closely match with the rest of the scene around it so it fits in seamlessly and doesn't draw attention to itself. The same thing with all the shots taken from the german hdtv stream to remove the poor changes from the blu-ray like the creepy blinking ewoks, I use different settings to bring the colours in line with the rest of the film.

I used no single reference as such for the colours, though I have seen the varying colour schemes of the different home dvd/laserdisc editions thanks to althor's fantastic COLD releases, I just used the lightsources and fleshtones as a guide for what the colours should look like, as I do with all my releases, trying to make the film look as natural and appealing to me as possible.

So the short answer is basically that none of my semi-specialised releases look like his despecialised releases. If you want to see what I mean, you just have to check them out. Once i've got TGTBTU, OUATITW and Raiders of the Lost Ark out of the way, i'll start releasing these. All the grading work has been done for all three films, I just need to encode them now.

Hello kk650 I've recently tried to drawn a difference between your semi-specialized V2 release and Harmy's respecialized version and tried to compactly define each version.

So from my understanding I get that Harmy's Respecialized edition is his fantastically Despecialized 2.5 version, while bringing back some SE elements, but all the while keeping the same color grading as his 2.5 DE. I don't know what this one actually bases off.

Your Semi-Specialized edition however is directly sourcing the Blu-Ray edition and reverting it as close to the Special Edition as possible, yours including a very close color-palette to the 1997 Special Edition. Right?

At least your edition has a very distinctive, colorful look that reminds me a lot of the SE look, but made a bit more consistent and exposed. Each other release I'm looking at has a very pale and neutral look. Not to say thats a bad thing. But to summarize things:

kk650 Semi-Specialized: SE recreation (colors)

Harmy's DE/Respeialized and probably every other fanedit: Fade-free Technicolor Print recreation (colors)

is that about right?

I'm just slightly surprised by how faded the supposed Technicolor look actually looks. I really love the look of your edition. Cach has it's own flavour, but yes, I'm surprised by your version looks actually healthier than the so-called "Fade-Free" print which should be a flawless rec-reation. Maybe the Technicolor isn't that flawless in the first place?

Anyway good work

(oh and a 16GB of v2 would be a spleen)

@BuddhaMaster: Hmm, where to begin. Firstly, I'm not reverting the blu-ray back to the Special Edition, by which I assume you mean the '97 SE release, my Semi-Specialised releases have never officially existed because I have removed/changed awful scenes that were in the original '97 SE like Jabba the clown in Star Wars, Greedo shooting first and Jedi Rocks. With these Semi-Specialised Editions I have kept all the changes I considered improvements, like the improved x-wing special effects during the Battle of Yavin and the Luke and Biggs scene just before the battle, closing his character arc started when luke first mentions him at the start of the film and also to add greater pathos and sense of sacrifice and loss to the Battle of Yavin.

As for as the colours are concerned, poita very kindly helped me get a feel for how Star Wars looked on the theatrical prints, I then had a look at Althor's COLD edition of Star Wars to get an idea of some of the different colour palettes that the film has had. All of them have problems, the fleshtones of the GOUT are far too red, the '97 SE laserdisc is underexposed and has a strong blanket blue tint throughout the film that is very unappealing IMHO and the 2004 DVD has all the colour problems we're already very familiar with. The japanese special edition laserdisc has the best colour palette of the bunch with the most appealing fleshtones IMHO but is over-saturated and has a strong blanket orange tint throughout the whole film so not all that reliable colourwise.

Basically all four home releases have numerous problems with their colours/image dynamics so I couldn't use any of them as a colour reference, so I regraded these films using just the fleshtones and lightsources as a guide of what the colours should be, removing the blanket blue tint on the blu-ray in the process. I was not trying to recreate the colour palette of any of the home releases, especially the '97 SE with its underexposure and strong blue tint, I wanted just to get the colours and fleshtones as natural and balanced as possible. That's probably what you find appealing about the colours of my Semi-Specialised Star Wars V2 release.

Danfun128 said:

I don't have your ESB and ROTJ yet. Should I wait until you release V2 of them both? Are the colors of adywans ESB 97se and Harmys Despecialized ROTJ better than V1?

I would personally wait for the V2 releases.

I aim to have the V2 releases of Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi out in the next month. I've finished regrading Raiders of the Lost Ark and should be finished with Once Upon A Time in the West in the next few days, then I'm focusing all my attention on these Star Wars V2 Semi-Specialised releases.

poita said:

towne32 said:

kk650 said:

@_,,,^..^,,,_ : I've had a look at all three versions of Star Wars and yes I was right, the retro release is the one that looks most similar to your screencaps.

@Octorox: There is a blanket green tint over ROTS, its pretty subtle though so i'm not surprised that most don't notice it. Annoyingly it seems that imageshack has deleted all my comparison shots, i'll see whether I have the ROTS ones still lying around on my harddisk still.

 Do you know if that green tint was there in the theatrical version? If it's slight, that may be a hard thing to figure out. Wonder if there were DVD screening copies floating around back then.

 There is a 35mm print of ROTS up for sale at the moment if you want to know for sure :)

 Personally, I think I would be okay dying mildly curious about that. :P

But I hope a generous person does end up buying it.

kk650 said:

I aim to have the V2 releases of Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi out in the next month. I've finished regrading Raiders of the Lost Ark and should be finished with Once Upon A Time in the West in the next few days, then I'm focusing all my attention on these Star Wars V2 Semi-Specialised releases.

Bumping for update.  How's it going, kk650?

Just got back from a trip. The regraded releases of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Once Upon a Time in the West and Return of the King took longer than I expected but they're now finished and can be found on Tehparadox. I was planning to start releasing these earlier in the month but the other releases set me back and as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men...

So its pretty much full steam ahead, my focus is squarely on these Semi-Specialised Editions now. I'm very glad that I've had a good long break from these because its given me the opportunity to see my grading settings again with fresh eyes. For the most part I'm satisfied but after some consideration I've done a few final adjustments to get the Classic and Technicolor looking more filmic and less digital like the blu-rays, now I think they're ready to go. :)

I need to decide which trilogy to do first though, the Retro one or the Classic one (the Technicolor one is the least accessible so i'll leave that for last). Any thoughts? I'll put up some screencaps from both soon so you guys can let me know which you prefer that I do first.

Based on previous settings I think I'll vote for classic.

Which RoTJ ending are you using? If you do both, will that be 6 versions of RoTJ (at both 9 and 16gb)?!

towne32 said:

Based on previous settings I think I'll vote for classic.

Which RoTJ ending are you using? If you do both, will that be 6 versions of RoTJ (at both 9 and 16gb)?!

Thanks for sharing your preference towne32! So that's one for classic. :)

I'll be doing both endings for ROTJ haha Honestly though after the crazy amount of hours I've spent on these Semi-Specialised Editions, leaving my PC on a few days more to encode the two different endings in different sizes doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I'm even planning to create AVCHD releases of these so they can be played straight off blu-ray players or a ps3, so those will need encoding as well haha