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Post #732301

Author
Topper Harley
Parent topic
THE PHANTOM MENACE - THEATRICAL HD Topper's Version (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/732301/action/topic#732301
Date created
20-Oct-2014, 7:09 AM

Hi All,

yes, I know, Episode I is not really worth saving. But after watching the Blu-Ray again and trying to explain to a friend that I like the “look” and “feel” of Episode I more than that of episode II and III and realising, that the blu-rays waxy cleaned look did no justice to the fact, that Episode I had still been shot and released on 35mm Film, I thought it would be great to have the option to see Episode I in the way, it was released in theaters:
Looking like 35mm film, with Yoda as a (ugly) puppet and without the prolonged Podrace Scenes that had been added for DVD but added nothing.

So I did my research here and tried to find ADYWANS Episode I Thetrical Version. After setting up usenet and stuff I didn’t know about before, I managed to download his DVD and use it as reference. (Since I wanted to have the Film in HD, I couldn’t stop here…)

I still have a copy of an pre-BluRay HD broadcast of Episode I (which is esentially the DVD in 720p) and used that for the picture.
The negatives: The frame is somewhat cropped on all sides and it has that infamous red tint all over it.
There is nothing to be done against the cropped picture, as long as I want to have the look of this 35mm scanned version, but the color can be handeled.
I tried to find ADYWANS 1080p color corrected version, that seems to go in the direction, the Blu-Rays went.
But since I didn’t find it I did my own color correcting and used as a reference the Podrace Clip I found on a THX DemoDVD I have. This PodRace there is also obviously scanned from 35mm, has no red tint and strong color, with clear yellow/browns, the way Tatooine is sopposed to look.
I manged to make the HD-Broadcast I had look exactly like it and used this correction for the whole film. And It works everywhere, since the “red tint” that pushed colors to a weird red/blue combo are in every scene about the same ammount. Now you get more pleasing yellow/green, and more strong and warm colors as in ADYWANS version or the Blu-Ray.

Here are some screenshots: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/96648/

The audio I’m using is the one ADYWAN was using, and that is a great Laserdisc DD 5.1 rip of the theatrical cut.

One thing I noticed, while editing the picture and comparing to the soundtrack: ADYWANS Thetrical Version was on the first half 2 frames and later 4 frames off sync.
So I checekd carefully every instance so the sound is now completely in sync to the laserdisc soundtrack.

So, basically I am finished with this, doing it only for my “pleasure”… or rather SW-Archive.
I have yet to export the project and make a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray…

But, since I am also often visitor to originaltrilogy.com I thought, maybe some of you may have some interest in this.

If so, then maybe I could share it with one of you, and you upload it to one of your places, where I usually don’t operate… 😉

And… I also have a question:
The HD Broadcast of Episode I is a 720p about 4gb file.
It’s not too bad, but also not really great.
Does anyone have by any chance a larger file of the HD-Broadcast (not the Blu-Ray Rip!)?
That would definitely help out to make the quality better!

All the best,

Topper