Team Negative1 - The Empire Strikes Back 1980 - 35mm Theatrical Version (Released) — Page 28

Frink inspires me.

borisanddoris said:

I must still be a fetus.  

RipBot was not working well with my VM.  Anyone have a preset for Handbrake or some simple instructions?  I used the high profile setting built in and made sure to output a full 1920x1080 file for the spec, but it would not work in tsmuxer, nor would the final m4v file work on the Oppo.  First time handbrake has stumped me honestly.

 Sorry about Putin.

I'm a total novice myself and remuxed the file on handbrake, my first time using the software. I muxedthe audio into ac3, stereo at 640 kbps. For the video I set it up in the mkv container via high level 4.1.  I changed the quality level to to 14 (0 is lossless) and I got a file size comparable to the raw file...roughly 22 gobs and now the file plays flawless in my home theater on both my kdlinks media player as well as my sony blu ray player.  Hope everyone else gets theirs to work as well!  I will say that the end scene is still a bit corrupted with the falcon. 

I like how the lightsabers are not that saturated in this version.  They have so much color in the new films.  Not to mention there is not a lot of light saber dueling in these films compared to the new ones. 

The prophecy spoke of kitt1987.  The one who would restore balance to the Blurays.

Please move all technical discussions here:

=========================

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/forum.cfm/How-Tos-and-Technical-Discussions/forum/12/

Unless you have a comment, or question about the actual release.

If you are knowledgeable about how to fix the issues, please post a guide there so we can refer people to it, and not keep duplicating the posts. Everyone is not an expert, so please help each other out there.

We have some more interesting plans, and want to make sure people know.

Team Negative1

lucasdroid said:

Frink inspires me.

 I apologize to the rest of the forum.

I love that you guys are doing this. Thanks for all the effort you guys put into this, It must have been a lot!

I like how you can see all the original matte lines around the spaceships. I also noticed a big grey square around the probe going to Hoth in the opening scene. I can't remember seeing those on the SE, but that's how I remember seeing them on VHS.

Although the movie still seemed a bit dark and reddish to me, I was able to correct this a bit in ffdshow, in Picture Properties by taking out a bit of red(0,89) and a tiny bit of green(0,93)

gamma correction: 1,28

Saturation: 75

I turned on Levels, chose Mode: Ylevel'sG, Force RGB conversion, Input: black to 19, Gamma correction: 1,11

Edit:I was screwing around. I found a much simpler solution, which works better and is easier on the cpu.

Picture Properties: RGB: (0,85) (1) (0,97)

Levels: Gamma correction: (1,65) Mode: original and everything else unchecked.

I also turned on a tiny bit of sharpening, using just the default settings.

The colors now seem a bit more balanced and less muddled and the picture seems to be a lot clearer (at least to me, on my laptop and disregarding the obvious dust and scratches, off course)

I your computer is fast enough, you could also turn on a bit of chroma noise reduction. Edit: actually, the movie looks pretty fine without it.

However, my laptop doesn't seem quite capable of running all these adjustments in real time, unfortunately. Any chance of doing a regrade?

Anyway, thanks for making Star Wars awesome again!

will you release a cleaner version with better colors?

Molly said:

Just saw the first few minutes and it's looking great!

Bit more beat-up than I prolly would have seen had I seen it in a movie theater, but that goes with the turf I suppose...

It gets better, the first few minutes are not indicative of the rest of the film. Some of it looks stunningly good. Though there is significant damage around the reel changes. and some pretty rough moments on Dagobah where someone may have paused, or handled the film?

I also noticed a bit of corruption at the end with the Falcon and further on during the end credits as well.

As this is being looked into, would it perhaps be possible to do a regrade and gamma correction as well, while you guys are at it?

I did a few tweaks in ffdshow using MPC-HC (see above) and that already improved quite a bit, I thought...

I'm sure there's a lot more detail to be pulled out of those scans...

We have no plans to do anything further with this release, besides fixing the encoding glitch at the end.

From the info:

=========================================

Methodology : Originally, we had considered waiting for cleanup to be

completed before release. However, during the last several years, the

team has changed. Members have left and other members have joined. Prints

have come and gone. In fact, we now have a partial FUJI print, and a

secondary complete FUJI print that is very clean with minimal fade.

This will probably be the source of the final cleaned and restored version

that is still being worked on.

Future : There is possible news of the rumored LPP foreign version of

the Empire Strikes Back, this is still being followed up on.

===========================================

For news and information about the future releases of the workprints and raw versions: http://www.reddit.com/r/AMPSdeux/

Team Negative1

Despite the repeated claims he isn't involved, I like how it's clear that negative1 wrote that info. Not to mention the fact that this has gone private once again.

*shrug*

I get it. You guys must have enough work on your hands as it is. I'll be eagerly awaiting further news and progress...

Thanks for all the hard work!!! :)

OK, I finally watched the raw scan of ESB and WOW! Sure, it's just a preview but the fact remains that it still looks infinitely better than the blu-ray which says a lot about how poorly handled the films have been treated special edition changes notwithstanding. A few points:

- Harmy and poita have argued about how the planet Hoth is indeed quite blue but I'm still not sold. To me whiter than white Hoth fits a lot better with the rest of the movie than the bluish tint poita talks about, I have even tested by playing around with the colour channels and although there is a hint of blue in some scenes it is very faint and is more aquamarine/turqouise than blue, being most evident in the scene where Luke sees Obi-Wan's ghost and whenever Anakin's lightsaber is ignited (it's got this greenish tint). My only concern is that liking "White Hoth" better than "Blue Hoth" and being wrong about it would make me a revisionist but I can't help it, White Hoth just looks right to me, it's a gut feeling.

- Looking at all 3 OT DVDs and BDs TESB has always struck me as weird-looking and the odd one out compared to SW and ROTJ because both SW and ROTJ look similar from a photographic point of view, as both have this grainy sharp focus look, with fairly strong contrast in many scenes and deep inky blacks whereas in TESB has a lot of soft focus and assumed it was down to the cinematographer (every movie had a different cinematographer and I imagined the cinematographer for TESB took a different aproach to his predecessor whereas the one for ROTJ decided to go back to the look of the original film). After watching Team Negative1's raw print I now know that is not the case, as in fact TESB is every bit as grainy and sharp with strong contrast and deep blacks as the other two which makes me realise the following: Although SW and ROTJ have had the most obvious alterations in terms of visual effects the prints Lucasfilm scanned them from were still in fairly good condition despite the many alterations in colour timing as there still is consistency between the many film prints you've aquired and the colour corrected blu-ray shots, and TESB was scanned from a very deteriorated film print. How else can you explain the poor contrast, smeared textures (compare Chewie's fur here vs. the blu-ray) crushed blacks to the point of drowning out any detail, washed out blacks come out as dark gray and that weird soft focus effect applied to many scenes to hide their shortcomings.

- The image quality is so detailed I noticed the amount of double exposure photography applied for the visual effects in this movie, lots and lots of translucent ships plus lots of garbage mattes, lol. I wonder if you'll let them be or will make your best attempt to correct those, do leave the matte lines alone please, I find them rather charming.

-Thoughout the movie I noticed almost anything blue looks teal/aquamarine/turquoise (i.e. Anakin's lightsaber, daytime skies) or outright green (end credits). Why?

I seriusly cannot wait until you release the finished product with all the colour corrections, colour boosting, dirt-scratch removal and overall cleanup. This is going to be the MUST-OWN version of TESB.

TV's Frink said:

Despite the repeated claims he isn't involved, I like how it's clear that negative1 wrote that info. Not to mention the fact that this has gone private once again.

*shrug*

TV Frank: I really can't understand your persistent need to try to unveil the workings of a group who are obviously trying to cover their asses for legal reasons, whilst bringing us great releases like this.

Are you upset that you're being lied to? Who hurt you as a child?

:) 

Harmy said:

This is from a heavily red-faded print and the colors have been partially corrected but trust me, I've seen what the print actually looks like and you just can't use it as a color reference, because half the color information is missing - this is why Hoth looks whiter here - most of the blue channel information is gone from the print.

 Combine this with the fact that poita has seen a reference print that isnt faded (iirc) and I'm willing to believe him over this any day.

towne32 said:

TV's Frink said:

Despite the repeated claims he isn't involved, I like how it's clear that negative1 wrote that info. Not to mention the fact that this has gone private once again.

*shrug*

TV Frank: I really can't understand your persistent need to try to unveil the workings of a group who are obviously trying to cover their asses for legal reasons, whilst bringing us great releases like this.

Are you upset that you're being lied to? Who hurt you as a child?

:) 

1st rule of thumb round here ..... never antagonize Frink.  He'll never let it go and you'll pull your hair out trying to get the idiocy out of your head.

Harmy said:

This is from a heavily red-faded print and the colors have been partially corrected but trust me, I've seen what the print actually looks like and you just can't use it as a color reference, because half the color information is missing - this is why Hoth looks whiter here - most of the blue channel information is gone from the print.

 Is that why anything that's supposed to be blue either looks teal/aquamarine/turquoise or outright green?

fmalover said:

Harmy said:

This is from a heavily red-faded print and the colors have been partially corrected but trust me, I've seen what the print actually looks like and you just can't use it as a color reference, because half the color information is missing - this is why Hoth looks whiter here - most of the blue channel information is gone from the print.

 Is that why anything that's supposed to be blue either looks teal/aquamarine/turquoise or outright green?

 Yes.

Considering that this print has been around for 35 years and that it was probably heavily used, I think it's in surprisingly good shape. All the detail is definitely there and whatever damage there is seems pretty minor. The red shift could be a lot worse and there is quite a bit of remaining color information.

For old folks like me, it brings me back to seeing matinees at the mall after the title had been out for a while. Before the internet, before home video on any meaningful scale. This was it and it was pretty great. Personally, I think the effects hold up pretty well compared with CGI.

Thanks to -1 for the memories and I look forward to SW '77!