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StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 57

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It's interesting how the engine glow fades once it gets to the other end of the screen.

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Hi Mike,

Wouldn't you want to fix the alignment and stars on top of the window bars issues since that was the original intent and it just got mangled when it was put on film?  I am confused because your other videos fixed lots of alignment issues and other major problems. 

Thanks,
Mike

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Yep!

EDIT: Well, wait.. are you saying the channel alignment of the stars (which I've done) or the bleed through onto the cockpit window frame, which has always been part of the image as a composite limitation?  If the latter, then no.  I don't improve composites in Legacy.  I don't paint out matte lines, etc. Wherever possible, I am not looking to do another Special Edition.  If the stars bleed through the foreground cockpit element, then that stays. If the individual channels are misaligned due to print anomalies, they are corrected. If channels are misaligned due to lens aberration, then they stay.  When I'm not sure where the channel alignment issue is coming from, they're corrected just to be safe.  This isn't an alignment issue, it's a compositing issue inherent to limitations in the process in 1977.

_Mike

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msycamore said:

You can actually see the seam for their color grading of the left wall on the first few frames of the shot:

Man, now that I see what you're talking about, it's no wonder everything is so messed up in the digital releases.

"Yeeeah, mmkay, this scene needs a little more work, for example, you can see that the walls are not blue enough."

"*grumble grumble* THERE, NOW THE WALLS ARE BLUE! Are you happy??"

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Thanks for the explanation Mike.  Your approach with what to correct seems good to me and makes sense now.  Agreed that in this case it is a compositing issue.  They didn't overlay the glow in the right spot.  The glow on the engines is misaligned the entire time, not just at the end in my opinion and I think the brightness changes at the end because the ship is rotating so when it is more straight on, you see less of the red glow since it is more intense. 

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Is that really how the 4k remaster is gonna look like, uncertain if that even applies?

It's like... the depth is completely gone and well, LOL.

Those are not professionals, right? Those are some hobby-kiddies trying to make SW look like your next casual Hollywood blockbuster. There is not even a decision made, just apply that general blockbuster blue/grey almost-teal-not-totally but very silverish-chrome-green-blueish ...it looks like cardboard made of metal. But very old and tarnished metal, not a industry-new shiny metal.

Remember the color grading of Terminator Salvation? It had that "new chrome/silver" color grading, like you've never seen before. Don't know that was good for the industry, but I think seeing something of that here.

This is the worst state of color's i've ever seen SW being at ever.

Even a bad 8mm copy looks lively and organic compared to this trainwreck. Thank you for being patient towards critique. It's not an easy thing to do :)

@ MVerta. Your restore looks phenomenal as usual. First I thought 3CPO is a bit bright and blunt, but looking at it for a moment. Phenomenal. I love how you always manage to make the pictures look 3D. Even more depth than actual 3D.

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BuddhaMaster said:

@ MVerta. Your restore looks phenomenal as usual. First I thought 3CPO is a bit bright and blunt, but looking at it for a moment. Phenomenal. I love how you always manage to make the pictures look 3D. Even more depth than actual 3D.

 Thanks! This shot is WIP, and even though it's obviously a step up, I can feel it's got another level in it.  You'll see what I mean in the final, but there's a flat spot in its luminance near the mid-lows which when fixed will bring out some nice things. There is a touch of cyan in it, too, which I can see in R2s blue, and a few other things.  It's amazing how delicate the adjustments can/need to be to really nail a shot.  But I believe in this sort-of "70%" spot where if you can hit it 70% right, quickly, you're on the right track, and then it's just finesse after that - as much a difference as it may make. It's just this vibe/flavor thing, which if you don't have it, all the details in the world don't make it.  It's actually fun to feel it come together!

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At what timecode is that stormtrooper shot? (in the GOUT if possible)

For some reason I can't find it for the life of me, and I want to check how it looks with our color timing.

Anyway, adding blue over the left side of the picture in the blu-ray, that just has to be one of the most sloppy things I've ever seen in "color correction". Did it look the same on the 2004 DVD or was this a change that first appeared on the blu-ray?

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You_Too said:

Did it look the same on the 2004 DVD or was this a change that first appeared on the blu-ray?

The frame I posted is from the DVD. Lovely isn't it. I assume it look the same way in the blu-ray.

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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msycamore said:

The frame I posted is from the DVD. Lovely isn't it. I assume it look the same way in the blu-ray.

Thanks Mike and msycamore.

That means they had no color data at all for that shot. What a mess. And they said that the 2004 DVD went through quality control... Yeah, sure.

Now I don't want to hijack this thread but I felt I wanted to post these two shots from our (TeamBlu) version of the GOUT as an interesting comparison.

Mike, I know you're probably not familiar with it but we did an upscale/antialiasing of the 2006 bonus DVD and tried to pull as much color out of it as possible and I did a color grading of the whole thing based on some shots you had shared from the tech prints and your work on Legacy in the past. Nowhere near perfect colorwise but a lot better than the raw 2006 bonus DVD, and interesting in a comparison like this since it actually shows how much was in there if they had taken the time to pull it out instead of leaving most of it desaturated except reds.

 

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You_Too said:

That means they had no color data at all for that shot.

I'm sure that's not the only shot...they had a very strict deadline to meet >_<

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Wow, that is gorgeous! I never noticed the glow reflecting off the nose of that last X-Wing before. Seeing this just really makes me sad that we almost lost these things to time if not for the fans.

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It's definitely a beauty. I love the engine glows against the dead of space. The shot no longer feels old and neglected. A labor of love, I can tell.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

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Believe it or not, it's actually dead-sexier than it looks online.  The DCI-P3 > sRGB conversion just kills me.  It's actually contrasty-er and more saturated for real than it appears.  When I'm done, I'm going to do a Rec.709 grade which I can pull stills from, which will look more like they actually do.  But still...!

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Man, you got me drooling with these overly compressed vimeo videos. That's how bad these films have been treated. All my life I've heard about Lucas being the pinnacle of quality... BULLSHIT. Films a good 20 years older than Star Wars have better blu ray releases.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

<span> </span>

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Yeah, and actually this is the first time I've routinely put DCI-P3 material online in sRGB, and I realize I hadn't appreciated just how different they are - and in funny sort of ways.  There's this area in the low-mids that just gets boosted in the conversion, which takes a lot of the contrast/saturation with it, but it's non-linear.  Like, in many of these space shots, you can see tone in the black but the actual image is pure black - I see stuff show up in there when I post it online that is not on my monitor, reference monitor, or projector.  It's gotten so that I set up an extra node which boosts things in that range just so I can make sure there's nothing ugly to be revealed later.  Weird.  But still, yes, these images have basically always looked like shit, so even these compromised restorations look tons better.

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I will be interested to see the scene when Obi Wan meets luke for the first time and how you color grade that, i know there was alot of debate when Harmy was doing Despecialised 2.5 on how this scene should look.

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^Yeah, I'm looking forward to that too.
"Very interesting..." : )

I really love seeing Legacy compared to the the GOUT, Bluray and now the Reliance versions. Really helps to drive home to the uninitiated why a proper restoration is so important and just how bad the official releases really are.

Ray’s Lounge
Biggs in ANH edit idea
ROTJ opening edit idea

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mverta said:

Tie on Luke

Careful Mike. On this one on the upper left strut of the canopy, the original has a couple white dots that appear for one frame each, and on your restoration they now fade in and then fade out. That's always a risk with temporal averaging, and you might want to look into a temporal median instead.

-G

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g-force said:

mverta said:

Tie on Luke

Careful Mike. On this one on the upper left strut of the canopy, the original has a couple white dots that appear for one frame each, and on your restoration they now fade in and then fade out. That's always a risk with temporal averaging, and you might want to look into a temporal median instead.

-G

 Good catch. I don't use strictly median or averaging, but a dynamic recruit based on motion and comparative analysis across sources.  In this case, I had both limited sources and misjudged the threshold setting.  Sometimes when there are areas of low motion and areas of high motion in the same frame, I have to be more careful.  Notice there are no artifacts on the fast-moving X-Wing, for example.  So it got one end of the spectrum right, and not the other.  It's been repaired.  Always appreciate the eyes on it!

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