kk650's Star Wars Saga: Regraded and Semi-Specialized (Released) — Page 25

No need to worry Cheebo, these Semi-Specialised Editions are still very much alive, just been busy with work and other projects like Fight Club and Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl so I haven't been around here for a while.

To answer your question MrToad883, I plan to start working on the 5.1 mixes once I finish Return of the Jedi, which will be very soon, like in 1-2 weeks. Return of the Jedi has always been my second favourite OT film after Star Wars so I'm very much looking forward to finally releasing it.

One thing you guys can be certain of is that all three Semi-Specialised V2 releases and the 5.1 mixes to go with them will be out before The Forces Awakens hits the cinemas.

thanks so much for the update! 

kk650 said:

No need to worry Cheebo, these Semi-Specialised Editions are still very much alive, just been busy with work and other projects like Fight Club and Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl so I haven't been around here for a while.

To answer your question MrToad883, I plan to start working on the 5.1 mixes once I finish Return of the Jedi, which will be very soon, like in 1-2 weeks. Return of the Jedi has always been my second favourite OT film after Star Wars so I'm very much looking forward to finally releasing it.

One thing you guys can be certain of is that all three Semi-Specialised V2 releases and the 5.1 mixes to go with them will be out before The Forces Awakens hits the cinemas.

 Hooray!! This is so fantastic to here. Your editions are fantastic and can't wait to have a complete set. Thank you.

Will you be including a Yub Nub edition of 'Jedi like before?

Definately!

Any chance of a DVD-9 release once the 5.1 mix is done? my setup is such that I can only get surround sound through my blu ray player, and my blu ray player is such that I can't play files larger than 4gb with it, and my computer is such that I can't burn blu ray. I get that my needs are pretty specific and I'm happy to do it myself if need be, but an AVCHD version would be much appreciated.

joefavs said:

Any chance of a DVD-9 release once the 5.1 mix is done? my setup is such that I can only get surround sound through my blu ray player, and my blu ray player is such that I can't play files larger than 4gb with it, and my computer is such that I can't burn blu ray. I get that my needs are pretty specific and I'm happy to do it myself if need be, but an AVCHD version would be much appreciated.

 can you just plug your computer into your surround sound receiver? or is your bluray/surround one of those home theater in a box things

MrToad883 said:

joefavs said:

Any chance of a DVD-9 release once the 5.1 mix is done? my setup is such that I can only get surround sound through my blu ray player, and my blu ray player is such that I can't play files larger than 4gb with it, and my computer is such that I can't burn blu ray. I get that my needs are pretty specific and I'm happy to do it myself if need be, but an AVCHD version would be much appreciated.

 can you just plug your computer into your surround sound receiver? or is your bluray/surround one of those home theater in a box things

 It's probably possible but I'd need to get creative with cables, the receiver's about 15 years old so it doesn't really support a modern range of connection types. Right now I'm just running a coaxial cable from the blu ray into the box. I think there's some sort of optical option too, but I'm sure I haven't got the cable for that. I'll probably look into that eventually, but right now the only thing I'm watching that even has a surround mix is Harmy's DE, which are on discs anyway, so I've been slow to change.

joefavs said:

Any chance of a DVD-9 release once the 5.1 mix is done? my setup is such that I can only get surround sound through my blu ray player, and my blu ray player is such that I can't play files larger than 4gb with it, and my computer is such that I can't burn blu ray. I get that my needs are pretty specific and I'm happy to do it myself if need be, but an AVCHD version would be much appreciated.

Yes I was planning to do dvd-9 AVCHD releases once those 5.1 mixes are done. I don't have any expertise when it comes to creating menus though so I was just planning to use tsmuxer to create an AVCHD with no menu. If somebody with knowledge of creating menus for AVCHDs would be willing to help me out in that regard that would be fantastic.

I've been able to make some rudimentary menus with Multiavchd, but the navigation sucks for extras.

There's been talk here of Return of the Jedi being kinda neglected when it comes to preservations which is true and a real shame, I think its a great film and my second favourite OT film after Star Wars.

With that in mind, I thought i'd remedy that a little by giving Return of the Jedi the limelight for once and putting up some preview screencaps of the up and coming Return of the Jedi Semi-Specialised Edition V2.15 :)

Looking good!

@MrToad883: Thanks! Return of the Jedi has a similar warm feeling colourwise to the Star Wars Semi-Specialised Edition V2.2 which I think fits perfectly because they are very similar films at heart, lighthearted space opera escapism.

The Empire Strikes Back has always been the odd one out both narratively and colourwise for me, its the most serious and dramatic of the three film and the one that looks the least bad on the official blu-ray IMHO because it seems a lot of the blue is actually meant to be there, which kind of fits the colder darker feel of the story unlike Star Wars and Return of the Jedi which are more lighthearted with more comedic moments.

@John Doom: That shot looks fine to me, they're being hit directly in the face by a hot Tatooine sun during what looks like the middle of the day, i'd expect their fleshtones outdoors to reflect that.

As for the green fur, who knows? I remember reading somewhere that the colour of the sources they used to create the master for these releases were a bit iffy with colour shifts often happening in the same shot, which I've personally seen myself many times and what makes there Star Wars so difficult to regrade, and numerous other visual/colour inconsistencies. Perhaps the green fur is one of those things.

Hal 9000 said:

Just noticed that you had uploaded a 50GB version of your TPM regrade. That's some serious dedication, and something great to have archived. I wonder if you had planned on giving the same treatment to your AOTC and ROTS regrades?

Also, while the TPM regrade has no burnt-in subtitles, AOTC does. Would it be easily done to upload the handful of affected shots without the subtitles? 

JEDIT: Of course not; they're part of the source material!

I wasn't planning to, The Phantom Menace is my favourite of the prequels and the added grain looked noticably better at the maximum bitrate compared to the 22gb release, making it worthwhile in my book.

If you're interested in using my AOTC or ROTS V2 regrades for your edits though I could certainly create 50gb versions for you, these prequel films could use all the help they can get editing wise, especially the second film.

John Doom said:

kk650 said:

@John Doom: That shot looks fine to me, they're being hit directly in the face by a hot Tatooine sun during what looks like the middle of the day, i'd expect their fleshtones outdoors to reflect that.

As for the green fur, who knows? I remember reading somewhere that the colour of the sources they used to create the master for these releases were a bit iffy with colour shifts often happening in the same shot, which I've personally seen myself many times and what makes there Star Wars so difficult to regrade, and numerous other visual/colour inconsistencies. Perhaps the green fur is one of those things.

Thanks for the answer and keep up the good work! ;)

My pleasure and thank you for your feedback about their fleshtones being too yellow in that screencap, its ended up being very helpful!

The issue that you were noticing there was actually the overall saturation setting being too high rather than there being too much yellow, i'd gotten so used to the high saturation levels of the blu-ray that I wasn't seeing it, that's why its so useful having a fresh set of eyes looking over what you've done. I've reduced the saturation and the fleshtones across the whole film look much better now.

I think Return of the Jedi is now pretty much good to go colourwise. I just need to tweak some of the lightsaber colours. I should very likely have this finished and up by next weekend.

Is the rotj getting released next week have your 5.1 mix or just 2.0 and then you will do all 5.1's later on?

For both Return of the Jedi V2.15 releases, the one with the Yub Nub ending and the one with the Victory Celebration ending, i'll be using the 2 channel uncompressed PCM audio tracks, like I did with Star Wars V2.2 and The Empire Strikes Back V2.2.

I haven't actually started yet on the 5.1 Cinema DTS tracks, my sole focus has been on the colour grading. Once Return of the Jedi V2.15 is done and out there, i'll take a little break from Star Wars then start working on the three 5.1 tracks.

Sounds good, thanks for the update!

The german hdtv transport stream I used as the main source for AOTC is 16-17gb so yeah, IMHO the difference between a 22gb version and a 50gb version wouldn't be noticable to the eye.

ROTS I used the blu-ray as the main source but there isn't really much grain in that release so i'd expect the difference to be barely noticable between a 22gb and 50 gb version.

TPM had the additional grain that I added which is very bitrate hungry so when I did tests comparing the 22gb bitrate to the 50gb bitrate, I could quite clearly see that the 50gb bitrate reproduced the grain structure more faithfully so I felt it was worthwhile creating a 50gb release.

kk650, are the video aspects changing at all for your 5.1 mixes or keeping anh 2.2, esb 2.2 and rotj 2.15 as the video sources?

MrToad883 said:

kk650, are the video aspects changing at all for your 5.1 mixes or keeping anh 2.2, esb 2.2 and rotj 2.15 as the video sources?

The video sources are staying the same, it doesn't look like any higher definition sources for Lapti Nek, Yub Nub or the Jedi Ghosts are going to become available before the release of The Force Awakens so those three scenes will remain GOUT sourced.

That said, i've manually gone through those scenes frame by frame cleaning them of spots, scratches and dirt and modified the colour and image dynamics on a shot by shot basis so they look very nice IMHO, certainly much better than the GOUT itself.