Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 553

The question of course is, whether the detail was actually visible in the 1977 prints. You can of course bring out more detail by altering the color palette, but that's essentially doing another SE. 

I think both Harmy and I have the intention to try to match the colors of the original negative, working from reference prints or in my case a reference frame provided by Mike Verta. The results can be quite different, as is evident from the following comparison:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/139124

Which is closer to the colors of the actual negatives? I leave that to your expert opinions/tastes, although I'm aware Harmy's been at it a lot longer than I have...

DrDre said:

The question of course is, whether the detail was actually visible in the 1977 prints. You can of course bring out more detail by altering the color palette, but that's essentially doing another SE. 

I think both Harmy and I have the intention to try to match the colors of the original negative, working from reference prints or in my case a reference frame provided by Mike Verta. The results can be quite different, as is evident from the following comparison:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/139124

Which is closer to the colors of the actual negatives? I leave that to your expert opinions/tastes, although I'm aware Harmy's been at it a lot longer than I have...

While that doesn't look bad, I will caution that the guys in the extreme background are starting to tip toward looking like the legendary "Lobsterman" SE mess up.  Color corrections always have these little give and takes (especially with a screwy source like the SW BDs), so it is really hard to know when to cut your losses.  I've also been wanting to point out that in your examples, while brighter and maybe more natural of a palette overall, the white Stormtrooper armor is more often than not getting blown out, resulting in quite a bit less definition.

As g-force pointed out, there is still a slight pink shift in the reference I'm using. That probably explains the lobsterman effect. I've now used an algorithm to white balance the reference, so I will redo the color adjustment based on this reference. The results will be put on the color matching thread I started.

We were all in a band called Lobsterman in the 90s.

Team Lobolie

Frink, is that your first album cover as your avatar?

Team W

ww12345 said:

Frink, is that your first album cover as your avatar?

Team W

 No, that's us with our wife, Stinky-Dinkins.

Team Olie

Right. I've followed advice from a private message I got and made an account with MySpleen (the only plaze they knew where you could get DVD5 copies), I made a new post asking about the DVD5 versions and how that website worked and also said that I wasn't planning on doing a hit-and-run with the movies...but my post has been archived in a no longer running forum full of people asking about the Harmys. Someone did try to explain it to me how torrenting and seeding worked if I DID get an invite and thus the movies, but it looks like it was a colossal waste of time. I don't have a clue where I'm going to find them. I'm starting to feel like giving up, honestly.

Is there any difference in quality between the MKV and the AVCHD versions?

Thanks!

Thanks for the info, CatBus!

I certainly want the highest possible bitrate when I watch these. I haven't seen the originals since they were each released and am probably more excited than a normal person should be. I was 11 in 1977 and I think Star Wars may have mutated my brain.

I'm going to pipe them into my home theater system. I have burned blurays from the AVCHD versions and they look pretty good, but if the difference is noticeable I will figure out how to watch the MKV versions.

How do you watch them yourself? Directly from some kind of media streamer or do you burn blurays? Can the MKVs be made into blurays without quality loss?

Use tsmuxer(gui) to make the MKV into blu-ray format. No re-encoding or quality loss involved. Note: Since you might ask this soon, you won't come across a RoTJ mkv. You've already got the latest version of that one.

Best way I've found to work with the MKVs is to just put them on an external hard drive, if your Blu-ray player has a USB port.

Depends on the kind of player you have and whether an external hard drive is in your budget, I suppose.

Okay! I've finally managed to get the trilogy thanks to some very kind individual offering to burn the DVDs for me then sending them to me. But now I've run into another problem. They work PERFECTLY on my laptop... but they don't work on our DVD player. For the first two movies this weird menu pops up that I can't get rid of with this file reading "VIDEO_TS". The only one that actually plays is Return of the Jedi (maybe because this is the only disc that is DVD-R, while the other two are DVD-RW), but for some bizarre reason the quality is absolutely appalling; the picture is slightly pixelated. The quality is fine on my laptop! But I don't know whether this is to do with our DVD player being kind of old (it's the type that also has a VCR player built in). Anybody know why this is?

Not sure about the first two. Might be that your player doesn't do DL DVDR. Strange that it tries to and can read the file structure, though. edit: doh, you said DVD-RW, not DL. Yep, seems your drive wants to play media files from DVD-RW? Does it play MP3s and such? You can try navigating to the VOB files in VIDEO_TS, just for the hell of it. Otherwise, try to get the disc copied straight to standard DVD-R.

The video quality of the DVD5 of Harmy's RoTJ  that is floating around is indeed very poor. I believe it was not encoded directly by him as were the other two films. It has a plain menu that pops up and then very pixelated video. His actual AVCHD release is pretty decent quality, but lower than all the >1.0 releases of the other films. I'm not sure that it can withstand re-encoding to MPEG-2, so you might want to just wait until the next version comes out or find a way to play the AVCHD file.

But that's the thing, none of them even had a menu. All three of them (ROTJ included) were completely fine on my laptop, quality and everything. And I've Googled the problem about playing burned DVDs and now I almost definitely think it's because our player is too old. I think we're getting a new one soon anyway, so hopefully this problem will be solved!

beyourowndensity said:

Okay! I've finally managed to get the trilogy thanks to some very kind individual offering to burn the DVDs for me then sending them to me. But now I've run into another problem. They work PERFECTLY on my laptop... but they don't work on our DVD player. For the first two movies this weird menu pops up that I can't get rid of with this file reading "VIDEO_TS". The only one that actually plays is Return of the Jedi (maybe because this is the only disc that is DVD-R, while the other two are DVD-RW), but for some bizarre reason the quality is absolutely appalling; the picture is slightly pixelated. The quality is fine on my laptop! But I don't know whether this is to do with our DVD player being kind of old (it's the type that also has a VCR player built in). Anybody know why this is?

 What kind of output options are on your laptop?  If you have an HDMI out, I would just plug that directly into your TV if I were you (assuming the TV has an HDMI input as well). 

Or you could always purchase a cheap VGA to HDMI converter (they also make them to convert VGA to RCA if you don't have an HD tv).  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Patuoxun-Adapter-Convertor-Converter-support/dp/B00K808RVQ/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1440789123&sr=8-8&keywords=vga+to+hdmi

Harmy said:

If you're getting a new player, you really should get bluray - the prices are now pretty much the same as DVD and even DVDs will likely look much better played through a BD player.

 And get one of these newfangled ones that the kids say play MKVs on a usb drive.

As for DVD on a blu-ray player, make sure to look up reviews online pertaining to their performance. Some do very well, I believe others are crap with interlaced sources, etc.

So played ANH straight through from beginning to end, and yes found three glitches- one was very brief and tolerable, but the other two I can't live with long term. So, back to the drawing board. I think I'll d/l the mkv file from a torrent source this time, and burn onto a differnet disk (rather than the TKD BD-RE Dl 50GB disks I have now). Sure, more $$ for the disks, and more time, but worth it for sure. I'm enjoying the challenge, and the reward is off the charts. Can't wait to have a clean copy in time to show my 8 year old for her birthday this December. Oh, and my wife gets getting blown away by the clarity of this version- I've sung your praises to her multiple times Harmy!! thanks again. I'll let you know how ti all works out.

OH- one last thing. Any recommendations for a bomber bluray disk that has a solid reputation? Preferable one that I can get off Amazon, maybe in a five pack (I'm not a big movie burner as you can tell, so dont' need one of those 10 or 25 packs). Or maybe some kind/generous philanthropist type wouldn't mind selling a few disks in a paypal deal? 

You guys rock- thanks for all the help. Good karma all around!