Star Wars GOUT in HD using super resolution algorithm (* unfinished project *) — Page 46

DrDre said:

The reason detail is lost, is because the GOUT lacks the color depth to show the detail, but on the print it is definitely there. 

 It raises an interesting point. Should compromises be made when the GOUT simply cannot handle the correction? The problem is really only striking in some of the Tantive corridor shots. I think the overall color palette looks good. And the detail in the mids actually looks nice (Leia's hair, the imperial's face). The blu-ray with such a correction presumably has more detail in the dark uniforms? Or are the blacks too crushed in the 2011?

I think the grain helps in hiding some imperfections. Haloing and aliasing are slightly less obvious when the grain is present.

Its a tough choice. A clean image with more apparent imperfections, or, retain the grain, and hide some of the imperfections.

Edit: V12 is still my choice, like FrankT said, the haloing is too distracting.

The Blu Ray pretty much fixed the crushed blacks of the 2004 DVDs.

Detail wise, the Blu ray is the best version, but due to it being the Special Edition, no one cares about it :P.

Zyrother said:

Edit: V12 is still my choice, like FrankT said, the haloing is too distracting.

 I don't think the haloing is affected in V12.  It is there in all versions.  I assume you are saying V12 is your favorite because of the better anti-aliasing.  I think V11 is better because it has a bit of extra detail and the anti-aliasing is good enough.  Maybe we can get the scripts and we can make our own versions.  :-)

confusedgambler said:

DrDre said:

For one reason only, because that's what the colors looked like in 1977. 

Come on, Darth Vader is solid black with no detail left. You can't seriously say that looks right or good or even "what it looked like in '77" Not a chance, no way.

Also,that's not what Mike Verta's version looks like and he has better sources to judge by.

Harmy actually addressed the differences between shadow detail on a print, and the GOUT:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Raiders-of-the-lost-ark-bluray-and-colour-timing-changes/post/670853/#TopicPost670853

Not surprisingly, Harmy's Despecialized Edition 2.5 more closely match the color references I have, than the GOUT in terms of shadow detail. In some ways the GOUT/Laserdiscs have really screwed up our perception of what details should or should not be enhanced for a theatrical version of Star Wars.

thorr said:

Zyrother said:

Edit: V12 is still my choice, like FrankT said, the haloing is too distracting.

 I don't think the haloing is affected in V12.  It is there in all versions.  I assume you are saying V12 is your favorite because of the better anti-aliasing.  I think V11 is better because it has a bit of extra detail and the anti-aliasing is good enough.  Maybe we can get the scripts and we can make our own versions.  :-)

 Yeah, I meant to say V12 was my favorite and V14 had too much haloing.

Though V11 is quite good after taking another look at it. Really hard to choose :P

DrDre said:

confusedgambler said:

DrDre said:

For one reason only, because that's what the colors looked like in 1977. 

Come on, Darth Vader is solid black with no detail left. You can't seriously say that looks right or good or even "what it looked like in '77" Not a chance, no way.

Also,that's not what Mike Verta's version looks like and he has better sources to judge by.

Sorry to dissappoint you, but the reference is a scan of an unfaded Technicolor IB print, corrected to the print. Although there can be variation between prints, the colors are the way they are on the print. The reason detail is lost, is because the GOUT lacks the color depth to show the detail, but on the print it is definitely there. 

I agree with confusedgambler completely.

I'd like to say beforehand that I never trust a scan that I didn't do myself or at least I couldn't compare it with the print I held in my bare hand... I'm just skeptical. I've seen so many times so-called references turning out to be wrong.

But even if these are accurate copies of frames, when they're projected, they look a bit different depending on the projector/light bulb setup... And TV screen is also different. It would look horrible on TV if it looked like the corrected caps. Too deep blacks, burnt out highlights and possible oversaturation (maybe just due to heavy contrast). The untouched GOUT looks better, more natural and (ironically) more film-like. Sure it could use deeper blacks, a bit heavier contrast, but not that much.

If you're sure those scans are consistent with each other, then the colors could be used, but the luma levels are either should be disregarded or fixed by reducing the contrast. One setting for the whole footage. In my opinion, of course.

I also think the color matching script didn't handle this well, I don't think those artifacts particularly visible on the Obi-Wan comparison should be there.

Possibly a stupid question, but maybe the source for this project should be a direct LD rip? Are any of the other LD versions less compressed than the gout? Perhaps the JSC versions?

Just a thought.

No way the Tech IB was how it looked in '77 for the vast majority of viewers. But, I like it, and I bet it and (hence Dre's color match) is much much closer than the GOUT.

-G

zee944 said:

DrDre said:

confusedgambler said:

DrDre said:

For one reason only, because that's what the colors looked like in 1977. 

Come on, Darth Vader is solid black with no detail left. You can't seriously say that looks right or good or even "what it looked like in '77" Not a chance, no way.

Also,that's not what Mike Verta's version looks like and he has better sources to judge by.

Sorry to dissappoint you, but the reference is a scan of an unfaded Technicolor IB print, corrected to the print. Although there can be variation between prints, the colors are the way they are on the print. The reason detail is lost, is because the GOUT lacks the color depth to show the detail, but on the print it is definitely there. 

I agree with confusedgambler completely.

I'd like to say beforehand that I never trust a scan that I didn't do myself or at least I couldn't compare it with the print I held in my bare hand... I'm just skeptical. I've seen so many times so-called references turning out to be wrong.

But even if these are accurate copies of frames, when they're projected, they look a bit different depending on the projector/light bulb setup... And TV screen is also different. It would look horrible on TV if it looked like the corrected caps. Too deep blacks, burnt out highlights and possible oversaturation (maybe just due to heavy contrast). The untouched GOUT looks better, more natural and (ironically) more film-like. Sure it could use deeper blacks, a bit heavier contrast, but not that much.

If you're sure those scans are consistent with each other, then the colors could be used, but the luma levels are either should be disregarded or fixed by reducing the contrast. One setting for the whole footage. In my opinion, of course.

I also think the color matching script didn't handle this well, I don't think those artifacts particularly visible on the Obi-Wan comparison should be there.

The scans come from a reliable source, and look perfectly fine on HDTV. However, there are a couple of things to consider:

1) The GOUT's color depth is very limited, so although it is possible to match the colors, the color depth cannot be increased. This will result in artifacts. 

2) The GOUT is very noisy. As for the decreased color depth, the noise leads to artifacts, such as in the Obi-Wan frame. This has nothing to do with the algorithm. 

In short, crap in is crap out. 

Applying the corrections to the bluray leads to a much better result, with less artifacts, but even the bluray suffers from lack of color depth, digital noise, and crushed blacks:

swagmasta69 said:

Possibly a stupid question, but maybe the source for this project should be a direct LD rip? Are any of the other LD versions less compressed than the gout? Perhaps the JSC versions?

Just a thought.

 This project was merely to get the best quality out of the GOUT DVDs. It seems to have slipped into another theatrical restoration with these color correction debates.

But to answer your question, yes, the JSC discs would be better. But they have slightly worse color than the DC set. Otherwise, they trump the DC set in every way.

As promised, here is the script for SRV12:

orig=AviSource("Star Wars.avi")

orig=ConvertToRGB24(orig)

edi0=nnedi2_rpow2(orig,rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize") 

edi=nnedi2_rpow2(orig,rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize") 

sr1=SR(orig,1424,548)

sr1=ConvertToYUY2(sr1)

yuy2=ConvertToYUY2(orig)

sr2=SR(yuy2,1424,548)

rev=Reverse(orig)

sr1r=SR(rev,1424,548)

sr1r=Reverse(sr1r)

sr1r=ConvertToYUY2(sr1r)

yuy2rev=ConvertToYUY2(rev)

sr2r=SR(yuy2rev,1424,548)

sr2r=Reverse(sr2r)

s64=Spline64Resize(orig,1424,548)

s64=ConvertToYUY2(s64)

edi=ConvertToYUY2(edi0)

edi0=Spline64Resize(edi0,1280,544)

sr=Average(sr1,0.5,sr2,0.5,sr1r,0.5,sr2r,0.5,s64,-2,edi,1)

sr=Spline64Resize(sr,1280,544)

q1=QTGMC(sr,Preset="Placebo",Edimode="EEDI2",InputType=3,TR0=1,TR1=1,ProgSADMask=0,Blocksize=8)

q2=QTGMC(sr,Preset="Placebo", Edimode="EEDI2",TR0=1,TR1=1,Blocksize=8)

q2=SelectEven(q2)

Median(sr,q1,q2)

ConvertToRGB24()

sr=last

edicd=ConvertToYUY2(edi0)

edicd=ConvertToRGB24(edicd)

Average(sr,1,edi0,1,edicd,-1)

nnedi2_rpow2(rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize") 

Spline64Resize(1920,816)

moved

Discussion about the color corrections can be continued in my color matching thread. 

DrDre,

Just curious, have you applied any of these recent SR scripts to either Empire or Jedi? I am very curious to see how Jedi would look, since it is the worst looking of the NTSC set.

Thanks

Zyrother said:

how Jedi would look, since it is the worst looking of the NTSC set.

 IIRC it's the only one where the NTSC looks worse than the PAL, but isn't it still in better shape than the other two films?

towne32 said:

Zyrother said:

how Jedi would look, since it is the worst looking of the NTSC set.

 IIRC it's the only one where the NTSC looks worse than the PAL, but isn't it still in better shape than the other two films?

 The aliasing in Jedi is no where near as bad as Star Wars and Empire. Totally forgot about that. Jedi just looks fuzzier than the other 2 to my eyes.

As for the PAL Jedi vs the NTSC Jedi, I have never seen image comparisons. Would like to see how much better the PAL version looks.

Zyrother said:

towne32 said:

Zyrother said:

how Jedi would look, since it is the worst looking of the NTSC set.

 IIRC it's the only one where the NTSC looks worse than the PAL, but isn't it still in better shape than the other two films?

 The aliasing in Jedi is no where near as bad as Star Wars and Empire. Totally forgot about that.

Jedi just looks fuzzier than the other 2 to my eyes.

 That makes it seem like Jedi would actually benefit the most and look the best out of the three using the Dr.Dre method.

The V10 script didn't make a huge difference in Jedi from the test I did. Someone could try the V12 now, though. But I assume it needs its own custom script.

Hi DrDre, can you also post the V11 script?  Thanks!

I've done some tests on Empire, which is improved in terms of detail, but not as much as Star Wars.

@ Swazzy

The script can in principle be used for any SD material, although it has been written for videos with heavy aliasing. 

Here is the script for SRV11:

orig=AviSource("Star Wars.avi")

orig=ConvertToRGB24(orig)

edi0=nnedi2_rpow2(orig,rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize") 

edi=nnedi2_rpow2(orig,rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize") 

sr1=SR(orig,1424,548)

sr1=ConvertToYUY2(sr1)

yuy2=ConvertToYUY2(orig)

sr2=SR(yuy2,1424,548)

rev=Reverse(orig)

sr1r=SR(rev,1424,548)

sr1r=Reverse(sr1r)

sr1r=ConvertToYUY2(sr1r)

yuy2rev=ConvertToYUY2(rev)

sr2r=SR(yuy2rev,1424,548)

sr2r=Reverse(sr2r)

s64=Spline64Resize(orig,1424,548)

s64=ConvertToYUY2(s64)

edi=ConvertToYUY2(edi0)

edi0=Spline64Resize(edi0,1280,544)

sr=Average(sr1,0.5,sr2,0.5,sr1r,0.5,sr2r,0.5,s64,-2,edi,1)

sr=Spline64Resize(sr,1280,544)

q1=QTGMC(edi,Preset="Placebo",Edimode="EEDI2",InputType=3,TR0=1,TR1=1,ProgSADMask=0,Blocksize=8)

q2=QTGMC(edi,Preset="Placebo", Edimode="EEDI2",TR0=1,TR1=1,Blocksize=8)

q2=SelectEven(q2)

Median(edi,q1,q2)

ConvertToRGB24()

edi=last

sr =Average(sr,1,edi,1,s64,-1)

edicd=ConvertToYUY2(edi0)

edicd=ConvertToRGB24(edicd)

Average(sr,1,edi0,1,edicd,-1)

nnedi2_rpow2(rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize") 

Spline64Resize(1920,816)