Info: In search of the correct colors for ANH... — Page 3

See, I think that for that shot, something in the middle would look best. But that shot, other than being frequently compared with various corrections, is a very minor scene in the film. But it could be an indicator that I have some more work to do. I still consider it a draft. Very close and watchable, but still a draft. I think I have this very light scene too washed out. I'll take a look and see if I can fix it a bit without wrecking the rest. I keep getting closer, but not quite there yet. I have some mystery blue splotches that I'd like to make go away as well bit they have proven hard to address and may indicate data loss in the bluray.

The blue splotches are data loss. I'll have to patch them. They are in the Bluray and the DVD, but not in the 97 SE or the GOUT Lowry again. I really don't know what was wrong with them. They seem incapable of realigning faded color channels. It isn't that hard if you have a reference and for ANH we have the technicolor prints, an outstanding reference. They claim to have gone by that, but I don't think they shared it with Lowry and they then were working under a handicap. I've found that the red and blue channels are nicely in line, but the green one is all over the place. I can't even fully correct for how off it is, I can only get close and use other tools to make it look good. The magenta tone to the explosions and the blue artifacts in the dark areas, not to mention the lobster skintones, are all the result of the green channel being misaligned. There are may ways to correct for it, but unless you can track down what the core problem is, there will always be something wrong. Blown out whites and crushed blacks just make it harder to fix. Add to Lowry's mistakes the color grading choices by Lucasfilm and you get a really messed up movie.

I've known that Lucasfilm messed up since the DVD came out. In the sand dune scenes with C-3PO, there are artifacts that indicate that he was adjusted separately from the background. Badly too. There some faint indications in several of the shots, but in the closeup with the skeleton behind him, the sand under his arms is green. It is really obvious when he raises his arms and you see the green sand next to the tan sand. Not a lot of people notice that. I even had to point it out to Harmy when he didn't fix that in DE 1.0. He has fixed it in 2.5 and I lifted those to shots from DE 2.5 to fix the bluray. Lucasfilm wasn't so heavy handed elsewhere, but I suspect that they messed with other scenes. I just haven't identified which ones.

I think I may be closer. watching different un-color corrected versions is educational, as is watching other films. I watched Lawrence of Arabia and am partway through Zeffirelli's Hamlet. Accurate fleshtones are elusive, especially in something with as varied color timings as ANH. Still, I think I keep getting closer to my goal. I still have some tweaking to do, but I think I am even nearer than the last draft. This is definitely nearer to the scans/images of the technicolor, though that is not my goal, it is an awesome reference. I also just about have all my sources converted into files that I can bring in to Vegas so I can compare them. Before I finalize anything, I want to compare the JSC print, the GOUT print, the 97 SE EU broadcast, and the Lowry scan of the negative. I want to see if I can figure out what scenes may have had additional adjustments.

In any case, I have reduced the saturation and adjusted the colors, and changed some settings. Anything that causes any loss of image must be avoided and I had used something that had washed out some details. I think I am getting close.

yotsuya said:

I think I may be closer. watching different un-color corrected versions is educational, as is watching other films. I watched Lawrence of Arabia and am partway through Zeffirelli's Hamlet. Accurate fleshtones are elusive, especially in something with as varied color timings as ANH. Still, I think I keep getting closer to my goal. I still have some tweaking to do, but I think I am even nearer than the last draft. This is definitely nearer to the scans/images of the technicolor, though that is not my goal, it is an awesome reference. I also just about have all my sources converted into files that I can bring in to Vegas so I can compare them. Before I finalize anything, I want to compare the JSC print, the GOUT print, the 97 SE EU broadcast, and the Lowry scan of the negative. I want to see if I can figure out what scenes may have had additional adjustments.

In any case, I have reduced the saturation and adjusted the colors, and changed some settings. Anything that causes any loss of image must be avoided and I had used something that had washed out some details. I think I am getting close.

 In my opinion that last one is too desaturated. I've discussed the basis for my regrade in my own thread, but here's how I would regrade this shot:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

I think I may be closer. watching different un-color corrected versions is educational, as is watching other films. I watched Lawrence of Arabia and am partway through Zeffirelli's Hamlet. Accurate fleshtones are elusive, especially in something with as varied color timings as ANH. Still, I think I keep getting closer to my goal. I still have some tweaking to do, but I think I am even nearer than the last draft. This is definitely nearer to the scans/images of the technicolor, though that is not my goal, it is an awesome reference. I also just about have all my sources converted into files that I can bring in to Vegas so I can compare them. Before I finalize anything, I want to compare the JSC print, the GOUT print, the 97 SE EU broadcast, and the Lowry scan of the negative. I want to see if I can figure out what scenes may have had additional adjustments.

In any case, I have reduced the saturation and adjusted the colors, and changed some settings. Anything that causes any loss of image must be avoided and I had used something that had washed out some details. I think I am getting close.

 In my opinion that last one is too desaturated. I've discussed the basis for my regrade in my own thread, but here's how I would regrade this shot:

 What you have it indeed much better for that shot. If I was color correcting each scene, I would have something more along those lines, but I am trying to find a color correction plan that covers the entire film. When I up the saturation to make this shot look good, 50 others look bad. This is one of the key culprints-

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

I think I may be closer. watching different un-color corrected versions is educational, as is watching other films. I watched Lawrence of Arabia and am partway through Zeffirelli's Hamlet. Accurate fleshtones are elusive, especially in something with as varied color timings as ANH. Still, I think I keep getting closer to my goal. I still have some tweaking to do, but I think I am even nearer than the last draft. This is definitely nearer to the scans/images of the technicolor, though that is not my goal, it is an awesome reference. I also just about have all my sources converted into files that I can bring in to Vegas so I can compare them. Before I finalize anything, I want to compare the JSC print, the GOUT print, the 97 SE EU broadcast, and the Lowry scan of the negative. I want to see if I can figure out what scenes may have had additional adjustments.

In any case, I have reduced the saturation and adjusted the colors, and changed some settings. Anything that causes any loss of image must be avoided and I had used something that had washed out some details. I think I am getting close.

 In my opinion that last one is too desaturated. I've discussed the basis for my regrade in my own thread, but here's how I would regrade this shot:

 What you have it indeed much better for that shot. If I was color correcting each scene, I would have something more along those lines, but I am trying to find a color correction plan that covers the entire film. When I up the saturation to make this shot look good, 50 others look bad. This is one of the key culprints-

 I didn't realize that you wanted a single setting for the whole film. That is indeed a big challenge.

Well, that last draft did not turn out so well. Some of the scenes looked fantastic, but some were horrible. I did something to the blacks. I was using curves to help correct the color and that has its drawbacks. I think I am going to have to rethink my approach to this. In the mean time, I need some good reference material. Considering my goal, that is going to be scenes from eps 2, 3, 5, & 6. These have the least color issues. I put on the original (uncorrected or upscaled) GOUT TESB and was amazed at the colors. It hardly needs to be touched. There are relatively consistent orange jumpsuits, yellow helmet goggles, nice skin tones, bright scenes, dark scenes, a pretty consistent (especially after watching ANH like 40 times) R2-D2 and C-3PO. So I am going to focus on TESB and ROTJ first, then turn to ATOC and ROTS. The latter, coincidentally, have recreated sets found in ANH. It means I have to convert some PAL sources to 24 fps (well, almost 24, close enough when talking about it). Those 4 should give me plenty of example scenes to color match to.

I also need to figure out what Lowry did. I figured out how the negative faded. The green info faded about 50 percent and the blue about 25. Not enough to prevent that original negative from being used to crate nice IP's for the 97 SE. Rick McCallum and George Lucas have repeatedly told us that the original negative was recut and that the 97 SE used photographic restoration techniques. But then add another decade and what did Lowry have to scan? How did they scan it? How did they correct the colors. I am tempted to reverse engineer what they did to arrive at that horribly faded green image of Vader on the blockade runner. I can recreate it in photoshop using a color corrected screen cap, but not all those tools are available for video editing. I think I need to know how Lowry tried to fix the image to know how to actually fix it. And then there are Lucasfilm's changes. Plenty to keep me busy experimenting while I work on the other 4 movies. I think after ANH, I can tackle TPM, which suffers from similar, though less severe, color issues (that have nothing to do with fading and everything to do with editing choices).

Again, Lowry didn't change the colors (I refuse to use the word "correct") - why do so many people think they had something to do with it ? - and they didn't scan it. They received the 1997 SE "negatives" scanned as a series of 1080p pictures.

Maybe this would be helpful ? http://web.archive.org/web/20140528152100/http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

Regardless of who did it, it is messed up and I've seen other things worked on by Lowry that share the same skewed color pallet.

But Lowry was right about one thing, the Tunesia scenes do have a lot of extra dirt. The Legacy restoration has found the same indications on the technicolor print - filled with mysterious yellow dots - that there is something up. I think many people underestimate just how insidious sand can be in the desert. It gets everywhere. And some of it is super fine.

I guess we'd better blame Lucasfilm for the piss poor job of scanning and color correcting. I have no issue with grain cleanup and reduction. I like clean images unless the grain was an artistic choice by the production team. And from what I've seen of the restorations being done by our own OriginalTrilogy.com members, 1080p is higher resolution than anyone outside of Hollywood has been able to see movies in. 4k starts to reveal things that the audience was never intended to see that shouldn't be left. Or 8k for 70 mm. I think they are great resolutions for scanning and preserving, but not for viewing. I already see too many flaws in Star Wars at 1080p.

yotsuya said:

It gets everywhere. 

 Well played.

And just a small little rant... these films were made at academy standard 24 fps. I can understand working with PAL 25 fps or NTSC 30 fps, but it really messes with trying to line up different versions when you use a non-standard frame rate. I've found some strange ones. And when you render from one to the other, it can add or subtract frames. I was really pleased to find the JSC collection at 30i fps, which was easy to re-render as 24 fps. And PAL 25fps is a piece of cake to convert to 24 fps. But some are impossible because the actual scenes don't line up due to extra or missing frames. 24 fps is ether true 24 fps (for cinema) or 23.976 fps (for home video). 

Starting to work on Empire. First step is to find out what frames are missing from each version. The TR47 is missing a bunch, but oddly, so are the NTSC GOUT. ANH was missing one from NTSC vs. PAL and Empire seems to be missing two.

I have all the GOUT version lined up. TR47, GONZO, NTSC GOUT, PAL GOUT, and Hyperspace along with the cut down TB, GKAR, DVD and BR. There were some color changes for the SE, especially on Hoth, so not everything will match, but I'm going to use the PAL GOUT as my guide. Colorwise it doesn't need much, if anything, just some contrast and gamma adjustments.

Where ANH fought me like a tiger for two weeks and I still didn't come up with draft coloring that was satisfactory, TESB, in one day, has yielded a workable color correction for all three versions (PAL GOUT, GKAR, and BR). Now to render and watch and then tweak.

I'm bummed. My tests of rendering the 97 SE for TESB (GKAR and TB) are showing way too much DNR blurring. It is a shame. Those SE broadcasts have such nice color compared to the DVD/BR. I will just have to get the colors right and maybe I can do a despecialization later to recreate them.

Oh, as I posted before, TESB, ROTJ, ATOC, and ROTS are my primary color references to go by for ANH. I think the GOUT is pretty close, but I still need to bring the DVD/BR back to where the GOUT is and for that I need a lot of practice and reference. Such as the end of ROTS and the work room in AOTC, sets recreated from ANH.

The sad thing is that Jabba in ANH and Yoda in TPM were both added to badly colored digital masters. So do I just leave them and let their color change or do I rotoscope them (a lot of work) and tweak their color separately? I eventually want to change Jabba to be more red and green than yellow and olive, so I'm already working on that, but that leave the question of Yoda. I guess I'll have to see what my color correction does to him.

poita said:

yotsuya said:

Oh, as I posted before, TESB, ROTJ, ATOC, and ROTS are my primary color references to go by for ANH. I think the GOUT is pretty close, but I still need to bring the DVD/BR back to where the GOUT is and for that I need a lot of practice and reference. Such as the end of ROTS and the work room in AOTC, sets recreated from ANH.

The sad thing is that Jabba in ANH and Yoda in TPM were both added to badly colored digital masters. So do I just leave them and let their color change or do I rotoscope them (a lot of work) and tweak their color separately? I eventually want to change Jabba to be more red and green than yellow and olive, so I'm already working on that, but that leave the question of Yoda. I guess I'll have to see what my color correction does to him.

 In resolve, simply pull a matte for Jabba using the HLS tools and tracker and you can colour him separately. I took a quick look at that scene and you can separate him out in just a few seconds.

 In Sony Vegas? I have not yet mastered mattes.

Well, all that work I did on the TR47 ANH and it is for naught. I found a better way and got better, less yellow, results for both the GOUT and TR47 (they are nearly identical in color to begin with, TR47 is just a bit darker - I assume from whatever color correction was done when it was captured). I have recolored the GOUT OT (from the PAL dvd's) and they are very watchable and the DNR smearing is tolerable. I want to fix that, but that step is a lot of work. I have to get the JSC versions color corrected first.

In the mean time, I am going to work on aligning all the ANH soundtracks and see if I can burn a AVCHD disk with both opening crawls and maybe both end credits and all the soundtracks that interest me. I'm contemplating making my own mix that would be stereo, but closer to the mono mix. No DTS for now. I'm not ready to wrap my head around 6 channels yet. I'm going to start with the 93 version, mix in the tractor beam line from the 85 version, and the see about Beru and some of the other changes directly from the mono. Music and effects could pose a challenge for some, but I'm also going to look at the BR stereo soundtrack to see how it compares since that was a fresh mix, supposedly closer to the mono (except for Beru).

Ever closer.

I’m down to tweaking the GOUT. I’ve been noticing some odd colors in some scenes, but overall I think I have it. The last tweak was to pull down the brights so there are no blown out areas. When I get around to screen caps I’m sure some are going to think the blacks are too crushed, but with what I’m looking at, they should be somewhat crushed. I’m going to have to pull up a bit on the bluray to match this so it is dark, but not as dark as the bluray. I also have a new theory to test on ANH. But I want to tackle TESB and ROTJ first. I hope to have some screen caps this week.

I also found that we have 3 completely distinct opening crawls for ANH. When they changed it in 81, they used a completely different starfield. For the SE, the went back to the original, but not quite the same layout. I’m not sure if they restored the original 77 opening and replaced the tiles with ones identical to 81, or if they redid it. It seems like the SE is the 81 titles over the 77 background with the Star Destroyer recomped. Anyway, thanks to the efforts to archive the JSC LD’s, I was able to get close the GOUT quality for the 81 version.

I have the GOUT color corrected. None required very much. I can see why they used this set of prints for the Definitive Edition LD set. I made them a little darker (some might complain about crushed blacks, but I like that making them darker hides a multitude of sins, like the garbage mattes and the slugs).

Now I’m on to the Blu-rays. I toyed with ANH again, but I moved on. I can’t seem to find the secret and I’m beginning to think that some of the color information I am trying to recover might be just plain lost. The blue channel appears to be the most intact while the green requires the most work. I know I can fix the blue panel in the Y-wing, but I’m not sure the information is there to fix the Death Star viewscreen. And I know the information is there to fix all the crushed brights in the explosions in ANH, but the same thing isn’t working for ROTJ.

Anyway, my first pass at the Saga has produced some interesting results. I think I have TESB and AOTC. And I might be close for TPM (though without the brighter blues I had hoped for so I don’t think I am done yet), but ROTS and ROTJ aren’t there yet. Close, but not close enough. But, I have Yoda nearly matched in the 5 movies he appears in. I think he is just about dead on in TPM, AOTC, and TESB and nearly there in ROTS and ROTJ. But, I’ll let the images do the talking. I have two from TESB because one is a general lighting that should match the PT and the other is the firelight glow in his hut to match ROTJ.

I am narrowing in on color corrections for all 6 films. ANH is definitely the hardest. I have come to the conclusion that a single, global color correction is not possible. I do no know what they did when they scanned the negative, but it is messed up. The good news is that I should be able to just use the BR to fix the BR. The bad news is that I need to use four or more separate corrections.

Overall, most scenes take a single color correction and come out close to the GOUT (which doesn’t have a very even color timing to begin with). A similar global correction seems to work for AOTC, ROTS, and TESB without the need for any additional correction.

ROTJ has one issue that ANH also has with flames and a similar correction works for both. It requires doing come channel mixing to restore the white cores. It affects the Blockade Runner explosion in the beginning, all the obviously recomped fighter explosion around the Death Star and Vader’s funeral pyre in ROTJ.

A Y-wing control panel and the Death Star screen have an unusual blue color. Easy to get rid of, but doing that creates unwanted yellow splotches in other scenes. And I’m not sure all of them can be fixed. The screen border might need to be replaced in a shot or two.

A number of scenes, mostly with C-3PO and one with Tarkin, are over contrasted and need to be toned down.

There are a few other annoyances, such as a scene or two where R2’s blue panels are too green and a few times when Ben’s lightsaber turns purple that I haven’t even gotten to yet.

And I am stumped on how to correct the Chancellor’s Guard from teal to royal blue in TPM.

I think I have ROTJ nearly done. TESB is close. ANH is going to take some greater work to render a version that eliminates the 2004 transfer’s flaws, but I think I have the color correction nailed for the majority of shots. I had hoped to avoid using the curves in Vegas because there is really no way to relate the exact settings, but that proved to be the only way to handle bringing back some life to the color pallet. I ended up getting very close and then realizing that the BR does not use true black for the space shots. Sometimes you can get too close. I pulled back from trying to have the space shots be pure black and it looks good. I’m rending a low res copy (720x404) to watch and then I’ll post some screen shots and the settings I used (including screen shots of the curves settings). They look radical, but I think it works and it brings the overall pallet close to the GOUT. All three of the OT need some other specialized work to fix the bad 2004 transfer and TPM needs something that I have yet to figure out, but I feel I have 6 color corrections that bring the overall movies into a unified experience.

As promised, screen captures. You will note some are not perfect, but that requires doing scene scene adjustments and my goal was to find the overall color correction that works best. I have tried to avoid crushing the black and tried to pull down the brights to reveal details that were washed out on the blu-ray but present in other transfers, such as the scene of Luke and the Burning Homestead. I had thought I would have to layer in a correction from another version, but with the right adjustments I found that the details were still there. I also found that a lot of the shadows are oversaturated (in the red tones) and that would require correction of those scenes where if I corrected for that in the overall settings it ends up creating problems elsewhere.