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Harmy's RETURN OF THE JEDI Despecialized Edition HD - V3.1 — Page 59

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Harmy, is it not a better option to leave ROTJ workprint the same as 1.0 in view of the structure? So it would be easier to mux another audio tracks/languages to it. I also would prefer a large mkv file like ANH and TESB. I know the workprint will not be the final release, but it would easier to handle it, also in case of spotting errors. If the resolution or the encode is higher bitrated, it is easier to recognize.

Anyway, thank you again Harmy for all the efforts you put in!

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FWIW, the difference between PAL and NTSC frames is so small you won’t notice it on most alternate tracks. Just ones with English audio–English tracks, commentary tracks, etc, and dubs that voiceover the English audio, like Russian, Polish and Ukrainian tracks. Even then some people don’t notice it–I only really notice it with Harrison Ford. So if you watch video with NTSC frames with German audio synced to PAL frames, you’ll be fine.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:
Also, I swear that you, Team Blu, and hairy_hen had already decided to standardize on NTSC GOUT in all new releases to avoid problems, because when that happened I went through all my audio and subtitle resources and switched them to NTSC. Ergh, please not again…

Go here.

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Harmy said:

No, I want to keep it consistent with the other versions, so all versions up to 2.5 will remain 720p.

Sorry, I don’t follow all the goings on of this forum as much as a lot of other people. What are your eventual endgame plans regarding resolution? 1080p was mentioned elsewhere, will that be for all 3 movies/is that as high as you plan to go?

Also as a side note, what are your plans after RotJ 2.0 is finished, start work on ANH 3.0?

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The DeEd’s are limited by the detail of their primary sources. The current Blu-rays, though 1080p, really don’t have any detail aside from sharpening artifacts above 720p. A better-mastered Blu-ray set (perhaps based on the Reliance 4K scans) could possibly form the basis of 1080p versions, or even 4K if the films actually have enough detail to justify that. My guess is that these better-quality versions of the SE’s (if they ever materialize) are likely to be quickly mooted by film scan preservations, so there’ll be little need to despecialize anything anymore after that. I do wonder if 2.5 might be the end of the line… unless we can gang up on Harmy and convince him to do another coloring pass on Star Wars 😉

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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There’s still more detail in some shots in the current master than in any of the prints that are available, so there’s still some reason to use it.

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If Harmy does have another go at Star Wars, the only thing that always bothered me (I think I made a post about it in the Star Wars thread a while back) is the digital error on the lizard thing in the background when they’re first going into the Cantina, where his head moves but the nostril doesn’t move with it. It’s a stupidly minor detail but once I noticed it I can no longer not notice it. Also I’m a little confused by your wording, are the despecialized editions planned to get an upgrade to 1080?

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cranyx said:

If Harmy does have another go at Star Wars, the only thing that always bothered me (I think I made a post about it in the Star Wars thread a while back) is the digital error on the lizard thing in the background when they’re first going into the Cantina, where his head moves but the nostril doesn’t move with it. It’s a stupidly minor detail but once I noticed it I can no longer not notice it. Also I’m a little confused by your wording, are the despecialized editions planned to get an upgrade to 1080?

I still am not sure anyone besides you sees the nostril thing.

I don’t believe there are specific plans for a 1080p release, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

But I too am more interested in a recolored SW than a resolution boost. Even the color of 1.0 with all the bells and whistles of 2.5 would be great. Nostrils or not. (Though I think the whole damn Eisley entrance scene can/should just be 35mm sourced some day. Most destroyed few minutes of the SE aside from Jedi rocks.)

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towne32 said:

I still am not sure anyone besides you sees the nostril thing.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here. It takes place between 43:53 and 43:58, and it’s clear as day to me. This obviously isn’t the thread to bring it up so I won’t harp on it, but I don’t understand why no one else sees it.

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I don’t know what to answer first 😄
The nostril thing, I guess - there is a problem with the animation, though I don’t think is so much with the nostrils, as it is that it changes directions too fast. But since TN1 already released an HD sample of the complete scene, even if I didn’t get a better source, there would be no reason to keep the animated version in a potential new release of SW - I’d just use a 35mm source for the lizard.

Now that brings me to the next step after Jedi 2.0 and the posibility of a v3.0 release - the next step is ESB and the ROTJ v2.5. I might do 3.0 eventually but it would be a release of the entire trilogy at once, where ESB and ROTJ would be pretty much just 1080p upgrades of v2.5s (all of despecializing was still done at 720p for ESB v2.0, so all those shots would have to be redone and I’d have to redo the color correction and the cut at 1080p as well) but for Star Wars, it would have to be a complete new version from scratch, so don’t expect v3.0 or the upgrade to 1080p any time soon, if ever - seriously, I’m not promissing anything and I’ve had these plans for a long time but plans can change and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up too high and I still don’t. It’s the same thing with this ROTJ workprint - I’ve been putting it together for quite a while now but I kept it under wraps, because I had no idea when the circumstances would allow me to finish it in a presentable state.

Concerning 4K, that would be just redundant without a new, very good 4K scan of the original negative - Scanning theatrical prints in 4K is great, because it allows for nice 2K results after the necessary resizing, cropping and other manipulation, but the detail present in a 4K scan of a print still doesn’t come anywhere near the detail seen on the BD, which is a shitty 1080p scan of the negative, and even this scan doesn’t resolve much beyond 720p. The BD does resolve a little bit beyond 720p, so there would still be some small merrit to a 1080p version but it doesn’t resolve all the detail possible with 1080p and 4K scans of prints resolve even less detail, so 4K would have no merrit at all, even sourced from a 4K scan of a print.

As to the GOUT sync, thanks for the info - the cut is not locked down yet, so I think I will still be able to make sure it’s NTSC synced, which, as CatBut correctly pointed out, has always been the plan for the final v2.0 version but it was just easier to keep the WP synced with v1.0, because I used v1.0 quite a lot when making it - most of the color-correction is just v1.0’s chroma with a bit of a tweak, and all the Jabba subs shots are just inserted in from v1.0. This is very much temporary and neither will be the case in v2.0 but it was a great way to expedite the proces to get the WP out in time for TFA.

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LOL, sorry about that - I typed that on my phone. But you’ve got admit that that’s a pretty funny typo to make 😄

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It’s fine, I laughed too. Also, if at some point you get your new 2.0 subs in their more-or-less final placement and appearance within the video frame, let me know. In fact, all I’d really need is a still image of a frame showing the subtitle for “You may have been a good smuggler…”, and I can do the rest from there.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Harmy said:

I don’t know what to answer first 😄
The nostril thing, I guess - there is a problem with the animation, though I don’t think is so much with the nostrils, as it is that it changes directions too fast. But since TN1 already released an HD sample of the complete scene, even if I didn’t get a better source, there would be no reason to keep the animated version in a potential new release of SW - I’d just use a 35mm source for the lizard.

Now that brings me to the next step after Jedi 2.0 and the posibility of a v3.0 release - the next step is ESB and the ROTJ v2.5. I might do 3.0 eventually but it would be a release of the entire trilogy at once, where ESB and ROTJ would be pretty much just 1080p upgrades of v2.5s (all of despecializing was still done at 720p for ESB v2.0, so all those shots would have to be redone and I’d have to redo the color correction and the cut at 1080p as well) but for Star Wars, it would have to be a complete new version from scratch, so don’t expect v3.0 or the upgrade to 1080p any time soon, if ever - seriously, I’m not promissing anything and I’ve had these plans for a long time but plans can change and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up too high and I still don’t. It’s the same thing with this ROTJ workprint - I’ve been putting it together for quite a while now but I kept it under wraps, because I had no idea when the circumstances would allow me to finish it in a presentable state.

Concerning 4K, that would be just redundant without a new, very good 4K scan of the original negative - Scanning theatrical prints in 4K is great, because it allows for nice 2K results after the necessary resizing, cropping and other manipulation, but the detail present in a 4K scan of a print still doesn’t come anywhere near the detail seen on the BD, which is a shitty 1080p scan of the negative, and even this scan doesn’t resolve much beyond 720p. The BD does resolve a little bit beyond 720p, so there would still be some small merrit to a 1080p version but it doesn’t resolve all the detail possible with 1080p and 4K scans of prints resolve even less detail, so 4K would have no merrit at all, even sourced from a 4K scan of a print.

As to the GOUT sync, thanks for the info - the cut is not locked down yet, so I think I will still be able to make sure it’s NTSC synced, which, as CatBut correctly pointed out, has always been the plan for the final v2.0 version but it was just easier to keep the WP synced with v1.0, because I used v1.0 quite a lot when making it - most of the color-correction is just v1.0’s chroma with a bit of a tweak, and all the Jabba subs shots are just inserted in from v1.0. This is very much temporary and neither will be the case in v2.0 but it was a great way to expedite the proces to get the WP out in time for TFA.

Wait, I’m confused. How can a 4K scan of a print have less quality than the terrible 720p Blu Rays?

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StarChewyWar said:

Wait, I’m confused. How can a 4K scan of a print have less quality than the terrible 720p Blu Rays?

The Blu-rays are based on scans of negatives, not prints. Negatives have a lot more detail than prints. So no matter how badly they screwed it up, there is often still more detail in the Blu-rays than anyone saw in the theatre, or that we’d be able to get from prints under the best-case scenario. That’s not to say there isn’t the occasional DNR bloodbath that erases, for example, Han’s mouth…

Also, if you wanted a reproduction of the theatrical experience, you might not necessarily want all that detail from the negatives. I would, but that’s more of a philosophical argument.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Yeah, a nice 1080p/2K restoration based on a print would certainly be great, because, like CatBus said, it may occasionally have some extra detail that was destroyed by DVNR and compression on the BD and certainly wouldn’t have all the warping and frozen grain and all the other crap caused by the DNR in the 2004 masters, not to mention the destroyed colors, which can only be revived to a certain degree from the BDs. But a 4K version of the same restoration would offer little to no upgrade - again, it makes a lot of sense to do the scanning in 4K, because then less detail is lost through inevitable manipulation of the image but for the final product, 4K would be redundant. I guess a restoration made from an IP could have some merit as that is only one generation removed from the ON but from a print, not so much, unless, like Mike Verta, you’re actually recruiting detail from multiple prints for each frame.

Either way, Despecialized in 4K would only make sense if there was a new 4K restoration from the negative, that would be the SE - but replacing shots in such a restoration with 4K scans of prints would be a similar situation to what we had replacing shots in the BD version with GOUT, although the difference would probably be less noticeable.

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StarChewyWar said:

Harmy said:

I don’t know what to answer first 😄
The nostril thing, I guess - there is a problem with the animation, though I don’t think is so much with the nostrils, as it is that it changes directions too fast. But since TN1 already released an HD sample of the complete scene, even if I didn’t get a better source, there would be no reason to keep the animated version in a potential new release of SW - I’d just use a 35mm source for the lizard.

Now that brings me to the next step after Jedi 2.0 and the posibility of a v3.0 release - the next step is ESB and the ROTJ v2.5. I might do 3.0 eventually but it would be a release of the entire trilogy at once, where ESB and ROTJ would be pretty much just 1080p upgrades of v2.5s (all of despecializing was still done at 720p for ESB v2.0, so all those shots would have to be redone and I’d have to redo the color correction and the cut at 1080p as well) but for Star Wars, it would have to be a complete new version from scratch, so don’t expect v3.0 or the upgrade to 1080p any time soon, if ever - seriously, I’m not promissing anything and I’ve had these plans for a long time but plans can change and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up too high and I still don’t. It’s the same thing with this ROTJ workprint - I’ve been putting it together for quite a while now but I kept it under wraps, because I had no idea when the circumstances would allow me to finish it in a presentable state.

Concerning 4K, that would be just redundant without a new, very good 4K scan of the original negative - Scanning theatrical prints in 4K is great, because it allows for nice 2K results after the necessary resizing, cropping and other manipulation, but the detail present in a 4K scan of a print still doesn’t come anywhere near the detail seen on the BD, which is a shitty 1080p scan of the negative, and even this scan doesn’t resolve much beyond 720p. The BD does resolve a little bit beyond 720p, so there would still be some small merrit to a 1080p version but it doesn’t resolve all the detail possible with 1080p and 4K scans of prints resolve even less detail, so 4K would have no merrit at all, even sourced from a 4K scan of a print.

As to the GOUT sync, thanks for the info - the cut is not locked down yet, so I think I will still be able to make sure it’s NTSC synced, which, as CatBut correctly pointed out, has always been the plan for the final v2.0 version but it was just easier to keep the WP synced with v1.0, because I used v1.0 quite a lot when making it - most of the color-correction is just v1.0’s chroma with a bit of a tweak, and all the Jabba subs shots are just inserted in from v1.0. This is very much temporary and neither will be the case in v2.0 but it was a great way to expedite the proces to get the WP out in time for TFA.

Wait, I’m confused. How can a 4K scan of a print have less quality than the terrible 720p Blu Rays?

Take a picture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima with a Nintendo DSi/3DS (or other low quality camera) and print it out on a normal print size photo. Then try to scan that in 8k, 10k, 1 000 000k, whatever. Will you get the same quality as the original large format negative at even 300 dpi? No. Because the quality of the Nintendo camera is crap to begin with, there’s no detail to squeeze out of it despite the resolution you’re scanning it at.

It’s a bit of the same here. A negative scanned at 1080p will have more detail than a 4k scan of a film print that’s about 4 generations away from the negative (4 generations = an ANALOGUE copy of a copy of a copy).

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Long time lurker, first time poster so - hey everyone!

Awesome to hear ROTJ 2.0 is so close! Thanks Harmy (and co) for all your work on these despecialised versions, it’s greatly appreciated! You’re all legends 😃

Complete Star Wars Poster Collection

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Harmy said:
Another little video. This time, I had a bit of fun with it 😃

Wow, talk about perfect timing!

About three weeks back, after seeing all the advertising for the upcoming new Star Wars, I was talking to my spouse about how to get the original versions. I mentioned that the best version I knew of was the LaserDisc transfers – but then I started to wonder if there was something else. Needless to say, I searched a little, found out about the Despecialized Editions. I downloaded all of them, and we just finished watching Jedi last night. I signed up for the workprint, so I’m excited to see improvements over the incredible version that we just watched.

Since I found out about the Despecialized Editions, I’ve been reading the threads religiously – all the Despecialized threads, as well as the Negative 1 threads. I think I’ve just about driven my spouse crazy, talking about the changes that Lucas did, the effort that people have spent in order to make better versions available, even details about obtaining 35mm film and scanning it, digital video editing techniques, everything.

Needless to say, Harmy, you’ve made me very happy. Thank you.

It’s been nice, having years’ worth of threads available to read. Now I’m caught up with these ones, I don’t know where to go next. I’ve started to take a look at some other fanedits – hopefully I’ll be able to get MySpleen invite at some point in order to check them out.

Once again, Harmy, thanks for taking the effort to make these. I’ve enjoyed them all, but Jedi is my spouse’s favorite (and she was furious when she found out that Lucas got rid of Yub Nub), so a double thanks for this!

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Welcome: Skyder and PartyVader.

@PartyVader: If you want to read about another amazing project, check out Mike Verta’s thread about Star Wars Legacy. It’s usually a bit more impressive to read from the latest and go backwards from there, partially because there’s some cringeworthy behavior from a lot of members in the early posts. But also because his work in progress videos that were posted later are amazing.

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Signed up for the work print! Thank you Harmy and everyone working on these, you’re doing the Maker’s work!

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forloc said:

Signed up for the work print! Thank you Harmy and everyone working on these, you’re doing the Maker’s work!

Well… more like undoing the Maker’s re-work.