Harmy's RETURN OF THE JEDI Despecialized Edition HD - V3.1 — Page 73

I know that this is a somewhat minor aspect of the Star Wars Trilogy, but will the vanishing TIE fighters be returned to their unaltered state in V2.0?

joefavs said:

Harmy said:

Great news - these new mixes will be awesome additions to v2.5.

Wait a minute, is this to say that 2.0 will have the same DD tracks from 1.0 instead of the DTS-HD of the other 2.X releases? If so, and if indeed the new audio will be ready in a matter of weeks, I think I’d prefer to wait. Though I may be biased, since I finally got a receiver that can handle 5.1 DTS-HD for Christmas. I guess I can hold off on burning the MKV and mux in the new audio if hairy-hen makes it available on its own.

I’ve provided Harmy with DTS-HD lossless versions of the old 5.1 mix… not that hairy_hen’s new mix won’t be better.

AFAIK, no such beast exists, you’d have to make it yourself from the MKV.

hairy_hen said:

After I’ve finished with that I’ll set about making a new 5.1 version. As before, this will be mostly the 1993 mix with the addition of an LFE channel, this time taken from the Bluray instead of the DVD.

Hey h_h, what about the 1997 DTS theatrical mixes, are they any good for this kind of project? Or is the BD better, which sounds to me a little hard to believe considering LFL’s home video releases? Great to see you back and thanks for the update!

We’ll see - v2.0 will definitely have DTS-HD tracks but they may not be h_h’s latest updates, depending on how fast he and I can get things done.

Cool - it seems like it will be at least a couple of weeks before v2.0 is ready, because the subs will take some time and I won’t have time to work on it until after new year, so I think it’s likely that the new mixes will be included 😃

Also, I think the question about the '97 DTS mixes wasn’t about using them instead of the '93 mix but instead of the BD, so it was about the LFE channel only - correct me if I’m wrong but I think the DTS tracks don’t have a discrete LFE channel, so they probably wouldn’t be the best sources for LFE.

As for the '93 mixes having to be upmixed, during my pre-TFA marathon, I watched Despecialized on a 5.1 setup for the first time and I must say that h_h’s 5.1 up-mixes have better spatial definition than many discrete-channel 5.1 mixes I’ve heard on other movies.

Thanks for the clarification guys. 😃

Harmy said:

nightstalkerpoet said:

just for a slightly registered, histogram matched version of that comparison:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/154019

Jesus, that’s a huge improvement - how did you do it? If there’s something I still feel like I have A LOT to learn about, then it’s color correction - would this be possible to replicate in AE?
Here’s what the raw scan looks like:
http://s18.postimg.org/ccagrvacn/Star_Wars_ROTJ_Reel3_Pro_Res444_mov_snapshot_19_37.jpg
and what you see in the BD vs LPP comparison is the best I was able to get out of it.

I completely missed your reply - Honestly, I have no idea how to replicate it in AE. As strange as it seems, I find I get the best results in GIMP. It has a very simple image registration tool you can add, as well as the histogram matching script.

-Image Registration Plugin: http://registry.gimp.org/node/24248
-Histogram Matching: http://www.silent9.com/blog/archives/162-Gimp-Script-Histogram-Match.html

(I’m working on an example using the raw scan, but my work computer isn’t very fast with image registation.)

Since I’m unsure how to do this in AE, my suggestion is to histogram match in GIMP, then use DrDre’s Color Correct tool to build a profile between your source image and your histogram matched one. I find that Dre’s tool works great so long as the image is cropped perfectly, so finding a color correction you like before hand and adjusting to it using the tool provides a pixel perfect adjustment match that’s more easily applied without getting artifacts.

GIMPs image registration isn’t the greatest, and I don’t know how to automate it between two sets of pictures. Because of that, I tend to use it more to adjust pictures for comparison images.

With histogram matching, I’ve found this process works best for me -

1. Open both images in GIMP (seperately not as layers)
2. Using LAB (preserve Luma) Match your reference image to your Source.
3. Using RGB, match your source to the reference image.
4. In the Reference image window, edit>undo Match Histogram
5. Using RGB, again match your source to the reference image.

Alright, this computer can’t handle image registation.
Here are my results with the raw capture image:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/156203
(some slight color tweaking after the histogram match to get as close to the warped blu colors as possible… just shifting closer to magenta than green, changing the hue of yellows to almost lime green, and upping contrast)

• Home now, and on my home screen can far better see the blown out darks (resulting from my tweaks, not the histogram match). Still, achieves mostly similar colors. How they screwed up the colors so bad in their initial scans that I can barely replicate them is beyond me.

ott said:

any idea on foreign language tracks for v2.0?

Czech, German, American Spanish, Castilian Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian. Not sure if Harmy’s going for the Russian dub, voiceover, or both.

Jason Wingreen passed away on Christmas day, which makes what you are doing all the more important, Harmy. I had to pop in TESB DE today just because I can. We know the true voice of Boba Fett!

What exactly should we expect when it comes to colors on the completed V2.0 for Jedi? Generally speaking, the only shots that seem off to me are ones that I’m assuming 35mm footage was used for (in general it seems a lot darker than the GOUT, which I know isn’t entirely reliable but it’s my best frame of reference). This is noticable specifically in the shot where the guy cries about the dead Rancor and also the footage of unmasked Shaw before Vader’s death (spoilers). Will this be tweaked for v2 or will that not be until 2.5? Same goes for the wobbliness of the Yub Nub scene which I think looks pretty spectacular but is a little shaky, will that be stabilized in the finished 2.0 or will that not be until 2.5?

Also, just curious, do you get the subtitles from the GOUT or the 1997 Special Edition? On a side note, I just recently saw a picture of what the blu-ray subtitle font looks like and it jarringly does not fit the look of the movies, much like almost all other special edition changes.

For the next DeEd ROTJ 2.0, I believe Harmy will be using film print references for both the appearance and timing of the alien subtitles (I used the same reference for timing for Project Threepio 9.0). For 1.x and the workprint, he kinda matched the film print appearance (close font match), but used DVD timing and a non-theatrical fade-in/out effect. The official releases use subtitle image overlays (not burned-in) on the disc, which look nothing like theatrical, either in appearance or timing. Player-generated subtitles are extremely rare, almost all discs just use graphical overlays.

DVD subtitles look bad because the subtitle spec only allows 3 colors + fully transparent, which means smooth curves and diagonals are impossible (plus the low res). The only way to have decent-looking subtitles on a DVD is to burn them in or player-generate them from an outside source. Blu-ray subtitles mostly look pretty good in my experience, except when they just upscale the old DVD subtitles (e.g. the Matrix), and that’s always pretty awful looking.

When I want to watch a BD movie with subtitles, I usually play it though my PC and add srt subs, because most BDs have really awful subtitles, not in terms of quality but in terms of size and placement - they are usually way too big and with 2.35:1 movies the first line is usually in the picture, while the second line is in the black bar, which IMO is the worst placement of subs you can have, because it totally breaks the cinematic feel - either put them in the picture, which is the way subs would appear in the cinema and it also makes them easier to read while also watching the movie (provided they have a black outline), or keep them in the black bar, so they don’t intrude in the image.