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team negative1 - star wars 1977 - 35mm theatrical version (Released) — Page 110

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On the plus side, I was able to locate 85 of the lost frames, the rest are all at the reel changes and are not on any of our other print sources either. Download the zip from here:

http://we.tl/PcodpuHF2v

In at least 30 cases there is a tif and an EXR with the same frame number. The EXR is the raw scan, the tif is the cleaned frame. The frame numbers should match up to the GOUT, but it is late so if I made a mistake please forgive me.

If any of you succeed in the cropping and color matching, please share the “fixed” Missing frames and your AVISynth script used to re-insert them, as I’m sure other people would like to do the same.

We will do our best to make sure they all make it into the Blu-ray version.

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 (Edited)

Does this mean the BR version will be GOUT - sync? That would be awesome!

Thank you for all your hard work guys!!

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That would be awesome because of the different language and other alternate audio and subtitle tracks. But how would you handle the frames missing at the reel changes?

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Harmy said:

That would be awesome because of the different language and other alternate audio and subtitle tracks. But how would you handle the frames missing at the reel changes?

Well I can think of several options:

  1. Insert Black frames - which is perfect for the missing frames between Reel 1 & 2 because they are black anyway, but possibly a little jarring everywhere else.
  2. Duplicate a few frames, or use some sort of interpolation technique.
  3. Recreate the missing frames perhaps by using another source, e.g. Upscaled GOUT or the Despecialized Edition with added grain or something to make it look like the other frames in the shot.

Personally, I think option 3 can be made to work in such a way that most people wouldn’t even know that’s what we did, but at the same time, it feels like cheating. We vowed to use nothing but the film sources and I think we need to stick with that, so I expect we will just insert black frames.

Whichever option we choose, there will be people who don’t like it, but one of the best things about this forum is that there will be somebody ready to step up and implement the alternative options. They will feel strongly enough that the short black “flash” is not good enough for them personally, and there will be others who agree, and between them they will find their own way to smooth it over, and hopefully they will share that with others.

Perhaps this is why Lucasfilm / Disney can’t be bothered to do it themselves - we (the experts) can’t all agree on what is best - some like grain, some can’t stand it, some like the “invisible CGI” fixes like the digital recomposits of the SE but want other changes removed… There are already so many different versions of the film and none of us can agree on the correct color timing, cropping, or audio tracks… The only solution is for us all to come up with the version of the film we want to see.

Personally, I’m old school. I want it to look as close to watching a 35mm film print at the cinema in 1977 as possible because that is the film that won the Oscars. That is the film that became a phenomenon, and that is the film I want to watch. I think we’re getting closer to that goal.

And I think that between Harmy’s Despecialized Editions, our own 35mm preservations (and we have more coming), Poita’s and everyone else’s projects, and all of the hybrid projects that will inevitably spin off from all of these, we will eventually get there. We will all find our personal Star Wars Nirvana.

Am I making any sense at this point or am I just so tired I’m delirious? It’s 2 AM, I’m going to bed! I gotta get up and go to work tomorrow… “Star Wars Nirvana…” If we find that, what the hell are we gonna do with all that spare time?

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
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Makes perfect sense to me, but then, I only got an hour of sleep last night, so possibly the wrong guy to comment.

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Williarob said:

Harmy said:

That would be awesome because of the different language and other alternate audio and subtitle tracks. But how would you handle the frames missing at the reel changes?

Well I can think of several options:

  1. Insert Black frames - which is perfect for the missing frames between Reel 1 & 2 because they are black anyway, but possibly a little jarring everywhere else.
  2. Duplicate a few frames, or use some sort of interpolation technique.
  3. Recreate the missing frames perhaps by using another source, e.g. Upscaled GOUT or the Despecialized Edition with added grain or something to make it look like the other frames in the shot.

Personally, I think option 3 can be made to work in such a way that most people wouldn’t even know that’s what we did, but at the same time, it feels like cheating. We vowed to use nothing but the film sources and I think we need to stick with that, so I expect we will just insert black frames.

Whichever option we choose, there will be people who don’t like it, but one of the best things about this forum is that there will be somebody ready to step up and implement the alternative options. They will feel strongly enough that the short black “flash” is not good enough for them personally, and there will be others who agree, and between them they will find their own way to smooth it over, and hopefully they will share that with others.

Perhaps this is why Lucasfilm / Disney can’t be bothered to do it themselves - we (the experts) can’t all agree on what is best - some like grain, some can’t stand it, some like the “invisible CGI” fixes like the digital recomposits of the SE but want other changes removed… There are already so many different versions of the film and none of us can agree on the correct color timing, cropping, or audio tracks… The only solution is for us all to come up with the version of the film we want to see.

Personally, I’m old school. I want it to look as close to watching a 35mm film print at the cinema in 1977 as possible because that is the film that won the Oscars. That is the film that became a phenomenon, and that is the film I want to watch. I think we’re getting closer to that goal.

And I think that between Harmy’s Despecialized Editions, our own 35mm preservations (and we have more coming), Poita’s and everyone else’s projects, and all of the hybrid projects that will inevitably spin off from all of these, we will eventually get there. We will all find our personal Star Wars Nirvana.

Am I making any sense at this point or am I just so tired I’m delirious? It’s 2 AM, I’m going to bed! I gotta get up and go to work tomorrow… “Star Wars Nirvana…” If we find that, what the hell are we gonna do with all that spare time?

All made sense to me. Honestly, any of the ideas seemed fine imo, and I trust you guys to make the right call. I would firmly throw my voice into the camp, though, that would be extremely, extremely grateful if you guys are able to release the next version as GOUT-synced. Holy hell would that be appreciated. I’m no computer slouch, but following some of the above conversations about how it would have to be done on my own were quite out of my league. If it came direct from the source that way, that would alleviate a lot of issues. Obviously I am eternally grateful for whatever you release, but I think it would be a huge boon to the community if it were GOUT-synced. Just my two cents.

May the Force be with you.

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Makes sense. Stick with preserving the film as it was in 1977.

-kurosawafan

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 (Edited)

Williarob said:

If these frame numbers are accurate, I can locate and upload the raw, uncleaned frames…

Thanks, but reintegrating the missing frames is not something I have time to do myself. As you say, it is quite a bit of work.

The numbers are accurate though. I’ll send you what I sent poita.

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I quite like it here in the cellar. It’s private and cozy.

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Density said:

I hate to sound whiny, and I hate that my first post on this site is a complaint, but if you really want the public to have access to this–as well you should, as it is of great historical significance–SOMEONE should upload it to a public torrent tracker. 99% of the public–myself included–has no access to a private tracker and no way of obtaining an invite, no understanding of or access to usenet, and no time or bandwidth or premium account needed to download a massive amount of large files from ulozto. As of now practically the only people who even know this project exists, let alone have means of obtaining a copy, are the most hardcore fans and internet users. I understand you may be trying to avoid legal issues, and I kind of understand uploading it by these means first (though Harmy, let me say I really love your work–which I was only able to obtain because thankfully someone uploaded it to a public tracker–but if you’re going to broadcast on Facebook that you’re uploading it to ulozto you might as well just upload it to a public torrent site to make life easier for everyone) but someone who has it now really should take one for the team and seed it to a public place if you really want it to spread and be seen.

Plus, it’s not like this whole scene is exactly a secret anymore. I’ve seen articles about Despecialized in major news publications. The genie’s out of the bottle. If Disney or whoever owns the rights to Star Wars now really wanted to shut you all down they would have already. You might as well go public with your initial releases and make sure the maximum number of people obtain copies and continue seeding it. Then there’s no way they could stop it from spreading. I honestly do not understand why everyone here makes their work so inaccessible and exclusive, and us mere mortals have to just sit back and wait for some good samaritan to share a secondhand copy with us.

Uh sorry. There is some definite sass here. Let’s start with: “if you really want the public to have access to this–as well you should, as it is of great historical significance–SOMEONE should upload it to a public torrent tracker.”

I am sorry but “SOMEONE should” comes off like you’re giving orders to us.

“someone who has it now really should take one for the team and seed it to a public place if you really want it to spread and be seen.”

Take it for the team? Really? Hyperbole much? Again, you continue with this tone of giving orders instead of polite suggestion.

“I honestly do not understand why everyone here makes their work so inaccessible and exclusive, and us mere mortals have to just sit back and wait for some good samaritan to share a secondhand copy with us.”

Inaccessible - exclusive - us mere mortals - good samaritan. I’m sorry but you come off as petulant here. You seem to concede that someone will eventually upload it to a public tracker but you whine because you can’t get it now.

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

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I watched the entire film, and it looks amazing! The colors, detail, and cleanup are excellent. Thanks a lot for all your hard work team, it’s been a lot of years in the making, but it’s definitely worth it. I’m already looking forward to your future projects…

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Williarob said:

We will do our best to make sure they all make it into the Blu-ray version.

I know I’m the only one who cares, but since you’ve outed yourself, why not just post all the updates from now on and drop the team account nonsense?

Sounds reasonable.

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Jan said:

  1. In my opinion, a total size of about 25GB is sufficient for a 1080p encode at a very good quality (just compare it to encodes of other movies available on various file sharing sites), if the encoding settings were to be somewhat enhanced compared to your V1.0. As you’re aiming for a final file size, 2pass encoding fits the purpose much better than CRF. Additionally, some other settings might need adjustments. Overall, the settings suggested at the official x264 website (see link below) are quite a good starting point. The one thing I would change though is --tune grain instead of --tune film for obvious reasons. Any other possible, manual change of the encoding settings is just fine-tuning in my point of view. With these settings, the encoding quality will be quite a bit better and fine details as well as grain will be be preserved much better! BTW, I helped Harmy with his encodes of the Despecialized Edition😃

Hi Jan, sorry to say you’re wrong on this one. The best h264 commercially available encoders are about 40% more efficient than x264. And I’m not talking about Mainconcept which is the encoder everyone compares x264 to, I’m talking about Sirius Pixels which is much better than x264, hence the reason that top authoring houses prefer it. So if you have a Bluray that’s already encoded using the Sirius Pixels encoder then no matter what you do, the x264 encode will be significantly lower quality at the same size (beyond just the generational loss). A single-layer movie encoded using the Sirius Pixels encoder can match the quality of a double-layer movie encoded using Mainconcept or x264. Also, the 2pass option does not produce better quality at the same size as CRF.

Additionally, movies are made more compressible before encoding as well. Such as removing film grain - especially in the effects shots.

With this release we have neither option - the -1 team don’t have access to the best encoders (and if they do they don’t want us to know), and they want to release the film as it is, and not cleaned up to a point that makes it much more compressible. So in my view it’s not the x264 settings that are an issue, rather it’s the CRF value itself. In this case, CRF = 19, which is just not quite good enough, and leads to visible compression artefacts, at least in some parts of the movie. If it were up to me, which it isn’t as I’m not a part of their team, I’d suggest a CRF value of 16. This might result in a 34-50GB file size, but I’d personally rather see that.

Yes it is much larger, but we have a v1.0 now so I say go all out for v1.5 and so I say: let the material truly shine!

Also: many thanks to the Team -1 - what a terrific effort with this release!!

V

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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 (Edited)

Williarob said:

Harmy said:

That would be awesome because of the different language and other alternate audio and subtitle tracks. But how would you handle the frames missing at the reel changes?

Well I can think of several options:

  1. Insert Black frames - which is perfect for the missing frames between Reel 1 & 2 because they are black anyway, but possibly a little jarring everywhere else.
  2. Duplicate a few frames, or use some sort of interpolation technique.
  3. Recreate the missing frames perhaps by using another source, e.g. Upscaled GOUT or the Despecialized Edition with added grain or something to make it look like the other frames in the shot.

Personally, I think option 3 can be made to work in such a way that most people wouldn’t even know that’s what we did, but at the same time, it feels like cheating. We vowed to use nothing but the film sources and I think we need to stick with that, so I expect we will just insert black frames.

Whichever option we choose, there will be people who don’t like it, but one of the best things about this forum is that there will be somebody ready to step up and implement the alternative options. They will feel strongly enough that the short black “flash” is not good enough for them personally, and there will be others who agree, and between them they will find their own way to smooth it over, and hopefully they will share that with others.

Perhaps this is why Lucasfilm / Disney can’t be bothered to do it themselves - we (the experts) can’t all agree on what is best - some like grain, some can’t stand it, some like the “invisible CGI” fixes like the digital recomposits of the SE but want other changes removed… There are already so many different versions of the film and none of us can agree on the correct color timing, cropping, or audio tracks… The only solution is for us all to come up with the version of the film we want to see.

Personally, I’m old school. I want it to look as close to watching a 35mm film print at the cinema in 1977 as possible because that is the film that won the Oscars. That is the film that became a phenomenon, and that is the film I want to watch. I think we’re getting closer to that goal.

And I think that between Harmy’s Despecialized Editions, our own 35mm preservations (and we have more coming), Poita’s and everyone else’s projects, and all of the hybrid projects that will inevitably spin off from all of these, we will eventually get there. We will all find our personal Star Wars Nirvana.

Am I making any sense at this point or am I just so tired I’m delirious? It’s 2 AM, I’m going to bed! I gotta get up and go to work tomorrow… “Star Wars Nirvana…” If we find that, what the hell are we gonna do with all that spare time?

It’s great that you found 85 of the 111 (or so, I think) frames.

Blank frames (or better yet, looped black frames from the same segment) are perfect for reel 1 to 2.

2 to 3 is a bit trickier, but I think you can rate-extend the reel 3 head to fill a few frames, frame blend, etc. The start of the shot is static iirc.

3 to 4 is the real trick, as discussed earlier. I hope you’ve gotten a lot of this one back, because there’s movement on both ends of the cut that will seem jarring when modified. As a side note, it would be nice to clean up some of the huge markings even if you leave the actual reel marker.

4 to 5 might be tricky as well as it’s in the midst of action. I can’t think of what the character motions are, so it might be possible to tweak the surrounding shots without hurting things too badly.

5 to 6 would be easy to extend the x-wing start on the reel 6 head.

I’m just hoping it can be done without relying on things like the GOUT. But hard cuts to black frames are the most jarring of all, and not really suitable for a final BD release in my biased opinion.

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He is one of many, IIRC. 😉

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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RU.08 said:

Jan said:

  1. In my opinion, a total size of about 25GB is sufficient for a 1080p encode at a very good quality (just compare it to encodes of other movies available on various file sharing sites), if the encoding settings were to be somewhat enhanced compared to your V1.0. As you’re aiming for a final file size, 2pass encoding fits the purpose much better than CRF. Additionally, some other settings might need adjustments. Overall, the settings suggested at the official x264 website (see link below) are quite a good starting point. The one thing I would change though is --tune grain instead of --tune film for obvious reasons. Any other possible, manual change of the encoding settings is just fine-tuning in my point of view. With these settings, the encoding quality will be quite a bit better and fine details as well as grain will be be preserved much better! BTW, I helped Harmy with his encodes of the Despecialized Edition😃

Hi Jan, sorry to say you’re wrong on this one. The best h264 commercially available encoders are about 40% more efficient than x264. And I’m not talking about Mainconcept which is the encoder everyone compares x264 to, I’m talking about Sirius Pixels which is much better than x264, hence the reason that top authoring houses prefer it. So if you have a Bluray that’s already encoded using the Sirius Pixels encoder then no matter what you do, the x264 encode will be significantly lower quality at the same size (beyond just the generational loss). A single-layer movie encoded using the Sirius Pixels encoder can match the quality of a double-layer movie encoded using Mainconcept or x264. Also, the 2pass option does not produce better quality at the same size as CRF.

Additionally, movies are made more compressible before encoding as well. Such as removing film grain - especially in the effects shots.

With this release we have neither option - the -1 team don’t have access to the best encoders (and if they do they don’t want us to know), and they want to release the film as it is, and not cleaned up to a point that makes it much more compressible. So in my view it’s not the x264 settings that are an issue, rather it’s the CRF value itself. In this case, CRF = 19, which is just not quite good enough, and leads to visible compression artefacts, at least in some parts of the movie. If it were up to me, which it isn’t as I’m not a part of their team, I’d suggest a CRF value of 16. This might result in a 34-50GB file size, but I’d personally rather see that.

Yes it is much larger, but we have a v1.0 now so I say go all out for v1.5 and so I say: let the material truly shine!

Also: many thanks to the Team -1 - what a terrific effort with this release!!

V

While we don’t have access to Sirius Pixels, or whatever the most expensive solution currently is, isn’t it fair to say that that, regardless of who has licensed the x264 codec and built a shiny wrapper around it with some custom presets designed for maximum quality, the codec at the heart of the application is probably exactly the same as the free version it was built on? All we have to do is find out what those settings are and feed them into the free encoder. Perhaps I’m wrong, the codec is after all open source so the companies that license it may have made some code changes, but I still believe that we can tweak the settings of the free version and improve the quality at the same file size.

In any case, unless somebody wants to buy us a $100,000 license for the Sirius Pixels encoder, it’s a moot point. Tweaking the settings is all we can do…

In other news, I’d like to add some motion menus to the bluray. You may have noticed that there is one motion menu background in the extras folder, but personally I think that one is more suitable for a Grindhouse version - this release is after all supposed to be the “clean” version. If anyone out there would like to come up with some alternative motion menu backgrounds we’d love to see them.

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
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Supaflex1 said:

This is my first post on the forum. I just wanted to say thank you to Team Negative1 for restoring this film back to the cinematic way that I remember it, grain and all. I downloaded this yesterday and watched it and I was immediately taken back to that galaxy far far away. Thanks again for restoring that magic. I look forward to your next release. Keep up the good work!!!

This is a proper first post!

“Stargazing wizards, stare into the night,
Hurricanes and blizzards, here comes the final fight”

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Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed watching this. I recently purchased the Blu-rays and the dissatisfaction they left me with lead me to Harmy which lead me to this. Nothing hits the mark as closely as what this does! I am truly grateful to have a copy of Star Wars that I can watch and not be distracted by all the “enhancements.” A part of me hopes that someday we’ll get a proper restoration, some kind of middle ground like the final cut of Blade Runner, but regardless the experience of watching this will always remain one of the highest points of my Star Wars experience. Excellent work. I can’t wait for Empire and ROTJ. Thank you!

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Yeah.

This. Is. Star Wars.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Williarob said:

While we don’t have access to Sirius Pixels, or whatever the most expensive solution currently is, isn’t it fair to say that that, regardless of who has licensed the x264 codec and built a shiny wrapper around it with some custom presets designed for maximum quality, the codec at the heart of the application is probably exactly the same as the free version it was built on?

No, it’s a different codec entirely. X264 is the best free AVC codec available, and it’s better than Mainconcept - a commonly used “entry level” commercial AVC codec. Try it yourself, grab yourself a bluray encoded using the Sirus codec, rip it and re-encode it to the same size using x264. Preferentially try it with a BD25 as the difference in quality will be more obvious. Doesn’t matter what settings you use, x264 can’t achieve the same quality at the same size.

You can run the same test on MPEG2 encoders as well. In this case the free encoders are TMPGEnc, QuEnc, and HC Encoder. As a general rule the slower the encoder the better the quality, but even the best quality of the three - HC Encoder - is both slower and lower quality than comparable commercial encoders like Mainconcept and Procoder. I think this is why there are so many SL discs out there - Mainconcept will produce with 4.3GB quality that back in the early days of DVD was impossible even with two discs, and that advancement has allowed DVD publishers to press high quality SL discs. If they were using HC Encoder they wouldn’t be the same quality. And the free MPEG2 encoders, as you’ve no doubt noticed, have not advanced at all in the last 10 years in terms of the quality they produce.

In any case, unless somebody wants to buy us a $100,000 license for the Sirius Pixels encoder, it’s a moot point. Tweaking the settings is all we can do…

My point is that what Sirius Pixels can do in 22GB, x264 needs more like 30GB to achieve. My advice is to stick the CRF down to 16, use the Slower pre-set, and don’t worry about the size. It’ll get down-converted and transcoded by others anyway.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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I too would appreciate a 720P down-convert as my TV is 1080i plus 1080P and Plex are not really compatible for seamless watching.