team negative1 - star wars 1977 - 35mm theatrical version (Released) — Page 111

daileyxplanet said:

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

You can find one on the Spleen.

Thanks. I haven’t had a chance to look on the Spleen. I’m at work so not much help. I’ll check it out when I get home.

RU.08 said:

Williarob said:

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You’re using a lot of words to describe what can be visualized with only a few pictures. You do so much work with this codec you’re bound to have a portfolio somewhere right? Some frame-accurate, frame-type comparisons between your sources, x264 and your commercial encoder at native resolution? Why not share those and prove your picture quality claims while sharing the settings used for both encodes instead of just rattling off numbers and bitrates and ending with “see for yourself!”

And that link you gave to their websites displays some examples of poorly mastered Blu-ray discs. Got a dark area in your film? Have some banding and blocking! Got a fast action motion sequence? You get some banding and blocking!

Jurassic World and Furious 7 have some pretty bad areas, Interstellar features banding in almost every IMAX scene, I can dig up more examples.

Source Blu-ray (encoded with Sirius PixelsTM) vs. Corrected Blocking and Banding, x264 encoded (far lower bitrates)
Jurassic World: http://someimage.com/KzHmLU0 vs. http://someimage.com/MndIkDv
Furious 7: http://someimage.com/LnmEJxd vs. http://someimage.com/1uwbTgt
Interstellar: http://someimage.com/ndPmGZj vs. http://someimage.com/LBYEEWz

Edit: Even better example, Blu-ray vs. Blu-ray. First image is Nightcrawler from the Norwegian Blu-ray vs. the US Blu-ray (encoded with Sirius Pixels). Both discs ~35 Mbps:
http://imgbox.com/w34vNBsZ vs. http://imgbox.com/vC2HbjyL
http://imgbox.com/M5Vo6Lfs vs. http://imgbox.com/nrQGv9ll
http://imgbox.com/C40t7Mzd vs. http://imgbox.com/ktwli0Tg

This belongs in a museum!

DrDre said:

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…

Thanks Dre, and of course without your tool to help, it would have taken longer. Which is why we thanked you again in the credits, so everyone knows.

Also, unlike some want-to-be Sherlock types, that can’t bother to read who the rest of the Team members are, they are mentioned also. Maybe they will tell us the sky is blue, or that grass is green next.

Team Negative1

Williarob said:

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?

Like others have said, it does make sense. As for the Disney thing, my own two cents as I see it, sorry for being off-topic… & long-winded (Note: As a big fan of Harmy’s, Adywan’s, & Team -1’s (amongst others), I have absolute respect for what they’re doing, this isn’t intended as a slight against the Star Wars Faneditors Community in the least - if it comes off that way, sorry ^^);

As most of us know, the Original Master Negatives were destroyed by Lucas to create the 1997 Special Editions, which were then scanned in 2003 in the (at the time) “future-proof” 2K resolution for the upcoming DVD release, & then re-used for the 2011 Blu-Ray release, even though these scans were even in 2010 horribly dated, suffering from “Older Scanner Tech” flaws, excessive DNR, Edge Enhancement, rush-job Colour Correction, etc. so the way I see it when Disney inevitably wants to do a 4K release, they’re basically faced with 3 choices (assuming Lucas didn’t get a clause in that sales contract that forbids them from releasing the Theatrical Cuts, in which case we’re likely permanently screwed);

A - Do what’s already been rumoured; upscale the existing 2K Master to 4K, which I think we can collectively agree would be an awful, cost-cutting approach, regardless of if they try to “fix” the most glaring issues, such as the terrible colour correction (ergo a hybrid Harmy-Adywan approach, with limited execution though to preserve the “Lucas Edits” as much as possible).
B - Go back to the 1997 Master Negatives & 4K scan those, then either recreate the Original Theatrical versions from those (apparently possible, albeit, costly/time consuming), or release those as-is (1997 Special Editions in 4K-HD), forfeiting the 2004/2011 Lucas Edits, but still retaining a lot of Post-Theatrical Edits - i.e. ‘90s Jabba insert, Han still gets shot at, etc.
C - Get access/buy/whatever Original Theatrical Cut Negatives from a private collector source/other, & then 4K scan those & apply (proper) Colour Correction, frame-by-frame clean-up, etc. with minimal grain removal. Not excessively so, just enough (This route would likely result in a new 5.1/6.1/7.1 Audio Mix, too, due to the different sound Clips used in the Theatricals). To be honest, while not ideal, the Negatives don’t even need to be “that good” considering how far Film Restoration has come in recent years. Just check out the “Behind the Scenes” videos accompanying Jaws’ Blu-Ray. The Master they had to work with is a nightmare-worthy mess. Likewise Criterion works with really clunky Negatives all the time, etc. etc. etc. (ergo the -1 Team approach)

D - Then, regardless of if they go with options B or C (as long as they do an “Official Theatrical Cut release”), as a big fan of Adywan’s Revisited work personally I’d argue there would be some monetary value in Disney applying selective Lucas Edits to these new Scans - in a separate release, of course. Specifically, for example; correcting various props errors - Uniform medals on the wrong side, Vader having the wrong panel on his Suit, Han’s Carbonite Prison featuring the wrong clothing, the insertion of Galactic Basic Standard on the Death Star Control Panel (replacing the 1977 Theatrical English-Language Panel) etc. etc. etc. Removing the now-extremely-obvious matte paintings & replacing them with CGI shots, would be another obvious one (without defiling the original version of Dagobah the way Lucas did), etc. The arguably actually “good” Lucas Edits that get lost in the massive sea of shit Lucas has added in as well.

Granted, this would still be a “give & take” kind of Edit, what with some people liking specific details that many others don’t & vice-versa, so there’d still be no guarantee of “global satisfaction” (even Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited was controversial enough for him to release a “Purist Edition”), but a set of Theatrical & “Revisited” Cuts would arguably provide a satisfying Official Cut for the two biggest fanbases in existence, & make Disney a lovely penny from it in the process?

This is all just me though, based on my personal ideology that Disney, unlike Lucas won’t be interested in utterly ignoring the Fanedits Fanbase forever, considering the money they’re letting slip through their fingers by not doing their own “Official Theatrical” release, & while Lucas did indeed inarguably extensively defile his Masterpieces with his Edits, he did also set the groundwork for an “Official Theatrical Revisited” Edit with much of his 2004/2011 work (I’d include 1997 but IIRC most of the SE’s were about applying unnecessary CGI to everything?). Like I said though, this is just me.

Speaking of Blade Runner, an even greater pipe dream; imagine if they actually released the different Original Trilogy Cuts together in a single Box Set (yes, including the 1997 Special Editions & the 2011 “George Lucas Edition” (on their own respective discs), assuming they end up re-scanning the 1997 Special Edition Masters in a first step to recreating the Theatricals (or otherwise). Though I suppose they could just take a page from Lucas’ book & use the old VHS Master if they don’t, or if they’re just unwilling to put the 1997 Masters through even a basic Remastering process… Alternatively, maybe LucasArts still has the original 2003 2K scans? Lol) in much the same way we can get all 5 cuts of Blade Runner in a single purchase (albeit, in varying levels of quality I might add), as the earlier posts in this Thread reminded me. Throw in those lovely Extras Discs from the Blu-Ray Box & maybe a new Documentary detailing the new Remastering process, & it’s guaranteed to draw a ridiculous amount of Star Wars fans desiring a “Definitive Collection” to have on their shelves to it, even as a 14/15-Disc Box Set.

Regardless, I’m way off-topic, so I’ll just wrap this up with; thanks Team -1, I’m equally amazed & excited to see what you’ve accomplished (especially with the limitations you’ve had to work with), & burn it to a Disc soon 😄 Keep up the great work!

P.S. Damn, that’s a big wall of text. Oops ^^

P.P.S. Did you know that the sky is blue & the grass is green? 😄

First of all, a huge thank you, guys! I didn’t know it was ready when I bumped onto it on Blu-torrents, and then saw it on MySpleen as well. I watched it once and a half already, and it is so cool. After recently seeing [i]Minority Report[/i] in 35mm and [i]The Hateful Eight[/i] in gorgeous 70mm, now [i]Star Wars[/i] in digital-35mm, it’s just awesome. I wish I had a videoprojector now… As I see it’s a v1 and as I noticed there’s still room for some improvement, I’m excited to see what will come out of this in the future.
Okay, so now my question : when I split the video to get rid of your introduction so I just have the movie on its own, I noticed the audio came down from 256 kbps to 192 kbps, according to MediaInfo. So my guess is that the 256 kbps only concern your introduction, right? Isn’t 192 kbps a little down? What is it supposed to be when the Dolby is decoded from the print?

Beber said:

Okay, so now my question : when I split the video to get rid of your introduction so I just have the movie on its own, I noticed the audio came down from 256 kbps to 192 kbps, according to MediaInfo. So my guess is that the 256 kbps only concern your introduction, right? Isn’t 192 kbps a little down? What is it supposed to be when the Dolby is decoded from the print?

Actually, we used the GOUT audio, at 192k. For the Bluray, we are going to try to use higher bitrates, and better versions of the Audio.

Team Negative1

team_negative1 said:

Beber said:

Okay, so now my question : when I split the video to get rid of your introduction so I just have the movie on its own, I noticed the audio came down from 256 kbps to 192 kbps, according to MediaInfo. So my guess is that the 256 kbps only concern your introduction, right? Isn’t 192 kbps a little down? What is it supposed to be when the Dolby is decoded from the print?

Actually, we used the GOUT audio, at 192k. For the Bluray, we are going to try to use higher bitrates, and better versions of the Audio.

Team Negative1

Oh, I see. I thought it was the audio from the print, just like with the grindhouse “Empire”. Okay, then, that’s one of the future improvement. Thanks.

RU.08 said:

Jan said:

2. 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

Hi Ru.08, I’ll just use your post as a reference to the discussion about encoders and encoding settings that has been going on on the last two pages.

First of all, I have never heard of that Sirius Pixels encoder and a quick Google search did not bring up any comparision to x264, so do you have any source proofing that it’s really 40% better? That would be an extremly high margin among two encoders using the same codec. Actually, the first thought that came to my mind is that you’re comparing an HEVC (H265) encoder to an AVC (H264) encoder. Then the significant difference in quality at the same file size would make sense.

Here are some basic rules about quality vs. file size vs. encoding settings (subme, reference frames etc.):

• Yes, CRF and 2pass result in the same quality at a given file size. However, the two encoding modes are tailored for completely different purposes. When using CRF, the goal really is to achieve a certain quality (represented by the CRF value) irregardless of the file size! With 2pass the filesize/bitrate is given and the encoder tries to distribute the bits in an optimal way to achieve the best possible quality at that very filesize. Here the encoding settings are crutial. I hope it’s clear now why it’s reasonable to use 2pass for a Bluray encode.
• A given CRF will always result in the same quality. If you use better encoding settings though, the encoder distributes the bits more efficiently (so to say), resulting in a smaller file size. The enconding time however increases.
• When using 2pass, the filesize is fixed, hence better encoding settings lead to a better overall quality. The enconding time however increases.

This is why I think it would make sense to use more optimised encoding settings for the upcoming BD release of Star Wars and ESB.

Thanks to TN1 and all the wonderful forum members that offered me a spleen invite. I watched it several times through out the weekend causing my girlfriend’s eyes to roll multiple times =)

This one looks so natural and I do love the grain! This will probably become my go to edition along with the Harmy version because that’s a whole different awesome right there.

Thanks guys for all you did and all you will do!

^^ You two should get a thread.

I did wonder about the audio on the MKV. It sounded like the '93 mix, but I didn’t see how it could be. I look forward to the mono on the next release.

team_negative1 said:

Actually, we used the GOUT audio, at 192k. For the Bluray, we are going to try to use higher bitrates, and better versions of the Audio.

Team Negative1

team_negative1
26-Dec-2015, 12:02 PM 

It has taken us some time, but there will be a better preservation of the mono soundtrack, thanks to Jaxxon - [16mm print].

team_negative1
31-Dec-2015, 9:49 AM 

We’ve checked out the synchronizing with all of our Reels, and so far it sounds good.

So 16mm mono, 35mm stereo and a reconstructed 70mm version + 35mm spanish soundtrack will be uncompressed PCM/DTS on BD ISO, they are fixed/restored?

Williarob said:

iatrogenic said:

…for anyone planning to author the Star Wars “Silver Screen Edition” mkv for burning to BDR, I came up with the Chapter List below…

This is great - Thank you so much - it was on my todo List.

No problem - glad it was useful to at least one person beside myself.

Unfortunately, the sound of the glass breaking is present. Moreover, Artoo makes a noise when the slaughtered Jawas are discovered, which I don’t recall being in the theatrical stereo.

Encoding is part of mastering of the disc, you have to compress those big movies to fit onto 50 GB with more extras than most people care about. You said Sirius Pixels was the best, I just provided 3 examples of where it failed with a very large bitrate size. I have a couple of custom Blu-ray discs mastered from DCP with x264 configured properly and the results are quite stunning compared to their retail releases. They also playback fine on a number of Blu-ray players. At the end of the day, most of those commercial encoders do not provide nearly the range of customization that x264 does, and they also aren’t updated as consistently being that they are closed source. By the way, it’s 2016. And the films I listed were on the front page of Sirius Pixels website as “excellent Blu-ray encodes” released in 2015.

I just want to thank every body for their work. It is beautiful to look at.