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Info Wanted: Which Fan Edits are considered the Best ?

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There seem to be countless fan edits for each Star Wars episode.
Which version of each episode is considered to be the best?

For IV there are many options:
Harmy Despecialized
Harmy Respecialized
2004 Special Edition Revisited

Episode I has so many options its unreal:
Shadow of the Sith
Attack of the Federation
Cloak of Deception
Return of the Sith
Fall of the Jedi

Thanks for the help…

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Well, two of the ones you mentioned are “fan preservations”, not fan edits. i.e. they are not an attempt to create a new edit of the film at all, but to exactly re-create a previous official version of the film. Despecialized attempts to be exactly the 1977 version of Star Wars, and Respecialized attempts to be exactly the 1997 version of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: Special Edition. In that sense, Despecialized is generally considered the best of those you mentioned, simply because it recreates an “edit” everyone already loved to begin with. Revisited is the only true fan edit of the ones you mention, in the sense that a fan decided to make his own edit, exercise some creative input over the process, etc.

I’m not really sure it’s possible to salvage The Phantom Menace. You can only do so much, even with the best of the prequels.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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When it comes to prequel fan edits, I go:

HAL 9000’s Episode I: Cloak of Deception
L8wrtr’s Episode II: The Republic Divided
HAL 9000’s Episode III: Labyrinth of Evil

Combined they form my personal prequel trilogy, though your mileage may vary depending on personal preference.

If, for example, you don’t mind Yoda fighting Palpatine with a lightsaber, then you may be more drawn to L8wrtr’s Episode III: Dawn of the Empire. Likewise, if you absolutely loathe Jar-Jar and want as little of him as possible, then you could go with L8wrtr’s Episode I: Shadow of the Sith.

I’d try the work of multiple editors and see what works with you personally. Q2’s prequel trilogy is some people’s sworn-by go-to.

Later, you could try “one-offs,” where an editor chooses to edit only one of the prequels and not all of them. Trooperman’s Shroud of the Dark Side, though a work print, is very detailed in its intricacy.

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Thanks a bunch Aluminum Falcon, You got right to what I needed.

I downloaded Harmy Despecialized and Harmy Respecialized and watched
45 mins of each so far going back and forth every 10 mins.

I really like the truer story and extra bits of footage in Despecialized.
The audio also seems more organic/natural on Despecialized. And Han
must shoot first!

But on my Pioneer Kuro Plasma, Respecialized has significantly better
picture quality. Objects have more depth perception, there is less
grain, and the the images look sharper, everything looks cleaner and
more polished. It looks awesome!

So I’m 50/50 on which I like more.

It looks like L8wrtr and Hal9000 have Ep I-III all locked up.
Between L8wrtr and Hal9000, does one of them make for better picture quality?
(I’ll probably try all 3 from each of them)

And allow me to ask for best 2 selections for episode V + VI.

I won’t be buying episode VII on Bluray. Disney destroyed the franchise.
Blew up the senate? Killed off Han? No intergalactic politics? No plot?
It’s 10 times worse than episode I IMHO. I never hated Disney so much.

Thanks again for all your advise…

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T34655 said:

I won’t be buying episode VII on Bluray. Disney destroyed the franchise.
Blew up the senate? Killed off Han? No intergalactic politics? No plot?
It’s 10 times worse than episode I IMHO. I never hated Disney so much.

I can think of many good reasons to hate Disney; TFA isn’t one of them.

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T34655 said:
Thanks a bunch Aluminum Falcon, You got right to what I needed.

No problem. Always glad to help.

But on my Pioneer Kuro Plasma, Respecialized has significantly better
picture quality.

I’m actually surprised about this. Respecialized and Despecialized are both taken from the same color correction. Non-97 footage should theoretically look identical.

You’re viewing the latest version of Despecialized (v2.5), I trust? Because previous iterations would have poorer quality than Respecialized.

Between L8wrtr and Hal9000, does one of them make for better picture quality?
(I’ll probably try all 3 from each of them)

HAL 9000 wins technically, hands-down, I have to say. He even went so far as to improve the quality of TPM from the commercial BD by adding a layer of fake grain. L8wrtr’s, which predate HAL’s by two years, look a touch too bright with less detail/grain retention.

FWIW, Q2’s trilogy, the full BD-25 versions, look as good or slightly lower quality than HAL’s.

And allow me to ask for best 2 selections for episode V + VI.

I’d recommend Harmy’s Despecialized 2.0 for both Episode V and VI. The latter release is not available quite yet, but there’s a workprint if you want something to burn soon.

Also available are teamnegativeone’s 35mm scans of Star Wars (cleaned) and The Empire Strikes Back (as-is). These releases are wonderfully filmic and full of detail, without the boosted colors and the ugly EE/frozen grain of the Lowry transfer. That said, these are from release prints (4th gen?) and consequently much more grainy.

For Return of the Jedi, there’s an HD fan edit based off of Harmy’s DE 2.0 workprint, entitled Revenge of the Jedi, which is pending approval on fanedit.org. I have yet to see the full thing, but there is a noticeable quality loss from Harmy’s original.

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I have:
Star.Wars.Respecialized.Edition.97.Harmy.mkv 11,223,710 KB
Star.Wars.Despecialized.Edition.v2.5.mkv 18,763,433 KB

What I wrote is based on what I observed.
And I wanted Despecialized 2.5 to win hands down because of the original content.

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Those are the most recent releases. I don’t know what to say about the apparent improved video quality of Respecialized…

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The Pioneer Kuro is ruthless in showing flaws OR greatness.

I noticed that Despecialized reports 720p while RESPECIALIZED reports 540p.
So they were remastered differently.

I A/B’ed many scenes and I consistently see the same results. It seems like
sharpness enhancement, noise reduction, and a slight color boost was performed
on RESPECIALIZED compared to Despecialized.

When the Imperial Destroyer tracker beam’s Leah’s ship in the opening scene,
Both ships have more 3D POP, less grain, less video noise, and more saturated
colors on the RESPECIALIZED version.

Also colors are very different in many scenes. The scene where Tarkin says
“Set your course for Alderaan” the entire scene is greenish and blurry on
Despecialized while with RESPECIALIZED the scene is super sharp with no green
tone at all.

I am using a media player so I can do quick A/B’s. At all times I am locking
the signal at 720P and allowing my Kuro to perform the upscale to 1080P.

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Harmy uses a 540-pixel tall frame for both DeEd and ReEd, but matted onto a 720p frame for Blu-ray compatibility. For Star Wars DeEd, Harmy got a his video de-purpled and re-encoded by another user, and he did his corrections based on that. For ReEd, I imagine he worked directly from the original sources. So the DeEd is re-encoded more times than the ReEd. Also, there have been some problems pointed out with that original de-purpled encode, so I’m guessing it wasn’t as good as it could have been. The 2.x DeEd versions of the other two films aren’t based on a de-purpled re-encode like Star Wars, and look better IMO. He won’t be able to use that for 3.x, so I imagine all re-encode-related sharpness issues will be resolved then. This of course doesn’t consider that the mismatched sources may need to be sharpened or blurred, fake grain added, etc, to blend better with each other.

As for greenish, Harmy’s Technicolor reference had a greenish cast, so the film was made greenish on purpose to match the color reference. Since then, he has learned that the reference isn’t as greenish once fully corrected, so he won’t go that far in the next version. ReEd didn’t have as authoritative a color reference as DeEd, so Harmy felt freer to do what simply looked good.

Hope that helps.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Nice details catbus… The more I watch Despecialized, the more scenes
I find where RESPECIALIZED kills it. When is Despecialized v3.0 coming out?

If RESPECIALIZED could be edited to make it Despecialized on the
dozen screens that Lucas futz’ed without losing any picture quality that
would be epic! (Han must shoot first) And the 3 DTS-HD-MA mixes need to
be added.

Remarkable efforts for both cuts… I’ll never watch my DVD versions again.

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Despecialized 3.x is a ways off. For Star Wars, pretty much everything needs to be despecialized again, since 3.x will be 1080p and Star Wars 2.x was an all-720p project. So don’t hold your breath 😉

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I strongly recommend that you also consider the “Revisited” edition of “Return of the Sith”, which is Seciors’ most recent edit of Episode I, and also “Army of the Republic”, which is Seciors’ edit of Episode II. At the very least they are both worthy of consideration next to the other edits you’ve already mentioned.

I am interested in this thread and discussion, because even though it’s already been discussed a lot in these forums in the past, there has been more recent fan editing work produced in the meantime, and I’d like to know if the favorites that members on this forum have chosen in the past are still their favorites today. So I hope that if there are veteran members of this forum who aren’t posting in this thread because they’ve already written about it in the past, they will still indulge me anyway and post their up-to-date opinions on this subject.

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Some of the Prequel Edits that interested me (back in the day - or more in the present time) for whatever long forgotten reason(s) reason were/are:-

JasonN Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/JasonNs-PT-FanEdits-Attack-of-the-Federation-Twilight-of-the-Republic-and-The-Black-Knight-Rises-Revised-V3-Cuts-In-The-Works/id/10114

MagnoliaFan Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Magnoliafan-Edits-Balance-and-Clone-War/id/987

ADigitalMan Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-ADigitalMan-Special-Editions-DVD-Info-and-Feedback-Thread/id/2446/page/1

Hal9000 Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Episode-I-Cloak-Of-Deception-Finished/id/15663

Q2 Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Fall-of-the-Jedi-Trilogy/id/13959

L8wrtr’s Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/SW-EP-1-Shadow-of-the-Sith-by-L8wrtr/id/11778

TM2YC Edits - http://fanedit.org/ifdb/component/content/article/79-fanedit-listings/fanfix/906-star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-reborn

Father Merrin Edits - http://www.fanedit.org/ifdb/component/content/article/79-fanedit-listings/fanfix/160-star-wars-episode-one-child-of-the-force

TVFrink’s Edits - http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Episode-I-The-Ridiculous-Menace-FULL-MOVIE-IS-AVAILABLE-TO-STREAM-SEE-FIRST-POST/id/12452

^ and that’s not listing the various ‘3-in-1’ Edits out there, or all the Prequel Edits I’ve obviously just missed down the years… (Kerr, Slumberland, Seciors, MrInsaneA, SithLord, Kwan, PhantomEditor, Bear Edit, etc)

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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deepanddark20 said:

I strongly recommend that you also consider the “Revisited” edition of “Return of the Sith”, which is
Seciors’ most recent edit of Episode I, and also “Army of the Republic”, which is Seciors’ edit of Episode II.

Both of these seem impossible to find…

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I want to help but that obnoxious signature image seems to be preventing me from doing so for some reason.

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TV’s Frink said:

I want to help but that obnoxious signature image seems to be preventing me from doing so for some reason.

But it’s soooo very true…
Is my replacement image toned down enough for you ?

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Wow, harsh review of The Godfather. Personally, I think it still holds up.

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Seciors edits are actually easy to acquire if you know how. Send me a private message if you are interested.

Also, one little comment about HAL 9000’s edit of Episode I: He still calls both Qui Gonn and Obi Wan “Jedi Knights” in his opening title crawl, even though he leaves in Obi Wan receiving that title at the end of the movie. This is one of the most blatant errors in the prequel trilogy (an explicit contradiction within the same episode), and I don’t think any fan editor has an excuse for not fixing it, especially when they write their own title crawl as HAL 9000 did, so he could have made it say whatever he wanted. In his audio commentary HAL 9000 doesn’t mention why he did it that way.

Please keep in mind that regardless of the above, I have great respect for HAL 9000 edits and his audio commentary, and I don’t mean any offense to him.

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I started to watch Ep1:Shadow of the Sith by L8wrtr and so
far it is awesome. A HUGE improvement over the DVD version!

My media player is having trouble with the ISO however and it
stops working at about 12 mins into the movie. I need to figure
out how to take it apart and convert it into a single MKV file.

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DominicCobb said:

Wow, harsh review of The Godfather. Personally, I think it still holds up.

I guess whoever created that image left too much up to the viewer to interpret.
(or misinterpret) It should have said “The Force Awakens is SO BAD it makes the
Phantom Menace look like The Godfather”. I honestly never disliked Disney before
December. Star Wars ends at Episode VI for me.

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T34655 said:

I started to watch Ep1:Shadow of the Sith by L8wrtr and so
far it is awesome. A HUGE improvement over the DVD version!

My media player is having trouble with the ISO however and it
stops working at about 12 mins into the movie. I need to figure
out how to take it apart and convert it into a single MKV file.

I find VLC player to be pretty decent at playing back iso files mate. It’s free and easy to use - and not too heavy on the computer power.

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.