I've done decent attempt at de-SEing ANH now and think I may release this as a precursor to my ultimate project. Sadly, the precursor might end up being more popular as it lops out more SE stuff than I want to for my version. Not every element can be excised, but a lot can just by lopping out extensions here and there. Here's what I've taken out/fixed:
1) An attempt at fixing the title card. Using the Spanish angle, I grabbed that version of the title card, then did a video crossfade when the crawl begins (early) to help mask the frame jump as best as possible with my limited resources and experience. On the whole I think it looks decent. Not perfect, but an improvement to be certain.
2) The extended dewback sequence. Hard cut from the sand crawler to the shot with the dewback(s) in the background. I don't have the ability to do soft wipes, and the hard wipes look worse than a hard cut. So be it. I intend to keep this shot in the long run, but I wanted to really take a stab at DE-SE'ing the DVD as much as possible tonight.
3) Mos Eisley. Hard cut from the drive into the city to the scene where they get "pulled over." Technically, losing the Ronto does lose some of the OT footage, as the Ronto was superimposed into the existing shot. To get rid of this, the entire thing needed to be killed. There are still other CG additions to the mind trick scene and cantina exterior, but this still removes most of the mos eisley sequence that's so offensive to so many.
4) Greedo's shot. It's gone. No explanation necessary.
5) Jabba. Though I intend to keep him in my ultimate version (with an automatic skip feature built in), I know a lot of people hate this sequence, so this one's being done for you guys on this particular version. I did a video fade between the surrounding edit points to try to mimic the original fade at this point. Hopefully it will suffice.
6) Biggs. I intend to keep him in the long run as well, but if this was an attempt to de-SE the DVD as much as possible, he had to go too in all fairness.
That's it, really. Battle of Yavin is untouched as I don't have any appropriate way to restore shots there. I still haven't the ability to fix Luke's green saber, which has bothered me more than anything other than Greedo shooting first from the day this DVD was put on sale. Hell or high water, I intend to fix it or bribe one of you to help get that fixed, but am in a holding pattern right now.
Stay tuned.