Is it just me, or does 2.7 have more artifacts than 2.5? Like at 42:22-42:26 as Obi-Wan moves his head the artifacts around it are visible and move as well. But again, it could have also been his way in 2.5, I don’t have a copy right now so I could’nt verify it.
Otherwise, especially color-wise, I see a huge improvement. Awesome work!
I have no problems with people pointing out stuff like this. But I would request that people do please try to make the comparison before bringing it up, just to make sure that we can focus discussion on things that are definitely occurring. There are a bit of artifacts in this shot for both versions. Overall, I do not think 2.7 has more throughout the film since it was made from the same master using the same settings. But yeah, as far as blu-ray shots, those artifacts you point out are the most noticeable in the entire film for me and I’ve seen them in a variety of different encodes. I don’t know if it’s a matter of the VBR being low for the very low-movement shot and then needing to rapidly ramp up for the wipe or what.
Not sure if this issue was noticed to death already, but on the Death Star scene, right before the shot with Stormtroopers searching the Falcon, there seems to be some sort of screen-torn brightness (blue color fade?) on the top right (and maybe the rest of it?). It looks like that brightness was slightly bumped up.
On some of my calibrated displays it’s not very noticeable. But on a display with kind of blown out black levels I see what you’re talking about. It’s there on the blu-ray as well. I’m not sure if it’s something they screwed up in 2004 or if that’s just how it was composited. Also, I’m pretty sure your image is from 2.5. If it is indeed an error it probably belongs in Harmy’s troubleshooting thread so that he can do something for 3.0. It looks like it might not be an error, but maybe its appearance can be optimized like some of the garbage mattes and slugs.
edit: Yep, I think it might be a 2004 thing.
Edit: Again probably just me, but there seems to be an audio glitch (pop?) for the 1977 70mm six track mix (5.1) at 33:07 (Occurs in Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic, but not in VLC).
The audio mixes aren’t done by me (or even Harmy) and they do have their own threads, I think. I don’t do any encoding of the audio (and believe me that you don’t want me messing with that!). But you are probably right that it might be a WMP specific thing. I didn’t even know it would run the mkv or DTS-HD. But then, I haven’t used it in many many years.