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The Original Trilogy restored from 35mm prints (a WIP) — Page 2

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poita said:

Star Wars: FTLFT was suggested. I’ll leave the acronym to your collective imaginations.

F*** the Lucasfilms’ Trilogy?

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

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peter_pan said:

Will the version you upload be 4K, or 1080?

I am not ‘delivering’ it as such in any format, the restoration will be done at 4K Academy resolution for archival purposes, it will probably clock in at around 16TB or so in size for the final work, per movie. From that any other format could be derived I guess.

I do not think he is going to answer your question as it is stated.

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towne32 said:

peter_pan said:

Will the version you upload be 4K, or 1080?

I am not ‘delivering’ it as such in any format, the restoration will be done at 4K Academy resolution for archival purposes, it will probably clock in at around 16TB or so in size for the final work, per movie. From that any other format could be derived I guess.

I do not think he is going to answer your question as it is stated.

I was only asking for clarification. 4K for archival, but I was enquiring if that was also what will be shared.

I am proud to say I remember the 80’s!

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Episode-1-TPM-game-sounds-files/id/15201/page/1

Currently working on: Red Dwarf Night 10th Anniversary V2.
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Red-Dwarf-Night-10th-Anniversary/id/18056#781639

Red Dwarf Night 10th Anniversary

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peter_pan said:

towne32 said:

peter_pan said:

Will the version you upload be 4K, or 1080?

I am not ‘delivering’ it as such in any format, the restoration will be done at 4K Academy resolution for archival purposes, it will probably clock in at around 16TB or so in size for the final work, per movie. From that any other format could be derived I guess.

I do not think he is going to answer your question as it is stated.

I was only asking for clarification. 4K for archival, but I was enquiring if that was also what will be shared.

I just mean that I do not think he wants to talk about that side of things, in case his previous message wasn’t direct enough.

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Mavimao said:

poita said:

Star Wars: FTLFT was suggested. I’ll leave the acronym to your collective imaginations.

F*** the Lucasfilms’ Trilogy?

lol yeah that was one i came up with.

also: for the last time f***ers

edit: i got that switched, should be for the last f***ing time
i mistakenly thought it was a palindrome

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Just got a chance to view the sample. I am blown away, it looks pretty great to my eye! I am pretty confident that your scan of this film will be the best yet. I would like to say thanks for working on these projects!

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Here is a sample from Empire, raw scan, then a pass with just a quick colour balance done in Nucoda to see if the print is worth using, then a dustbust and ny deflicker/denoise routine as a test.
Obviously he colour still needs a ton of work, I am mainly just checking that the print was worth pursuing. Also no damage repair, hair removal, emulsion scratch removal etc. has been done, this is just a rough pass, so keep that in mind.

https://we.tl/YT0v4T72gc

There are some problems here that I need to work on with the deflicker routine, but the print and scan look viable.

(Oh, and the suggestion was in fact Star Wars: For the Last F***ing Time)

raw
processed

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Hm, i kinda like that name, wish i wouldn’t have to drop the f-bomb to explain it to people in polite company, but the expression probably sums up most forum users feelings on the matter.

That Empire sample is not bad! i am curios, there are various flickering lines on the console of luke’s snowspeeder, is that in the print or from the deflicker routines? (in the color shot, it looks like they are red lines that come and go, most noticable in the large black vertical block next to the round gauge (Directly below the atat)

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 (Edited)

Look on the red tinted first half, if they come and go there, then it isn’t the routine, but keep in mind, anything red will be way, way brighter than it should be in the faded footage, and some of te red and shadows were crushed in the very quick colour adjustment.

The deflicker can get false positives, this really is a rough pass (I spent about 30 minutes on it just now to make a sample) so it is quite probable that there are some processing artefacts.

Part of my process once I get going on these will be to post WIP scenes and have all of the eagle eyes on OT help find anything I miss, but these samples I barely looked at, they are just tests.

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Yeah its there in the red version too. Fair point, i won’t bother you with nitpicks that have no bearing on the current work, sorry! (Glad you are feeling well enough to provide this flurry of updates!)

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poita said:

Here is a sample from Empire, raw scan, then a pass with just a quick colour balance done in Nucoda to see if the print is worth using, then a dustbust and ny deflicker/denoise routine as a test.
Obviously he colour still needs a ton of work, I am mainly just checking that the print was worth pursuing. Also no damage repair, hair removal, emulsion scratch removal etc. has been done, this is just a rough pass, so keep that in mind.

https://we.tl/YT0v4T72gc

Another extremely impressive example. An intense action scene in what I believe you said is the most beat up print of the three OT films. Looks like the dustbusting takes it a long way. If getting to this stage in the cleanup is mostly automated, do you think you can get the OT looking this nice before your licenses expire? There would still be plenty of remaining work, of course, but it’s still an impressive stage to be at.

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Even with the automation, processing time is around 70 hours per reel, and has to be adjusted depending on content etc. So probably not, it will have to wait until I get enough paying work most likely.

The damn virus is the reason for the flurry of updates… can’t sleep!

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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poita said:

Here is a sample from Empire, raw scan, then a pass with just a quick colour balance done in Nucoda to see if the print is worth using, then a dustbust and ny deflicker/denoise routine as a test.
Obviously he colour still needs a ton of work, I am mainly just checking that the print was worth pursuing. Also no damage repair, hair removal, emulsion scratch removal etc. has been done, this is just a rough pass, so keep that in mind.

https://we.tl/YT0v4T72gc

“Color” me impressed! That’s pretty good for an automated script.

To get rid of the red fade, are you using the same technique that you did for the 16mm print of THX?

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

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No, just the standard colour correction tools, offset,LGG and curves in Nucoda, and only a quick botch job at that.

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Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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I’ve always thought Curiosity Edition would be a good name for a SW restoration, and it has the benefit of being anti-litigeous, saying that the restorations are curiosities, rather than rival releases. It’s also definitely a Mars rover, which is a problem. 😉 Great work! Question, is this the same print of Empire as TN1 have, or another?

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Watching the ESB sample again, I noticed that during the shot where the speeder passes under the walker’s legs, the speeder itself disappears in two different frames. This doesn’t happen in the uncorrected part.

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

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 (Edited)

Yes it does, which is part of the reason I chose that shot, it illustrates my process, and is a tricky scene for automation.

I use the same process we used at work, basically develop a set of automated routines that work well with different types of shots, like fast action, pans, zooms, close-ups, static shots, high and low contrast etc.
Then break the movie into ‘scenes’ and apply the appropriate routines.
The I use a ‘diff’ algorithm to spit out a movie of just the pixels that were changed by the routines (it is acutally more compelx than that, but that is the gist) and watch that to look for scenes that need re-doing.
Then adjust the algos to be less aggressive on those scenes, and then repeat the process then go in by hand and do any restoring of original data that had issues with the automation.
Then go through the movie and adjust everything manually that requires it.

We have found this faster and less destructive than doin only a manual pass, or doing manual passes first. The main issue is ensuring that you have picked up all the errors that need undoing, but that is where extra eyes come in handy.

This is a bit different to other approaches, but it is the fastest workflow for me, and again, for me personally, results in the best work that I am capable of.

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Looks great. I love that this last year we have seen 35mm projects. While the Despecialized Editions are very impressive I am in the purist camp that wants the films unmodified as they were presented. Despecialized will always be a well made remix any way I see it. Between the Grindhouse projects and now this it is very impressive to see what could be coming up in the future.

My opinion on the title is this “Star Wars Theatrical Version, Empire Strikes Back Theatrical Version, etc”. It gets across the point that it is the original versions and that it is from a film print. It’s also simple. Too many projects have strange names IMO, which to an outsider or someone browsing torrents looks confusing.

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Dialling up the accuracy of the motion detection brings the speeder back. Also did a hair pass and stretched the signal a little to reveal more shadow detail.

https://we.tl/verwNofxYa

(the green glitch frame happened during upload for some reason)

As mentioned these are just a test, not something requiring feedback at this stage. I’m happy for everyone to comment and pull them apart, but these clips are not going to be used as is, they are only offered up as an example of how I work.

I’ve also been asked by a few if they can have a copy of the scripts, I probably should have used different terminology. I have written these as part of Nucoda’s development system, they are not AVISynth scripts, they are more like plugins and the deflicker on the last compile was just over 3000 lines of code, the motion estimation is around 12000 lines and the de-dust is about 4000 or so, and they have dependencies on other specific plugins.

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To round out the trilogy, here is a shot from Jedi.

https://we.tl/YjCgGTEZUG

Again, there are some issues, but this gives some idea of how it will look.

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Excellent quality! Thanks for sharing your progress with us! And thanks for the read-along records! I had both of those as a kid and the big record for ROTJ. I didn’t remember the voices being so different from the movie.

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This will be all from me for a while, I need to get on with THX and also find some paying work, as I really need a few more SSDs to make it faster and less painful to work on, and family stuff is pretty overwhelming at the moment.

Thanks everyone for the feedbacj, I will post here again when I have something to show, but it may be a while, so don’t be concerned if I go quiet for a month or two.

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thorr said:

Excellent quality! Thanks for sharing your progress with us! And thanks for the read-along records! I had both of those as a kid and the big record for ROTJ. I didn’t remember the voices being so different from the movie.

I’m glad you enjoyed them, here is the last one I have

Mac: https://we.tl/OoWYrD4K16
Windows: https://we.tl/srDZ35ycvt

I guess back when you could only see the movies in the cinemas, you didn’t notice the different voice actors quite as much.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!