Idea: Preserving the original trilogy 2 - Drafting a manifesto

I have a few thoughts on how to preserve the original trilogy based on what few resources we the fan community have, I’m new here but I’ve put alot of thought into this so bear with me.
Software is one thing that comes to mind,
Super resolution
Video epitomes
And afew ither techniques that I though might be useful.

Resources available to us include,
The blurays, Harmy’s despecialized editions, Gout, and the Silver screen editions.

So my first thoughts in restoring this would be to see what we can salvage from the bluray and team negative one’s silver screen edition.

But I have an idea,
Suppose we could break a shot of Star wars down further, say we could break a shot down into three layers,
Foreground, midground and background, via rotoscoping.
Basically, these three layers of video have now been seperated,
If we could run super resolution software then overlay them and render them, we may be able to gain more information.
But lets take it a step further, what if we could again break these layers into rgb layers and reoverlay those.

Video epitomes can be used to train and produce a video of higher resolution, if you have any high res stills that can boost the quality.
Years ago a guy named vincent cheung released this as open source software.
And Total variational inpainting is another type of upscaling software that can be utilized.
The Legacy edition restoration is not available to the public but the vimeo vids may provide a suggestion for how to color time these.

I do not have a desktop at this time capable of handling the task I have suggested, so if anyone cpuld make any suggestions or tell me if I’m full of shit lets have it. XD.

He did say afew things that may be useful though, despite him seeming like a dick.
And the x wing shot and a small handfull of others are sorta available.

I admire that quality, it usually leads to very funny moments.
And I’m dead serious.

Mind you, dicks usually get things done, and mike verta has done some amazing and admirable work.
Anyone who is willing to go through that frame by frame and face legal consequences for their actions even if the fans never get to see it, is a role model of mine.
so yeah, I’m a very nice guy, but saying he seems like a dick, that is from one very nice guy to the other.

I’m done with the topic.

forgive me for being a nerf hurter.

I know, XD.

Jeffgale26 said:

I’m done with the topic.

ONE CAN ONLY HOPE

So let me guess, my preservation suggestions are meaningless, right?

BEATS ME

IM NOT A NERF HURTER

One more resource that may be available is the 35 mm lut from team negative one.
But my main thought was to rotoscope each shot into layers,
If you could seperate Han Solo froma. Shot and Luke from a shot and have their video sections exclusive, we might be able to make the software run more efficiantly.
And we could track errors more easily.

Rotoscoping is an enormous, time consuming task. Harmy’s work is so well regarded largely because of all the time and energy he has spent rotoscoping a number of the despecialized shots.

What you’re suggesting is rotoscoping the elements of the entire film, including elements that were not changed. Compared to Harmy’s work, that is more on the scale of producing “A Scanner Darkly” or any pre-CAPS animated Disney Blu-ray. I don’t think I understand what the benefits you’re suggesting are, but I think you are probably incorrect about them. It would be the most work ever put into a fan restoration project, and would not have a particular purpose as far as I can tell (but I am no expert). Furthermore, we would undoubtedly introduce changes in reconstructing all these layers, just as Disney does to every animation they re-rotoscope.

I understand that it’s a massive undertaking, but I believe my idea is genuine.
While, my idea is not so simple,
I want to at least see what the maximum amount of detail is that I can milk out of a downgraded obsolete master, and the silverscreen edition.
I want to at least get 10 seconds of footage rotoscoped into 3 layers, a foreground, midground and background and maybe more, I’m hoping that doing this may not compromise depth of field sensitive shots, and eliminate ghosting artifacts inherint in The GOUT uprez.
The idea is to minimize changes and artifacts that would occur.
So I would need to deblock the footage, and then convert it into an uncompressed Raw video format.
I at least want to test out my concept in the future and see the potential of it.
It may provide more benefits and I’m a bit skeptical myself.
I also wanted to see if I seperated this footage down to the RGB level if there was any potential of extracting more detail that was lost.
So I’m not trying to introduce any changes, but trying to see if we have anymore definition to gain. The only things we have access to at the moment.
I worry that we’ll probably not see Star Wars rereleased ever again on home video.
And if there is a potential perhaps I can assemble a team of people to assist me in such a massive undertaking.
If we could break down the movie into say 8 segments and recinstruct it in such a manner
It would take less time.
The 10 seconds of footage I want to use are Han shooting greedo first.
So my resources are only two.
After editing from them I will rotoscope this into the 3 sections and seperate them into 9 sections
And once finished I will reunify these elements to the original and compare.
I’ll be starting this project in 6 weeks, and I’ll share then bit I need to get a desktop first.
But it’s hopefully going to work and be a decent preservation attempt.

In a nutshell it is to increase the resolution and to create a sharper copy than what is currently available to the average viewer.
It becomes clear that doing a 4k restoration a year after the release of video from obsolete 2k masters, should probably be taken as an insult.
Considering that the only people who have a decent set of masters at this point id FOX, Disney, and GL and Mike Verta.
So I want to see if we can produce something of decent quality in the mean time.
That being said the only change is hopefully the way the computer interprets the grain pattern.
Basically I want to reconstruct a decent Anamorphic 2k master from an
804 x 1920 video source.
It can be fitted back into a ratio by rendering or by VLC media player.

And that’s just in case Donalt Trump, bad Vlad and the rest of the world does come to an end for a while.
So it’s for archival purposes and I just want to see if my theory is possible, mostly.

I want to see if I can unify their techniques to produce a better result.
Don’t get me wrong they all have brilliant approaches, but if we all combined our efforts into one project
We could have a much better headstart on saving this thing since the powers that be don’t appear to care, Fox and Disney are two children.
If they do, and they show that they do, by some chance in hell then I’ll drop this SOB, and shut up.
But until then, I think their needs to be a new fedora looking for the ark ofnthe covenant.

It’s not quite the scale of a scanner darkly about half, and again I’m well aware of the massive undertaking.

My only other addition to this will be that my software will be.
Cinelerra
Blender
Infognition suoer resolution
Ffdshow
Avisynth
I want to be able to use open source software or affordable software.
I’ll post a pdf with my example video when the work if complete.
But my objective is this.
To see if more resolution can be obtained from the bluray, silverscreen edition and any other random sources.
To use software available to any consumer.
To hopefully prove my thoughts.
To create a higher quality version of the film for the purposes of archival.

Jeffgale26 said:

My only other addition to this will be that my software will be.
Cinelerra
Blender
Infognition suoer resolution
Ffdshow
Avisynth
I want to be able to use open source software or affordable software.
I’ll post a pdf with my example video when the work if complete.
But my objective is this.
To see if more resolution can be obtained from the bluray, silverscreen edition and any other random sources.
To use software available to any consumer.
To hopefully prove my thoughts.
To create a higher quality version of the film for the purposes of archival.

Negative1, is that you?

Jeffgale26 said:

It’s not quite the scale of a scanner darkly about half, and again I’m well aware of the massive undertaking.

The issue, aside from the 15 years of rotoscoping, is that I’m not sure any of it makes sense as far as why you would rotoscope it. You keep alluding to combining the best things together and getting the most out of it, but I’m not sure that there is a reason for any of this work to be done. And you’ve suggested using the SSE. As great as it is to have that release, and despite the fact that I used it myself in 2.7, it is a relatively low quality scan. Certainly not worth the weird massive undertaking you’re describing. Better scans have already been done and, though they don’t have planned release dates, they would surely be available before you complete several minutes of the… thing… you are describing.

I don’t mean to discourage you in general. It’s nice to have people who are motivated to help with these films. But there is always a balance between the amount of work required and the payoff. Before deciding to undertake any large scale project in life/hobbies/business/, it is necessary to plan and understand the benefits and risks. Your project sounds like years and years worth of work, but without any reason at all for any of it to be done. I don’t think you understand what you are talking about.

Basic.
I have a theory, rotoscoping the footage and seperating it into rgb layers might make it easier for the super resolution software to perform a deep analysis of the footage.
I want to run a test on a small sequence of footage of say 10 seconds 240 frames, I will then share my results.
I want to create a cut of the film that matches the TOA salvaging footage from my 3 resources BR, SSE, and SSE if the reults are worth it.
And finally, I love these films, I want to make sure we can all watch them in their original form as art.
I don’t play games and I have no social life, and I’ll be the bitchboy of the fan community, but I’m determined to get this done.