Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Maxim, let me try to clarify. People consider the GOUT a "horrible RELEASE". A "release" is a particular packaging of a movie that is officially produced and sold. Releases are by their very definition embedded in the context of their release date. Given the release date of the GOUT, "horrible" is an apt description because it doesn't meet baseline standards of releases at that time. You're right it isn't a "horrible movie" or "horrible video quality", but it is a "horrible release". That phrase requires no additional clarification of context.
A fan-edit is a completely different sort of "release" and would understandably not be held to the same standards.
I don't necessarily begrudge Lucasfilm using the laserdisc master for what he considered a "bonus disc". I don't even begrudge the excessive DVNR, etc. It's the non-anamorphic format that makes it a "horrible" release. In 2006, the choice between anamorphic and non-anamorphic is akin to simply checking a box in the encoder software. The fact that it isn't anamorphic was clearly to intentionally lower the quality. With no extra effort whatsoever, Lucas could have improved the video quality dramatically just by filling in the check box as was the case for virtually every other film release of that time. It is unfathomable that a producer would intentionally lower the quality of a release so dramatically, to sub-baseline levels, and that's primarily for me what makes the GOUT rise(!) to the level of "horrible release".
I didn't reply to anyone who said it was a "horrible release", I replied to someone who said:
"Regardless of how horrendous the quality was"
I also replied to someone who said it was "unwatchable".
The D1 masters were 4:3 letterboxed, 720x486 (or 720x480, depending on the version of D1 tape used) the same as the GOUT that came from them. To make it 16:9 anamorphic you have to increase the vertical resolution of the picture content (and crop the excess letterboxing so that picture + letterboxing still adds up to 480 pixels). In other words, they would have had to "upscale" it in order to make it 16:9 anamorphic, which isn't typically done when authoring retail DVDs.
Normally with retail DVDs of feature films, the master is much higher resolution than DVD (rather than being the same resolution like D1 tape), so making a 16:9 anamorphic DVD is no problem.
This is one way that will give you 16:9 anamorphic for the GOUT:
crop(0, 104, -0, -104)
Lanczos4Resize(720,366)
AddBorders(0,57,0,57)
That will make this ...
... become this:
Then set a PAR of 40/33 when you encode it and your DVD player will display it like this ...
... instead of like this:
And that is the same result as if Lucasfilm had done it, except for an extra generation of loss (which can be ~imperceptible if done right) due to re-encoding it; or you could encode with a lossless codec if you don't mind a much larger file size and it no longer being in DVD format.
So no, it is not just a matter of checking a box; the raw image has to be prepared properly first, and in the case of the D1 master, this preparation involves "upscaling" the vertical resolution of the picture content and cropping some of the letterboxing (or cropping all of the letterboxing and adding new letterboxing, like my AVS script above would do).
