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AotC NTSC P&S + Pal Widescreen (* unfinished project *)

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 (Edited)

Planning on trying to combine the NTSC Fullscreen release with the PAL widescreen release.

Will upscale the PAL to a cropped 1152x480 from 1024x430. Then split the film into shots and line up the 640x480 frame from the NTSC and merge it at approximately 95% (tests needed to guarantee improved quality without making center of the screen stick out). May potentially mix in schormanns hdtv preservation lightly to flesh out details near the edges if the quality difference is too noticeable.

Anyone who could pm me with access to the PAL dvd, I’d much appreciate it.

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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Just one question - why? Both the NTSC DVD and the PAL DVD come from the same digital master, right?

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 (Edited)

Pal was only released in anamorphic widescreen with a vertical resolution of 430 lines. The NTSC Fullscreen version offers 480 lines of vertical resolution, as well as denser horizontal resolution since the initial 720 pixels are squished to represent 640 pixels worth of picture.

Essentially, the difference is the same 4:3 region is represented by 450x430 = 193,500 pixels in the PAL Widescreen, as opposed to 720x480 = 345,600 pixels in the NTSC Fullscreen.

Both are better than the 400x356 = 142,400 pixels that represent this same region on the NTSC widescreen release (The Full screen is nearly 2.5 times higher resolution).

Ideally we’d have a PAL Fullscreen but I don’t believe any were released (720x576=414,720 pixels).

  • The issue is of course finding a way to integrate this in without making the remaining 44% of the video look visibly worse in comparison. Integrating the HDTV stream (maybe 20 percent) into the widescreen portion should help without the broadcast pixellation issues interfering a whole bunch.

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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I’m still not sure I see the point. The HDTV version is already the same master, and higher quality too.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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Sounds like he wants to avoid pixelation and compression artifacts.

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While that is admittedly an issue with the HDTV version of AOTC in particular, it’s much less noticeable on a tv vs. a computer monitor. Best bet would be to do a color regrade on the Blu Ray.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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Maybe a screenshot comparison would show the necessity of doing this?

Star Wars Revisited Wordpress

Star Wars Visual Comparisons WordPress

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You do realize this film was released on Blu-ray, right?

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DominicCobb said:

You do realize this film was released on Blu-ray, right?

Who was responsible for that? I’m gonna sue for the damage it did to me.

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 (Edited)

I personally prefer the DVD master for AotC - Bluray detail harms the film more than helps (IMO), since it makes the quality difference between the Live action and the CGI more apparent. My guess is that’s part of why they opted for the teal-shift.

As for this project, I’m looking at which direction I want to go. I had never seen the PAL version and was incredibly disappointed to find that the video track is nearly 2gb smaller than the NTSC Fullscreen. The quality offset between the two is far more apparent than I had expected.

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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then just tape a clear plastic film on top of your tv screen, or watch the blu-ray while crying.

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dahmage said:

then just tape a clear plastic film on top of your tv screen, or watch the blu-ray while crying.

This works. Or you could downrez the blu-ray to whatever you want.