GOUT Bugs (and DUDSbtEoEE) — Page 3

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I do consider the non-anamorphic format to be a bug.  Why?  Because industry standard at the time was to release widescreen movies anamorphically.

I have to point out that according to Lucas-logic, the GOUT is not actually the feature film on the 2006 DVDs, but a bonus feature, more akin to a deleted scene or making-of featurette.  And those, I'm afraid, were not only occasionally non-anamorphic in 2006, but also showing timecodes, etc.

That said, aside from Lucas and a few sycophants, I doubt anyone on the GOUT production team believed the Lucas-logic.  Certainly the advertising team believed the GOUT was the primary feature on the set.

AntcuFaalb said:

I know that GOUT's master was prepared for '90s CRTs.

My problem with GOUT is that my primary TV is a 36" GE CRT TV (148lb.!) and GOUT still looks terrible on it while playing.

Yeah, I agree and I found the primitive DVNR distracting even back then, but also many other video transfers looked pretty bad sometimes back then. You are also more used to better looking video transfers these days. You could get away with this in '93 that's what I meant by my comment.

You can also add to your list that the LD's displays more vertical detail compared to the DVD transfers, which is completely ridiculous. Even if the masters were limited and looked like shit they contained more detail than what is seen on the DVD's. This is the case on at least Star Wars and ESB.

A classic example of this:

top: US Definitive Collection LD below: GOUT

I also agree with what Asaki mentioned earlier, what about the rest of the DVNR? the speeder pass by shot and the four-eyed stormtrooper sort of became the poster boys of that problem, but it's far more extensive than just those two shots, overall I have to say that ESB is the worst affected by it, even though the speeder shot in the first film is the single worst one.

^I think that might actually be the result of a poor attempt to remove some of the aliasing. I have no proof, but I think someone has suggested that in the past.

I may have made some progress toward correcting the over-represented reds: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Three-strip-Technicolor-Please-help/post/598910/#TopicPost598910

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I do consider the non-anamorphic format to be a bug.  Why?  Because industry standard at the time was to release widescreen movies anamorphically. It shouldn't have been necessary to state that it was anamorphic; a reasonable presumption is that it would be.  It's also the first thing that fan edits correct when using GOUT as a base - something LFL should have done from the start. So it is obviously for all practical purposes a bug that should have, and could at zero cost have been, fixed.

i also think it's not an issue.

just because people's expectations are implied,

doesn't mean anyone is obligated to 'assume' that

 a process or product will be done to suit their needs.

is it really a zero cost issue? if the transfer

wasn't done that way originally, wouldn't

they have had to do another one?

If a DVD of Wizard of Oz came out and it turned out to be black and white, would it not be a mistake because the label didn't say "in color"?  No, certain things are just presumed.  

Perhaps if the disc included the label - "disclaimer: outdated crappy non-anamorphic f-ed up transfer", then there wouldn't be any bugs!

don't all movies state what formats and technical

specs they are on the back?

couldn't you tell just by looking?

studios have re-issued and re-released dvd's due to

mastering errors (back to the future - improper cropping, etc)..

i'm still not really sure why people were complaining at

the time. all i had to compare them to was a laserdisc

version. and the dvd's were superior in ease, and access

compared to those on standard def tv.

i was VERY happy with the GOUT. (well at

least until i came to OT.com) ha ha

later

-1

msycamore: What's wrong with everyone's face in your GOUT image? In particular, look at Luke's face. My (unmodified) GOUT doesn't look like that at all.

AntcuFaalb said:

What's wrong with everyone's face in your GOUT image? In particular, look at Luke's face. My (unmodified) GOUT doesn't look like that at all.

Yeah, I noticed the same thing right away when posting it, might be due to having been resized in the forum or something, I took this example from an old post of mine in the XØ Project thread. Originally taken from: http://aptirrelevance.com/otscreenshots/screenshots.php?shot=36 and I can see it looks a bit better there but still not right, compression artifacts perhaps. Still, my point stands. ;)

So it looks like the DC's (and, therefore, the GOUT's) temporal noise reduction algorithm is a simple temporal frame blender. Do you see Darth Vader and Leia's bun from the previous frame too?

You_Too: I agree. That's what I was trying to say in my previous post.

However, I was also trying to point out that it doesn't do anything sophisticated. It looks like a very simple algorithm was put into use.

Edit: Here's a challenge!

1. Look at the image of Leia in my previous post and find the corresponding frame in GOUT (I think it's 58995 in PAL GOUT). Also, note that it occurs at a shot/scene-change. Let's call this ``curr''.

2. Take the preceding frame (it contains a shot of Darth Vader on the left and the side of Leia's head on the right) and the successive frame. We'll call these ``prev'' and ``next'', respectively.

3. Jump 4-5 frames ahead (just enough for the blending to disappear). 58999 in PAL GOUT is probably a good candidate. It shouldn't be too different from the frame in #1. Let's call this ``temp''.

4. Using Overlay (or something similar) with ``prev'', and possibly ``next'', try to make ``temp'' look as much as possible like ``curr''.

Note: You probably only have to work in luma for this to work.

BE GONE, FOUL POST OF THE UN-DEAD.

Are you trying to say the process can be undone?

My computer really doesn't like this forum, I can't get the post above to show up correctly or go away... Edit: Fixed!

Asaki said:

Are you trying to say the process can be undone?

My computer really doesn't like this forum, I can't get the post above to show up correctly or go away...

We need to figure out if we can replicate it before we can determine if it can (at least, partially) be undone.

My challenge was for someone to take a frame similar to the one I posted earlier (one without the frame-blending) and merge it somehow with the last frame of the previous shot in order to look at close as possible to the blended one.

g-force said:

it's actually a combination of a temporal smoother and median filter (like clense). If I had to guess, from what I remember, it's probably:

median(current frame, average of about 12 previous frames, median(current, previous,next))

Median filters are non-linear, and cannot be undone.

-G

Yuck :-(

Simple frame-blending can be undone, but if what you say is true, then it's screwed.

AntcuFaalb said:

We need to figure out if we can replicate it...

That bit's easy, just buy this:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Digital+Vision+DVNR+1000+Noise+Reducer

"[We used] a noise reduction and dirt concealment device made by Digital Vision, a company in Sweden. Their DVNR-1000 is a very powerful noise reducer for reducing film grain. Especially on the two earlier movies the film grain was very high."

 - from the 1993 Dave Schnuelle interview.

Moth3r said:

AntcuFaalb said:

We need to figure out if we can replicate it...

That bit's easy, just buy this:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Digital+Vision+DVNR+1000+Noise+Reducer

"[We used] a noise reduction and dirt concealment device made by Digital Vision, a company in Sweden. Their DVNR-1000 is a very powerful noise reducer for reducing film grain. Especially on the two earlier movies the film grain was very high."

 - from the 1993 Dave Schnuelle interview.

Wow, you rock! Where did you find that information?!

Edit: Click Here

A proper name from Google:

MKIIIC Digiscan 4:2:2 - (1987) brought telecines into the standardized world of Digital Television.

(Punctuation modified.)

pittrek said:

You_Too said:

Probably the worst thing to ever come out of my country... haha

What about Abba ? :-)

nothing wrong with Abba.

to me...

later

-1

negative1 said:

pittrek said:

You_Too said:

Probably the worst thing to ever come out of my country... haha

What about Abba ? :-)

nothing wrong with Abba.

to me...

 

later

-1

GOUT = Star Wars: Waterloo Edition

You_Too said:

I wonder why the interpositives used for the GOUT was so rough by the way? Shouldn't they look cleaner than the theatrical prints, being two (is this correct?) generations closer to the negative? Just look at all those glue marks between almost each shot shift, especially in ESB. It's like they let some kid cut and glue it together.

They were old and battered from overuse I guess. New IP's should instead have been produced, but they probably thought they were good enough back then. Around the same time a restoration of the films was under way, but we all know how that turned out.

The splice glue you see in ESB is indeed ugly in many places, but it was seen on theatrical prints as well.