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Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 676

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These look striking, great job. I feel like the sun-bleached tone of Tatooine must be one of the more challenging parts of the film to get right, color-wise. What you have looks great. Just seems like it must be hard to tweak.

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This is so cool! I’ve had this question for a while and I was hoping someone could answer me: It seems like any time star wars is found on 35mm it is pretty beat up and the colors are very wrong. How do you know when color grading that your colors are accurate?

Max rebo has no arms, only legs.

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rebothejedi said:

This is so cool! I’ve had this question for a while and I was hoping someone could answer me: It seems like any time star wars is found on 35mm it is pretty beat up and the colors are very wrong. How do you know when color grading that your colors are accurate?

The Technicolor prints aren’t beat up, although they tend have a green cast. There’s also the Derann prints, which have great color, and the 1997 SE prints, which are very similar to the Technicolor prints colorwise.

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Thanks for the response! That makes sense 😃

Max rebo has no arms, only legs.

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Honestly I don’t even care if we get an official release anymore. These projects almost mean more than that anyways. And I honestly think things like 4K77 and 83 (and despecialized ofc) look better than the official 4K Blu-Ray releases lol.

(Previously Pickle2503)

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This was inspired by my viewing of D+80, but since it’s pertinent to all of the films, and I imagine Star Wars 3.0 is the current project, I am posting it here.

I found the UHD disc footage to be great in detail and color, but was really (really) distracted by the godawful frozen grain, especially in bright footage on Hoth and Bespin (I absolutely do NOT mean this as a criticism of ohteedee’s fantastic work putting this together). Further, I found the DNR’d 35mm footage to leave a lot lacking in detail and continuity with the “official” footage.

I am curious where on the spectrum the 3.x versions of Despecialized will lie. Will restored footage be DNR’d to match the UHD Blu-Ray footage? Will Blu-Ray footage be “re-grained” to match the restored footage? Or will both be done to some extent to “meet in the middle”? In addition to its utility for “matching,” I think some artificial grain added to the Blu-Ray footage could help hide the frozen grain.

Thank you all for your hard work, I can’t wait to see what you come up with on the next round!

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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IIRC some degraining and regraining is necessary, not for meeting in the middle per se, but so that the grain characteristics of the various sources blend. i.e. you can’t just add fake grain to a degrained shot and necessarily expect it to blend with the natural grain of surrounding shots, not to mention how many shots contain multiple sources in a single frame.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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This is just awesome!

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I don’t know why but the sky in that sandcrawler shot is particularly nice to look at.

Max rebo has no arms, only legs.

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Agreed, that’s wonderful. Very nice colors.
Could one capture grain from other the other grainy sources and lay it on top?

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Ryrynz said:

Agreed, that’s wonderful. Very nice colors.
Could one capture grain from other the other grainy sources and lay it on top?

This is just the color correction of the BD source as i understand, not the final restoration. I believe they are planning to do something with grain.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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Ryrynz said:

Could one capture grain from other the other grainy sources and lay it on top?

I’ve been wondering this myself. I know that it is possible to, when scanning a print, get the camera to only pick up dust, dirt, hairs, and scratches. I have absolutely zero knowledge as to how scanning works, but poita explained in this post:

poita said:

Okay, there are a pair of TIFF files on the share that have the IR damage matte in the alpha channel if you’d like to take a look.

Anyone who wants to know what an Infr Red damage matte looks like…

The top image is what the film frame looks like under infra red light, the film is completely transparent to infra red, so the only thing the camera picks up is any dust, dirt, hairs or damage on the film.
The bottom image is the film frame the IR matte is taken from.

I am not sure if the grain could be picked up like this because it is so small and packed together, but having an extremely authentic layer of grain would, while mostly unnoticeable, be such a cool detail to make this feel even more polished.

Max rebo has no arms, only legs.

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@DrDre
Even if i am so nitpicking on tone balance (above all black level and midtones)
and the first thing that strucks me is “oh dam they pumped down the black again!”
i have to say your images are most naturals, although i would rise the general dark level a tiny bit (in order to recall more the old fashioned natural colorization instead of popped-up-in-the-face modern contrast).
But keep going on this way, and remember don’t be tempted by “look at how black is this black”!
Thanks and great works!

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This is really amazing.

It also underscores how pathetic Lucasfilm is on this issue. This is certainly orders of magnitude more work for the fan restorationists than it would be for [salaried] LF restorationists with proper elements. Shame we have to resort to this, but bravo!

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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DylanValenti said:

Honestly I don’t even care if we get an official release anymore. These projects almost mean more than that anyways. And I honestly think things like 4K77 and 83 (and despecialized ofc) look better than the official 4K Blu-Ray releases lol.

I’m with you on that. This trilogy of Despecialized HD editions were like the holy grail I was waiting for as a classic fan. Still, if Lucasfilm (or whomever, at some future point) were to release essentially the same thing, officially, on physical media, I would do them the honor of a new purchase. Until then, I’m satisfied with this. MTFBWY

<i>TCBOO</i>

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It’s been a while, but after having reviewed the earlier shots, I’ve updated the indoor shots to have better color dynamics and separation (outdoor shots will follow):

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Looking good, Dre. Harmy indicated in his latest video that he’s working on Empire (instead?/also?). Are you planning any correction on that front?

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Harmy and I haven’t discussed it, so maybe, I guess. 😉

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I’ve updated three more sets of shots: