Harmy, I do have a poor connection in general but it'll be awhile before I get to review this workprint. This filesharing website you upped it to isn't very generous with its speeds...
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
Well, it normally downloads at around 300Kbps, which is quite standard in terms of filesharing sites - and the upload is really quick, because you can upload up to 2GB files.
OK Harmy! I've gotten through most of this, and here are my thoughts so far (aside from WOW):
-Laser blasts. The lasers themselves look good, but the flashes are a shade of purple that doesn't agree with me. I know it's not as bad as in the '04, but shouldn't these be white? It looked like they were in the GOUT corner above.
-Some of your Death Star shots are a little iffy on the colors IMO. What might be gray in the GOUT turns out a strange shade of green. Is this what you're going for, or are you going for something closer to the blue from '04? Just curious.
-Crushed blacks are a problem, probably from working from the '04 DVD. I guess you can't do much about that but I felt it was worth mentioning.
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
hey harmy,
checking this out and so far it looks great. I'm sure if you release a DVD5 version the switches to the gout won't be as noticable. I also really liked how you edited jabba out. Looks like I can finally get rid of those pesky 2004 discs. Hooray!
Also a quick suggestion. One thing I really liked about Adywans theatrical reconstruction of ESB was the audio. I think it was the 1997 Special Edition laser disc audio. Maybe you could add the 1997 Special Edition laser disc audio as an optional secondary track to this. But either way this is my new favorite version of STAR WARS."I will laugh my ass off a hundred years from now when the only version of STARWARS people remember are harmys despecialized editions. They will project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality."
Thank you, guys, I appreciate your help.
I'm still kind of torn on the flashes. Colour correcting single frames like that is a bit complicated and time consuming. But I might try.
To the colours, I'm really not quite sure what exactly you mean, like I said, the vague comments like that aren't really helpful, I need concrete shot times to check it out. But I'm trying to go by the Technicolour pics and the 70mm scans rather than the GOUT, as it is really screwed up for SW, it needs a boost for the real colours to show through but not the same boost throughout.
The crushed black are sadly unsalvagable and the 04SE is the only available HD source and in all likelyhood the BluRays will be the same. But to me, the crushed blacks are only really distracting in a few dark scenes, like inside the sandcrawler.
As to the audio, there will be quite a few soundtracks but the 97SE won't be one of them, because it wouldn't sync because of the changes and I have no idea about sound editing and there are several excellent mixes (such as hairy_hen's 70mm 5.1 reconstruction or Belbucus' mono mix restoration) readily available to sync with this project.
joshdv said:I think it was the 1997 Special Edition laser disc audio. Maybe you could add the 1997 Special Edition laser disc audio as an optional secondary track to this.
That audio was on the '97 SE AVCHD. As I recall, Adywan's theatrical reconstruction had audio sourced from various places. Hairy hen gave precise details not long ago.
It looks like the reveal of Tatooine in the first shot is a little early.
The GOUT clip in the upper left is revealed right on cue, and the music reflects this. https://picasaweb.google.com/doubleofive/StarWarsSpecialEditionChangesHD#5537299928729670658
However, there are a few places in this shot where no movement is present that can be used for pausing and retiming: after the crawl has faded away, and the point between the pan down being over and the Taintive IV flying overhead.
But, again, just look at the GOUT clip because it appears to be at the proper cue.
It may just be the power of suggestion, but it seems like different picture settings were applied to the duel than the rest of the film. It seems strange, but I can't put my finger on it.
One specific example of what appears to be an effect of this is "blue drift." It comes off the walls, this blue glow. You can see it on the left of the frame in the shot at 1:21:01.
Because the sabers aren't "despecialized" anyway, and these settings mostly serve to make the scene seem strange, perhaps you would want to try a half-way point for the duel.
(Too bad there isn't an HD source for the '97 SE.)
Harmy said:
And these DVD active comparisons are pretty shit compared to 005's.
Thanks for that. Makes all the time and hard work I put into them back in 2004 seem worthwhile...
@Mentasm: Sorry for the strong words man, I had no idea you were a member. I seriously loved your comparisons at the time (although I disagree with some of the comments) but they're just outdated now. Check out 005's comps:
@ Hal: Yeah, I'm aware of the Tatooine reveal problem, but the only way to fix it is to start the pan down later or to slow it down, the first would cause the pan to be out of cue and the other would make it jittery, I'll test it out and post some samples but I'm afraid it's just gonna have to stay this way.
I used Ady's AVCHD for the duel, because he fixed the blade colour inconsistencies, so that might be it, although I tried making the colour-timing consistent with the rest, it's probably not perfect. But I was still going to go through the duel and tweak the colour some more anyway.
Also, did you by any chance convert it to 23.976fps before watching, because in the WP 1:21 isn't the duel yet, it's when Obi-Wan is leaving the tractor beam.
Two new battle of Yavin shots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MGG_KfVNWA
It's not much of an improvement but it's a bit better.
Hey Harmy, I've checked out the workprint and I really like what I'm seeing. Of course the coloring still looks off for much of the movie, but I'm sure that'll be remedied. I was suprised when I saw the exterior shot of Obi-Wan's hut, that looked pretty damn good. The shot of the falcon approaching the Death Star looks much improved even if it's not 100%. I was also suprised when I saw that you've tried to put back in the original matte painting of the y-wing in the foreground right before Luke climbs into his x-wing.
Question though, what's up with Luke's POV shot of the cantina exterior? The dewback is in a completely different position now. Aside from the unremoved shadows, it looked pretty accurate in the mos eisley test sequence you posted on youtube. Is there a reason for this or is it just part of a test or something? Aside from those few things, it's looking pretty good. And those 2 new battle of yavin shots do look better BTW.
"Oh, don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch."
Forget what I said about the colors, I'm not good at describing them and that's really a subjective thing. However, I agree with keysersoze5's comment about the dewback. And also, I know you were having EXTREME difficulty with the lightsabers, but often times the tip if Obi-Wan's lightsaber becomes a different color from the rest - a different blue, or there's less glow to it or something. Is that an '04 issue? It's noticeable in motion, but I'm having trouble getting a screenshot that properly demonstrates what I'm poorly explaining. The best I can do is this:
If it's like this on the GOUT than I apologize but it doesn't appear to be so judging on the preview.
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
Hey harmy,
for those gout shots have you considered running them through a sharpening filter? It might make them look more HD.
"I will laugh my ass off a hundred years from now when the only version of STARWARS people remember are harmys despecialized editions. They will project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality."
Thank you guys :-)
The colouring looks off for much of the movie? I was actually really satisfied with the colouring for much of the movie. How does it look off? I'm not being an ass here, I'm really interested.
For Ben's hut, I used Dark Jedi's awesome upscaled GOUT, sharpened it a bit more and cleaned up the sky, which was really grainy in GOUT.
Yeah, I decided to use the GOUT enhanced with HD elements for the Y-Wing matte, because it was shortened by about a half in the SE. And I also had to use the previous shot from GOUT. Would people prefer something to the effect of the PDE solution for this?
The cantina exterior matte looked pretty bad on the GOUT, so the Dewback used from there stood out. I decided to replace it with the Dewback from the next shot, which was much higher quality. It's not perfectly acurate but it blended in better. Is this an issue? I can change it back to the original Dewback.
As to the lightsabres, I did notice that myself and I'm afraid there's not much I can do about it. And yeah, it definitely a 2004 issue, they recomped all the lightsabres.
And the GOUT shots are already sharpened plenty. When you sharpen it any more it starts looking like shit. Anyway, shapness isn't really an issue here as much as the stars flickering and smearing and stuff. But I don't know if testers will agree with me but I think that most of the GOUT shots blend really well.
I thought the whole Battle of Yavin looked pretty damn good! Most of the GOUT shots blend quite well, go by fast, and themselves didn't look good in the original version and so really don't stick out at all.
That's too bad about the pan down from the crawl. I'd vote for having the pan begin sooner in order to have the planet reveal on musical cue. That way at least one cue is on time rather than none. Not a big deal or anything, since it's been that way since 1981.
As far as the shortened shot with the Y-Wing, I think it plays perfect the way it is in the workprint, and I prefer it to the way it was in the Partly Despecialized version.
Those damn sabers are the only thing that sticks out in my mind as a bummer, and that's the truth.
Overall, beautiful work. I'll keep pouring over the workprint and let you know of anything else I could add.
Thanks :-)
Here's the new cantina matte:
While cutting the Battle of Yavin sequence, I discovered that this shot was zoomed in in the SE:
So I changed it back using GOUT but it was one of those shots I though stood out quite a lot. And now, when viewing the WP, I found out that the reason they zoomed it in was that the same shot was reused later in the sequence, so I can just take it from there. AWESOME!
Harmy,
I've only made it 30 minutes into the workprint so far, but I had a few comments:
8:52 and 9:27 - too much blue on R2 (and pod). This is a flaw of the SE where they really punched up R2's blue.
10:47 - GOUT sky is more blue than SE (Many scenes on Tatooine suffer from this. Another example is at 16:10).
25:29 - The GOUT sky in this shot is RED. It was corrected to blue for the SE. Do you want to revert to red?
More to come.
You know of the rebellion against the Empire?
Thank you!!! That's how I imagined the feedback to look :-)
Well, what I'm seeing is that in GOUT the blue is overall of more purple tone (on R2, the pod and the sky) which I think is caused by the red shift of GOUT.
About the red sky, I tried to go back to red but it just wasn't possible to achieve through colour correction and it was a bitch to rotoscope (and I did try) so I decided to just leave it.
Harmy said:
The colouring looks off for much of the movie? I was actually really satisfied with the colouring for much of the movie. How does it look off? I'm not being an ass here, I'm really interested.
I know what you mean. Maybe I was just using a poor choice of words. The coloring doesn't really look off for the whole movie, I guess I was really just referring to some of the still present problems from the SE such as the colorless lasers. And I understand there isn't much you can do with the crushed blacks so I'm not gonna be too concerned with that.
I thought I might have seen some flesh tones that looked off but I might have just been imagining things. I guess I'm not as familiar with the original colors as a lot of other people, so I'm probably not the world's best judge on color timing. Plus it's been a little while since I actually saw the 2004 SE's so maybe my first impression was that it looked too similar to them. If I do notice anything specific though I'll definately let you know, I might need to check out the workprint a few more times.
Oh BTW, truly excellent job on that new cantina POV matte. Now THAT'S more like it :-)
"Oh, don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch."
Thanks.
Just try putting it side by side with the 2004 version and you'll see that it's actually very different for the most part.
And flesh tones are the thing I'm concerned with, if you'd find some rather jarring case, please report it. I may or may not agree but it's better than me not noticing something I'd have liked to fix :-)
Vader's saber seems pink. I know that's vague and cliché, but I'm throwing that out there as a general impression.
Could the reds have been toned down too much in that scene? The laser flashes and smoke seems pinkish in the shootout immediately following the duel, whereas the GOUT in the corner is more of a red.
Also, you can see more of that 'blue spill' I was talking about in the short shot where Luke yells, "NO!" toward Vader and Ben. It's present all over the '04 transfer, so it's probably non-reparable.
@bluespill: Oh, that, yeah, I can't do anything about that :-(
The pink sabre I'll try to fix but can't guarantee results.
The flashes, like I said I'm still considering. There's like a million of them in the film, it would be a pain in the ass but maybe.
On a happier note:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FscknS_rCY
I just couldn't sleep soundly knowing I didn't give that shot all the effort I could :-)
The new Tatooine pan-down video coming soon.
Nice; it's awesome to see that mistake shot restored. :)
I only mention those pinkish blast shots because they follow a scene with a pinkish saber, with a possible connection.
And I look forward to seeing a new take on the initial pan down to Tatooine.