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Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 132

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Holy crap, Harmy. This stuff is looking amazing. I was hopeful for ESB v2.5 before, but seeing just how much of an improvement this update can promise, I now have a burning desire. It was okay before, and better than watching the official releases by far (actually that should go without saying), but this is on another level.

Really looking forward to it. Let us know what we can do to help.

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To be clear, are you wanting to use that for V3 and up only, or are you waiting for poita in v2.5, too?

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Harmy said:

the colors on the Grindhouse version are pretty bad, so there’s only so much that can be done to retrieve them (actually, I think I deserve some kind of award just for how much I’ve been able to pull out of the Grindhouse)

We just assumed you had one already

I am curious, aside from colors, what are the other problems you have with the grindhouse?

youtube.com/c/StarWarsComparison

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Harmy said:

3.0 and up.

Thanks for the quick response. While I will help as I can in Poita’s efforts from here out (LOL, I’m only ever aware of new things here if I see links in the few threads I follow), and would love for you to have better sources with as much of a reduction in delay that donations could allow, after seeing what improvement we could be getting in the short term from the sources you do have at your disposal, I’m elated to know that whatever the wait is for a quality Poita scan won’t be a barrier to v2.5’s release.

While I’ve already got your attention, might we get you to share what tricky scenes you have ahead of you after this Hoth battle? Are the cockpit shots color correctable enough from the Grindhouse to replace the GOUT zooming fixes? Additionally, are there any compositing changes you expect not to tackle in v2.5?

And a question on a completely different level: in v3.0 and up, are you planning to try to restore original scene wipes throughout the trilogy?

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The colours in your screenshots differ quite a bit between 2.0 and 2.5 (much more blue in 2.0). Is this due to limitations of the Grindhouse colors or a deliberate choice to make 2.5 closer to the original colors of the theatrical release?

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 (Edited)

Blackout said:

I am curious, aside from colors, what are the other problems you have with the grindhouse?

There’s this red flashing in the imperial fleet introduction (and I’m guessing a few other places), which I’ve mentioned before, which makes those shots virtually impossible to use. It’s also a lot dirtier than Poita’s scans and it is pretty heavily cropped. But anything’s better than the GOUT!

yoda-sama said:

While I’ve already got your attention, might we get you to share what tricky scenes you have ahead of you after this Hoth battle? Are the cockpit shots color correctable enough from the Grindhouse to replace the GOUT zooming fixes? Additionally, are there any compositing changes you expect not to tackle in v2.5?

I’m definitely hoping to replace the zooming fixes using the Grindhouse. I’d like to replace all recomps but I will not force it, if I can’t get some shot to look good enough, if the visual difference in the recomp isn’t blatantly obvious - the imperial fleet is a good example of where it isn’t obvious, the snowspeeders are a great example of where it is.

And a question on a completely different level: in v3.0 and up, are you planning to try to restore original scene wipes throughout the trilogy?

Maybe - I’ll definitely do some tests and see if it works - I’m pretty sure, judging by the samples posted, that Poita’s ESB scan will actually be good enough to blend perfectly seamlessly with the BD after cleanup, so if I can get sources as good for the other two movies, I’ll definitely try.

Stotchy said:

The colours in your screenshots differ quite a bit between 2.0 and 2.5 (much more blue in 2.0). Is this due to limitations of the Grindhouse colors or a deliberate choice to make 2.5 closer to the original colors of the theatrical release?

Bit of both.

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Great work, Harmy. Looks really awesome! Looking forward to the release. Reading some comments over on Facebook made me loose a few brain cells. I don’t know how people think 2.0 looks better.

“Always in motion is the future” 🌌

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Harmy said:

Actually, what people could do to help, is donate to Poita’s project, which would be such a better source that it would make my work a lot easier.

Yeah, I’ve had a lot of people ask, and the answer is YES, I will be fast-tracking Harmy access to the 35mm scans of Empire as they become available, so you will see some HarmyPoit stuff in 3.0 hopefully 😃
If anyone wants to help out, the paypal is in my signature at the bottom of my posts. Money goes directly to having the reels cleaned, I’m picking up the other costs. We have three reels done, three to go!

I’m supplying the files in VistaVision format, so there should be plenty of resolution for Harmy to play with.
e.g. https://infinit.io/_/kSCBFSN

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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By the way, I have trouble following all the different interconnected projects, but what’s the color correction strategy for Poita/DeEdvWhatever? Is it DrDre utilities, color references, old skool, winging it, or some combination of the above? Does Harmy correct what he gets from Poita, or does he consider what he gets from Poita to be already a color reference? That sort of thing.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Nothing’s really decided on that - these scans by Poita are quite new. But I think I will be keeping the colors pretty close to v2.0.

What is definitely decided though is that I’ll now be scrapping months worth of work I did using the grindhouse and will be starting from scratch using Poita’s scans. The progress using those should be a lot faster though, as they’ll require a lot less cleanup and color correction work.

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Harmy said:

What is definitely decided though is that I’ll now be scrapping months worth of work I did using the grindhouse and will be starting from scratch using Poita’s scans. The progress using those should be a lot faster though, as they’ll require a lot less cleanup and color correction work.

Just curious, do you plan to do the how-to despecialize a shot video with this scene?

youtube.com/c/StarWarsComparison

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I might. Although, at his point, using such high quality 35mm sources, it would be more like how to clean up a 35mm shot. There’s no point combining most of these with the BD, because after cleanup, I should be able to cut back and forth between the BD and the 35mm quite seamlessly.

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Harmy said:

There’s this red flashing in the imperial fleet introduction (and I’m guessing a few other places), which I’ve mentioned before, which makes those shots virtually impossible to use. It’s also a lot dirtier than Poita’s scans and it is pretty heavily cropped. But anything’s better than the GOUT!

I was going to ask about the slight discoloration on the right side of the frame and if it would be an option to crop the frame just a tiny bit to get rid of it… but I suppose if the print is already noticably cropped to begin with that might not be an option. Oh well, if that somehow ends up becoming a serious problem to me while watching, I guess I could always just use MPC’s “Increase size” option to cut off the edges myself.

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Harmy said:

Nothing’s really decided on that - these scans by Poita are quite new. But I think I will be keeping the colors pretty close to v2.0.

What is definitely decided though is that I’ll now be scrapping months worth of work I did using the grindhouse and will be starting from scratch using Poita’s scans. The progress using those should be a lot faster though, as they’ll require a lot less cleanup and color correction work.

Too bad and all for the best at the same time!

But this repeated work is something that would be done for 3.0 anyway, so best that you didn’t continue on too much longer. Are you still using 720p BD material or are you considering jumping right into 3.0 style work?

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Oh, I’ve been working at 1080p for quite some time now - all the work on ROTJ 2.5 has been done in 1080p.
That being said, v2.5 will still be 720p only because I will be using parts of v2.0 but the newly despecialized shots should all be ready for v3.0.

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Harmy said:

Oh, I’ve been working at 1080p for quite some time now - all the work on ROTJ 2.5 has been done in 1080p.
That being said, v2.5 will still be 720p only because I will be using parts of v2.0 but the newly despecialized shots should all be ready for v3.0.

Ah, okay. I thought part of the issue was the base 2011 content having the first round of color correction rendered out at 720p, and not switching to 1080p until Neverar’s version (or similar). I know that you switched to 1080p for new content as of Jedi.

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That’s right, the over-all edit is still being done a 720p for that reason.

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Wow, the comparison shots look so much better, far superior detail, colors and just general naturalness. Great job, Harmy! =)

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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And they should look even better when I replace them with Poita’s scans 😃

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So the main sources are the Blu-ray, poita’s scan, the 2004 HDTV version, and custom matters?

Also, do you think the recent caps of the WOWOW 2011 version would be of any use over the Blu-ray, or even averaged with it?

she/her
mwah