Idea & Info Wanted: GOUT improved versions?

Is anyone interested in improving the GOUT DVDs as best as possible? I’ve seen several threads detailing how to do stabilizing, colour correcting and upscaling the image of these versions but I can’t seem to find a single restoration project that does all this for all three movies.

I know that Moth3r did something similar for the GOUT Star Wars, but it’s only for the first film 😦

As far as laserdisc rips of the '93 Definitive Collector’s Edition go, the GOUT is the best, it might not be what we expected but I’m yet to come across a better rip to start this project with.

What I’m suggesting is something like this:

1. use the retail PAL GOUT as a basis because it has slightly more resolution

2. stabilize and colour correct the image, and remove grain as much as possible (just compare these colour corrected images with the original GOUT: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Methods-for-colour-matching-colour-grading/post/336687/#TopicPost336687)

3. create custom AC3 5.1 soundtrack based on the '97SE laserdiscs and '93 Collector’s Edition

4. make them as 3 DVD9s

I’m not much of an AV editor myself but from what I’ve seen on these forums I know it’s not a question of if it’s possible but rather if anyone wants to do this?

So are there any dedicated AV’ers out there who want to do this?

Thanks,

LG

EDIT: Is there perhaps a thread where I can see some comparison shots of this project?

thanks for your help so far, I'll check out your link :)

You have a few PMs Lord Grievous.

Much appreciated :)

Thread tidied up.

Read the rules about Custom DVDs please guys.

I don't know, I thought it really does have slightly more resolution as is to be expected of PAL. But you guys would know more about this than me :)

I'm pretty sure that ANH & ESB PAL GOUT are just upscaled from the NTSC master but ROTJ PAL has more detail than the NTSC and looks to be from a PAL master. There was a thread with some comparisons between the PAL & NTSC GOUT versions which showed this but i can't remember which one it was

adywan said:

There was a thread with some comparisons between the PAL & NTSC GOUT versions which showed this but i can't remember which one it was

Sticky thread (just above), I guess... ?

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-NEW-official-Screenshots-thread/topic/4681/

Lord Grievous said:

Is anyone interested in improving the GOUT DVDs as best as possible? I've seen several threads detailing how to do stabilizing, colour correcting and upscaling the image of these versions but I can't seem to find a single restoration project that does all this for all three movies.

I know that Moth3r did something similar for the GOUT Star Wars, but it's only for the first film :(

As far as laserdisc rips of the '93 Definitive Collector's Edition go, the GOUT is the best, it might not be what we expected but I'm yet to come across a better rip to start this project with.

What I'm suggesting is something like this:

1. use the retail PAL GOUT as a basis because it has slightly more resolution

2. stabilize and colour correct the image, and remove grain as much as possible (just compare these colour corrected images with the original GOUT: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Methods-for-colour-matching-colour-grading/post/336687/#TopicPost336687)

3. create custom AC3 5.1 soundtrack based on the '97SE laserdiscs and '93 Collector's Edition

4. make them as 3 DVD9s

I'm not much of an AV editor myself but from what I've seen on these forums I know it's not a question of if it's possible but rather if anyone wants to do this?

So are there any dedicated AV'ers out there who want to do this?

Thanks,

LG

Why don't you do it yourself, if you're so passionate about it?

I'm not much of an AV'er either, but I still managed to get G-Force's script to work (manually finding and downloading the avisynth plugins one-by-one), resize it to a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio cause that's what I wanted and put the mono soundtrack on SW... it isn't hard. May take about 40hrs to encode per movie, but that's life. I have ESB at 60% encoded at the moment and about 14hrs remaining!

By the way this is what I did:
1. Rip DVD.
2. Use DGIndex to create dv2 file.
3. Prepare an altered "G-Force script" (this was the most involved step, there were three things I altered - 1. the video ratio, 2. the video size (no overscan), 3. the subtitle placement, but this rolls over into the next step.
4. Load said script in vdubmod, and check frames to ensure I'm happy with the result.
5. Save in vdubmod using the option "direct stream copy".
6. Wait for 40hrs.
7. Make AVS file, this was the contents:
AVISource("StarWars.avi")
AssumeFPS(23.976)
8. Use vdubmod to create XVID.
9. Use vdubmod to mux audio. (BeSweet was used to re-encode from a PAL "framerate" to an NTSC framerate).

PAL "gout" as a bias? Yes, because the overscan bars were removed. However this is a very small and negligible difference anyway. I'm not really a fan of removing grain, it was necessary because when I tried to keep it I didn't get the full benefits of the script, and also the picture is more "noisy" than "grainy" imho. More important is antialiasing if you ask me.

The "gout" is not an "LD rip", it is a DVD mastered from a digital tape previously used as a laserdisc master (probably D-3 tape since the audio format is 4 channel PCM and this is exactly what is on the LD in the form of 2 for the audio and 2 for the commentary track). Basically all they seemed to have done to it (besides using a different source for the SW crawl) was to IVTC it and then master it as a DVD using MPEG2/AC3. They didn't bother to convert the subtitles -although imo player invoked subtitles suck- or even to convert it to anamorphic (which really is inexplicable). It isn't the first DVD to be released from a laserdisc master tape, however most ld-based DVD releases were well before 2006. I'm pretty sure LFL didn't bother to scan anything pre-SE for the 2004 DVD since original pre-2004 SE elements are clearly evident on the release.

Why Lucas molested his movie I do not understand, but watching the SE "Jabba" scene just makes me think he's really lost the plot. If the dialog was more unique it may be interesting, but he almost reiterates word-for-word was Greedo said. Like putting Ian McDiarmid into ESB and making ridiculous new lines for him, I don't understand it, and Lucas himself seems to be the only fan of his SE.

I don't mind all of the SE additions, some of them were valid and beneficial to the movie (new Sandcrawler scene for example) but I too would love to have a better archival version of the theatrical versions, warts and all :)

EDIT: I came across a Star Wars REIVAX version, it claims to be from a digital betacam broadcast and thus better quality than the laserdiscs. Is this so and does anyone have some comparison shots?

The REIVAX version is the 1997 SE.

But is it better quality than the laserdiscs?

Yes.

adywan said:

I'm pretty sure that ANH & ESB PAL GOUT are just upscaled from the NTSC master but ROTJ PAL has more detail than the NTSC and looks to be from a PAL master. There was a thread with some comparisons between the PAL & NTSC GOUT versions which showed this but i can't remember which one it was

 If this is so would i be better of with the ntsc version of episode 4,5 ?

Well he says that only the ROTJ PAL has better quality so you'd be better of buying Ep6 PAL.

What he meant by upscaled is that for 4&5 they simply took the NTSC image and stretched it to fit the PAL version, whereas the ROTJ PAL image already is PAL to begin with.

Moth3r, thanks for the info :) Do you perhaps know of any comparison screenshots of the REIVAX version with for example the GOUT? Would it be worth downloading or is it only marginally better?

Thanks

EDIT: Are there also ESB and ROTJ REIVAX versions available? Or possible other digital betacam broadcasts of the OT?

From Wikipedia:

The Digital Betacam format records a DCT-compressed component video signal at 10-bit YUV 4:2:2 sampling in NTSC (720×486) or PAL (720×576) resolutions at a bitrate of 90 Mbit/s plus four channels of uncompressed 48 kHz / 20 bit PCM-encoded audio.

Are there any other preservation projects that use a digital betacam broadcast as source? Especially any that don't compress it to a DVD5 but perhaps DVD9 or better?

Also, is there a project that uses the uncompressed PCM from the laserdiscs as audio?

Thanks for all you comments so far :)

I dont think theres REIVAX versions for ESB and ROTJ.

Could the Revivax be easily converted to NTSC?