Info: 1992 VHS Set - Star Wars Trilogy Special Letterbox Collector's Edition - any special and/or redeeming qualities?

Did you find a way round the Macrovision thing? Did The Phantom Menace defeat your new set up?

Edit: I just realized in my haste I completely blanked the original topic. apologies. if you are tackling this set I was eager to find out if you managed to tame the macrovision thing that seemed to have killed the PM tape or were you able to get round it

Looking at the first three frames russs15 posted in the link below, 1984-9, I would be a bit sceptical that even if the exact same master is thought to be used for consecutive versions over a period of years, that some minor differences might still not emerge. It depends if you think these are worth spending time (or money) investigating. Maybe some people in the early days of the forum already investigated all this and laserdisc won everytime so there was no vhs preservations worth archiving. But what if a specific aspect fell through the cracks?

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Help-Im-new/post/582999/#TopicPost582999

I'm interested to know if the tapes from different european countries were any different or australian tapes??

The first film uses the same transfer as the Special Widescreen Edition, 1993 Technidisc pressing. (In fact, I believe it first appeared on VHS, before the LD repressing.)

Empire and Jedi, AFAIK, match the SWE discs, including Jedi's letterboxing still being shifted up like the Japanese Special Collection.

As for PAL, the pre-THX PAL widescreen transfers are confusing. The French/German widescreen LDs seem to use a different source element than the NTSC JSC/SWE transfer. I know that unlike the JSC/SWE, the French and German releases switched to an awful, dark, faded, grainy dupe for the subtitle-less Greedo scene.

The 1991 UK widescreen tapes, however, seem to be converted from the NTSC widescreen transfers seen on the JSC/SWE discs. The weird yellow-green hues in that Empire frame are evidence of this. And as Russ said waaaaay back in 2005:

For some bizarre reason, the 1991 Trilogy Special Widescreen Edition films are approx 4% longer than the other releases I have.

Star Wars 118 mins and 122 mins
Empire 119 mins and 125 mins
Jedi 126 mins and 132 mins

It is almost as if there is some type of framerate compensation to make the films play for the same length of time as the same as the theatrical and NTSC versions.

It appears that he was right, and they just transferred the NTSC versions to PAL. I would bet that the first film even has the "shrinking ratio" problem.

In comparison, it would seem that that the later UK widescreen tapes used the "PAL GOUT" transfers seen on the French "Coffret Trilogie" LD set.

AntcuFaalb said:

I now own a like-new copy (ROTJ opened; ANH and TESB sealed). It should arrive on Tuesday, 10 July. I'll capture it whenever I'm finished with PS78. Yay!

 Nice. One thing myscamore mentions in his Technidisc thread is he was unhappy with the white balance via his set-up. The stills Asaki linked of his VHS capture look like they have just fractionally cleaner/lighter whites. It will be interesting to see your results on this tape, especially as its fresh out the box!

russs15 said:

Which all goes to back up my thoughts that once we have a particular release "in captivity" we will know for sure exactly what each release was the same as or different to. Phrases like "I assume" and "AFAIK" will become a thing of the past.

Once everything has been captured and logged here, people can then quote hard facts that you posted seven years ago which again justifies what I did.

 

props to russs15 here, its easy to cross reference all this stuff when someone else has gone to the trouble of capturing and storing all this stuff for years for the benefit of people like me who can just arrive and access that info in seconds

AntcuFaalb said:

frank678 said:

Did you find a way round the Macrovision thing? Did The Phantom Menace defeat your new set up?

Edit: I just realized in my haste I completely blanked the original topic. apologies. if you are tackling this set I was eager to find out if you managed to tame the macrovision thing that seemed to have killed the PM tape or were you able to get round it

Don't worry about it!

My setup chews right through TPM's Macrovision. The image is crisp and stable; almost as good as a DVD!

If you can get that crisp of an image I'd love a copy for future projects.  My TMP VHS had some play in them so I'd love something solid.

Cheers!!!!

Asaki said:

frank678 said:

... The stills Asaki linked of his VHS capture look like they have just fractionally cleaner/lighter whites. It will be interesting to see your results on this tape, especially as its fresh out the box!

 Like I said, I didn't calibrate the picture or anything. The whites are way blown out compared to how it looks on an actual TV.

Also, there's lots of rainbow colored interference from the VRC itself. I just wanted some quick shots, so I didn't bother averaging multiple shots together or anything fancy like that.

 Sorry, my brain didn't process the blown out whites info, in my haste to click the link. Its wierd even though I know its bad for the image integrity there is something appealing to me about upsetting levels if it makes the image feel more open or light somehow. I think this is a wierd subjective taste of mine (like people who set the treble really high on their stereo). This is a good reason why I should never do my own project with these sources.

Here's my tweak (2nd attempt) on a still from one of myscamore's new technidisc clips to give you an example of the above statement:

ORIG

TWEAK 2

Now the thing is I can't get this result by moving the sliders in vlc image adjust (i.e. plus or minus contrast, brightness, etc). myscamores original seems to be the most balanced and correct result with the way those sliders interelate (a push even a little in any direction and you start losing information altogether). The result I got was done by using the curve tool against the graph of the levels- which *I think* is a less linear or fixed interelation of adjustment aspects. It brings levels up between points at different speeds so to speak. I also added a duplicate layer which seems to be adding to the image in a less linear way than just adjusting the original sliders. Now, whether my result grabs you or not, my speculative question is whether rather than summing or merging linear captures, is whether there is some way to 'weave' a new duplicate out of a moving graph of the initial capture using a fixed or modulating 'response' curve. Or merge multiple captures with different settings in different percentages to improve on a single capture. [thus improving on the best-on-average setting via a more automated correction process]???

Or if that sounds a bit too like rambling nonsense - does anyone have any ideas how to lift out the darkness embedded in this master a bit without blowing out the whites?? Is there actually much room for manouevre on this?

AntcuFaalb said:

frank678 said:

Did you find a way round the Macrovision thing? Did The Phantom Menace defeat your new set up?

Edit: I just realized in my haste I completely blanked the original topic. apologies. if you are tackling this set I was eager to find out if you managed to tame the macrovision thing that seemed to have killed the PM tape or were you able to get round it

Don't worry about it!

My setup chews right through TPM's Macrovision. The image is crisp and stable; almost as good as a DVD!

So the light blue sky was always already blown out somewhat on the technidisc master anyway - by the (contrast?) settings used by the operator?

PS78:

Asaki said:

Well as we discussed elsewhere, the 35mm version has a lot of white clipping that may or may not have been intentional.

god damnit i keep finding out stuff that adds another layer of complexity to all this stuff.

look at this deleted scene in the first half of the sky turns white, they turn a corner and its blue again??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsDE7o_o26E

here is a tweaked still from pre-anh bootleg:

Although this has probably the most original information packed into it of all versions - thats what it feels like to me: that it's too packed in. The packed-in-ness is making it feel to dark and heavy. Why I prefer the PS78 is there seems to be more space and air in the mid range so it feels more lifelike

edit: i wonder if this packed in-ness combined with deliberate blown out whites is what makes some things look so wierd when its transfered 'down'= why the flesh tones burn so much - this is especially wierd on catnap bootleg

2nd edit: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcdkap_the-making-of-star-wars-1-4-1977_shortfilms#

(around 12.37) If you look at the general conditions on the day this was shot, and the one thing that does seem like a clear fact - that mark hamill was not beet red from sunburn, then you get closer to how it all fits together maybe. the more i look at this stuff the more it seems like the relationship between colours adds or minus to the sense of lightness or heaviness, if the relationship is screwed up to begin with then plus or minus brightness isnt going to completely undo that

3rd edit: Theres something about the relationship between the darkness of the hair and the blown out sky that doesnt seem to gel / work

AntcuFaalb, I wish I had seen this thread earlier as I have a copy of this in my basement that should be in very good shape - the tapes were played very few times.  I don't have a use for it, so I would be happy to ship it to you for any kind of preservation effort.  Any reason you need a second copy?