Info: DVNR smearing in GOUT not in the master...? Or is the 1995 release a different master altogether...?

OK, I have read several people here say that the 1995 THX “One Last Time” release was sourced from the same master as the 1993 Definitive Collection and consequently the GOUT. Also it has been said that it is the 1993 master that is corrupted by the horrible DVNR smearing present on GOUT, which causes the 4 eyed stormies and other stuff like that. But I just checked my 1995 widescreen THX VHS capture and guess what? No 4 eyed stormtrooper, no smearing (or at least far from the amout seen on GOUT). Here’s a proof:

Also note, that the framing is slightly different and so are the colours (nicer and more vibrant on the VHS, though admitedly a bit too red).

In the second picture note the guys passing the speeder, especially his legs.

To me it seems like it might be a different (and better) transfer after all.

Is your VHS PAL?

Oh, yeah, it is. Does that make a difference?

I would expect them to scan the film only once for PAL and then downscale the resolution for ntsc...

I think it's been shown in the past that the PAL master from 93 was different from the NTSC master. If nothing else, I think the different framing confirmed this (Moth3r can probably back this up).

Why didn't they use the superior PAL master for the GOUT instead of the NTSC? One of the great mysteries of the universe.

Oh, I see, so there are two different masters but they're not the 1993 master and 1995 master, but they are the 1993 PAL and NTSC master? That really is a mystery why they didn't use the obviously superirior PAL master for GOUT (it would at least be higher resolution but as it seems it would also be better in the colour and DVNR aspects). Shame. So wouldn't it be better to use PAL LD for any future preservations?

PAL-land did not get a 1993 "definitive collection" THX release in any format.

We did however get the 1995 "faces"/"one last time" THX release on LD (France, Germany and Spain only) and VHS. In the US, they used the 1993 master, however a new master was made for the PAL releases. This master has occasionally different framing, less dirt in some shots and the famous burn marks in the Tantive corridor. It still has some DVNR - see the cantina scenes in ANH and the Hoth battle scenes in TESB - but it was probably not applied as aggressively as on the NTSC releases.

The PAL GOUT DVDs were upscaled from the NTSC masters because we got screwed over.

They are sourced from the same pre-DVNR master that the Japanese Special Collection LD comes from I think, very dirty and bad colors in many scenes.

This is very interesting, never thought the difference in smearing was that huge between the Pal and NTSC versions, this can be a better alternative than using JSC LD/US '92LD footage as the colortiming is basically the same as in GOUT.

There's not a lot of mystery to it, right?

There was no interest at Lucasfilm to make the GOUT look good.

The.  End.

The 95 NTSC VHS is definitely the same 93 master-just checked my 95 widescreen tapes to be sure.

Now I'm curious about those 92 tapes.

I don't know, I think that even with the DVNR the GOUT is still superior to any VHS out there. It seems the only way to get better results from a VHS/LD era medium could be a very very good capture of the 1995 PAL LD. Or maybe some kind of combination of the 92, 93 and 95 LDs. Make a really good (X0 style) capture and go through them shot by shot and for each shot use the version that looks the best. But I'm not sure it's worth the effort, it would still be an old nonanamorphic transfer, probably sourced from the same worn IP print, so the quality difference wouldn't be that great. But just looking at the pics I posted above, I'm quite sure a raw transfer of the 1995 PAL LD could beat the GOUT.

Moth3r did a capture of the French laserdisc in pal i believe.  It was the 1995 THX transfer.

They are on single layer dvd'rs. 

You can see his results on the screenshot thread.  Though they probably look a lot better in motion.

I think before the gout, moth3r's Star Wars transfer was the best one imho.  Despite pal speedup. 

I think they were the only dedicated pal transfer.  Not a ntsc to pal conversion like the first issue UK pan and scan lasers.

I wonder if they simply lost the pal masters, they got thrown out or Lucas/Fox were so lazy they just dumped the NTSC masters to disc after Pal conversion.

OK, I checked out the screenshot thread but there are no high-motion shots, so the DVNR is really hard to recognise there. Mother, could you perhaps post the 4eyed stomtrooper shot from your PAL LD preservation?

Well, to be honest, from what I can tell from the screenshots, the quality is definitely inferior to GOUT, it would have to be a really really good transfer of the PAL LD to beat GOUT but I was just interested to see how the smearing looked in a better transfer as the one I got the screen from is just VHS and has a lot of video noise and a very low resolution.

I'm quite sure it will work with a good capture, the problem with the '86 JSC/'92 US LD are the huge differences in colors to the '93/'95 masters so a good '95 pal transfer would be much easier to splice in I guess.

Here's just a quick color adjustment I did to a capture of the Japanese Special Collection, just to give you an idea of how it may look.

GOUT

JSC

GOUT

JSC

The color correction/contrast must be much better if it's going to work of course.

Well, you can tell why they used so much DVNR on the later transfers, the dirt is apparently beyond cool on the IP they must have used on all the 3 releases. I think those 90s video releases might be beyond saving. The 1995 PAL still seems to be the best of the 3. It seems to have a balance between keeping too much dirt and overdoing the DVNR.

You know, DVDNR doesn't necesarily need to be a bad thing, when used carefully. In 1993 the DVNR was something new and actually at the time of it's release the 1993 LD was cosidered really good. I've read a contemporary  review of it from some home video magazine and they said that it was the ultimate release to show off your home theater system... And no wonder it seemed like really good picture when watched on a small CRT TV and being compared to a dirty noisy picture of LDs like the JSC...

msycamore said:

...

This is very interesting, never thought the difference in smearing was that huge between the Pal and NTSC versions, this can be a better alternative than using JSC LD/US '92LD footage as the colortiming is basically the same as in GOUT.

The difference in smearing is not that huge. The 4-eyed stormtrooper may be better, but other scenes are just as bad as the NTSC version. I'll dig out my DVD.

Interestingly, the colour timing of the PAL master for ANH is slightly different to the NTSC master. Tatooine's sand is more red and less yellow, and the sky is more grey than blue. In these scenes, the colours are actually closer to the 2004 DVD.

Harmy said:

[...] But just looking at the pics I posted above, I'm quite sure a raw transfer of the 1995 PAL LD could beat the GOUT.

For fine (horizontal) detail, the GOUT DVD would win every time. However, the PAL LDs win if you consider they have less aliasing, less gate weave and no blurring of vertical detail.

Harmy said:

... it would have to be a really really good transfer of the PAL LD to beat GOUT ...

I now have another player to test, and a few other ideas for improvement. I've learned a fair bit in the last 5 years... just wish I had more time to play with this stuff.

msycamore said:

... the problem with the '86 JSC/'92 US LD are the huge differences in colors to the '93/'95 masters ...

Did you see this thread:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Methods-for-colour-matching-colour-grading/topic/9430/

Yes, I've seen it. A new Avisynth plugin would be very helpful.

Harmy said:

Well, you can tell why they used so much DVNR on the later transfers, the dirt is apparently beyond cool on the IP they must have used on all the 3 releases. I think those 90s video releases might be beyond saving. The 1995 PAL still seems to be the best of the 3. It seems to have a balance between keeping too much dirt and overdoing the DVNR.

You know, DVDNR doesn't necesarily need to be a bad thing, when used carefully. In 1993 the DVNR was something new and actually at the time of it's release the 1993 LD was cosidered really good. I've read a contemporary  review of it from some home video magazine and they said that it was the ultimate release to show off your home theater system... And no wonder it seemed like really good picture when watched on a small CRT TV and being compared to a dirty noisy picture of LDs like the JSC...

Yes, but this DVNR is very bad and have always been, it looks like shit even on a CRT TV, and I thought the same when it was released back in '93. That landspeeder shot however is supposed to be grainy, it's part of the special effect technology of its time due to repeated optical compositing. But I agree, the JSC is very dirty and noisy but I much prefer that to the horrible smear of the Gout in those scenes and those caps doesn't really do the JSC justice. But that is just the two most obvious scenes, as we know the films are full of those moments, here's a favorite of mine. ;)

I had read the gout came from a D-1 master tape which was better than the later D-2.

Without the bad DVNR smearing the transfer even if in standard def and non anamorphic was pretty good for the time.

I wonder what the source was for the Gout master though.  It is so overly grainy, and the DVNR made it worse by adding a noticeable artifact behind.

Could this has been from one of the duplicate masters, because it obviously is not there on the negative. Even prior to the Lowry clean up the negative was not as grainy as the gout.

Is the faces pan and scan ntsc VHS a different master? i Will have to check sometime to see if the 4-eyed stormtrooper glitch is present.