Wow, I am really impressed what you were able to achieve with the BR source so far... they almost like "Star Wars" should! I really commend your efforts here, I love your color correction schemes... to me they look very accurate for the most part. There are some scenes that require more attention than others, but you seem to have a handle on how to undo the horrific color scheme that was applied.
You_Too, I think those newest shots look fantastic! Like others said they may be pushing the boundaries of the white levels a bit but that doesn't really bother me, they still look very nice.
Could these settings be used on the dvd's or HD broadcasts with similar effect or would they require their own tweaking? I'd really like to test these out on the BD's but I don't have BD drive on my PC.
I think the colors look much better now, great work.
And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.
Thundercracker said:
You_Too, I think those newest shots look fantastic! Like others said they may be pushing the boundaries of the white levels a bit but that doesn't really bother me, they still look very nice.
Yeah the whites were pushed together in the bright parts, but I really think that's how it's supposed to be, and the slight clipping that occurs is not really visible anyway. And btw, in GOUT they pushed the whites even higher, and raised the overall gamma. I can't raise the gamma more since that clearly shows the missing crushed blacks.
Thundercracker said:
Could these settings be used on the dvd's or HD broadcasts with similar effect or would they require their own tweaking? I'd really like to test these out on the BD's but I don't have BD drive on my PC.
Well, considering those are compressed a lot compared to the blu-rays, it wouldn't look as good. I tried my curve on the HDTV version of SW and what happened was it clearly revealed compression artefacts in the dark parts of the picture. Feel free to try though! I'm gonna update my settings today.
EDIT: I tried my settings on some DVD captures from the screenshot thread. Looks quite good I think.
And according to photoshop, this is all that got clipped in the whites in that Tantive scene:
After some more experimenting, I decided to change the gamma curve back to the old version, keeping the new RGB adjustment so the colors are still more correct and not yellow-ish. There were some scenes on Tatooine where the whites looked much more crushed than in others. That's what made me change my mind about it.
I also updated my color settings again, to make red colors less yellow, (made skintones look slightly more real) and I changed cyan back to the old setting. I made a new cyan setting to try and correct R2's hologram of Leia, the insanely blue lights on the tractor beam control in the death star, and some other things. The new setting resulted in other scenes looking weird like for example, Greedo's jacket looked oversaturated and dark.
I'll post the new settings and curve soon in post 3.
You_Too said:
After some more experimenting, I decided to change the gamma curve back to the old version, keeping the new RGB adjustment so the colors are still more correct and not yellow-ish. There were some scenes on Tatooine where the whites looked much more crushed than in others. That's what made me change my mind about it.
I also updated my color settings again, to make red colors less yellow, (made skintones look slightly more real) and I changed cyan back to the old setting. I made a new cyan setting to try and correct R2's hologram of Leia, the insanely blue lights on the tractor beam control in the death star, and some other things. The new setting resulted in other scenes looking weird like for example, Greedo's jacket looked oversaturated and dark.
I'll post the new settings and curve soon in post 3.
Looking forward to it!
BTW, I'm starting to think that your greens are more accurate than the Technidisc. I just love how much color there is in the Technidisc, especially in the highlights, I keep forgetting that those colors aren't perfect either.
-G
g-force said:
BTW, I'm starting to think that your greens are more accurate than the Technidisc. I just love how much color there is in the Technidisc, especially in the highlights, I keep forgetting that those colors aren't perfect either.
Sadly there's no way of really knowing what's accurate, since I guess only the original negative is accurate.
Anyway, the greens seems to have ended up like I thought they "should" look like, somewhere inbetween that 35mm scan posted earlier and the GOUT. Here's using the latest settings:
I'm glad that you seem to like the SWE (technidisc) g-force, I must admit I like that transfer myself for various reasons, if only I could have captured it with a decent combfilter, the rainbowing and dotcrawl are hideous on it. Your great median script helped quite a lot though. :)
You're doing great job on improving the colors, You_Too! unfortunately it is impossible to get these destroyed transfers to resemble the original photography no matter what you do, incredible resolution but nothing else. :( Star Wars is so fucked up nowadays that I even avoid mention that film when I end up talking about my favorite films with my friends even though SW and Empire is on my top ten of all time favorites. If only people knew/remember how beautiful these films looked and sounded back in the day...
In 1977 everyone loved Star Wars except George Lucas, but why not turn that around so that the only one who likes this film is Lucas himself, he has definitely worked on it the last 14 years.
We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions.
Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com
You-Too, would you be OK with me posting some comparisons here of my own corrections or would you prefer I start another thread?
snicker said:
You-Too, would you be OK with me posting some comparisons here of my own corrections or would you prefer I start another thread?
If you're using my settings you could post some, as long as you apply selective color before the curves, and keep it like that. If you're making completely own corrections with own settings you should make a new thread.
You_Too said:
snicker said:
You-Too, would you be OK with me posting some comparisons here of my own corrections or would you prefer I start another thread?
If you're using my settings you could post some, as long as you apply selective color before the curves, and keep it like that. If you're making completely own corrections with own settings you should make a new thread.
I'll make a new thread.
Something funny I discovered is that some SE-only scenes does actually look much better using my settings too. Some comparisons between raw blu-ray (top) and my settings (bottom).
Even the (in my opinion) weird-looking Jabba scene looks better:
Now, if only scenes like this one was free of CGI and looked this good:
Update! I managed to make an avisynth script for those interested. Check post 3.
I will soon post updated screenshots in post 1 as well. This time I'll only do the 36 shots seen in the screenshot thread.
I'm going to add an experimental longer script in post 3. What I've added is a custom "in-script plugin" and a setting that greatly reduces the dark blue colors which are seen in lots of places in the movie where it looks like they shouldn't be.
Some examples, on top - only color corrections and curves, on bottom, correction + curves + additional script.
I actually wrote an Avisynth plugin specifically to kill the near-black blues. I think I uploaded it somewhere, but I can't find it now :(
DE
Interesting! If you find it I'll compare it to my new script.
Could you try it on the "You'll be malfunctioning within a day" shot? IMO, that's one of the most blatant examples of those dark blues (or "purple shadows" as I previously referred to them).
Also, do your curves/corrections/scripts reduce the blue haze effect when the Star Destroyer engines come into view? The original '77 composite did have that blue lens flare effect, but it was absolutely nowhere near as overpowering as in the '04/'11.
Found it!
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Darth-Editous-Episode-IV-DVD-Info-and-Feedback-Thread-a-partially-de-specialed-DVD/post/391778/#TopicPost391778
The dll is still available but is rather outdated.
DE
Darth Editous, thank you so much! I'm testing the badblue parameter, and so far it looks like it does a slightly better job than my custom script. I'll test it a bit more and we'll see.
TServo2049 said:
Could you try it on the "You'll be malfunctioning within a day" shot? IMO, that's one of the most blatant examples of those dark blues (or "purple shadows" as I previously referred to them).
Also, do your curves/corrections/scripts reduce the blue haze effect when the Star Destroyer engines come into view? The original '77 composite did have that blue lens flare effect, but it was absolutely nowhere near as overpowering as in the '04/'11.
The purple shadow problem is already solved with my magenta setting. Also the pink flashes throughout the movie are much better. The blue haze will probably get better now with Darth Editous's plugin.
Seems I might have said "wow" too early as usual...
Poor R2 got ruined by badblue. Too bad since some scenes got a lot better with the plugin. I guess the only way to fix the dark blues properly is to do a shot-by-shot correction.
You_Too, thank you for posting the Avisynth version, but I take issue with this part:
And to those really into color correcting: The last line should be "ConvertToYV12()" and not have "(matrix="rec709")" added. I tried this first but the colors were messed up. It was enough to have it at the first color conversion line.
This is incorrect. When you convert back to YUV from RGB, you have to use Rec.709 coefficients if you intend to output HD. ConverttoYV12() assumes Rec.601 coefficients and would only be correct for DVD. If the colors were messed up in the script, then something else went wrong, but it is not enough to specify the matrix only upon the initial conversion to RGB. You have to take this account every time you convert between RGB and YUV.
Chewtobacca: What I said was true, even though it doesn't sound like it. I took a raw screenshot from the blu-ray, processed it in photoshop with my settings, then took the same screenshot from the script running through media player classic. Skin tones were more pink for example. When I removed the matrix setting from ConvertToYV12, the screenshot I took looked identical to the photoshop one.
So wrong or not, if you want my corrections, don't specify the matrix the second time.
Then media player classic is doing something wrong or there is something wrong with the settings. The line has to be ConverttoYV12(matrix="rec709").
That R2 shot, I think it should be somewhere between the before and after. The blue panels on R2 were not originally as blue as the '04/'11, but not as black as your "after" image.
TServo2049 said:
That R2 shot, I think it should be somewhere between the before and after. The blue panels on R2 were not originally as blue as the '04/'11, but not as black as your "after" image.
Exactly, I did some more testing yesterday and decided to only lower saturation of dark blue to 75%. Going to update the script. It won't remove the dark blue from some scenes now, but like I said it seems one could only do that properly with a shot-by-shot correction.
