My first reaction was: not bad at all. A bit desaturated for in the Tantive for my tastes, but the rest looks pretty good.
But then I read your post. You’re saying this is with a single correction across the entire film? Quite impressive if that’s the case. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Do you think brights could maybe be a little bit brighter without losing much in the way of detail?
Now for the Sony Vegas Pro 12 settings that I used.
I started with the demuxed video stream from the blu-ray. All the FX are built in to Sony Vegas Pro.
First, I used a Video output FX Levels to correct the viewing image. I used the Studio RGB to Computer RGB to correct for Vegas’s automatic use of cRGB when most video players use sRGB. Turn this off to render an sRGB compliant file and leave it on for a cRGB file.
I used one Track FX. I used the RGB curves for overall brightness. I raised the midtones and limited the brightness and darkness of the image. This is where I brought out the details in the sky in the Burning Homestead scene. Here is a screen cap of the settings.
Depending on how you want to do this, you could do all the settings as Track FX. I tend to do most as Video Event FX, but it doesn’t matter which way, as long as you do the settings in order. Changing the order will change the results as Vegas applies them in order. The follow are all Video Event FX the way I did it. I’ve only listed the settings I changed.
Brightness and Contrast - Contrast: -0.212
Color Corrector (Secondary) - (for ANH BR, I didn’t change anything here, but if you find the overall saturation too high, this is where you can change it)
Color Balance - Red: -0.031, Green: -0.051, Blue: 0.003
Color Curves - Red:
Green:
Blue:
Composit:
Unsharp Mask - Amount: 0.150, Radius: 0.100 (I found this setting helps to up the contrast of the image in a completely different way than Brightness Contrast and it works with the reduced contrast of the other setting because it helps bring out the fine details that reducing the contrast overall would tend to hide)
Levels - Input Start: 0.014, Output End: 0.980
For those who don’t use Sony Vegas, I hope this helps if you want to use other software to duplicate my color correction. If you do use Sony Vegas and you want my .veg file, PM me your email address.
I believe that concludes the purpose of this topic. I will be proceeding to finish my full restoration of the blu-ray transfer. I am going to make several parallel corrected tracks (one with further reduced contrast, one dealing with the over saturated shadows, one for the space shots that is darker, one for the dark grays that are blue, and one for the muted explosions) that I will use to correct groups of shots that I think need the same or similar correction, then refine it on a shot by shot basis. I shouldn’t need to use any additional settings.
My first reaction was: not bad at all. A bit desaturated for in the Tantive for my tastes, but the rest looks pretty good.
But then I read your post. You’re saying this is with a single correction across the entire film? Quite impressive if that’s the case. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Do you think brights could maybe be a little bit brighter without losing much in the way of detail?
In some shots, yes, but in others, doing much to the brightness has strange consequences. That is something I’m saving for my shot by shot correction (well, not quite that detailed, but I do plan on having several levels of correction to deal with several issues that crop up more than once). I’m also going to address the light sabers separately. My initial goal is to stay true to the BR and SE edits to get what they should have been, but my ultimate goal is my own edit which I have a separate topic for.
Certainly looking much better than the bluray!
Certainly looking much better than the bluray!
Thanks, that was the goal. And coming from you, it means a lot.
Especially in the Lars Homestead scene, you’ll also want to correct for too much magenta. Look at the shadow detail in Lars outfit. It looks purplish. Amazing how badly the people responsible for this transfer botched everything!
yotsuya hows it coming along?
yotsuya is this project dead?
Well, I did see it as completed. I had no plans of issuing a file, just supplying the settings I used so you could do your own render. But after revisiting TESB and ROTJ and finding some tweaks there, I think I must revisit this. Plus with the excellent -1 version now available, I have a new source to compare to and that could change some things. That gives me the GOUT (DNR’d to hell but good colors), the JSC (missing many frames, but a distinct transfer), the 97 SE broadcast (also DNR’d to hell, but also good colors), the DVD/BR (with so few changes and adjustments, they are practically the same plus they are from the same transfer), and now the Team Negative 1 35mm scan. One thing that I am trying to also do is to identify non-optical “corrections” to the film that were done to the DVD/BR transfer so I can undo them. If it weren’t for such things, it would be easy to create settings to re-render the entire move. As it is, some scenes are just crap because they “improved” them. The early scenes with C-3PO are particularly nasty. The purpose of this topic is the basic settings on top of which those “improvements” and “corrections” can be undone.
I am close to having all three OT films color corrected. I completely redid ANH and have done two tweaking passes. I am comparing it to both the 2006 GOUT and the G’Kar/TB merged version I did for myself. I am working with multiple tracks to do more than just a master color correction. But it is contingent on having a good color correction to start with because everything goes from there. I decided that the first priority was to de-magenta what I could. I was not able to return to the colors of the original, but they are close. The different color channels are clipped differently and the film was scanned in some strange way that really ruins it in so many ways. Most of the film can use the base color correction, but some of the C-3PO/R2-D2 shots that start the film have been fiddled with. Most of the film is consistent between the 2006 GOUT, the 97 SE broadcasts, and the BR. But a great many of the scenes have been done differently. I suspect that they took a shortcut and did not follow the full color grading when they scanned the negative. Why I can’t imagine, but with a very consistent pattern of shots from one angle always matching each other but not necessarily matching the rest of the scene, it seems like something was done wrong.
I have only identified two shots in the middle of the movie, but many during the lightsaber duel and the Death Star battle and a huge number from the first part of the film. And, of course, I can’t help but replace the shots of R2-D2 and the damned rock. But it is on a different track that I can turn off or on as needed. I think I am close, but every other time I have thought that I have had to go back and try again. But this time I have conquered more issues than ever before, so I have hopes this is the one. The last one I posted was so close… just not close enough. I’m rendering it right now to view and determine what else I need to do. If I’m satisfied, the next step is to compare the OT to be sure they are tuned to the same color palet. My early test shows they are close. In particular the reused shots of firing the Death Star weapon in ANH and ROTJ and the Death Star corridor shots.
I’m making one editorial change. I’m taking the intro from TESB and using it on ANH and ROTJ. That updates the music for ANH (again, a change I can use or not use at will) and the pacing for ROTJ. I’m going to use it for the prequels when I get back to them. I’m also going to change the fade-out between the droid auction and the repair shop to match the 2006 GOUT, the 97 SE G’Kar, and the DVD. It’s only a few frames that were trimmed out, but it creates a needless difference between the versions. But that will be the last thing I do because I want to keep the track intact until I am truly finished.
I checked my current settings against the last screen caps I posted and it is hard to tell the difference. A general less green tint and the dark areas are no longer as oversaturated. I have rendered it three times without changing the settings in any way. I have, however, been tweaking the various scenes, comparing them to the 97 SE and 2006 Gout (The SE colors are very different, but it helps with saturation, contrast, etc). So far I have not changed my basic color correction settings on any of the scenes… though I am considering using the previous version for the burning homestead.
The conclusion I have come to is that a bunch of amateur monkeys must have gotten their hands on this. I have learned Lowry didn’t do any color correction, just dirt removal. That leave George and the people at Lucasfilm. They should be embarrassed by the horrible transfer. And there was simply no need to make some of the changes in saturation and contrast that I have found. The only way to explain the horrible state is that they did not use the original color timings when they scanned it and then tried to fix them afterward. I’ve color corrected TESB and ROTJ and they need almost nothing in comparison… just a bit of de-reding. I think I’m going to post a video next. I’m going to use ANH and ROTJ and compare the reused shots. Both before color correction and after. And maybe with the Gout as well or the 97 SE. I’ll have to see what I’m in the mood for.
I checked my current settings against the last screen caps I posted and it is hard to tell the difference. A general less green tint and the dark areas are no longer as oversaturated. I have rendered it three times without changing the settings in any way. I have, however, been tweaking the various scenes, comparing them to the 97 SE and 2006 Gout (The SE colors are very different, but it helps with saturation, contrast, etc). So far I have not changed my basic color correction settings on any of the scenes… though I am considering using the previous version for the burning homestead.
The conclusion I have come to is that a bunch of amateur monkeys must have gotten their hands on this. I have learned Lowry didn’t do any color correction, just dirt removal. That leave George and the people at Lucasfilm. They should be embarrassed by the horrible transfer. And there was simply no need to make some of the changes in saturation and contrast that I have found. The only way to explain the horrible state is that they did not use the original color timings when they scanned it and then tried to fix them afterward. I’ve color corrected TESB and ROTJ and they need almost nothing in comparison… just a bit of de-reding. I think I’m going to post a video next. I’m going to use ANH and ROTJ and compare the reused shots. Both before color correction and after. And maybe with the Gout as well or the 97 SE. I’ll have to see what I’m in the mood for.
when can we expect the video?