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Info: The LID Project: Laserdisc is dead.

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In this thread, we rejoice and are happy that the complete O-OT is now coming out on official pristine DVD, and we don’t have to deal with blurry, crap looking laserdisc transfers anymore.

I love the laserdisc transfers - they kept the flame alive. I love every one of you who completed a laserdisc transfer, with particular props to Moth3r, Cowclops, Citizen, dark_jedi, Gkar, whoever did the TB set, Doctor M for his remix … oh the list goes on.

From now on, let’s concentrate on improving the 2004 and 2006 DVDs making them more O-OT friendly with more sound mixes and better color. Or just concentrate on enjoying the 2006 DVDs and getting on with our lives.

Let’s do a quick comparison between sourcing it from Lucas’ DVDs and sourcing it from laser … I call it the LID Project … LID stands for “Laserdisc is Dead.”

Enjoy, folks!

http://orangecow.org/starwars/xotantive.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidtantive.jpg

http://orangecow.org/starwars/xobattle.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidbattle.jpg

http://orangecow.org/starwars/xoskiff.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidskiff.jpg

http://orangecow.org/starwars/xoshaw.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidshaw.jpg

Conclusion: LID project wins. Laserdisc is dead. And I’m glad. We can see the OT in pristine quality.

What I’m really trying to do is to get this forum to stop looking back at the past and start looking at its own future. When an HD master of Star Wars shows up on some TV channel in a few months, we’re not gonna still be sourcing from laserdisc …

I’ll be posting more comparisons as I can find more XO screen grabs. =)

Laserdisc is dead - put a LID on it!

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Here's what people who know are saying about the LID project.


RAVE REVIEWS!


"That's stupid, then it just becomes a fan edit NOT a fan restoration." - Rikter

"Some people are apparently ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater." - MebeJedi

"I have more faith in the X0 Project than the Official release." - Patrick R.

" I have every reason to believe that [the XO project] will be just as good - if not better than those $30 DVDs coming out in September." - Zion

"Ocp [is] acting like such an ass ... The official DVDs are little better than VHS to DVD transfers." - C3PX

"So nice to finally see your true colors." - Mebejedi

"Like OCP said, DVD remixing is essentially the new frontier for the editors here." - The Bizzle

"George is giving us a High Quality Raw Capture of the OT, better than any LaserDisc player (even the sacred X0) could ever give us. The X0 Project (and everyone else's projects) will now have a much better master to work from to create a myriad of editions for us all to trade." - pupil

"If the detail smearing, caused by THX lab's 'dirt concealment' processing in the '90s, is present on these new DVDs, then we can have a go at combining the best aspects of both the 2004 and 2006 DVDs together to produce the ultimate restoration of the OOT." - Moth3r

"Thanks especially to ocpmovie. Until your Classic Editions came along, having the originals in DVD quality was nothing but a dream for me." - Lordjedi

[Re: Classic Editions] "Any random VHS or LD transfer has more OT spirit than an ESE DVD with some desperate polishing applied to it." - Grinder
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More fun! Ones at top are from the XO site, bottom are from LID.

http://orangecow.org/starwars/xotie.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidtie.jpg

http://orangecow.org/starwars/xogreedo.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidgreedo.jpg

Xo compared with another transfer compared with LID.
http://orangecow.org/starwars/xovader.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidvader.jpg
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What if the non-LID Project does not provide all the material in suitable quality to make the OT you remember? Does that make the non-LID-p a failure? Are there any SW moments which you think will not show up in the non-LID Project?
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ocpmovie, even though I see many people not understanding your approach/humour in your posts in recent days, I do agree with you here.

As ocp quoted me saying (aw shucks), from all that we can gather at this point (1 press release and a couple sentences in interviews) it looks like we are going to get pretty much the same print used in the 93 DC/Faces releases, the print we (up until 3 days ago) considered to be the absolute best possible transfer of the OOT we would ever get to see. This was the transfer that everyone was using for their preservation projects. So, in essence, the best we can do to preserve the OOT is:


UP UNTIL NOW: Buy best LaserDisc player one can afford and mod it if neccessary (X0), buy the best analogue video capture card one can afford, capture it to lossless AVI and then work from this as our RAW Master. Time to do all this and messing around tweaking players and capture cards = a LONG TIME (even longer depending on how obsessive you are in getting the best possible capture, the X0 team have done several captures already!) Cost = a HELL of a lot of money, most people here couldn't even begin to afford!

FROM SEPTEMBER ONWARDS: Buy new OFFICIAL OOT Discs, rip them onto our computers (DVD Decrypter), convert the MPEG2 files to lossless AVI (VirtualDubMod and huffyuv) and then work from this as our RAW Master. Time to do all this = probably a day, tops. Cost = Price of the DVD's.


SO, bearing in mind I'm generally a very positive chap, I'm hoping (and it sounds like) that what we get in September is a nice simple straight transfer to DVD of the same stock they used for the DC/Faces LaserDiscs (from what we are lead to believe with comments like "state of the art circa '93 quality", this sounds like what we are gonna get, no messing with anything, just straight from film to DVD... even they can't mess that up, SURELY!) For a fraction of the cost/time we are having to deal with currently, we get a MUCH BETTER RAW PRINT TO WORK WITH! Blatantly people are gonna see ways to improve it ala the exhaustive frame-by-frame clean up work of the X0 and colour enhancement etc, then those wanting to go beyond preservation into digital remastering/enhancement, get rid of garbage mattes, fx glitches, compositing shoddiness etc can do that with their projects.

Also, as an aside, sounds like the OOT DVD's are gonna have a nice high bit rate as they won't be coming with extras or anything on the DVD's with them, so hopefully we won't have to deal with much/any MPEG2 compression artifacts when we convert them to uncompressed AVI to start editing them. Speculation atm, but that's the way it sounds from the press release.

AS far as I'm concerned (all things happening as I have described) this is the best news we could have hoped for! There is no way LFL were gonna spend loads of time remastering this print just so they can slap it on as bonus feature in the new boxset, so instead, they are gonna just give us the best raw capture we could ever hope for of the source we have been working with for the last few years, so we can then go on to remaster/add all the extra soundtracks to it ourselves

Roll on September and the beginning of a whole wave of "LaserDisc Is Dead" projects Exciting times!


ps ocpmovie: I'd say lay off posting things about this in the X0 thread, I'm sure you mean well and you're not really wishing to cause trouble, but I think you're just gonna piss people off needlessly, and I'm sure all those guys will be observing threads like this. Also (and completely no disrespect to those guys and their impressive skills) the only thing which had them before as the bastions of the OOT effort was their beautiful RAW capture, from September hopefully that will be rendered moot, and then anyone with the same dedication and willingness and skill to clean/remaster the OOT can do so too! Things here have basically got to the point where everyone was only interested in what the X0 team were doing, from september, I'm hoping, loads more cleanup/remastering efforts will begin and things here will be more exciting than ever! Everyone will be given the same opportunity to work on this and produce the best possible results, regardless of financial support or equipment resources, how beautiful is that! Of course if people want to still continue to create their own definitive take on the best LaserDisc conversion that is possible with this technology, purely for their own satisfaction and amusement, then sure, go ahead and do it, no one can criticise that, please yourself first and if others love what you're doing then that's a bonus. Personally, my interest will be squarely centred on what people can achieve with using this new wave of LID preservation.

Or maybe I'm just being too optimistic meh, keeps me happy

www.bardothodol.net

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Well put, pupil.



>> What if the non-LID Project does not provide all the material in suitable quality to make the OT you remember? Does that make the non-LID-p a failure? Are there any SW moments which you think will not show up in the non-LID Project?


I'm not sure what you're saying here. By "non-LID Project," do you mean the 2006 DVDs? Let me assume you meant that and just said it in a really weird way.

>> What if the 2006 DVDs do not provide all the material in suitable quality to make the OT you remember? Are there any SW moments which you think will not show up in the 2006 DVD Project?

I believe the 2006 DVDs will have everything in 'em - lazy 1993 masters sounds fine to me - but just in case, we've got great LD transfers like Moth3r's on standby. Worked fine for the Classic Editions.

I really doubt anything will be missing from the 06 DVDs if that's what you mean.
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yeah non-LID = 2006 DVD. While we're in this tranistionary terminology phase, are we calling the non-LID "Corporate Preservation".

So what fan edit projects did occur using the LID transfers? Wookie Groomer Splits, Deleted Magic, Building Empire, __?__.

What we're the promising/interesting fan edit projects which we're proposed? I was looking forward to the foreign language WWII audio track for ANH, and someone was going to cut the PT (as flashbacks) into the OT.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Here's what people who know are saying about the LID project.


"Ocp [is] acting like such an ass ... The official DVDs are little better than VHS to DVD transfers." - C3PX


Sweet, I got totaly misquoted. ocpmovie would make a great journalist. If you read my original post I said I was disappointed to see ocp acting like such an ass. When I said that it had nothing to do with his LID thing but with the way he was posting in the X0 form in all caps saying "LOL YOU GUYZ GOT OWND BY LUCASFILM END GOODBYE" and less than half an hour later "LOL OWNED SO OWNED SO MUCH WASTED TIME LOL LOL LOL KILL YOUR LD PLAYER kill self " I had a lot of respect for him, he was an important member of this community and he has done some fantastic projects, so I was a little shocked to see him posting such things. I thought he would have had more respect, I would not have expected him to be going around in a very troll like fasion and stomping on the toes of some people who have really put a lot of time and effort into the X0 project. Even your whole LID thing is just there to spite the X0 project. What does it matter to you. If you think the official DVD are going to be great, then good. I hope they are. But let the people who are still excited about the X0 project keep their excitment. Maybe in the end what the X0 project comes up with will be little better than a pile of crap, and the official ones will be just great. I guess we will know for sure in September.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Ok, yes I thought you lost your mind OCPm (or were drunk for the last several days), but abrasive as your posts have been, I also think you are 100% right.

GL doesn't love us, he doesn't care what we want or think, he just wants more of our money.
But... no matter what he turns out in '06, these DVD will be our real source for all future work. Digital anamorphic 480 lines of resolution blow away analog letterboxed 270 (?!) lines every day of the week.
Woohoo bring 'em on!!!!

Btw, the LID screenshots above, are they Classic Edition snaps or the the '04 discs newly color corrected/tweaked.

Dr. M

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If you're going for the best quality, don't even think about buying the NTSC DVD's. On top of that, the vertical resolution of LD is 480 for NTSC and 576 for PAL (same as DVD) it only differs horizontally. As can be read here. Of course everyone here is supposed to be in state of euphoria about the upcoming release, and if it will really be straight transfers, without screwed up color/contrast/brightness BEYOND REPAIR as on the '04 DVD's, video-wise the LDs will indeed be obsolete. As a LD fanatic, I regret to say it (also because the SW LDs will be worth a lot less money than they are now) but that's just a fact. The main thing is, that has yet to be seen. Personally I have the feeling they will tamper the footage either 1: to let the ESE look better, or 2: to "enhance" them and give them the same appearance as the '04 DVDs. In the case of the latter option, the material will be useless for any OT recreation attempt, as with the '04 DVDs. Fan edits can be entertaining, but any random VHS or LD transfer has more OT spirit than an ESE DVD with some desperate polishing applied to it. To give one practical example, the brightness/constrast levels on the DVD have resulted in a LOT of detail loss in the dark areas, beyond repair, beyond getting it to look OT. That is one of the reasons why the X0 project may still look better than the upcoming official release.

That's no moon. It's a LaserDisc.

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Originally posted by: Grinder
If you're going for the best quality, don't even think about buying the NTSC DVD's. On top of that, the vertical resolution of LD is 480 for NTSC and 576 for PAL (same as DVD)

To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been an anamorphic Laserdisc release - therefore the DVD release will have 1.33x the vertical resolution (360 DVD lines after letterboxing v. 270 Laserdisc, or 432 v. 324 for PAL).

If your destination is NTSC, you probably should stick with the NTSC release. You won't have to resize the video and you won't have to resample the audio.

it only differs horizontally.


LD being an analogue format (or is it a digitised representation of an analogue signal? I can never remember), it doesn't have a real horizontal resolution, as I was given to understand it. Of course, there is a limit to the amount of information per line, and it's not as good as DVD.

DE
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THE DEBATE CONTINUES

"The new DVDs will need a lot of work to look anything like the X0 Project LD transfer." - Zion

"The image of Greedo looks better from the X0 pic as does Shaw." - Knightmessenger

"stoppit ocpmovie!" - Hal 9000

"[image] How about a nice cup of shut the fuck up?" - PaulisDead2221

"You make some valid points, albeit in a cocky yet childish manner." - Zion, privately.

"Roll on September and the beginning of a whole wave of 'LaserDisc Is Dead' projects!" - pupil



None .... could you change your terminology, as it's weird. Don't say LID or non-LID. Say laserdisc, 2004 DVD, 2006 DVD. There, that's easy ...

Sup Doctor M!

>> Btw, the LID screenshots above, are they Classic Edition snaps or the the '04 discs newly color corrected/tweaked.

Newly color corrected. =) I wanted to put the XO project and the 2004 discs on the same playing field, by making them look roughly the same. If the laserdiscs really have some magical quality that makes them OT and not the 2004 DVDs, it shouldn't take two seconds to color correct them to look the same. Heh.

I wanted to show what was possible for future projects. This might springboard some discussion and ideas if the 2006 DVDs really do need any work put into them ... although I suspect they'll be damn good and watchable just as they are.

To compare them to my Classic Edition would be a bit lame as that was my first anamorphic film edit, and I've learned a lot since then. As you might have heard, I was planning a much better version of the Classic Edition, with significantly improved picture quality, before the announcement was made.



I wanted to dispel the harmful myth that the laserdiscs despite their quality have some magical O-OT quality that the Lucas DVDs don't. If we don't abandon laserdisc this site will never get anywhere. Cleaning up an old laserdisc frame by frame, you might as well be cleaning up frames on a VHS tape or Beta when you've got an HD master sitting right there.


I kind of like the idea of using the PAL DVDs. I wouldn't use the sped up sound from them, but the transfer has more resolution and could be fun to transfer to HD even.



And Grinder, let me be the first to say ... what?

"If you're going for the best quality, don't even think about buying the NTSC DVD's. ... any random VHS or LD transfer has more OT spirit than an ESE DVD with some desperate polishing applied to it." - Grinder

WHAT.


Did you say this before in the other thread about my edit? I thought it was Rikter but I guess it was you.

Okay, fine, let's all do our transfers from VHS and Beta from now on. Or Super-8. Any dead format.

=)



"SPIRIT" doesn't matter. "QUALITY" matters. Dead formats have no magical quality to them.



To paraphrase a fat man, that version is on VHS if anyone wants it ...


THE DEBATE CONTINUES AGAIN


"What on earth are you trying to prove?" - Gorram

"Only time will tell if what [Lucasfilm] put out will be any better [than the XO] ... there's no way LFL spent the time and money to clean up the film and resotre the original color like we are." - Zion

"There are only about 270 lines of movie data on a laserdisc ... The DVD captures on the other hand are anamorphic and have a TRUE height of 360 horizontal lines. ... Frankly if I were running the X0 project I'd go dark until September, saving time and money ... anything else is just plain crazy." - Doctor M

"OCP is being a mean-spirited jerk ... X0 headquarters is about as state-of-the-art as enthusiasts can get." - Karyudo
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If we're trading selectively-edited quotes...

"Jesus christ, people, 2+4 equals four." - ocpmovie

"[M]y Classic Editions looked like shit ... totally terrible." - ocpmovie



If you're going to quote me, please do it properly:

"I have every confidence whatever happens behind the scenes at X0 headquarters is about as state-of-the-art as enthusiasts can get." - Karyudo

And my favourite:

"I still think OCP is being a mean-spirited jerk." - Karyudo
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Right ... so I edit your quotes to make them shorter but say the exact same thing.


And you edit my quotes to say the opposite of what I was saying.




Right ....


All right then.

"Laserdisc is better than DVD." - ocpmovie



Anyway, ignoring the "great debate" for a moment ...


What would you people like to see on your ideal Star Wars Original Trilogy release?


Lucas is giving us the basics .... what can we add to the pile?
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Right ... so I edit your quotes to make them shorter but say the exact same thing. And you edit my quotes to say the opposite of what I was saying.


Not true! You edited my post to sound like I was saying everything from the X0 Project is state-of-the-art, which is not the same as saying that I have confidence that everything behind the scenes is as close to state-of-the-art as enthusiasts can get. Your edit implies that I'm in the "blind faith in LD" camp, when I am not. Bits are cheap; why not use the whole quote?

What I removed from your post is something you have removed from every post you've quoted: context. If that happens to have removed the intent from your post, and in fact turned the meaning completely around, well, then, that's really not any different from what you've been doing. Because you did type, "Yeah, my Classic Editions looked like shit, didn't they? Totally terrible." I don't think that sounds substantially different from how I posted it above. Does it?

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"Anyway, ignoring the "great debate" for a moment"

What "debate"? You are arguing against no one. You are simply spamming the boards with your obvious and overnight hatred of laserdiscs, and apparently can't deal with the fact that no one's jumping on your bandwagon. Now you are making yourself into a self-styled martyr with these quotes you're reposting, all because you aren't getting your way with the X0 Project.

It's not a debate....it's a debacle. Stop whining and grow up.

"And you edit my quotes to say the opposite of what I was say"

Not entirely correct. the "Jesus christ, people, 2+4 equals four." quote is word-for-word, but Karyudo did edit the second quote.
Here it is in its entirety. "Yeah, my Classic Editions looked like shit, didn't they? Totally terrible."

All better. Oh, and let's not forget this one: "There is no such thing as an anamorphic laserdisc."

Completely unedited, and yet still completely wrong. Happy now?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Unfortunately, none of us can add the three original 6-track mixes, which Lucasfilm has STILL not released; that's really what we all want to go with the OOT, particularly the fabled 70mm mix. But I would like subtitles in many languages. I'd like a choice of many audio mixes, and a good isolated score. Perhaps a text commentary with trivia, as they did on the Star Trek DVD's?

I would love to see not only the lost cut, but also "Star Wars: The Temp track edition with the different crawl". That stuff would be incredible to see. Obviously not going to happen, though; there isn't really a market for that as much.


What we're the promising/interesting fan edit projects which we're proposed? I was looking forward to the foreign language WWII audio track for ANH, and someone was going to cut the PT (as flashbacks) into the OT.

I agree- I was really looking forward to the WWII edit. Know, though, that the "Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side" film will come out on DVD this September (because at that point, I'll be able to rip the logos in the highest quality from the OOT DVDs. Without saying too much, I honestly think you'll love Episode II after seeing this film. Not only is the acting a radical departure from the original, with some new voice actors, but the CGI work has been seriously changed to be more real. I really can't wait for you guys to see it. So at least this project isn't going by the wayside- I'm sure of that.

-TM

Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

Emperor Jar-Jar
“Back when we made Star Wars, we just couldn’t make Palpatine as evil as we intended. Now, thanks to the miracles of technology, it is finally possible. Finally, I’ve created the movies that I originally imagined.” -George Lucas on the 2007 Extra Extra Special HD-DVD Edition

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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
What would you people like to see on your ideal Star Wars Original Trilogy release?


Good, on-topic question. How about:

- colour correction faithful to original film
- both crawls (and/or other languages, say?)
- Original Unaltered Trilogy elements in same quality as rest of film
- HD resolution
- multiple audio tracks
- DTS 5.1 audio

I don't see that anybody would have a better shot at filling in that wish list than the X0 Project has, assuming LFL doesn't get it exactly right in September.
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P.S. Please stop bickering like teenagers. You guys are really disappointing me.

Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

Emperor Jar-Jar
“Back when we made Star Wars, we just couldn’t make Palpatine as evil as we intended. Now, thanks to the miracles of technology, it is finally possible. Finally, I’ve created the movies that I originally imagined.” -George Lucas on the 2007 Extra Extra Special HD-DVD Edition

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Sorry, I was getting too much of a great laugh from his obvious mistakes - the biggest of which was thinking he could affect the X0 Project in any way, shape or form. If anything, he's given me more reason to finish it now. Thanks, OCB, and have fun in your thread.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Karyudo, MebeJedi:

"'Thank you' for your 'intelligent contributions' to this 'thread'." - ocpmovie



It's sad that we don't have the 6-track mix, yes. And we still won't. Oh well. I'm very fond of the mono mix as well, and made a point of using the most interesting bits from it in my cut. I would like to see that done again here. Not a complete mono mix, as we don't have it any any worthwhile quality, but the interesting bits.


The best mono mix currently out there is from a British TV airing in the 80s. It's all right but not great.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Let's do a quick comparison between sourcing it from Lucas' DVDs and sourcing it from laser .... I call it the LID Project ... LID stands for "Laserdisc is Dead."
http://orangecow.org/starwars/xoshaw.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/lidshaw.jpg

I would really like to know from what Lucas' DVD the last pic is. It can't be the 2004 DVD since there are eyebrows.

Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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Again: Taken from the 2004 DVDs with added eyebrows, in the spirit of Jedi Classic. Eyebrows from the very sharp 1997-edition TB set (also used for Jedi Classic).

I could have done a better job, but I was trying to prove a point quickly.
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None .... could you change your terminology, as it's weird. Don't say LID or non-LID. Say laserdisc, 2004 DVD, 2006 DVD. There, that's easy ...

OCPmovie created the term in the title of this thread, and now that it's out there, we're not suppost to use it or expand upon it... boo
So is this "Laserdisc is dead" is like "Rock'nRoll is dead" or "Elvis is dead" or "James Brown is Dead" or "George Lucas's creativity (which raped my childhood) is dead as a doorknob"... etc.
none
Non-Ranking Official in the non-LID Society for Laserdisc Awareness
(I'm not just a member, i'm an active participant.)

Now will a 1080 (i or p) version of the OT make the non-LID dead too? Personally i'm tired of waiting I wants the hexology in Ultra High Def! I-Max me babie...