.: LeeThorogood's Original Trilogy Replica Technicolor Project :. (Released) — Page 2

Nerfherder said:

Is it just me, or is there evidence of halo-ing and a little video colour-shift (smearing to the right) going on with the engines of the Tantive IV at the very beginning of the GOUT? I noticed this when I first got the DVDs, and it's only evident on the section containing the original crawl that was spliced in...

- John

Chewtobacca said:

msycamore said:

Personally I would be more happy to see someone take a stab at the pre-THX LD transfers instead, but every attempt to get the films colortiming closer to its original state is always welcomed. :)

+1 on both counts! 

Those screenshots look great, Lee. :-)

I certainly would not believe this was the GOUT if you hadn't told us. Fantastic job! Can't wait to see this for meself. This may be what gets me to watch the movie again!

Nerfherder said:

Is it just me, or is there evidence of halo-ing and a little video colour-shift (smearing to the right) going on with the engines of the Tantive IV at the very beginning of the GOUT? I noticed this when I first got the DVDs, and it's only evident on the section containing the original crawl that was spliced in...

- John

I have also noticed that, other than that I think the crawl segment looks very nice with the video standards we're used to when it comes to SW. If they only had transfered the entire source it came from...

LeeThorogood said:

@myscamore which LD transfer would you suggest I use? The only non THX transfer I am aware of is the Dark Jedi/Sega JSC preservation and I was under the impression this is not a very good transfer?

That's a good question. ;) You would of course need raw captures, if something like that should even be attempted. I just thought I'd throw it out there, as the main problem with the GOUT isn't the colors IMO.

But I fully support your attempts and I like what I'm seeing. I guess I started to fantasise what something like this could do to the other transfers, that's all.

This is how I like to see it. I remembered Star Wars being a very colourful film as a child, yet digitally it hasn't been either washed out or blue.

Now everything has depth, it looks like people are actually there. People look like they actually have blood flowing through them. Skin Tones are more natural.

I can't wait for this.

@Zombie84 Many Thanks for putting that comparison page together, it was a really interesting read, very helpful! :D

@Bkev Thank you for the kind praise, knowing that so many people are interested in this just makes me even more excited about working on it. :)

@msycamore I too wish their was a pre THX source that could at least equal the GOUT for horizontal and beat it for vertical resolution. Believe me if such a source was available I would do my best to get my hands on it ;) For me once G-Force's and my own enhancements are applied to the GOUT the only real issue I have is the DVNR smearing, it's a shame there isn't some sort of de-ghosting filter that could at the least make this less obvious. Thank you for the continued support and don't stop fantasizing because the moment we do Darth Lucas wins! ;)

@EyeShotFirst Thank you for the kind praise. :)

Now for an update. I watched Star Wars through last night and I am happy to say I was VERY HAPPY with it! :D I re-rendered the video with the latest suggested tweaks over night, so I just need to export, encode, and author this, watch it through one last time to make sure I am happy with it, and if I am that will be Star Wars finished. :D

If anyone is interested in making DVD covers for this project that would be greatly appreciated I would request however that you base them on the following VHS covers as these are the ones I grew up with. :)

Star Wars:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vanhuk1994.htm

The Empire Strikes Back:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vesbuk1994.htm

Return Of The Jedi:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vrotjuk1994.htm

Many Thanks :)

I've never seen that spine art before, it's nice. Isn't there a smear-free version of the DC that Malwalker found? Why hasn't he captured it yet?

I have a question; if Binary sunset is suppose to be pink/red/orange rather than blue/purple does this mean that when Luke comes rushing up out of the garage looking for R2D2 that the sky here should also be pink/red/orange too?

Many Thanks

Back on-topic: as it stands, I see a bit of inconsistency in the Death Star shots. Compare http://img413.imageshack.us/i/sw31.png/ to http://img839.imageshack.us/i/sw44.png/ . While they are different areas of the battle station, I would imagine that the colors would be at least unified in that blue tint.

LeeThorogood said:

@myscamore which LD transfer would you suggest I use? The only non THX transfer I am aware of is the Dark Jedi/Sega JSC preservation and I was under the impression this is not a very good transfer?

As much as I hate to say it, I tried using a simple saturation boost on Arnie.d's V8 and it didn't work half as well as it did on the GOUT =/

But don't let me discourage you, your results may vary.

LeeThorogood said:

If anyone is interested in making DVD covers for this project that would be greatly appreciated I would request however that you base them on the following VHS covers as these are the ones I grew up with. :)

Star Wars:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vanhuk1994.htm

The Empire Strikes Back:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vesbuk1994.htm

Return Of The Jedi:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vrotjuk1994.htm

Many Thanks :)

Thanks for linking to my site. But thanks to me using bl**dy frames, people can't click themselves back to a main page :-)

I have High-rez scans (300dpi) of those covers and would gladly email them to anyone who wants to use them for the DVD covers. PM or e-mail me from my site.

Thanks Video Collector!

I should hopefully have Star Wars finished in a day or two, I am rendering out the final colour correction overnight tonight. :)

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Wow! That was fast, Lee! From your screenshots, this looks like an awesome project. Are you planning to upload to newsgroups?

So I was fiddling about while I was waiting for things to encode and what have you today and I thought I would share some of my findings. :)

First of all is saturation, now I know some here would have me boost this more then I already have, and believe me I would love to, however to keep everything broadcast legal as it were I can't not without crushing/clipping areas of high saturation i.e. the red light/LED behind Greedo in the Cantina. What I mean by crushing/clipping is that the red light would go from looking like a light bulb where you can see the glowing filament inside the main glass bulb to one big bright red mass with no detail to it.

Next is contrast, once again some here would have me boost this more then I already have, and once again I would love to, however the problem is that the GOUT has inconsistent blacks which can vary as much as 10 IRE between one scene and the next. An example of this would be if you were to adjust the black point on a waveform monitor in the scene where Vader and his pal walk down the Tantive hallway so that the bottom of the Luma wave is just touching the baseline (0 IRE for PAL) and then take the same setting and apply it to the "I find you're lack of faith disturbing" scene you would find the blacks in this second scene are being crushed with the bottom of the Luma wave at about -10 IRE. The white point on the other hand is fairly stable throughout but then this doesn't surprise me because the GOUT suffers from clipped whites. :(

Knowing this the way I see it there are two options, push things as far as you can until these secondary problems become apparent or push things to the desired levels and accept/put up with the secondary problems as a by product. Neither situation is ideal but thenI suppose you have to play the cards your dealt. ;)

It looks like Star Wars may take a little longer then I previously indicated. It's my fault I keep on playing and tweaking and I keep on finding ways to improve the results but of course every time I make a change it means re-rendering, re-encoding, re-authoring and re-watching the film which all takes time. ;)

I have just finished making a new round of tweaks to the colour grade which I think is about as good as its going to get. The contrast/saturation is much improved compared to the screenshots I posted. That said I am not done yet, it was suggested in another thread that the end result might look better if I upscale the GOUT to 2x Anamorphic PAL resolution first then apply the colour grading after which I can scale back down to Anamorphic PAL resolution.

I'll run some tests tomorrow and go from there. :)