PS78: Pre-ANH Star Wars Bootleg VHS from 1978 ***"RAW" DVD RELEASED*** — Page 16

AntcuFaalb said:

Is it possible that the AGC in the Panasonic AG-1980P is causing the problem(s)?

If so, does anyone know of any early VCRs produced without AGC circuitry that can be modded for S-Video?

Sorry I am late to the party.  Haven't been on OT.com very much this past year (new to parenthood, and it is crazy!).  At any rate, I would be willing to give it a shot on my deck, and I live in Northern Virginia (about a 45 minute drive to Baltimore from my house).  

I have a JVC HR-9600U.  Generally looked at as one of the best prosumer decks.  

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buying-guide.html

It is then connected to my PC via SVHS cable with a Hauppauge PCI card that can do lossless AVI.  I could just make a straight lossless AVI capture and save it to an external hard drive and give it back to you.  It will probably be around 20gb.  So a thumb drive would work too.  I am not 100% sure that the end result will be drastically different from yours, but who knows, might be worth a shot.

I made this preservation if you want to see what I was able to get out of the 30 year old 1982 rental tape. 

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-1982-Rental-Copy-Preservation/topic/14254/

Hi,

I have a bootleg of Star Wars I received from a family friend named Shea who was married to a person in "the business". What may be of further interest is that there is a record date of 17 June 1979 on the label.

Pictures of the  Cassette are here

http://imageshack.us/g/1/9795200/

Shea's initials SB are on the label.

It is widescreen. It has been years since I've viewed it.

Any interest?

PhotoDroid

Spambotkiller42(at)yahoo(dot)com

Yeah Yeah Yeah Star Wars is definitely on the tape.

Shea recorded Battlestar Galactica off of HBO (in 1980) AFTER the Star Wars recording. See the record dates and the white-out? Anything recorded over would have been white(d) out?

So It's obviously Recorded in LP Mode.

What gets me is that is was RATHER UNREMARKABLE to Shea and her husband to have a copy of Star Wars and record it in LP Mode

I guess it really wasn't a big deal for them?? How much were blanks 25.00+??

PhotoDroid

frank678 said:

Wow, this could be another awesome find - have you had chance to cross reference what it looks like compared to other versions? Maybe you could take 2 or 3  photos from the first five minutes and post them up to show what it looks on the screen?

Hi Frank,

>Maybe you could take 2 or 3  photos from the first five minutes and post >them up to show what it looks on the screen?

Sure, no problem. Please give me a day or so. How about the Greedo Subtitles. and maybe something else as well. Give me specific scenes, things to look for that would be of interest. I am a rank amateur when it comes to the different prints.

ALL I KNOW is that the SE gives me the hives. I (accidentally) put in ESB SE (from the 2 disc retail set) and I nearly stroked out when I saw Zev with blood on his face.

>have you had chance to cross reference what it looks like compared to >other versions?

I have not. Please tell me some give-away stuff to look for as I stated above.

Considering the source, it is my firm belief that this is from a bonafide film chain source and not a camera/tripod affair.

PhotoDroid

Great find :)

hey photodroid,

here are a couple of things which you could use to judge how interesting and early on your version is. In the first death star scene early print versions had much more colour in them especially the blues of the walls and greens of the uniforms, later on this scene had become very grey.

likewise the end death star attack had some blue tints among the greys, which later became just plain grey.

but if you dont want to wind thru the tape to those parts just the very first shots of C3PO walking in the tantive ship corridor should give you an idea of what youve got. If C3PO looks very flat, dull and one dimensional in colour then its probably not going to be too exciting on the rest of the tape, but if he looks really reflective and really 3-D metallically (almost mirror like). Then you could be onto a winner! The more clear and mirror like he is the better. You could check that first minute or so, if you want to risk playing the tape at this stage. There is the chance playing and pausing it might degrade it. But its your tape, so its your call. If from what you can remember it was a really good version and youre not confident of how your video player is going to behave you could consider lending it to one of the guys on the forum who have got the real high end set ups going on. But the again you might want the satisfaction (and hassle) of capturing this yourself. Whatever it looks like though this sounds like it comes from a unique source and therefore potentially could have specific elements present ONLY on this version/tape... So guard and protect this tape with your life!!!!

It definitely looks that way, but the exact balances are hard to gauge from different sources=

film cell

senator screening

film cell

pre anh bootleg

Even TeamNegative1's sources seem to show hue variation:

The 70mm scans seem muted

Retartedted's 1982 preservation is the one official source where the green uniforms and dark blue tints (the blue effect is strange as it seems to be an effect from the wall lights picking out dark blue tones in the grey wall paint?) seem to be still intact. I took a stab at trying to get the Pal VHS to uncover the original mix, but was limited by what I started with https://vimeo.com/59244857

The blue and green information is hinted at in the greys on some transfers its just so washed out it hardly registers/can be recovered.

Ive got my fingers crossed that Photodroid 's Shea '79 bootleg is not grey looking. Very interested to find out what it looks like!