Return of the Jedi 1997 Special Edition HD Reconstruction

Hi everyone!

As the title suggests this is an HD reconstruction of the 1997 version of ROTJ. This is a project I’ve been intending to do for a while now and I finally have something that I can call watchable. Since there are two very well made reconstructions of the 97 versions of ANH and ESB (thanks to Harmy, Team Blu, and Adywan) I figured ROTJ needed a reconstruction done in some capacity!

I used 3 sources for this project:

• DNR version of 4k83 (for scenes that weren’t altered in the 97 edition i.e. Shaw force ghost, theatrical “A long time ago” text)
• TB SD broadcast **REPLACED BY LASERDISC UPSCALE AND MERGE (thanks ZigZig!)
• 2004 HDTV broadcast provided by schorman

There are still a few things that need to be done to make this reconstruction complete (if anyone would be willing to help with these things send me a message!) :

1. Adding theatrical style subtitles for when Jabba says, “Ah! Do that again!” before the Jedi Rocks scene (DONE thanks to Schorman for helping!)
2. Zooming in and color correcting the Gkar broadcast clip so the black bars and color are consistent with the other scenes before and after it (DONE, using ZigZig’s ld merge for all scenes of planets celebrating)
3. Syncing to the DTS and Laserdisc audio (DONE)
4. Color correct entire film to match the Gkar version of ROTJ (In progress)

I’m not sure how long it’ll take for me to get around to doing these things that still need to be done since I am busy with college classes at the moment, but I’ll get around to it eventually!

Video dimensions: 1280x720p, 23.976fps
File Size: 14gb mkv

PM me for a link and share some feedback here if you’d like. Thanks!

Cool, I’d love a link, please.

I had thought about using 4K83 but since Harmy used Blu-ray for his main source and I’m using the Blu-Ray to restore some changes I figured they would blend better. You’re projects sound interesting and I hope to see them get released! I bet they’ll be miles better than what I’m able to accomplish. I’ll pm you a link to what I have done!

Edit: Looks like I’ll be using 4k83 after all!

This sounds excellent! I grew up with the '97SE and have lamented the lack of a good HD reconstruction. Count me in as excited to see the results.

Thanks for the interest! This will definitely be a group effort so I’d be happy to receive help of any kind!

And I have a minor update regarding the subtitles for Jabba’s extra scene. I used Illustrator to recreate the theatrical subs and they came out pretty well! I’ll still have to make the resolution of the subtitles match the resolution of the film to make it blend in better. Would I be able to use this png to add subtitles on video? (I’m using Movavi Video Editor if that helps answer the question)

It might be easiest to just render that out using AviSynth. I can do it for you if you want.

schorman13 said:

It might be easiest to just render that out using AviSynth. I can do it for you if you want.

If you could do that, that would be great! I really appreciate it! And also I’m looking forward to your revised HDTV broadcasts 😃

Ok, sent a PM with the clip. Excited to see what you can do with this one.

Got it! Thanks so much

Harmy already did ANH 1997, and Adywan did ESB 1997. This is to fill the hole left by no one having yet done ROTJ 1997.

Subtitles are finished thanks to Schorman for helping!

One thing I noticed was that you used the Theatrical “A long time ago” text, instead of the newer version that appeared in the Special Editions and prequels. However, upon further inspection of a '97 PAL DVD and '97 Laser Disc, for some reason the new text was only added to Empire and ANH, and Return of the Jedi still has the theatrical text, so your reconstruction is still accurate.

Can’t wait until I can have my complete box set with theatrical-97-04-11 and revisited all together. For now other reason then I totally need 5 different ways to watch the same movie

SparkySywer said:

One thing I noticed was that you used the Theatrical “A long time ago” text, instead of the newer version that appeared in the Special Editions and prequels. However, upon further inspection of a '97 PAL DVD and '97 Laser Disc, for some reason the new text was only added to Empire and ANH, and Return of the Jedi still has the theatrical text, so your reconstruction is still accurate.

Huh I didn’t even know there was a difference! I’ll have to use 4k83 to put the theatrical text back in for V2. Thanks for sharing that info!

Also that’s weird that they forgot to update the text for ROTJ

dgraham414 said:

Can’t wait until I can have my complete box set with theatrical-97-04-11 and revisited all together. For now other reason then I totally need 5 different ways to watch the same movie

I’m glad I’m not the only one who wants to make a box set like that! I’m actually trying to make three multi-disc boxsets for each movie like the Blade Runner box set!

Sorry for slightly off topic but I would love my set to be 4 discs

Disc 1-2 would be both despecialized discs
Disc 3 would be 97 and 04
Disc 4 would be revisited

UPDATE: I have officially finished the v2 of this project using all new sources (listed above). There are now theatrical subs, DTS synch, and improved sources. I want to give special shoutouts to ZigZig and Schorman for helping me out!

Zig was kind enough to purchase PAL and NTSC laserdisc sets, capture the scenes I needed from them, add in the TB and Gkar broadcasts, upscale all of that using SuperResolution, and finally merge all of them together using the “PANup” method (https://forum.fanres.com/thread-25.html) to get the best possible quality out of all of the SD frames. It basically gets pseudo-HD frames out of it, and in the words of Larry David, it looks pretty, pretty, pretty good!

Here are some screenshot comparisons (the third screencap is especially impressive!):

• http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/JFC11NNU
• http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/DKZYGNNX
• http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/DKZYPNNX
• http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/JFC1CNNU

Instead of having the sources switch midshot, I just had Zig’s footaage replace all of the planets celebrating since it’d be too jarring to have it switch without a cut. So as of right now everything is finished except for color correction, the film is color timed to the 2004 versions (minus the botched lightsabers, those shots are replaced by the Blu-Ray). At first I was thinking of getting this color corrected to DrDre’s 4k83 LUT, but now I’m leaning towards learning to make my own LUT based off of the Gkar release and applying it. Hopefully that’ll get done soon!

I have a link for v2 at the ready so PM me if you’re interested!

WDW203 said:

trillary dump said:

the film is color timed to the 2004 versions (minus the botched lightsabers, those shots are replaced by the Blu-Ray).

Does this mean that the color is HDTV matched to the Blu-Ray in those shots or that they just use the Blu-Ray? IIRC, the HDTV version uses the 1997 recomposites, just with messed up color. The Blu-Ray uses new digital cores.

Yeah, it would definitely be more accurate to fix the color on the 2004 HDTV lightsaber shots than to use the Blu-Ray. However…were the lightsabers in Jedi actually ever recomposited before the cores were replaced in 2011? I seem to remember that only being the case for a few shots in ANH, with ESB and ROTJ’s lightsaber composites being untouched in 1997…