STENDEC's Hybrid SE (part-finished project?)

Hello all. I’ve set this thread up to detail my hybrid DVDs of the 1997 SE trilogy. At the moment I’m about 90% done with ANH, but a couple of things are holding me up temporarily. Firstly, I’ve read elsewhere that some people swear by the Funk release as the highest quality available for the '97 ANH. I hadn’t grabbed this one yet, so I’m downloading the torrent right now from the Spleen and hope to have a good look at it shortly. Secondly, I want to include the 5.1 and stereo mixes from schorman13’s exceptional Laser Disc Audio Archive, however at the moment there are no seeds, so I’m a bit stuck with it.

With that all in mind, here are the details of what I’m hoping to release:

All 3 1997 Special Edition releases of the OT, utilising the best quality digital broadcast copies available. This means that although I have a few choices for ANH, ESB and RotJ will have to be a mix of the G’Kar and the TB versions, as they are the only copies of those two (besides the 5 Star versions, which are by all accounts crap). Each movie will be available with the Laserdisc 5.1 and stereo mixes. Lastly, I’m actually rebuilding the official DVD menus from my copy of the 2004 DVD release. This means that, for all intents and purposes, playing my disks will look almost as if GL had not modified the films for the 2004 release.

I also forgot to mention that these will be released in NTSC format, and not PAL. As I mentioned in the other thread, although PAL does have a slightly larger frame size (576 lines vs 480), the 4% speed up just sounds awful to my ears.

Now to help in the discussion of which release has the best image quality, I’ve done the following comparison frames (the Flunk isn’t included yet as it’s still downloading on my PC):

G’Kar:

Reivax:

TB:

As you can probably see from there, the G’Kar offers far better image quality over all, as the other two seem to have had more DNR applied. Also, the Reivax looks to have had the blacks crushed a bit and the TB release’s colours seem to be off in comparison to the other two. You guys would probably know better than I as to which one is more ‘correct’ however.

To help the analysis further, take a look at these close ups of Obi-Wan’s beard:

G’Kar:

Reivax:

TB:

Based on this, I have to say that I think the G’Kar offers the best picture.

Excited!  As was said in the other thread, regardless of how great they are, they certainly are an important part of Star Wars history and deserve preservation.  I especially enjoy the bizarre bits of the 97 ANH, such as the strange looking Jabba and Greedo's even lamer first shot (they're all lame, but it looked a little better in 04).  Plus I hear the color are very nice in the 97 SE.  Best of luck :)

I've been comparing the 97 SE versions to help dark_jedi with an eventual future project, and I can tell you that the Flunk version is not the best.

Flunk has crushed shadow detail and is oversharpened.

Reivax has some weird frame-blending which adds more smearing, and makes each shot fade into each other by one frame.

The best is Gkar, and TB is second, being a bit more blurry than Gkar.

By the way, by Hybrid, do you mean like layering Gkar and TB on each other to get more detail out of them?

This sounds like a good project! Best of luck on it. As I grew up with this version, I'd be happy to have it preserved in good quality. Perhaps you could use the 5.1 Theater Disc preservations for the audio once they are done...

You_Too said:

Flunk has crushed shadow detail and is oversharpened.

Reivax has some weird frame-blending which adds more smearing, and makes each shot fade into each other by one frame.

The best is Gkar, and TB is second, being a bit more blurry than Gkar.

Hmm? Sorry, but I disagree. While the Flunk is over processed and has digital errors, the G'Kar is far from the best. The G'Kar, in my opinion, is the absolute worst of the '97 PAL Discs. It's over compressed and undeniably soft.

The Reivax actually looks the best overall to me despite the added smearing. The TB is second best for good compression but an overall lower quality sharpness than the Reivax; since the blending of the Reivax may be an issue, I'd actually recommend you use this one for preservation purposes.

OK I've added some more details about the various releases I'm working with, as well as the fact that my release is NTSC (which I forgot to mention here initially).

You_Too said:

By the way, by Hybrid, do you mean like layering Gkar and TB on each other to get more detail out of them?

Well the 'hybrid' name was basically just referring to the fact that I was using more than one copy of the SE releases (and the audio) to produce one finished film, rather than trying to extract more video info by compositing and so forth. However, that may be an avenue worth pursuing if I can figure out a good way to do it (and if it will produce any appreciably better results).

STENDEC said:

Based on this, I have to say that I think the G'Kar offers the best picture.

Hmm. Guess I'm wrong then. Sorry about that guys. Will the slight compression macroblocking in this release be a problem at all though?

msycamore said:

You_Too said:

I've been comparing the 97 SE versions to help dark_jedi with an eventual future project, and I can tell you that the Flunk version is not the best.

Interesting, how did he take it? I recall he went berserk when I explained the shortcomings of that transfer.

Berserk?

Well, DJ said he might wanna do some upscales of the 97 SE's too, along with the Blu V2, so he sent me samples of each version which I compared, I told him that Gkar looked the best and he just trusted me on that.

Anyway, just to clarify to anyone interested: We won't clean up the 97 SE in that case. Just upscale it and maybe do a minor color correction.

EDIT: After some more analyzing of Gkar vs TB, I think they both somehow have their ups and downs. Gkar is indeed blocky because of the compression, and has some kind of weird edge sharpening maybe?

TB doesn't seem to have crushed shadows like I first thought, they're just darker. TB is more soft but has more grain preserved than Gkar, but also has another kind of compression artefacts, especially in the shadow detail.

The best thing would be if somebody would layer both on each other, because when cropped, they both are a perfect match. It's just the subbed parts of Gkar that would have to be layered with only TB or something.

Really ? Then I must check both versions again, because the last time I checked the TB releases were "barely watchable"

@msycamore: You're right, after more analyzing it seems TB is not that bad. Not as bad as it looks on those screenshots.

And yeah, Gkar seems to have some added DVNR or something. Weird.

Actually, me and DJ are probably gonna use TB to make our upscale.

Actually, I personally don't have any interest in the 97 SE, at least these versions. I'd love to see the theatrical prints though, if the colors are much better like people say.

I'm just helping DJ because he wanted to do an upscale. And it's not going to be something advanced. Just a simple upscale with minor color correction.

Hmm interesting point about the TB vs G'Kar thing. To me it just looked like the TB was softer and had less visible detail, but I could be wrong. It might be worth me cranking the contrast way up on both of them and seeing if there's any obvious lack of detail in one or the other. I have noticed a bit of image warping in the G'Kar, but I haven't checked if it's the same in the TB.

The other thing that led me more to the G'Kar were the stars in that frame on the Falcon. The stars in the G'Kar window are easily visible, but in the TB they're much less obvious. This could just be due to differences in the levels however.

Now about these missing frames, does any one know for sure which ones are missing from which broadcast? Has that sort of analysis ever been done by anybody before? Secondly, I have the SE laserdisc boxset as well. Does anyone know if those transfers have missing frames too or was that purely an issue with the digital broadcasts?

Oh and I'm not having any luck getting the laserdisc audio tracks, so if anybody has them handy and is willing to upload them somewhere that would be awesome. I asked Jetrell Fo if he could send me his copies but he said his internet's not up to the job at the moment (and I'd feel bad getting him to send a disk to Australia :P).

Darth Mallwalker said:

Hard to believe nobody's seeding schorman's Archive torrent, only six weeks old, but I've seen it too with my own eyes.

Regarding the frame analysis, I've been working on a spreadsheet comparison:
-2004 R1 DVD
-DarkSvn '97 laserdisc preservation
-ReivaX
-Flunk (only the first layer of the DVD9, until "She lied to us!")

The LD preservation is missing one field at the middle of Side 3, for example.
Side2 is missing first three frames of the green saber shot, after Praxis explosion. Side1 seems uncut.
You'll have to decide for yourself if any frames are missing between sides. My source isn't reliable that way...

Thanks for that Mallwalker. Yeah I've been doing some checking tonight for missing frames. So far I've determined that the G'Kar is missing one frame of the Star Destroyer flyover (which isn't a problem since nothing from that is usable anyway - it's in German and the colours and cropping are way off) and that the TB is missing 3 frames from the Alderaan explosion.

STENDEC wrote: Secondly, I have the SE laserdisc boxset as well. Does anyone know if those transfers have missing frames too or was that purely an issue with the digital broadcasts?

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-1997-Star-Wars-Special-Edition-Trilogy-Preservation-Standards-Thread-Work-In-Progress/post/597884/#TopicPost597884

The process starts with Lee Thorogood's.  Compared to that release are TB, Flunk.iso, G'Kar and the 2004. The public version can be edited by anyone.  Besides the opening and end credits, Lee's and the 2004 seem like a lock.  The other three have issues here and there.

SWSE-v001.1: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtjXdIjRQo5NdDdXY1IwZ0JJcnBhbHhBd2ZRMWNmMUE#gid=4

SWSE-v001.1-public: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtjXdIjRQo5NdFhSaGVfYVdlRlpnTHlvVk53Q3R0R1E#gid=5

Yeah, still coming along. Most of the last couple of weeks were spent waiting for the Laserdisc tracks to finish downloading. I've also had a number of setbacks with Premiere and Encore, but for the most part everything's going well. I haven't started on ESB or RotJ, but all the missing frames from ANH have been restored, the 5.1 and stereo LD tracks are synced up and the DVD menus are nearly finished. I'm hoping to have ANH completed and ISO'd this weekend so that I can start on Empire.