Star Wars ANH Bluray Semi-Despecialized & CC (JASWFP) V1 DONE (Released)

Introduction: just another star wars fan project…

First of all i wanna say that I don’t really follow the Star Wars fan edit scene so this might already be done and/or might not really be that interesting to most of you, but this a personal project of mine that I’m doing anyways so I thought I might as well share it here since some one might find it interesting.

Anyway, I saw Harmy’s Despecialized version a few weeks ago and got really inspired of doing a similar project but for the version that I grew up with and actually prefer to the originals (expect for a few changes): the specialized editions. But as most of you are aware of the contrast and colors on the bluray are pretty much worthless so the focus of this release will be to make a complete color correction of the bluray as well as a few changes (only Han fires; CG rock, Jabba scene and some of the Mos Eisley CG will be removed) and it will be released and synced to the 97 theatrical DTS surround soundtrack. What I’m basically doing is what I think should have been the bluray release of Star Wars.

I will put a lot of effort in to provide the highest picture quality possible, that means that my whole workflow will be in a DI-format (Prores) and it will end up as a 1080p 25GB (single layer BD) file using x264 2pass slow preset. I’ve tested the workflow and quality wise it’s pretty much transparent to the original bluray. The tools I will be using is Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Colorista II and avisynth.

ETA is when it’s done. I have a full time job so dunno when I get time to finish it, been working with it for about a week now and I’m already 20min in, so lets hope that I will continue in that rate.
 

Color correction

I will do a cut/cut CC of the whole film, and it should be noted that this will not be a “regrade” of the film, I’m pretty much relying heavily on the RGB-parade, waveform and vectroscope to make sure that contrast is spot on in every scene, that objects that are supposed to be white are white and not green, blue or red (although it will probably be slightly on the warm side throughout the film), and that skin tones are on the skin tone line on the vectroscope throughout the film. So my objective is more to make sure the colors are accurate and not what I think look best/trying to imitate what the original print looked like. My first plan was actually use Harmy’s version as a reference but I found pretty quickly that his CC and contrast are very inconsistence (no offense) and there are some scenes that have a lot of weird things going on color and contrast wise. I will also remove all the weird magenta smoke and flashes throughout the film. the GOUT will be used to some extent as a reference when it comes to shadow detail, exposure, smoke color etc.
 

Screen samples

I hope that I don’t upset anyone when I include Harmy’s version as a reference here, I figured that since they are so popular they should make a good reference. Since the first scene on tatooine look so much worse then the rest of the movie I ran it through MCTemporalDenoise, it’s not perfect yet, but it looks much better then the original at least.

(mine on the bottom)

http://share.pho.to/8rg92

http://share.pho.to/9EPOg

UPDATE:

I’m done, the file is now available on teh internetz
 

    
I don’t support piracy in any form, this release should only be shared among legal
owners of the official movie and are only intended for the originaltrilogy.com community.

Thanks to Harmy for allowing me to use his excellent work, and to the rest of the guys over @
originaltrilogy for their input and support.
 

Changes:
*Complete cut/cut color correction of the entire movie.
*Removed magenta flashes throughout the film.
*Fixed some of the matte color inconsistency
(e.g. CC and removal of bluish shadows in special effects shots).
*Some cleaning of the first scene on Tatoine with 3CPO and R2D2.
*R2D2 no longer hides behind CGI rocks.
*Recut the opening of the Mos Eisley part to remove some of the horrible CGI.
*Restored the original Han and Greedo scene.
*Jabba scene in Mos Eisley removed and original transition restored.
*Fixed the color inconsistency of Lukes lightsaber on Millennium Falcon.
*Restored blaster impacts.
 

Video sources:
Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope 2011 (1080p Blu-ray Remux)
Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope 2004 (1080p HDTV)
Star Wars GOUT 2006 (NTSC DVD, upscaled and remastered by me)
Harmys Star Wars Despecialized Edition v2.5 (720p 17.8GiB MKV)
Harmys Star Wars Respecialized Edition 97 (720p 10,7GiB MKV)
 

Audio Sources:
English 5.1 1997 Theatrical DTS (sourced from Harmys Respecialized Edition)
English 5.1 1977 70mm six track mix (sourced from Harmys Despecialized Edition)
English 6.1 2011 DTS-HD (sourced from the Blu-ray)
 

Tech Specc:
File size                                    : 22.9 GiB (Fits 25GB Singel layer BD)
Duration                                   : 2h 2m 52s
Overall bit rate                         : 26.7 Mbps
Container:                                : MKV
 

Video
Encoder Settings                        : x264 r2538 121396c 2pass preset slow
Format profile                            : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC             : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 5 frames
Bit rate                                      : 25.2 Mbps
Width                                        : 1 920 pixels
Height                                       : 816 pixels
Display aspect ratio                   : 2.35:1
Frame rate mode                       : Constant
Frame rate                                : 23.976 fps
Color space                                : YUV
Chroma subsampling                  : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                    : 8 bits
Scan type                                   : Progressive
Stream size                                : 21.1 GiB (92%)
 

Audio
Format                                       : DTS
Bit rate mode                             : Constant
Bit rate                                      : 1 509 Kbps
Channel(s)                                 : 6 channels
Channel positions                       : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                    : 16 bits
Stream size                               : 1.30 GiB (6%)
Language                                   : English
 

Sub (Greedo only)
Format                                       : UTF-8
Language                                   : English
Forced                                       : Yes
 

Great work! Color correctors are coming out of the woodwork lately it seems, and the results are fantastic. I very much look forward to your release!

newguy said:

I will put a lot of effort in to provide the highest picture quality possible, that means that my whole workflow will be in a DI-format (Prores) and it will end up as a 1080p 25GB (single layer BD) file using x264 2pass slow preset. I've tested the workflow and quality wise it's pretty much transparent to the original bluray. The tools I will be using is Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Colorista II and avisynth.

 Very cool, I will definitely get this when it's available.  Question: what's the actual size of the movie on the commercial disc, with just the English angle and soundtrack?

Looks nice. Hopefully no offense taken indeed about the color. A different end goal than Harmy, clearly. The color reminds me of the more saturated "technicolor" version kk650 was working on.

As far as the semi-specialization goes, removing the awful Mos Eisley entrance, Jabba, and all the CGI dewback and scout droids would be ideal (to me, of course).

Good luck

great colors.i like them.hurry up...:-))

I just love how vibrant this new version looks in the screenshots above. Beautiful stuff.

Nocturnaloner said:

Very cool, I will definitely get this when it's available.  Question: what's the actual size of the movie on the commercial disc, with just the English angle and soundtrack?

 The bitrate on the bluray is around 34Mbps i think, so it should be roughly about 35GB depending on audio bitrate.

I'm glad you guys liked it. One thing I would like some input on is how the pod cover should look, should it be blue in both scenes (it's desaturated then blue in the bluray) or should both be desaturated?

towne32 said:

Looks nice. Hopefully no offense taken indeed about the color. A different end goal than Harmy, clearly.

I get it that he is trying to get it to look like the orginal filmprint (hence that greenish warm look as seen in 4th screenshot), the problem is that it's so inconsistent. The white walls in the opening scene goes from neutral, to cold, to red, to green from scene to scene. The thing is that your eyes adapt really quickly so you don't really spot it when you watch is as a normal movie (I didn't), but if you watch it togheter with video scopes or side by side with another version it becomes really apparent. My guess would be that they didnt do a CC before they did a filmstock grade. It's superhard to do a grade when the colors isn't consistent in the first place. I might be wrong though and it doesn't really destroy the overall excellent work, no ones perfect, mine will prob have tons of bugs to if you look close enough :) Working as intended is always a possibility as well :)

And it shouldbe noted that some of the stuff will never look good, some of the tatooine scenes are pretty much beyond saving, it's not like working with a raw format were you can pull the colors all over the place, some time the picture just fall apart when you go to far from the original.

Just something about your version feels more "right" than anything I've seen previously.

Update

Made great progress the last few days, I'm about half way through now and finally finished with tatooine and mos eisley (prob the most time consuming part).

Changes: (these will be the only changes done which are not CC related)

*Removed the CG rocks in front of r2d2 (1080p HDTV version used)

*Used my own GOUT version when that fat CG creature walks in front of speeder, hopefully I can get my hands on the same source that harmy uses (i.e. not gout), since it's much better http://share.pho.to/8v5P3 (mine vs gout)

*Restored han and greedo scene (timed and cut as in gout)

*Removed jabba scene and restored the original transition

*I also made some cut changes to the opening of mos eisley to improve the flow after removing some of the CG-antics, don't know if I will keep it this way, but it flows so much better then both the SE and the gout version so I might. Cut order now is: establishing shot (second half of the same shot as the foolish cg robot), speeder speeds straight ahead on the streets of mos eisley (SE shot), speeder stoped by stormtroopers (gout). I.E. two of the gout shots is missing/1 1/2 from the SE, but the direction of movment in those shots when edited toghether with the other ones just rubs me the wrong way. Thoughts?

newguy said:

*Used my own GOUT version when that fat CG creature walks in front of speeder, hopefully I can get my hands on the same source that harmy uses (i.e. not gout), since it's much better http://share.pho.to/8v5P3 (mine vs gout)

 You could also use the actual despecialized 2.5 release, even though it's in 720p. 

Wazzles said:

newguy said:

*Used my own GOUT version when that fat CG creature walks in front of speeder, hopefully I can get my hands on the same source that harmy uses (i.e. not gout), since it's much better http://share.pho.to/8v5P3 (mine vs gout)

 You could also use the actual despecialized 2.5 release, even though it's in 720p. 

 I agree.

I've messed around trying to make a semi-specialied Mos Eisley entrance a bit. The SE really has little going for it. The speeder looks nice in most shots, but that's about it.

The kangaroo-rat things are unnecessary.

You can cut it after the robot in the next shot, but visual continuity becomes a bit wonky. The following approach has more kangaroo-rats, and irks me because the storm troopers are exact mirrors, making the exact same movements.

Dinosaurs* need to be cut entirely, IMO.

Droid behind stormtrooper needs to go.

Overview shot might be nice with dinosaurs edited out. There is camera movement and it would be quite a task.

The speeder/landscape in the next shot look wonderful. But the dinosaur obviously makes it unusable. This shot has simply never looked good, aside from Mike Verta's version.

*Aware they have species names. It's more appropriately disrespectful to call them dinosaurs, of course.

Here's my attempt at the entry. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zkfh8_anh-7_creation

Admittedly, a few of the things I complained about are still there. I used mostly Harmy 2.5 to despecialize it. But his first 35mm shot (with the car-speeder-thing, replacing the swinging Jawa) was just something I couldn't get the color timing to work for. I don't know if it was just washed out or tweaked too many times already. Ended up using the 1.0 SD upscale. 

Newguy, there are a couple of other things you might want to consider reinstating. The censored blaster flashes on the imperial troopers in the docking bay command center and the detention center might be doable? Not sure if adding them would throw the soundtrack out of sync or if it could still work.

Wazzles said:

newguy said:

*Used my own GOUT version when that fat CG creature walks in front of speeder, hopefully I can get my hands on the same source that harmy uses (i.e. not gout), since it's much better http://share.pho.to/8v5P3 (mine vs gout)

 You could also use the actual despecialized 2.5 release, even though it's in 720p. 

 Yeah I thought about that, don't wanna "steal" some ones work though, but if it's ok with him I will use it.

towne32 said:                                                                                       ...

I agree. But I will leave most of it in as of now, and go back later to see if I can despecialize it more. As of now it will do to remove the biggest focus stealing CGI things. I agree that the rats/driods etc are annoying but they dont steal that much focus, so I think it actually will do more damage if you have to use a bad source to get rid of them, and I'm not a huge fan of the original scenes anyway, some of the weakest and worst looking shots in the gout. But the one when they are stopped by the stormtroopers had to go, blocking the whole frame with a fat cgi dinosaur is awful and destroys the whole shot, some goes for the robot and jawa falling of dinosaur.

Funchasaid:

Newguy, there are a couple of other things you might want to consider reinstating. The censored blaster flashes on the imperial troopers in the docking bay command center and the detention center might be doable? Not sure if adding them would throw the soundtrack out of sync or if it could still work.

I will look in to that, if I can rotobrush in gout material seamlessly I will. Sync is no problem, since I have to do it anyway as I go to fit the 97 DTS to the bluray/my version, and had to use some of the 77 six track mix aswell for jabba removal and han greedo scene

More screens added!

http://share.pho.to/8rg92

The colors look absolutely fantastic in those new screenshots!  I feel like your color grading is a nice happy medium between the Blu and Harmy's version... best of both worlds, in my opinion!

newguy said:

I will look in to that, if I can rotobrush in gout material seamlessly I will. Sync is no problem, since I have to do it anyway as I go to fit the 97 DTS to the bluray/my version, and had to use some of the 77 six track mix aswell for jabba removal and han greedo scene

 Also... I fancy myself a bit of an audio guy, and the kind of work you're talking about doing on this mix has me both fascinated and excited about the finished product, whenever it may come.  :-)

Update

Haven't been able to do much work lately, but I got some work done today so I'm about 1h25 in now. I need to go back and revisit most scenes that needs to be rotoscoped though since i skipped some of them e.g. were two parts of the image need separe CC, since the color of the matte doesn't mach the rest of the shot most of the time (this can be seen in the hangar screens below: in the bluray version the space outside is black but the shadows inside are blue, which makes the opening to stick out as sore thumb).

Some more screens added http://share.pho.to/8rg92

Your work is nice.  I'd love to see what your method does to the respecialized edition of ANH.

Eagerly awaiting the final results of this!

Just making a post so you guys know that the project isn't dead :) I just havn't had enough free time yet to finish it. But I'm 1h40 through now so at least I'm making progress.

Here's a sample of some matte color missmatch correction http://pho.to/9EPOg (work in progress). I'm having some problem with the workflow for that since AE dont have any build in scopes which makes CC a bit of a struggle, so I have to use the scopes in premiere which makes it a bit of a headache since I have to go back and forth. 

I have also noticed that the color balance in the gout is actually pretty accurate throughout the film, to bad that it has contrast issues and desaturated colors, but it works pretty good as a base reference. But ofc all the matte balance issues is still there (black level issues and different white balance).

I am really excited to see the finished version of this.

Are you color correcting the whole bluray before you make your edits?

I only ask as this would be an invaluable resource to the OT community, particularly if you released a high bitrate version.

Your screenshots look great!!

Intruder said:

Interesting project, I really like the colors and denoising in the third screenshot. Can't wait to see more! Could you maybe show one of the scene with the sandcrawler rolling over the dunes?

 Sure, but this is a example of a scene that is pretty hard to CC, there is no white or gray areas to use to white balance it, nor does it have any skin tones to grade after. However, based on the sky and clouds this should be somewhat accurate (and afaik the crawler supposed to have a rusty reddish tone). Harmys version of this is brown and teal.

Stotchysaid:

I am really excited to see the finished version of this.

Are you color correcting the whole bluray before you make your edits?

I only ask as this would be an invaluable resource to the OT community, particularly if you released a high bitrate version.

Your screenshots look great!!

No, I'm not correcting the whole bluray, but if people would like an unaltered bluray version it's not that much more work (1-2h). But I guess that rendering and encoding this project will take a few more hours than that :P The problem is more my upload speed i guess since i'm only have 10Mbps fiber upload connection. Getting two versions out there will take more time then one.

newguy said:

Intruder said:

Interesting project, I really like the colors and denoising in the third screenshot. Can't wait to see more! Could you maybe show one of the scene with the sandcrawler rolling over the dunes?

 Sure, but this is a example of a scene that is pretty hard to CC, there is no white or gray areas to use to white balance it, nor does it have any skin tones to grade after. However, based on the sky and clouds this should be somewhat accurate (and afaik the crawler supposed to have a rusty reddish tone). Harmys version of this is brown and teal.

Stotchysaid:

I am really excited to see the finished version of this.

Are you color correcting the whole bluray before you make your edits?

I only ask as this would be an invaluable resource to the OT community, particularly if you released a high bitrate version.

Your screenshots look great!!

No, I'm not correcting the whole bluray, but if people would like an unaltered bluray version it's not that much more work (1-2h). But I guess that rendering and encoding this project will take a few more hours than that :P The problem is more my upload speed i guess since i'm only have 10Mbps fiber upload connection. Getting two versions out there will take more time then one.

 Cool! Thanks.

What source will you be using to remove the CGI rocks from in front of R2?