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Star Wars: Full Frame + Widescreen = ?

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If the PAL laserdiscs are the highest quality copies of the pre-special edition Star Wars movies, and widescreen bars are matted (not anamorphic) so we lose a huge chunk of the picture, would it be possible to make a hybrid cut merging the full frame PAL Star Wars with the Widescreen? What would this look like?

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried this before. I'm also guessing the full frame versions are pan and scan, which would mean that the full frame would have to be matted overtop of the widescreen and aligned shot by shot. Sounds pretty painstaking, but possibly the closest we can get to a higher resolution picture without using the DVD releases.

What do you think?
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I'm sorry, I really don't understand what is you are asking. Why would we want to combine the full frame image with the widescreen image? Is there something wrong with the widescreen image? Maybe someone can shed some light on this because I'm just confused...

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There was some discussion about this before. However, none of the THX certified Definitive or Faces were in pan & scan, I think. Doesn't full screen VHS roughly equal laserdisc resolution of a 2.35 film?

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From the LD faq:

Pioneer pitches LD as "60% sharper" than VHS. LD image quality is roughly comparable to standard 16mm film, VHS is roughly comparable to 8mm film. There are no home video formats comparable to 35mm or 70mm film.

The pulse-FM data structure on an LD (unlike ordinary VHS/Beta), is defined to hold all the information present in the composite video signal. Depending on source material and the transfer to disc, LD is above live TV broadcast quality: For NTSC, this is 425 TVL (luminance lines horizontally for 3/4 of the screen width) and about 482 scan lines, compared to 330x482 for broadcast. For PAL, the numbers are 450x560 and 400x560, respectively.

Compare this to 240x482 for good VHS (recorded, pre-recorded is probably less). Only recently have Super-VHS approached LD capability, and ED-Beta has gone even further with its resolution of 525x482. Of course, pre-recorded material is not widely available in these VCR formats. Even using S-VHS/ED-Beta to tape off-air still only reaches the 330x482 of the broadcast signal (400x560 in PAL countries).

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There's nothing wrong with the widescreen image, but the full frame laserdisc image is much higher resolution, because it makes full use of the pixels offered by laserdisc. Since widescreen laserdiscs are not anamorphic, the black bars are taking up valuable space. If you crop the full frame image into the widescreen image and make an anamorphic DVD, you'd have more pixels (and a clearer image) for half of the picture. The other half (the left and right edges) would retain its lower resolution, since the full frame image is missing that part of the picture. The question is: would the combination of the two look awkward?
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It probably would. Watching the films frame by frame, there's always some jumping around by one or two pixels. It would be minor, but noticeable. Mind you, that doesn't take in account color differences between transfers, which would probably be even more glaring.

"Since widescreen laserdiscs are not anamorphic"

Some were, though very few, and certainly none of the Star Wars LDs.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: mcfly89
If the PAL laserdiscs are the highest quality copies of the pre-special edition Star Wars movies, and widescreen bars are matted (not anamorphic) so we lose a huge chunk of the picture, would it be possible to make a hybrid cut merging the full frame PAL Star Wars with the Widescreen? What would this look like?

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried this before. I'm also guessing the full frame versions are pan and scan, which would mean that the full frame would have to be matted overtop of the widescreen and aligned shot by shot. Sounds pretty painstaking, but possibly the closest we can get to a higher resolution picture without using the DVD releases.

What do you think?


Star Wars was shot in Panavision which means that the 2.35:1 image is the full area on the original film frame. No matting involved.
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Originally posted by: OgOggilby
Originally posted by: mcfly89
If the PAL laserdiscs are the highest quality copies of the pre-special edition Star Wars movies, and widescreen bars are matted (not anamorphic) so we lose a huge chunk of the picture, would it be possible to make a hybrid cut merging the full frame PAL Star Wars with the Widescreen? What would this look like?

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried this before. I'm also guessing the full frame versions are pan and scan, which would mean that the full frame would have to be matted overtop of the widescreen and aligned shot by shot. Sounds pretty painstaking, but possibly the closest we can get to a higher resolution picture without using the DVD releases.

What do you think?


Star Wars was shot in Panavision which means that the 2.35:1 image is the full area on the original film frame. No matting involved.


I think he means that the LDs aren't anamorphic, he's just phrasing it awkwardly.

I also think that merging the two images would look like crap, as MeBeJedi previously stated.

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