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Star Wars - The Vintage Edit (* unfinished project *) — Page 2

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Any updates, by any chance?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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I'm looking forward to seeing this, although the only thing that really bothers me on the 2004 DVD's is the lightsabers. Those should have just been completely redone by ILM back in '97. If I could just have my 2004 DVD's with fixed lightsabers, I'd be perfectly happy.

As for the official GOUT DVD's from 2006, they look fine on my 25 inch TV, but on my mom's huge widescreen TV the visual noise in the Tatooine and Hoth scenes stands out like a sore loser.

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Do you absolutely have to restore the crappy original mattes of the soldiers on the sides of the door?

Ha, yeah I hated to do it too, but it must be done!

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/DeathStar--Aurabesh2.jpg

Yeah so, though it's completely illegible and you'd never know the difference anyway, that's good old fashion English written up at the top of the screen instead of that damn Aurebesh.

So my idea wasn't to take the stars from the GOUT or a laserdisc transfer, but to chroma key the black out of the 2004 footage, and have underneath it the same 2004 footage, with the brightness and contrast brought up a bunch. I got the stars I wanted in one .avs file, but I couldn't get valid arguments inputed into my color key mask .avs file. I'll chalk that one up to me just not knowing what I'm doing. If anyone can tell what could be wrong with these arguments in the colorkeymask section:

Layer("Matte2.avs", ColorKeyMask("ANH_HD_Darkened.avs", $00000, 10), "add", 255, 0, 0)


In general news, the battle of Yavin is done, most everything before the Falcon enters the Death Star is done, so I'm just closing in on the middle. I'm having a great time just kinda doing this thing a little bit every day now that school's out and I have all this free time. Summer rules.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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The thing that makes me happiest about this is the English. I don't know why, but I completely detest Aurabesh. Just doesn't look right.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Well, the method I've mentioned makes exactly what I have written, simply takes the GOUT video as the base layer, and puts over this layer the same video from the 2004 release with black being transparent. That's why the code doesn't work.
Both Layer and ColorKeyMask expect a clip as their parameter, and not an avs script, so you should have it ALL in one script, and you should start it with for example

GOUT = mpeg2source("path_to_GOUT_clip.d2v")
SE = mpeg2source("path_to_SE_clip.d2v")

GOUT = GOUT.Trim(..., ...) #the start and end frames if you want to do it only with one scene
SE = SE.Trim(... , ...) #the same

GOUT = Crop(... , ... , ... , ...).Lanczos4Resize(720, ...) # crop it and resize, the numbers are depending on the format you're using (NTSC / PAL)

#and later use
Layer(GOUT, ColorKeyMask(SE, $000000, 10), "add", 255, 0, 0)



That's one method. If you don't wanna do it this way, tellan wrote a couple of month ago a different method on chroma keying in his "Lancer project" thread. Maybe it's worth reading.
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I'm so excited your doing this project as it will possibly be the first time i can actually watch star wars in decent quality, though i'm looking forward to the X-0 project as well.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Originally posted by: pittrek
Well, the method I've mentioned makes exactly what I have written, simply takes the GOUT video as the base layer, and puts over this layer the same video from the 2004 release with black being transparent. That's why the code doesn't work.
Both Layer and ColorKeyMask expect a clip as their parameter, and not an avs script, so you should have it ALL in one script, and you should start it with for example

GOUT = mpeg2source("path_to_GOUT_clip.d2v")
SE = mpeg2source("path_to_SE_clip.d2v")

GOUT = GOUT.Trim(..., ...) #the start and end frames if you want to do it only with one scene
SE = SE.Trim(... , ...) #the same

GOUT = Crop(... , ... , ... , ...).Lanczos4Resize(720, ...) # crop it and resize, the numbers are depending on the format you're using (NTSC / PAL)

#and later use
Layer(GOUT, ColorKeyMask(SE, $000000, 10), "add", 255, 0, 0)



That's one method. If you don't wanna do it this way, tellan wrote a couple of month ago a different method on chroma keying in his "Lancer project" thread. Maybe it's worth reading.


Tellan's actually what gave me the idea, and it was he that said that it probably could be done in avisynth, he just used his editing program.

Oh Jesus I'm retarded, d2v files. Ha ha. Well I finally got it working and I don't think I'm getting anything out of it. I can't get the tolerance and saturation intensity and all that balanced so that the shots work. There simply aren't enough stars in that shot in the 2004 footage to be gained without other elements beginning to glow and bleed outside the matte lines on the top layer. I'm still working on it.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Yes, keep working on it, I wanna know who will be faster
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Any updates, PaulisDead? Hope things are going well.
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Well, yes and no. I've covered almost all of the easy changes. I was actually gonna post tonight with a query for volunteers :

1. I need some volunteers to look over a DVD screener of my final footage. I just need a few fresh eyes. Should have proper equipment for the job, be willing to go into extreme detail at what you see wrong, specific pointers, etc. Free copy of the final project to these people for a good and hard critique. I'll put a nice time-code on it and everything so it looks like an official screener DVD.

2. Also, and this is a stretch, but a volunteer to do some of these damn matte fixes. It's a bunch of the perspective fixes on the cell block corridor. If someone wanted to re-matte in the original backdrop into the first 5 or 6 times they fixed the perspective in 2004, free copy of the final project. Doesn't need to be an HD source, just work off the DVDs you already own. I'm just putting this out there for volunteers. If no one is able I'll just have to switch in GOUT

Problems aside, it's all going good. Little before and after action (contrast in my color corrected frame is too high sorry...but it's still an improvement):

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/OpeningShot--2004.jpg

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/OpeningShot--Tatooine.jpg

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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I like the first one somewhat better. Would the contrast change the color of the planet´s "outline" to purple? Or was it like that in the original?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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No, the planets atmosphere was never purple....

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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Originally posted by: PaulisDead2221
I need some volunteers to look over a DVD screener of my final footage. I just need a few fresh eyes. Should have proper equipment for the job, be willing to go into extreme detail at what you see wrong, specific pointers, etc. Free copy of the final project to these people for a good and hard critique.
I like to give thorough, constructive critiques , and I can be hard but not harsh. Should I PM you with my contact info?
Arrgh I just noticed it, I spent so much time getting the purple cast off of Tatooine, I wasn't paying attention to the outline of the planet. [sigh] well that's gonna be a lot of work...

Paul, I'm no technical guy, but couldn't you make make the shot in two layers, so that you could color correct space and the Tantive independent of the planet and tweak the contrast and color of the planet separately? I have no experience in Avisynth (yet), but I would think this would be fairly simple to do in Adobe After Effects if you have that available to you.

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Possible you could post some clips? Last time there were a few problems with ESB, and we didn´t get to point them out beforehand. Any finished scenes you could put up for us?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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So encoding 2 hours of this crap takes only...69 more hours, and that's with motion estimate set to pretty low quality. But I think I've got things more or less lined up so I can start syncing audio to what video I have, await our screeners' comments, then just encode it again correctly. But that starts something like three days from now. It's excellent this is finally happening, cause Premiere takes about a week to render a preview frame with this HD material. So far, some shots look good, some shots don't, but I'm finally getting a good look at it outside of the editing window. Every special edition improvement is officially gone. Great thanks to adywan for doing all the tough matte replacements in the cell block corridor, he kicked their ass quite sufficiently. I hope to find the restored mono mix from the mono mix restoration project in a torrent soon. From what people have been saying so far it's quite the listen.

Obstacles of Doom:
-Opening shot (repainting that stuff) I'm playing with some methods outside of actually shelling out for After Effects, and it should work out soon.
-Original crawl (where are you Swehanzon?)
-Some matte fixes of my own are failing when encoded, like not lined up correctly...god damn lying preview window.
-And I don't know exactly how I'm going to pull off a 5.1 1977 mix, or a 5.1 mix at all without resorting to some sort of "heresy mix" just for the sake of a 5.1 mix as per standard DVDs for classic films. Neil's disc (or as he prefers, "the disc he received" ) is obviously a good base, but we'll see.

In somewhat related news: I've got HD The Empire Strikes Back already, and I'm downloading HD Return of the Jedi as we speak (hey seeders!), so at least I can complete the trilogy. Yes, everything is proceeding as I have foreseen...muahahhaaha!

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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The mono mix torrent's already there PaulIsDead2221, check my tracker (usotsuki.info:6969)

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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I just downloaded the mono mix and it's very pretty and I'll have a wonderful time stealing it for my own use . I'll have to grab some people's real names to give due credit. I want to this release to feel legit in that respect.

So....my encode went...okay. What does anybody know about WookieGroomer's HD thang. So it's the combined efforts of a number of HD broadcasts? Is this just to eliminate broadcast glitches? How do people like the quality of the encoding? Many artifacts? I know they're mostly unavoidable with a broadcast signal, but just wondering from anybody who's seen them.

It's just so grainy right now. I know part of this is probably coming from how filter heavy the process from the original file all the way down to the encode, so in that respect I might need to rethink how I do the actual color correction. I might also rethink about when I resize the image, cause I get some stair-casing when I let Premiere do the resizing, when maybe it's a better idea to resize first with a good avisynth resizer.

Well I learned a lot from this first 3-day debacle! And I've got some new ideas and I'm gonna get back on track. Screener getting held off for a bit cause this one sucks too bad. It needs to be as good as I think I can get it, that way the standard of the critiques will go up as well.

But for tonight...Simpsons Movie. I hope it's great...oh it won't be. It hasn't been great since season 10...can only hope

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Sorry to hear that the encoding didn't go as well as you wanted.

I don't know if this would be any help, but I have found that I don't like Adobe Media Encoder. I usually prefer to render out a DV AVI file and then transcode from that to an MPEG2 file via Sorenson Squeeze.

The DV AVI file would be fairly large, and larger of course if you went uncompressed AVI, but maybe the two-step process could yield a better result. Do you have any other encoding software you could try instead of Adobe Media?

Two thoughts on the staircasing in the HD footage: have you tried deselecting "frame blend" or messing with any of the field options for the clips? I know that 1080i footage renders the upper field first whereas 720x480i footage does lower field first.
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Oh, I have a frame-server to TMPG. Actually I changed where in the order of things I resize the video, plus gave TMPG some more reasonably higher quality settings, and the results look a lot better. Ha, I was scared a minute there.

I've updated the initial post to contain screen-shots sourced from an actual encode, instead of a bitmap off my time-line in premiere. So this is what it actually looks like and would look like on DVD. There's oodles of little flukes to go back and fix, but those are some screen-shots of where things have improved.

A friend of mine and I watched my ESB edit on his big screen TV. Obviously I saw all the places where I need to improve, but the overall experience of seeing something I made on somebody else's screen was awesome . Plus I gave him the disc and he watched it again only days later with the isolated score, big Star Wars fan too. I've said this before in the midst of a large rant in another thread, but I just wanted to bring it up cause it really enlists some confidence to know these movies are salvageable. OT all the way. Peace dawgz. (plus offering free copy for a volunteer to create an original crawl in HD resolution)

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Nice! Glad to hear things are going good. Yeah, i can't wait to see my edit up through a DVD player on an actual TV screen. The feeling must be awesome! Really glad to hear it went well and that the OT can keep living on in the HD world!

BTW, so does the fact that you sat down with your friend and watched your cut mean that you won't be needing those critiques you requested help with a while back?
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It sounds like maybe you're thinking about revisiting ESB and redoing it with some HD source, just like your Star Wars VE....is that a possibility?

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.