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The Empire Strikes Back - The Vintage Edit (Released) — Page 5

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We can talk about it, just not link to it.

Search for vintage on Demonoid. It should come up.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Or search for Empire Strikes Back.
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Originally posted by: see you auntie
Rules state we can't link to that kind of stuff.
...

Wasn't asking for a link.

Thanks for the help guys. About to download them.
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Hmmm...okay, I've now had a chance to sit down and watch the first 45minutes of the film straight through, and since no one else seems to be chiming in I thought I'd add to my earlier impressions. It's pretty obvious now that the histograms are really only going to be a beginning to solving the problems with the official transfer, and not the magic bullet many were hoping when the first examples were being put up months ago. While they fix some of the problems, they often don't seem to take care of everything within a frame, and create other entirely new problems. The obvious stuff that springs to mind is in the "lost in the snow" and medical center sequences, and the horrendous blue/cyan artifacting going on there, and the inconsistent colour from shot to shot. It almost would have been better for those sequences to have left the DVD footage alone, or to CC and time them without the histograms being involved at all. There is also a great deal of oversaturation in certain details with a shot (mostly blues and reds it seems, stuff like the flight suits, buttons on control panels and stuff, also have a look at when Han is welding in the BG during the pilot briefing - the welder flashes consume a MASSIVE amount of the screen, much like the bacta weirdness actually - very weird), and funky stuff happening like the Ion cannon shots turning yellow, half of laser, lightsabre, and other animated effects bieng partly coloured, and then totally desaturated in another part of the same frame. As has been pointed out in the other CC thread regarding the histograms, the asteroid sequence is badly brown/yellow. I think if you do another pass at Empire, and if you do end up doing the other films, you should think about using the histograms fairly sparingly and as a base from which to work, shot by shot, sequence by sequence, rather than letting them run straight through the film. There is definetly potential there, but again, by going shot by shot, I think you'd get a better result.
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Yeah I agree, even though some of the scenes, like the Dagobah ones look much better without the whole blue tone over them, as it stands now, the histograms create more problems than solve them. One question though is this a product of the histograms or did you repaint the lightsaber on this shot?:

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/606/superbluezj7.jpg
I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away.
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Going to likely watch this tomorrow, but just wanted to thank you for the effort and work with this project. I also like the cover design, the logo is reminiscent of The Criterion Collection logos.
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Thanks to the seeders sticking it out with me.

Originally posted by: frendon
as it stands now, the histograms create more problems than solve them. One question though is this a product of the histograms or did you repaint the lightsaber on this shot?:


It might be just these particular histograms. I'm working with GOUT histograms at the moment, and although Desree once said they're "not different enough" (maybe that's what he said, or maybe that they're just not the best source I can't remember) I'm getting better results from a less extreme approach. This could fix the problems the previous histos created. Also taking Ocp's advice, and reducing the effect by about 50% could mix and combine histogram colors and 2004 colors into an overall natural picture. Luke's saber there I didn't repaint, a color replace function at the core of the blade could get it looking bright again. That's how I got Vader's white core back again, but Luke's saber was such another issue.

I like the cover art too , though with no pleasant surprises at how the other two might look, it's at least nice and uniform if need be redundant.

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

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Most impressive. Overall, I love it. I love that it has a "glow" throughout the whole thing, while also having somewhat muted colors. One of the things I remember about ESB from when I was young was that it was so less colorful than the other two movies.

A couple suggestions for V2:
- as Luke is running out of the wampa cave, it looks really weird, like it is missing frames or slowed down
- tone down the fiddling on the opening crawl - it casts a weird glow around the whole screen (at least on my tv) until the text fades away
- more color consitency during the first part of the Vader vs. Luke duel
- Vader vs. Luke in the windshaft could be brightened or have a little more blue to it (not much, though)
- you missed some blue R2 shots in the trip to Dagobah, I think
- add more clickable chapters in the chapters menu

In the end, I consider the results of your color tuning here much more successful than OCP's process. Hoth (for me) looks pretty well perfect. I much prefer this approach than the one in ESB:CE. I like too that you aren't mixing OUT materials in the same scenes as 2004 SE. Awesome! Can't wait to see the others! Good luck with the first movie - by the way - original 77 crawl, or ANH crawl?
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1113/userbar381851ln2.gif
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8653/userbar381853dp6.gif
Super Mario Bros. - The Wicked Star Story
"Ah, the proverbial sad sack with a wasted wish."
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Nice work on this! This is probably one the cleanest versions of ESB I've ever seen with out and se footage!
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Very impressive. However, the black levels look pretty bad at times.

And I do like the idea of blending several different histograms for a more balanced color overall. Good luck to you in the future!

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hey Paul,
as many of you guys know I've been looking fora version of the OT; my friend (big thanks to him) lent me his VHS copies of SW and ESB (both pre-faces, one FOX vid other CBS.) If someone were to capture that, would you use the historgrams from it? Given the amount of dirt grain and random oddities found on the video, it's safe to say it probably has colors very close to the original.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Interesting idea. Depends on the quality of the capture I guess. I dunno I'm starting to get the hang of doing this by hand. I practiced with getting rid of that purple hue to The Phantom Menace, and I'm just adjusting ANH as I go along, using GOUT Histo as a boost, I suppose.

Hopefully a selectable crawl. I'd ask Rebel_1138 to help me make one, but I flaked out on an edit he helped me with awhile ago so he'd prolly not do it (feels bad).

Well I won't start a whole new thread for ANH till it's actually kinda done. I'm just starting, but my HD source looks pretty good.


So the typeface isn't exactly like the original...so what? Adjust the color back to what it was in '77 and it still feels like Star Wars.
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/LongTimeAgotitlecard.jpg

This is what a white Tantive looks like when it's sourced from HD.
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/C2POTantive.jpg

The 2004 DVDs had a gray overcast digitally overlayed in this shot to match surrounding shots. This is my first matte . OCP is giving me his blessing in stealing his excellently done mattes, but he missed a couple shots. It's lucky I can pull these off.
http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/release/video/f20060825/20060825_picview/img/7.jpg
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/BlueSky.jpg

Of course they changed the sky in this shot from an anachronistic red to blue matching the other shots. Well I need to blend this a little better, but I got it back to red
http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/release/video/f20060825/20060825_picview/img/17.jpg
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/RedSky.jpg

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

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I have a question for you:
is there any ghosting that occurs in your vintage edit?

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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OK, forgive the double post, but just for reference I think I should show you (and those who want to compare) these articles:
http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-one.html
http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-two.html
http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-three.html

Probably common, but I thought you could use this.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Ah yes those articles were a great help with audio changes, the near-archival list of changes on starwars.com didn't include anything about their audiomixes.

Ghosting, yeah in the GOUT a little, just when I slowed it down so it would be a couple of frames longer as to not drop in any extra frames during encoding, and to fit into the timeline. Won't happen in SW. I'm doing the audio mix last. Going to try and make a deal for Neil S. Buck's corrected surround 1997 mix, for the rear channels to replace the DVD ones. That's the deal with that right?

I'm having troubles with the subtleties of the 2004 audio mix. There's the obvious changes that can be heard and easily replaced with some other source, but I can't find any definite answers to certain issues. Where exactly are the extra battle sound fx? Are the music channels reversed the whole time? I have the mono mix for reference, and the stereo mix for reference, but where could I find information on the uniqueness of the original six track? There's the mono mix comparison page, the "list of changes to Star Wars" thread that was very detailed about the audio. Any other definitive threads or sites?

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

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Originally posted by: PaulisDead2221
where could I find information on the uniqueness of the original six track? There's the mono mix comparison page, the "list of changes to Star Wars" thread that was very detailed about the audio. Any other definitive threads or sites?
DC & Faces - Original audio sources
70mm mix to ’93 mix comparison

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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no single layer version of this?

“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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So are you done with ESB? Theres nots going to be a 2.0?

"The Empire can't stop us now..now its our turn" -Luke-

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No no, 2.0 after ANH and ROTJ. But it's going to be sooo long! Downloading Star Wars in HD took like a 2 weeks, but it's going swimmingly.

No SL version technically, I could DVD shrink it, but to devote uploading bandwidth to it I don't think is a good idea, since there's barely any seeders on the DL anyway. Is it an issue of computer space?

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

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How's it been PaulisDead2221? How's ANH coming? My kids and I have watched your ESB many times in the last two weeks....thank you.

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

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ANH is going pretty good.

I'm glad to hear your kids are enjoying my edit . I don't know your kids' age, but my greatest fear with all this Special Edition crap is that one day a post 1997 Star Wars fan is watching the 2004 DVD and actually says "the graphics were really ahead of their time in 1977."

It sends chills down my spin, don't laugh, I've actually heard it said before...

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

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OCP's Classic Edition had one serious flaw that I found made it unwatchable:
When DVD and laserdisc material were merged in the same frame, the older material had a jitter and slight color differences that made them stand out.
It looked like a really bad special effects shot and it pulled me out of the movie.

How did you deal with this... or didn't you?

Dr. M

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I didn't have to mostly. Most shots I just dragged and dropped. The jitter you're seeing Ocp has told me comes from like a frame rate conversion in his editing program. The good thing about this edit is that there's consistency, either GOUT or 2004, never both in the same shot. But it also suffers in this way by taking huge leaps in quality shot to shot. In terms of color differences, I did some color correction to GOUT footage to match surrounding footage.

If I take a stab at more of Ocp style matte fixes, there won't be that jitter, and due to the improved nature of GOUT DVD as an alternate source, color might be easier to deal with as well.

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

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No, OCP is mistaken.
The jitter is because DVDs lack the frame to frame vertical shifting present on Laserdiscs (what the X0 project is using to restore stars and other detail).

When they are composited you see steady DVD video with a little window of shaky laserdisc material (like someone is using a hand held camera).

Dr. M