Wookie Groomer's 1080p Star Wars Saga project (Released) — Page 15

ell i have downloaded a couple of rars and made some snapshots to help those that have asked for samples etc.

well WG has applied colour correction.  I'd need to download the whole disc to give any sort of review of the colour correction but 40GB is just too much for me.

i would say however that there was no benefit with this being a DL-BR as the video quality is the same as the German HDTV broadcast ( which it would be the same as the source no matter how much extra bitrate you give it) that you used so a  SL-BR would have been more than sufficient when the original source was only 17GB.

I'm not knocking what you have done in any way WG, so please don't think that. I know what a pain in the ass attempting the colour correction alone is with these transfers so anyone that attempts it gets my up most respect.

Deleted - double post

Thanks for the snapshots, Ady. The comparison is most appreciated. :)

Think I'll stick with my AVCHD version for the time being, but once I get enough bandwidth allocation to justify the 40 gig download, I might give this one a whirl...particularly if it starts getting notably good reviews.

Sorry, double post.

BD-D2 said:

...watched...my favorite scenes, ... I can say that what I have seen and heard thus far has been very pleasing to the eyes and ears. ...

...I've previewed it on my 120" FP LCD, and 50" plasma systems....

What model is your 120" FP LCD?

Is there any comparisons of 2004 screens and WG's screens with WG's being 1080p and note scaled down? I want to see if it actually looks HD or not.

I have a question.

How did wookie groomer get dts audio when their has never been a home video release or tv broadcast of star wars in dts?

I know the theatrical release of the special editions in 1997 had dts but when the 2004 dvd release came along Lucas who must have huge shares in dolby forgot to include it,lol.

I think it was six track dts also.  Though some claim Dolby Digital 5.1 EX with it lower sample rate sounds the same.

Plus their has never been a 5.1 DVD audio release of the soundtrack much less in dts.  I wonder if these options are wookie's home brew?

I would personally like at some point to see unaltered blu ray versions of the 2004 as broadcast preserved.  It is all well and good to color correct and remove greedo shooting first but neither of those was in the broadcast version.

I must say wookie groomer's release with all the bells and whistles in terms of audio does make adywan's look a bit barebones. 

Not sure which looks better in terms of image quality.

The Griff said:

WG could've taken an uncompressed 5.1 PCM soundtrack from LD...

No he couldn't, because such a thing does not exist.

Octorox said:

I think Wookie's is higher quality (it's compressed on a freakin BD-50, Ady's is DVD9) but Ady's has better color correction judging by those screenshots.

This is a ridiculous statement, all WG did as up the bitrate when recompressing the GermanHD transfers, and seeing as how there is no DTS to draw from I'll assume he did the same for the audio. Just cause its 45 gigs doens't make it 1080p its an upscale convert, I could jack up the bitrate on any video and get a 100 gig file doens;t mean theres any more detail to be had. If you feel the need to have a BD with DVD quality detail to go on ahead but 45gigs is crazy talk for this download.

dlbsyst said:

It looks liike he is releasing a final version.

From the abhdtv.net forum.

Wookie Groomer:

"I am building the final Bluray ISO that is about 45GB and has a nice little 10 minute TriScreen vignette feature showing the differences between the color adjustments and the original. Plan on seeing that final release in the next couple days. This is the final and is the bluray template I will be using for the remaining trilogy".

-Will

Got time for a 10 minute vignette but not screenshots? or a sample clip? oh wait I forgot... we suck. :p

Octorox said:

well the original was 16gb. this is compressed to 50gb and ady's was compressed to about 8gb. Of course the quality is going to be better, however a BD25 definetely would have been enough

Plus the german broadcasts are 1080p, not DVD quality

Yeah its been upscaled to 50gigs by recompressing the 16 gig file at a higher bit riate, that doesnt mean you get any more detail, in fact at 50" or higher screen I wonder if it wouldn't be even softer than the 16gb version.

As for the German broadcasts, they might be "1080p" but it looks like a more uncompressed version of the 2k transers done in 2004. If an actual Blu-Ray were to be made today from Lucasfilm, I'm sure we would see a 4K or 8K transfer from the orig SE negative, I recommend you compare the Wizard of Oz 2K DVD to the new 8K Blu Ray. It would be that drastic and an improvement. Just cause it fits on a BD-25/50 doesn't make it so, this reminds me alot of the the 16bit wars of the early 1990s lol Then we had 32 bits then 64 bits... really it comes down to the source material, to get the Life like expierience on Bluray you need a higher transfer from the film stock.

Personally, I just dont see the point for downloading 45gb of data that is the same detail as the 16bg version, of course there is color correct, but none of us here would have known that if it weren't for Ady posting pics. And lets not even bother with the DTS claim...  Which brings me back to WG's wierd behavior here on the boards.. haven't seen that kind of stuff since Anti-Matter...

And the colour-correction is hardly a major selling point, since we already have Adywan's colour-corrected HD version. Yes, I know it's been compressed from 16g video to...what was it...an 8g release? Still, the compression bothers me a good deal less than the notion of downloading 50g, and the manner in which this release was presented to the community. Not intending to be a prick, but still...a little civility goes a long way...

The star wars transfers were sent off to Lowry in 1080P resolution.  Which Lucas apparently thinks is archival quality.  Just a few years ago i think he said DVD was archival quality.

That 1080 master might have passed for a dvd and a tv broadcast but won't pass muster with a blu ray release.  They have to start out at least at miminal 4k and then compress down to 1080.

You have to roll over laughing 1080 is not even comparable to the resolving power of 35mm motion picture film much less a film trilogy that was designed to be shown in a showcase 70mm with the special effects produced on a extra large negaive area in vistavision i believe at 65mm. Or was that 60mm cannot remember the exact figure but 6k is miminally acceptable for vistavision opticals but probably should be rendered at 8k.

Phantom Menace was the last star wars movie produced on film.   Episode II and III will look barely ok on blu ray.  Anything higher than that in the future and the films will look like shit.

Lucas used HD video an unproven format to make his last 2 star wars movies.  Therefore they won't ever be archival quality.   And they look best of digital projection and look even worse when printed back to 35mm film.

Phantom Menace on the other hand could be rescanned at 4k or higher yeilding a very consistant blu ray image to the theatrical version as long as lucas and his pals don't dial up the dnr like they so love to do.

I have never seen the 1080 master of star wars as broadcast and really cannot comment if the grain stucture is intact but the mere mention of the name Lowry Digital these days infuriates me because of their digital grain removal process and digital color correction algorithms ruin films.

Some films i even have read people think they removed too much grain and then added it back in with fake digital grain.  I mean that is so totally absurd an idea and laughable if there is any truth to its validity.

Some films and negatives are so far gone that they have to be restored both in the digital domain and repaired, washed and chemically restored frame by frame, reel by reel.  Not every movie can afford the Harris treatment.  I wish all my favorite movies could be restored at the level of Lawrence of Arabia, or the first 2 godfather films etc.