hi all,
I’ve completed the preliminary colour grade.
…
here is an image of the final scene.
Looks yellow and seems to lack highlights. Perhaps the gamma is wrong I don’t know.
Unless that’s intentional you need to calibrate your monitor 😉
TonyWDA said:
The “centre” music channel, as it was originally presented, does exist on the magnetic stereo releases. I was given three discrete audio tracks— left, centre, and right— when my print was captured. It’s why the 2000 and 2010 home video releases also have discrete centre channels. Disney didn’t artificially generate that with some plug-in or standalone software, it’s always existed, and it does contain information unique to that channel; it’s not just a cheap sum of the left and right signals.
Those are the 3 original channels that were manually panned towards the speakers.
Just to be clear, those 3 channels are not L, C and R. They are 3 discrete arbitrary sound channels.
The mix would direct them to whatever speaker combination was desired.
So you could have “left” playing simultaneously on your SR and FL speakers, “center” directed to SL and “right” to C. All combinations are possible but you only have 3 discrete source channels playing at any given time.
It’s my interpretation of the system and might not be 100% correct, but hope it helps.
You might be confusing playback with recording tracks.
The 7 tracks were used for studio recording only, and then mixed down to 3 on the actual movie.
So you have 3 tracks + control (http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/sound/fantasound1.htm)
“four photocells which scan three program tracks and a pilot control-track”
The control track was there to extend the dynamic range of the audio tracks. Basically it did volume/noise control.
The manual panning was done on top of that, directing each of the 3 audio tracks towards specific speaker(s).
The 3 program tracks are not LRC, they can be any arbitrary channel combination. For example Ls, C, R or Ls, Rs, R
From reading http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/sound/fantasound1.htm I think there where 3 independent sound channels.
Each channel was directed towards a speaker (L C R Ls Rs) according to a control track. Basically they did the mix on playback.
The 3 original channels don’t correspond to any specific speakers. Channel 1 could be directed to L at one point, and later on to R. So you absolutely need the control track to recreate it.
In theory Dolby Surround can reproduce the original mix perfectly.
Modern signal processing gives you quite good separation, even with complex sounds.
Just sharing this link that KRouge sent me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpit0ctcyoE&feature=emb_logo
It has many of the scenes in much better quality than any other source.
I managed to incorporate those scenes into a full edit, based on a YouTube video of the entire “game movie”.
It’s not bad, but it becomes boring after a few minutes, since you only follow a single character.
As for quality .tgv are the best source. I remastered the VHS footage to match them regarding color and brightness and it looks decent (for what it is).
Anyway, sending you a link to the full edit, check you PMs.
Seems interesting, specially what you mention about improved sound.
Can you PM me a link please ?
All the Ahch-To scenes should be in because they improve Luke and Rey’s relation.
And to be honest, although I dislike TLJ I find Luke more in character on those scenes.
As others mentioned, he’s like Yoda at this point in life. Showing him like that connects to the OT and gives more weight to Yoda showing up later.
One thing you should do it to remove all the “oops” and “oh oh” from Anakin. That makes him feel more adult and the action more believable.
You can even make him go into the space battle willingly. Actually makes more sense if he just decides to go, it’s more in character.
adywan said:
Maybe one or two shots, if any at all, may be used
If you restore the original space battle sequence the extra guys in the Falcon make sense. They do disappear out of the cockpit in the theatrical cut, and Lando gives orders/reacts to repairs being done by someone else on the Falcon 😉
Here’s the second space battle sequence with the extra crew as a proof of concept:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EE0ZhDQzzpMYBMe17Xarx4IOQBFsUZzt/view
I mentioned this earlier but the scenes between Han and Leia need to be more intimate.
Quick, someone find out if Carrie Fisher has ever done a sex scene in her career! 😉
You don’t need that. Cutting out the love triangle with Luke is a first step.
I know, I was joking. It’s a reference to some of the conversation that was going on in the prequel redux thread recently. Someone was trying to add a sex scene between Anakin and Padme, using footage from another Natalie Portman movie.
That scene works well in the context of Episode III. But on Jedi no.
Vhs hifi tracks can be quite good. It’s a pure analog recording with 20-20000 frequency response. I think that noise is also quite low.
Early 1990s NTSC video was generally mastered to different monitors than we have today. So you need to adjust gamma, saturation and hue. In fact the colorspace might even be slightly different, but I don’t think there’s any software to handle that.
So your best bet is to adjust “by hand”. You can use the TNG remasters are reference, since uniforms and some sets will be similar.
Or you can take a look here: http://blog.trekcore.com/2019/05/exclusive-star-trek-deep-space-nine-hd-what-we-left-behind-footage/
On my tests I used something like gamma 1.4; saturation 130% and a -4% hue shift. Also clipped black a bit on levels.
I’ve analyzed the pilot’s DVD video structure and I have good and bad news.
The good news both the live action and effect shots are at 24 fps, encoded as 3:2 pulldown. So no separate processing is needed. (The initial crawl is at 30 fps but I think it can be disregarded)
The bad news is that the show was edited on video (60/30 fps), so scene changes don’t match 24fps.
That is, scene changes can occur at any frame, and break the 3:2 pulldown pattern.
So we get interlaced frames here and there, until the pulldown filter adapts. I’m using VirtualDub, but the same should apply to other software.
3:2 pulldown only: https://streamable.com/xg8qrs
One option is to run a deinterlacer over the 24fps material. You end up with some duplicate frames and deinterlace artifacts.
3:2 pulldown + deinterlace: https://streamable.com/4i214c
Another option is to simulate what an old CRT would do, and simply deinterlace everything and present it at 60fps. You get duplicate frames and some deinterlace artifacts, but it doesn’t look bad.
Deinterlace to 60p: https://streamable.com/wqrhbi
I decided to try a frame based upscaler on the first 2 versions.
On top you have the result at 960x720. On the bottom row I unsharpened to images to analyze detail.
As expected the 3:2 pulldown only version has better detail.
https://images2.imagebam.com/39/03/7e/a32a6c1349363260.png
So it’s a tricky situation…
PS - all DVD samples had level, gamma and saturation adjusted. I also run a chroma filter to get rid of line artifacts on some frames.
Animaxx said:
They look a little on the soft side (probably due to noise and grain reduction). Let’s wait and see.
The general softness can mean that they are free from edge enhancement.
But I agree that on gradients and low contrast areas there’s almost no detail. Compression is really hard here.
On the other hand DVDs usually have macroblocks on such areas…
Baobab Archiver said:
I’m not sure if these will be a better source or not, but worth a look.
Looking at the JPGs these upscales might have less compression artifacts than the DVDs. In terms of visual detail, it’s in line with a good 640x480 master tape. Again, might be slightly better than the DVDs.
I too would like a sample of the unaltered capture. I just want to run some filters on VirtualDub. We have a tricky situation here with 60i » 24p / 30p content…
This will not interfere with Animaxx’s work, just experimenting other possible solutions.
Yes, just mentioning this for the best 😃 Not a critique of your work.
PM me a raw sample of the DVD intro if you can 😉
This is an interesting project, but looking at your first 3 steps:
I spot some problems there. I strongly doubt there’s any variable frame rate on those DVDs *
What you should have is a standard NTSC 3:2 pull-down for the 24fps film segments, and standard 60fps video for the effect composites.
So your first step would be to get rid of the pull-down, and that would also remove any interlace artifacts on the film segments. You get 24fps non interlaced video.
The effect sequences require a separate treatment. There a normal deinterlace filter would do, coupled with frame rate conversion (60 » 24fps).
As you are doing, you are running a line doubling deinterlacer (step 3). I seem to see some deinterlace artifacts on your SD-Quality (NTSC DVD) link images. And why are those images in 768x576 ?
I not saying this to put you down, just to prevent you from spending more time with something that has problems from the start. PM me to further discuss this, perhaps I can help!
(of course I might be wrong, but from the images you posted I seem to stop these problems)
Not just on that scene.
Your added colors and effects are great!
But the untouched elements from the new masters just look grey and dull to me. It looks like gamma is off or something.
I wonder if they mastered this to something other than BT.709…
You improved it a bit but it’s still too dark in general.
It’s perfect on the Admiral Ackbar scene. So go for that look.
But it’s awful on the first Luke image. He’s brown over a gray background…
I’m not a fan of the new overall gray and dull look. It’s from the new transfer, right?
I think you can increase contrast and saturation a bit.
I played a bit with this movie and it can be improved by some scene reordering and trimming of Roper and Williams.
Basically:
Just putting this here because it works reasonably well and fits the existing footage.
Looking forward to your work with the deleted scenes.
I don’t care for the initial Luke scene, but Toshi Station and Biggs are good and should be in the movie.
I’d also put that short distant take of Han with the girl on the cantina, and a few frames of the girl leaving right before Luke and Obi-Wan approach Han.
Some boards can capture 30fps video from PAL sources… so don’t bother with that.
VHS has large timing variations anyway (speed variations, dropouts, etc).
You always need to manually match the audio between sources.
Skin color is hard. I’d try to match Han from TFA. That way it won’t be subjective.
I agree that ROTJ needs visual intensity. So anything done in that regard is good.
May I suggest adding some fog elements ?
There’s some decent green screen fog/dust footage that you could use for Endor. Perhaps alternate between sunlight and fog to show different places ?
As it is we get the impression that it was all filmed in the same small stretch of forest…
