AntcuFaalb

Good point(s), Mr. Cobb. Looking at incentives is worthwhile.

Octorox said:

This is not true. The O-negs of the films are still conformed to the 97 theatrical versions.

It's my understanding that this is still conjecture at this point, despite what has been written on it over the years.

Harmy said:

That would be great! Thanks. If it made things easier, I could always demux the *.264 file from the m2ts prior to the conversion.

How does one define the codec, which is to be used for the lossless compression? If that is part of the script (which I expect it has to be) I'd like to use "UtVideo YUV420 BT.709 (ULH0) VCM".

Demuxing won't be necessary.

The compression is handled by the rendering application which, in this case, is FFmpeg. Unfortunately, FFmpeg can't do UtVideo encoding at the moment.

Rendering with VirtualDub might be better in this case.

Harmy said:

That sounds great but I'm going to need a little more detail than that - if it's avisynth with no GUI, a complete script would be ideal.

Sure, no problem. You said that the input is an m2ts, right? Isn't that just for MPEG-2 streams?

I can hack-up the script tonight.

Harmy said:

OK, I have a technical question - what do you guys think is the best way to convert the BD's m2ts video to lossless AVI and at the same time resize it to 720p?

Avisynth with ResampleHQ. It does gamma-aware downscaling (in linear colorspace), so you won't have color errors in shots with very high contrast.

http://int64.org/projects/resamplehq/

The best kernel and chroma_kernel for this kind of work is Spline36.

If it were me, I'd hack-up the Avisynth script and render with FFmpeg. I'm always available to help. Drop me a line if you're interested.

JEDIT: Just making sure... this is downscaling from 1080p, right?

How much vertical stretch is there? I'm able to register to the BD pretty well after vertically compressing the 278 active lines to 270.

darklordoftech said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Cobra Kai said:

Don't worry. We'll get a theatrical restoration soon.  Disney has "top men" working on it now.

...?

At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is told that "top men" are studying the Ark. However, we then see that in reality the Ark is stored in a warehouse, never to be touched again.

I knew that, but didn't put it together with Cobra Kai's post. Thanks. :-)

Spaced Ranger said:

... oh, and did I mention I'm dying to see those awesome new screenshots?

I'll post 'em tonight. :-)

Cobra Kai said:

Don't worry. We'll get a theatrical restoration soon.  Disney has "top men" working on it now.

...?

Cobra Kai said:

"Disney officials confirmed that the digital print being provided the Plaza will be based on the Special Edition version which got a wide release in 1997."

This is just too depressing. :-/

Harmy said:

Sometimes I forget how bad the BD looks and then I turn on the uncorrected BD layer in my project and see stuff like this:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/83799/picture:0

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/83799/picture:1

Man, the BD really is... yuck.

poita said:

I am about to enter the cleanup phase for Star Wars, does anyone have a scene they would like to see done, I have to start somewhere, so I thought I may as well throw it out to you all to get a favourite scene done first.

The infamous speeder shot. :-D

NeverarGreat said:

AntcuFaalb said:

NeverarGreat said:

That's my vote. My tickets to the screening in Atlanta have already been refunded though.

NOOOOOO! You must go! :-(

All sold out. Besides, six hours is quite a drive for the SE. I'm sure we can find someone who has tickets who is obsessive enough to recognize what went into its making.

Ah, sorry. I was under the mistaken impression that you live close by.

NeverarGreat said:

That's my vote. My tickets to the screening in Atlanta have already been refunded though.

NOOOOOO! You must go! :-(

doubleofive said:

Third time's the charm?

WTF are those red Xs?

doubleofive said:

What else do we have?

Very little hope left... :-/

msycamore said:

AntcuFaalb said:

No replies yet; crossing my fingers that it's not the SE.

The compositing in the lightsaber duel from those frames 005 posted is the '04 FX - work, no question about it.

The top of the three? It seems to match GOUT better than the DVD/BD.

pittrek said:

timdiggerm said:

Eh, those lightsaber blades look 2004 to me.

 Really??? They look MUCH better than I remember - but the truth is I haven't seen it since 2004

Agreed. The cores look a lot bigger, too.

The color looks off, but that's expected.

No replies yet; crossing my fingers that it's not the SE.

emanswfan said:

I hate thinking this might be another useless "getting me hyped" rumor that ends up leading nowhere.

This is, hopefully, part of the same "OUT coming to BD" news that the media hyped back in May/June.

timdiggerm said:

Sorry, 005, which is which?

I think it's: RMW/GOUT/Blu-ray.

m_s0 said:

Would they need a new scan for that, though? It wouldn't get projected in 4k anyway.

I think it's harder to do all of the "3D stuff" with an inferior scan. Plus, the 2K/10bpp masters aren't really up to modern standards and expectations.

Cobra Kai said:

doubleofive said:

Cobra Kai said:
That staffer's resume indicates that she worked on it starting in september of 2012.  If that's the case, then I bet this was just a new SE master for the 3d releases that were eventually cancelled.

Judging by the changes made to the Blu-ray, it's my opinion that we got the 2D versions of what would have been released in 3D. Besides, why would they need to do "Restoration, Mapping, and Dirt Picking" the already way too clean 1080p Blu-ray masters in 4k?

No, what I meant was that this might have been a new 4k scan/restoration from original elements that was to be used as as the basis for the 3d releases. 

^This is probably true. My guess is that Disney inherited this and, instead of releasing the 3Ds, will cash-in with an OUT release. It's a win-win.

ForceFreak said:

The 2004 transfer was a 8-bit RGB scan of the original negative done by Lucasfilm themselves.

On http://www.rmwusa.com/#start there is even a HD video called "Image Processing" which showcases clips from movies they worked on and to me it looks like that the Star Wars scenes are not taken from the 2004 Master.

It looks like a new scan to me.

I didn't know it was done at 8-bit. Yuck! That's barely OK for LDs.

This one was done at 4K/16-bit.

m_s0 said:

the average Joe won't care or understand what this is all about

I see this mentioned here a lot, but in my experience (I know it's anecdotal), this simply isn't true. I've heard the biggest-non-nerds I know complain about SEisms. I overhear a lot of "I don't understand why they keep fucking around with the movie. It looks so fake." during office discussions with dry climb-the-corporate-ladder types.

They don't care about it as much as we do, but they definitely see through the bullshit.