Brooks

hairy_hen said:

...no one but LFL actually has any legal right to them whatsoever.  Believe me, I wish that were otherwise as much as anyone, but it isn't.  So when talking about making a film restoration from the kind of materials that Mike has access to, there is no way most of that can be mentioned openly in a public forum...

Sorry, don't mean to go off topic, but this is a question that's been bothering me for a while.  It's always been apparent that Lucas owns the rights to Empire and Jedi having funded them himself rather than going through the studios, but doesn't Fox have a say in Star Wars itself?  Does Lucasfilm have exclusive control of it as well?

As for the chats, I look forward to sitting in on one, though I doubt I'll have much to contribute other than encouragement.  I have precious little expertise in technical matters :)

lucasdroid said:

  This is a slight step above the 16mm work being done. 

It's a "slight step" that I (and most everyone else here) am eagerly awaiting with great anticipation! : )

Stay on target... stay on target...

jero32 said:

Don't forget the noooo they added...UGH so distastefull. (probably my most hated change)

Absolutely horrible.  And the new "dance" number in Jabba's palace took any seriousness and realism out of that entire sequence.  Don't get me started, I get all riled up just thinking about it :) 

negative1 said:

episode 5 is safely transferred.

however, there might be some improvements

coming. we'll see. i'm not involved with that.

also, there are some solid leads for return of

the jedi.

 

later

-1

That's great news, keep us informed on these two! Empire is my favorite as I was 6 when I saw it in 1980 and it began my star wars obsession.  And though Jedi isn't most people's favorite of the trilogy, it is, in my opinion, the one that was most grievously wounded by the special edition hacks. The space battle at the end and Luke's duel with Vader are pinnacle moments of the trilogy that deserve the full treatment.

this is one of those screenshots after a minute in photoshop, it's neat how much color information remains despite all that red!  

Star Wars Purist, I agree with you, and that someone your age feels that way gives me hope for the future of the OT and its legacy.

Harmy said:

That could happen to anyone :-)

Yeah, it happens to me everytime I watch the special editions and realize I bought them.

negative1 said:

 

 

later

-1

I don't remember this shot.  Is this a really quick one before he get's shot??

I think its safe to say that most of us prefer film but the reality is that digital is cheaper and more convenient so we might as well accept that it's the new standard.  Besides, without digital we wouldn't be able to make or share ANY of these restorations.

so what happened to that nice pal tape?  Is anyone capturing that?

you sure those pics aren't switched?  the second one looks worse, doesn't it?

Many Bothans died to bring us this restoration...

lucasdroid said:

none said:

I'm not a lawyer and my advice cannot and should not be construed as legal advice, but the forums maybe better off with a general legality discussion thread to alleviate these as the thread turns and to collect our delusions of grandeur into one big humorous mess.

Good idea.

I second that idea.  Let's not derail the thread.

Also, this site (and the internet in general) is FULL of star wars re-edits and restorations.  This one might be higher quality than some others but it's still not competition for the blu rays (which are, themselves, easily downloaded by anyone inclined to do so).  I've seen articles about Adywan's versions on Cracked.com and other sites, he's not in jail (right?)

yeah I'd like to see a pic or video of this setup when you're done with it, it sounds pretty awesome!

Ok, I've attempted an ivtc.  I don't know if you can tell if it's working on vimeo or not (it looks all stuttery when I stream it on my computer, but my connection is really slow, does vimeo convert back to 30fps??), but here it is on vimeo and mediafire.  Does it look like it worked to you guys?

vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/45876395

(mediafire link 35mb):

http://www.mediafire.com/?7v3j5k3b362yc5i

I don't know which one is more legitimate but the top one looks much much better than the bottom one

These HD projects are a real revelation to me.  There's so much detail in the sets that I never noticed before (including watching it in theaters as a kid, I think we forget how crappy most theaters were in the olden days, at least in the small towns and army bases I lived on in the late 70's early 80's).

I can't wait for this one!  :)

oh, I was under the impression that you guys had jedi too, my bad.  :(

The Divx codec did the trick.  So now I've opened my script in vdub and tried looking for the frames like omegamattman said but I don't really know what to look for or how to count them.  

 here's about 100 frames uncompressed from vdub after running the separate fields script if any of you has the free time and inclination to look at it and see if you can help me figure out what frames need to go (57mb)

http://www.mediafire.com/?6i85yub38uzyram

This is a complicated hobby! :)

negative1 said:

i'm not saying anything bad or extreme will happen. but better to play

it safe than sorry.

later

-1

please please please capture jedi too if you have any concern the prints will be confiscated or otherwise made unavialable.  To have SW and Empire but not Jedi would be heartbreaking (to me, anyways)

OmegaMattman said:

If you want to make these progressive without stuttering, you may want to consider doing a manual IVTC to remove the pulldown.  This can be done fairly easily with AVISynth and VirtualDub (both free software).  It's a little time consuming, but there's less chance of error.

Assuming you're starting with an AVI file, start by separating the fields in an AVISynth script.

Example:
avisource ("yourvideo.avi")
separatefields

Next, open the script in VirtualDub.  Find an early section with some obvious movement (like the flying "Star Wars" logo)...and then get ready to start counting.  The goal is, out of 10 frames (actually fields), to figure out the duplicate "junk" frames and eliminate them.  You want to change the pattern from "2,3,2,3" to "2,2,2,2".  I'd recommend starting with a frame ending in "0".

Once you have the pattern counted, use the "selectevery" function in AVISynth to specify the frames you're keeping and then "weave" them back together.

Example:
avisource ("yourvideo.avi")
separatefields
selectevery (10,0,1,3,4,5,6,8,9)
weave

Then, just scan through your video for any combing.  When it appears, the pattern has changed and you'll need to go back and figure out a new IVTC pattern for that next segment.

I've been trying to do this, my virtualdubmod won't open my script.  It said "AVISource couldn't locate a decompressor for fourcc".  I looked it up and it seems it doesn't have a codec to read DV, so I installed the Cedocida DV codec and then I got the error "couldn't locate decompressor for format YV12."  This is feeling really complicated to me, is there no commercial program that can do this more simply?  Is the ivtc really a dramatic improvement?  :(

I'm interested in this set as well, I've never seen the show before, looking forward to it!

negative1 said:

 

of course, we have a much better print,

and with cleanup and some color correction,

that version looks fantastic!

 

later

-1

these look great, even these prints are very watchable, makes me excited for the better print!!

Mavimao said:

But that seems like a lot of work. Would probably be easier just to edit the soundtracks to sync with Negative 1's project.

 

As long as -1 tells you where the reels they're assembling begin and end it should be pretty straightforward to sync them I would imagine.