Brooks

They've also shown videos of their capture setup.  It's very elaborate.  There's no way to fake that.  Imagine a couple of guys cleaning thousands upon thousands of frames in their free time.  Imagine how expensive acquiring all those prints must be, not to mention the harddrives, that dolby gear, etc.  We're all lucky that they're doing what they're doing.

Papercut said:

I can confirm there were SE VCDs produced in Asia. I owned a set that unfortunately has been lost in the sands of time...

I remember seeing them on ebay around 2000/2001 or so and thinking whhaaaaa?? It would be an interesting thing to add to the old collection. Around that time I actually made some vcds of video I captured before dvd burners were affordable.  As I recall they were mpeg1 and supposed to be around the same resolution as vhs but I remember thinking they didn't look very good.

looking good! I can't wait!  If you can I'd love for you to post shots from the space battle, that's one of the most spectacular looking parts of the whole trilogy (to me).  Keep up the good work!

Joel said:

... getting to be the Star Wars gate keeper was an exciting honor, even though it just meant not telling anyone what was in the new safe for a few days. 

you should have worn emperor's royal guard robes!

Joel said:

...In the early 2000s, the talk was that George didn't want to release the DVDs, he was waiting for all 6 movies to be released and then to release them on whatever high-def format prevailed at that time (source, anyone?). The choice to even release DVDs seemed like a giving-in to public pressure.

I remember reading that also during those years before the dvd's were released.  Something about Lucas not liking dvd because it didn't support his thx audio??  I mainly remember thinking it was odd that dvd wasn't up to his standards but vhs was (weren't there even officially released vcd's overseas?  THAT was acceptable, and not dvd??).

That's a neat story about your involvement with the dvds.  Were the star wars scans used for the dvds (and apparently blu rays) stored there on standard def digit-betas?  What an awesome sounding job you had! 

That's also what I was getting at in an earlier post.  The original negative will certainly provide the most detail, however it is the theatrical print that we all grew up with as the final product and were perfectly happy with.  I think it's interesting that home viewing technology has advanced to the point where a theatrical print might be insufficient.

oh no, did I do something wrong?

team_negative1 said:

 

that vader looks fantastic!

I took the hoth shot into photoshop and was surprised at how well the auto color fixed it up.  The bottom one needed a little work with the curves too but the top one was all auto

Mavimao said:

Imagine taking a CD and making an mp3. Then take the mp3 and convert it to a large 24 bit 96khtz wav file. Is the wav file better than the original CD? In terms of numbers yeah, but no amount of processing is going to bring back the detail lost in the initial CD to mp3 conversion. 

That makes a lot of sense, but you're missing the step of the 1080p scan of the negative, which would be like lowering the sample rate of the original cd and then comparing it to the upsampled mp3.  But I understand your point, well said!

Harmy said:

The fine detail in Ben's coat could be missing due to compression of course, but the detail in the lines around his eyes and in his beard, not so much.

Wow that is a dramatic difference!  So the theatrical prints we watched as kids really aren't up to the standards of modern hd viewing I guess?

Harmy said:

... the problem is that the best source that is likely ever to be available to us is a theatrical 35mm print, which most likely doesn't even resolve 1080 lines to begin with - the best you can hope for is to get about the same level of resolution as the official BDs 

I'm confused about this.  The detail lost in the generational losses between the negative and the theatrical prints mean that a theatrical print scanned at 4k or higher would be equivalent in detail to the negative scanned at 1080p?

timdiggerm said:

...Because no matter what you do, the Blurays will always have a finer level of detail, because their source is closer to the original camera negative than any theatrical print.

That's true, but (as recently discussed in poita's thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Anyone-want-a-4K-film-scanner-for-1000/topic/15651/page/4/) the blu rays were sourced from a 1080p scan, so the detail is limited somewhat by the resolution of the scan, right?

Thanks for the fascinating insights.  I'm sorry to hear about your friend, have a safe trip -B

ferrari486 said:

... It's interesting how the first special edition used 2k scans but the DVD/Blu-ray is a 1080p scan

It's weird how Lucas, a special effects guy and early adopter of digital, was so short sighted about the progress digital resolution standards would make.

team_negative1 said:

Team Negative1

That's beautiful!  I love those early computer graphics.  Think about how advanced that was for its time.

What resolution were the scans used for the official blurays?  I don't know much about motion film, I've been scanning my still photo negatives at 4800 dpi and that works out to about 100mb a frame too.  I would love to see a frame of motion film scanned at 4k (or 10k, wow!).

LOVING those screenshots!  Thanks for sharing them!  :)

Wow, what does a 10k scan of a 35mm even look like?  Does the clarity hold up at that size? Is it possible for you to post a single frame at full size to see?

Though Jedi is not as popular on this forum I love it and I think it had the most egregious changes made to it.  I'm thrilled thrilled thrilled with the quality of what you've shown us so far.  Maybe now that the blog is gone you can drop the occasional screenshot here as a treat!  

wow, how exciting!  I wonder what the neighbors thought it was.  A fancy refrigerator maybe? 

I'm sorry to hear you had sad news :(

Tobar said:

MMmmmmm.........

That's pretty neat!  3D printing makes a lot these things easier

I hope that's true, I was really excited about this project :(

Is the Pioneer CLD-D504 a good model?  There's one for sale on the local craigslist for $35 with a bunch of laserdiscs (including the trilogy).  Is that a good/great/mediocre deal?

SKot said:

Poita No Return?

--SKot

I vote for this :D

Along the same lines, Poita Entry could work.

The Sith could not have returned without the Jedi being aware of it....