Also, FWIW, broadcast masters can have really impressive audio quality, not just compared to their OTA VHS-recorded counterparts, but really objectively good sound. Emphasis on can have good sound though. They have the capacity to sound great, but not all shows really used that capacity.
I always disliked Yub Nub… until I heard what they replaced it with. Now I’m obligated to admit Yub Nub is the best musical finale for this film by a mile.
By the way, to anyone trying to use Project Threepio’s scripts on a non-Windows platform: I’m sorry. My test machine had been a quirky and ancient Linux box, but now that it’s been upgraded, I can see that most of the cross-platform functions had probably been badly broken for some time.
This will definitely be fixed in the next release, as will many minor bugs squashed during the review.
PM sent.
Sorry, I just use the word unicorn to talk about something rare of excellent quality. 4K83’s print was a special print that didn’t go through as many duplication processes as your average projection print. And it was a print with very, very little wear and tear because it hadn’t been shown much. And it hadn’t been abused in any other way – stored in an area that was too damp or warm, and so on. To find a print in this condition over twenty years after all circulating prints were ordered to be destroyed is pretty damn special. It’s like finding a unicorn. It’s a large part of why 4K83 looks so good.
I’m curious, CatBus – how much do you think AI upscaling can improve print scans to get mildly closer to camera negatives quality (in terms of making despecialization more seamless)?
It depends a little on how clever the AI is. The only project I’m really following along these lines is DrDre’s, and it looks like the improvements are modest but noticeable. I’m a fan of AI enhancement, but I’m not sure it could ever really approach camera negatives.
IMO I think we’re stuck with the detail versus authenticity struggle indefinitely. Something pieced together from the best bits of HDTV, BD, and UHD will always outstrip projection print scans on detail, no matter how much we try to enhance them. But that’s the only metric they’re guaranteed to be ahead on. For despecialization, I think we’ll end up removing more detail from the high-detail sources than adding detail to the low-detail sources, to make them blend. And grain matching too, of course.
I’m firmly on the detail side of the struggle. My personal goal is to be able to watch the Star Wars trilogy as if it had had a respectful Blu-ray release (we’re talking 1080p here, I’m not picky), akin to other classic films respectfully restored for the format. Imperfect authenticity isn’t a dealbreaker for me, as long as I can’t detect it.
That said, projection print scans have factors in their favor I can’t ignore. 4K83 looks good. DrDre’s AI enhanced version looks damned good. Does it have all the detail I could ever want? No. But it’s extremely close to good enough to stop caring about it, as far as I’m concerned.
4K77? Meh, I honestly never cared for it. I don’t know much about 4K80, but that ESB print Poita had looked so good it made my teeth hurt. God, I hope that sees the light of day.
I am not familiar with my fair lady’s releases (I have never even seen my fair lady). So I can not understand the comparison, can you please explain for me.
Nothing much to explain – you offered two examples of films that had been butchered or at least abused on UHD. My Fair Lady is just an example of a film that had been treated very respectfully. They still went back to earlier-than-projection-print elements, and so the UHD has more fine detail than the projection prints ever did – and considering it was a 65mm film, that’s really saying something!
I was not saying that all official releases are subpar quality, stuff like the birds and doctor Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb look beautiful. The camera negatives do show much more detail, just as soon as DNR is in play they show less detail.
Right, but as we see with Despecialized, even if you take a subpar scan of a more detailed source, DNR the crap out of it, and downscale it to 720p, it still can show more image detail than a pristine projection print scanned at 4K. A lot less detail than the negative is often still more detail than a projection print. Yes, for this to be true, the amount of detail lost by generations of optical duplication would have to be staggering – and it is.
Example:
Now don’t get me wrong. The image on the left (Despecialized scaled up to 4K) has all sorts of issues: objectively shitty scan, DNR, edge enhancement, some banding (some of this possibly exaggerated/introduced by the upscale), and of course any fine image detail above 720p is just plain gone. Not perfection in the least, and I could see how a person could reasonably prefer either of the images (because bears). But Despecialized definitely, without any doubt at all, in spite of its many other faults, still has more fine image detail than 4K83 at 4K on the right. And 4K83 is the special unicorn print with much more fine image detail than 4K77.
I am not familiar with my fair lady’s releases (I have never even seen my fair lady). So I can not understand the comparison, can you please explain for me.
Nothing much to explain – you offered two examples of films that had been butchered or at least abused on UHD. My Fair Lady is just an example of a film that had been treated very respectfully. They still went back to earlier-than-projection-print elements, and so the UHD has more fine detail than the projection prints ever did – and considering it was a 65mm film, that’s really saying something!
ya, I get that, but would you say that the 4k release of terminator 2 is better than a film print? same case for star wars.
Personally, I would definitely rather watch the UHD of My Fair Lady than a projection print of the same film, but I recognize that it’s not really the same as the theatrical experience. The BD and UHD releases of Star Wars are trash on their own – I don’t think anyone here will argue that – but the question is if there’s anything of value worth salvaging from them (color-correcting, grain-matching and despecializing in the process), not if you’d actually watch them without those alterations. I’d argue yes, there’s stuff worth salvaging from them. Others would argue no, it’s irrevocably tainted. I actually don’t like the D+ releases as much as Despecialized, but I like D+77 better than 4K77 and 4K83 better than OTD83. It’s a crazy mix of personal preferences. In other words, black bears are the best bear.
SnooPac beat me to it, but clearly not many fans of the US Office here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaaANll8h18
“Black bears are the best bear” is sort of a parody pronouncement of something that is clearly an opinion being stated as if it were a proven fact. But once you’re explaining the joke, the moment is lost. Luckily for me, the jokes I tell are only for my own amusement. If anyone else gets it, that’s just gravy.
Did I ever tell you my joke about the UDP packet? It doesn’t matter if you get it.
On a serious note, the grain versus detail debate is real, although it’s not really about grain, it’s about generational loss. The optical duplication process used to create projection prints from negatives (typically via several intermediaries) loses significant detail with every generation. Thus, if you want to get the most detail, you go back to the original film negatives, or at least something higher-generation like an interpositive. This is why Blu-ray restorations tend to be based on “scans of the negative” instead of “scans of projection prints”. The Star Wars UHDs, and even the BDs, are based on these higher-generation sources. So even with all the grain scrubbing and color mangling and other nasties, they do in fact have more detail than a projection print. That’s more detail than anybody ever actually saw in the theater, though, so whether that’s a good thing or not depends on what you’re after. So while 4K77 is a better representation of how the film looked in theaters, D+77 does have more fine image detail. Even Despecialized has more detail, and it’s 720p. The reason 4K83 looks so much better than 4K77 is that it’s a special print that skipped a few duplication generations, creating a more detailed and less grainy image (also seventies filmstock was crap, and this was mostly resolved by the time ROTJ was filmed, but that’s another tangent).
Grain is sort of a red herring. Because of how optical duplication works, the grain structure is “stacked” with the grain of all the previous generations. So the grain of the negative may be fine, but by the time you get to the projection print, it’s pretty thick. But really I’ve found it’s not the grain so much as the lack of fine detail people object to. But as you lose detail in duplication, you gain grain, so they kind of go hand-in-hand.
Nevertheless, if you’re blending with NTSC TV footage and don’t want the quality seams to be obvious, I’d recommend a Laserdisc/GOUT source, but color-adjusted.
Regarding his absence, Zion comes and goes, and works on his own schedule. I would not necessarily take a year-long absence as a sign of a problem. But I do wish him well.
Fact: Black bears are the best bear.
I don’t get why that is relevant.
Fact: Bears eat beets. Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica.
Fact: Black bears are the best bear.
I saw them in theaters. I didn’t know the significance of the Special Editions at the time – that the original films from that point forward would be unavailable. I thought they were just a weird alternate edit of the trilogy that would eventually make its way as bonus features onto future home video releases of the trilogy – a moneymaker, because you can charge more for six films than three. DVD was the next big thing in 1997, I figured it was just going to be a cash grab and nothing more. Everyone would be re-buying Star Wars in a couple years on the new format, and they knew it, that’s all. That’s what I thought was the meaning of the “one last time” Faces home video advertisements. Get it one last time… on VHS.
It just didn’t seem… even remotely plausible that things would turn out the way they did, especially given the quality of the edits. And it still didn’t seem plausible for the next decade as they still failed to make a new home video release of the original movies. There must be a plan, I thought. Nobody would actually throw away these beloved classic films.
Shows what I knew then. I’m definitely more cynical now, and see how filmmakers can often be the worst parents of their own creations – first bringing them to life, and then proceeding to destroy them. Although thankfully none are as bad as Lucas.
And people are still clinging to those same Star Wars home video releases they had back in 1997, keeping their VHS and Laserdisc players in repair decades after both formats were effectively dead. I would certainly never have guessed that. That so many would watch some of their favorite movies on the big screen in anticipation of a new home video release, and then never buy them on home video ever again.
I also see that they made intentional parallels between Yoda and the Emperor, as far as being the masters of their respective apprentices. Some of it is more apparent in Jedi, but it certainly starts in Empire. Frail, wrinkled, very old figure who walks with the aid of a stick. Smaller than their pupil. The use of both the words “master” and “friend” to describe their relationship (friend might not seem like a giveaway, but Lucas frequently links the last line of one scene with the first line of the next scene – “I have a promise to keep… to an old friend” / “Rise, my friend”)
It seems like as they were developing a master/pupil dynamic for Yoda and Luke in Empire, they were doing the same for the Emperor and Vader. The Emperor just didn’t get much screentime until Jedi.
PM sent.
PM sent. Project Threepio is its own standalone project, but the current method I’m using to distribute it also contains a link to my dub collection. See the file “International Audio Links.txt” at the download link.
PM sent.
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Sometimes you can scale back the time you commit to projects on your own, but if you’re a little on the OCD side, you may need a strict, enforced limitation like an account ban to make sure it actually happens. Best of luck (and I can relate)!
FYI – my youngest son just voluntarily and without any prompting at all decided he wanted to watch the Holiday Special a few days ago. In fact, to be perfectly honest, there may have been a little bit of an attempt to dissuade him from this choice. Nevertheless, he not only stood by his choice, but watched the entire thing. When asked afterward, he reported that the Holiday Special was “weird” – I’m calling that a win, another fan is born!
PM sent.
Agreed. Something’s just wrong with how the 4K upscaled version handled it, I guess.
I guess telecined 24p film-based material was spliced into native 60i video material. I’m not sure how to make that look vaguely natural throughout except to keep it interlaced (well, deinterlace, process, and reinterlace). 60p messes with the 24p-sourced material, and 24p messes with the 60i-sourced material.