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hairy_hen said:

U-He Satin is probably the only digital version that exists.  I discovered this capability yesterday while researching the issue—I'd been aware of its existence as a tape emulation plugin before, but hadn't had a reason to look more closely since I already have the Ampex ATR-102 and Studer A800 from Universal Audio, which are extremely accurate reproductions of popular studio tape machines from the 70's.  (The Ampex was a 2-track mastering deck, while the Studer was a multichannel machine, very similar to the one used to record the score for Star Wars.)

It looks like the U-He plugin is a more general 'tape effect' rather than an exact recreation of all the electronic nuances of one particular machine, like the UAD plugins.  But it does appear to be the only software solution for decoding a track that has been recorded with Dolby noise reduction.  Dolby themselves have never made a digital version, so either their hardware or this plugin would have to be used to get the right sound from the film prints.

Assuming the Wikipedia article on Dolby A is correct, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to recreate the exact multiband processing necessary for decoding; it's simply a matter of setting the thresholds and attack/release times for the compression and expansion to the right values.  The U-He plugin is well viewed for its quality, so in all likelihood its reproduction of the Dolby process is an accurate one; and given its high rate of internal oversampling, any aliasing distortion should be virtually nonexistent.  It would, however, be necessary to ensure that the analog signal from the film print has been digitized at the same reference level that the plugin operates at (ie, 0 VU = -18 dBFS, or however the plugin is set; looks like it has a variable calibration capability).  Otherwise the thresholds of the processor will be incorrect, and frequencies will be boosted or lowered at the wrong levels, yielding an inaccurate sound.  The input to the plugin can be trimmed to the appropriate level easily enough; but the importance of using proper calibration cannot be overemphasized.

Satin doesn't have Dolby SR capability, so it wouldn't be any use for film prints encoded with that, but I'm not sure how useful that would be anyway.  SR is much more complicated than Dolby A, and hardly ever used for music recording since digital was taking over around the same time, so I expect it wasn't worthwhile for U-He to try to implement it.

kpmgeek said:

Dolby B is not compatible with Dolby A.  And if I remember right, Satin has some issues with how it decodes.

What issues?  I haven't seen anything about this . . .

Sorry to dredge this issue back up after so long, but after much pain on this front, either this software and all its related software is far too modern, or I am far too old.  I'm just gonna let this one stay put until we either get another capture of the Latino dub with NR enabled, or someone else wants to take a crack at the software side.  This may very well be fine and perfectly functional software, but all it did was give me a headache, and that's coming from someone who thinks nothing of attacking a binary with a hex editor and thinks Perl is nifty.

DominicCobb said:

It was a fad that passed.

Yeah, but it took so painfully long to die this time around that they might be gearing up for its next revival already.  3D is the Rory Pond of technology.

TV's Frink said:

why does not anyone use punctuation here anymore

i think father skywalker used it all up

I'll send you a PM with the corrected audio.

I like it.  Thanks for bearing with the peanut gallery.

I think he mostly used color-adjusted GOUT (i.e. the GOUT adjusted to remove its known color bias), but there are other good sources, like the Japanese Special Collection Laserdisc and the -1 preservations, which I think were useful in bringing the warmth back to Cloud City interiors--the GOUT was based on some up-level source that made Cloud City interiors cool bluish in earlier versions.

But the lack of any reference as authoritative as a Technicolor print gave him more free rein to just do "what looked right to him", since there was no evidence stating it didn't look that way.  And I agree it looks great.

EDIT: Example of the Cloud City interiors here.

I've found torrents to be a perfectly adequate substitute for patience.

You know you want to.

Depends on the goal at this point.  If it's to match the Senator, it's still a touch too green to my eyes.

But if it's to try to counteract some of the known color bias in the Technicolor prints, then it could be made even less green (you can still leave it with a touch of mint).  IMO for similar reasons you could restrain the clipping a bit more too, but I know that's my particular peeve.

FrankT said:

Could it be that George was telling the truth when he talked about his "original" vision???

Isn't this less "Random" and more "Theatrical Cuts vs Special Editions"?

That said, I tend to mostly believe that George's original vision for the trilogy was godawful, and it was only through the fortunate graces of pragmatism, budget and time constraints, technological limitations, and George not yet being considered infallible by his co-creators that we actually ended up with the great films they were.  If anything, the Special Editions put an underline under Marcia Lucas' Oscar for Editing, because we got to see what happened without it.

But he also makes it up as he goes along: consider Luke's scream or lack of scream falling into the chasm in Empire.  Obviously his original vision, if it even exists, is malleable.

Your sample looks even more blown out than the Senator sample (which I think is already too blown out for my tastes--if in doubt I'd opt to err in favor of less blown out).  Look through the doorframe at the detail of a second doorframe over the rebels' heads, or the shoulder of the closest stormtrooper.

EDIT: but the colors are nice, if that's all you wanted feedback on ;)

team_negative1 said:

We have the advantage of several years of experience by professionals in the industry that have been working on it, along with the peer reviews here on the forums.

Also, you have the critical advantage of being a nonfictional restoration.

Yeah, that's, uh... perfect, really.

Although the purple skin tones of the Blu-ray do have the unintended effect of making the choking look more severe.  But then Vader would have to be choking everyone at all times, maybe some sort of galaxy-wide force-choke...

Yeah, I have to say I'm coming around to liking this too.

PM's sent.

Does anyone have a link to that guy who had more technical details on the projection angle on the Senator screening?  i.e. how the print came in "under cover of night" about 10 minutes before the show started, so they had no chance to do the typical adjustment they do for a film, which resulted in the heavy cropping you see in the photos?  I don't know if any of that last-minute-zero-prep angle might have affected the brightness/colors/etc.

Akton said:

Though it's shame so few of them are lucky enough to have you around to point it out to them, Frinkie, old boy.

Wait, there's only one Frink again? Did I forget to subscribe to the newsletter?

*cough* plane ticket *cough* Virginia

Not right away though.

darklordoftech said:

In 1981-1998, it did say Episode IV in the crawl, but nobody thought "I missed I-III. Back to the video store to look for I."

*raises hand*

Actually I didn't think exactly that, but in 1980, Star Wars was clearly Episode I, and they skipped over three episode numbers when they released Empire as Episode V.

I remember excited conversations with my friends in school about what must have happened in those missing three episodes (in this case, 2, 3, and 4)--there was a hint of something that happened on Ord Mantell, so clearly there was something juicy in there.  Would it come out in a future film?  TV series?  Who knew?  Either way, LOTS of us believed it, until 1981, or maybe later if we didn't see Star Wars again right away.  Finding out Star Wars was Episode IV and not Episode I like everyone assumed was kind of anticlimactic.  Not as much as the actual prequels, but still a little disappointing.

My understanding is that Technicolor prints require a bright-ass bulb to prevent them from looking really murky, and this is part of why they've been historically more difficult to scan than other prints.  Blown out whites and murky blacks are likely just part of their distinctive look.  They don't look like other film prints, they don't look like the prints the DP's look at to approve the timing, heck, they don't even necessarily look like other Technicolor prints--their primary value is that, over time, their color doesn't hardly fade at all, compared to the other crap filmstock used in the seventies and early eighties, so in many cases, they're the best we've got.

hairy_hen said:

Ass Windex?

Well, they say the eyes are the window to the soul.   So it seems there is no other logical explanation than that Mace's ass is an eye, which is a window to . . . well, something.  (The soul of the Force?)  Presumably not a very clean window if it needs Windex to be able to see into it.

 

I challenge anyone to try to disprove this, because you know you can't.  Yeah, I said it.

PSA: Please keep in mind he's referring exclusively to Mace's ass, because ouch ammonia.  Fool me once, hairy_hen...

darklordoftech said:

being pessimistic for the sake of being pessimistic

Hey, that's my raisin, Dieter!

If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak.

DominicCobb said:

People aren't stupid enough to think that that's the original crawl.

I disagree--people are extremely stupid.  But more importantly, even when they're not stupid, they're imprecise.  They will use terms like "original" when they actually just mean "pre-1997".  I know a number of casual fans who really want a pre-1997 release, but they really don't care about the crawl, color timing, inauthentic sound effects, missing sound effects, etc--but they call what they want the "original" versions.  They just want a version of the Star Wars they used to know before it sucked, and many only knew it from VHS.  I suspect they easily outnumber us.  And I know Disney will cater to the largest audience first.