CatBus

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.

yoda-sama said:

CatBus said:

I'm not saying it'd be worthy of an official boycott, but it would certainly be worthy of a sizeable collection of uninterested shrugs, to the same effect.  Why would you watch the official release if you've already had something for years that's better in every way?

Don't forget, even if it isn't us rushing to buy a perfect release, those of us that support the ideals of the Despecialized Edition would buy an official OUT as a legal-peace-offering against outright piracy, since it would probably be a primary source for a future DeEd.

That's why a was careful to say "watch".  Lots of us have the official Blu-rays hidden away in a location where their existence doesn't embarrass us as badly, with no plans to ever watch them.  I don't think that's the definition of a delighted customer base.

As for the 93 audio, I meant content-wise--I agree it would be some upmix, but there will still be shattering glass in the cell block.  As for the 81 crawl, I think it's a given that any packaging would say "Episode IV: A New Hope", and that unlike with Raiders of the Lost Ark, there is actually already film that includes the altered title.  The GOUT got a pass because (by Lucas-logic) it wasn't the main feature, just some bonus material.  Our best hope for a 77 crawl on an official release IMO is a "watch with original crawl" pick on the menu system.

moviefreakedmind said:

I'd accept any release of the OOT. No one was boycotting releases because of theatrical mono mixes before the SE so why should we start now?

The trick is that, unlike before, many of us have now already seen a good-quality high-definition release of Star Wars, just not an official one.  Twenty years ago, the GOUT would have been not only cutting-edge technologically, but would have at least arguably looked better than anything we'd seen yet.  It would have been happily and gratefully received (okay, I'd have grumbled about the 93 audio, but bear with me).  It's easy to sell DVDs to a crowd that's only seen VHS.

Now, if they release Star Wars in HD with the 81 crawl, 93 audio, and poorly-restored colors (and that's your most likely scenario, IMO), we'll likely say: "Meh, I'll wait to see what Harmy can do with it first".  Because we can't unsee our preservations--they are the new de facto yardsticks we use to measure release quality.  I'm not saying it'd be worthy of an official boycott, but it would certainly be worthy of a sizeable collection of uninterested shrugs, to the same effect.  Why would you watch the official release if you've already had something for years that's better in every way?

I don't know the history of French releases at all, but is the French crawl the original 77 crawl or the revised 81 crawl?

Doctor Nick said:

Harmy has implied that he's not going to continue working on this because of the impending official release, so I wouldn't bother at this point.

There is no impending official release, there's just the latest in a twenty-year train of hundreds of rumors that hasn't even once panned out.  But hey, maybe this time is totally different than the other hundred and seventy gazillion identical rumors we've seen over the years.  It only has to be right once, right?  Well, unless it never is.

darklordoftech said:

What would Disney have to gain from making more changes?

A 4K version of Star Wars, for one.  For >2K, they absolutely must go back to film elements, which means pre-2004.  Another good reason would be maintaining contractual obligations (i.e. with Reliance Media) that were agreed to prior to the Lucasfilm purchase.  They may try to make the result look like the 2011SE, or the 2004SE, but if they do, it will inevitably be somewhat different and therefore "more changes".  Heck, if they decide to actually go the OOT route, they may decide to port over some of the more subtle recomps from the SE, and that too would be yet another special edition.  There are SO many ways this can go wrong without someone at the helm who actually loves the films deeply.

moviefreakedmind said:

I don't think for one second that Disney would allow more changes to the trilogy due to the backlash it gets every time it happens. I could see Disney sweeping it under the rug, continuing to release the 2011 SEs, and then never mentioning the OOT ever again, but adding even more changes I just can't see them doing.

And then there's the mysterious Reliance Media project, which seems to be exactly that.  The 04/11 SE's are limited to 2K, so going back to the 97SE's, doing a 4K scan, and re-specializing is the only way to keep the SE fork alive at all for higher-res releases (and, given that complicated history, it won't be an exact match to the 2011SE even if that's their intended goal).  Now, Disney probably bought this project already contracted out and partly-completed, so they didn't technically decide to do it, but AFAIK nobody's killed it yet.  Corporate inertia is a force to be reckoned with.

Hey, I want it released as much as anyone, but "it just doesn't make sense not to" has been a valid argument since the mid-nineties and nothing's come of it yet--except, you know, rumors from "credible sources" every five months for the past twenty years.

moviefreakedmind said:

I'd love to hear what Landis himself said verbatim, but it seems that Empire magazine interpreted his statement as being the original versions specifically.

Sure, but Landis is already not the first speaker in that game of telephone.  He heard it from Lucas.  Lucas may have said "the original trilogy--yes, John, THE original classic films that started the whole thing, back in 1977, with no changes at all to what I intended all those years ago".  A normal person could walk out of there thinking Star Wars was finally going to get a decent home video release and say that to the press without reservations, but in Lucas-speak, that just means a new 2016 Specialer Edition where Yoda is now CGI.

Most sources for the English audio were from Laserdisc, we have nice mixes now (not necessarily exactly the same as those used for the DeEd's) that use "best of breed" releases, with patched over dropouts, etc.  So it's lossless in the sense that it's from Laserdisc, mostly digital audio, but occasionally patched over with analogue audio, originally 44.1k 16 bit lossless, resampled to 48k.

"Lossless" is always a bit of a dodgy term, because much could have been altered for the Laserdisc release (dynamics, channel separation, etc), but that's pretty much exactly as good as Blu-ray lossless in that sense--moreso in that they didn't routinely tweak the audio so much back then.

The Star Wars mono mix is mostly from a capture of a European TV broadcast, expertly cleaned up and synced, and doesn't really sound much worse than partial captures we've gotten directly from 35mm--academy mono really wasn't all that great, so it seems that's just about as good as it sounded originally.  Empire 16mm mono mix is, surprise, from a 16mm film capture, and is pretty rough.

This thread is about one mix in particular, just the 6-channel 1977 70mm reconstruction, which is from multiple sources, all Laserdisc IIRC except that some of the LFE track is derived from the Blu-rays.

IIRC these 6-channel mixes for ESB and ROTJ are content-equivalent to "tasteful upmixes" of the original stereo mixes, not reconstructions of the original 6-channel mixes.  ESB's theatrical 6-channel mix was entirely different, matched an entirely different 70mm cut of the video, and our best source is a pretty dodgy-sounding 8mm capture that's missing some big chunks--and we don't have a complete re-creation of that.  ROTJ's theatrical 6-channel mix has no known differences from the stereo mix content-wise (but no reference either, so who knows), so a tasteful upmix of the stereo mix may very well be pretty close.  ESB got some LFE from the Blu-rays in the latest iteration, ROTJ will probably get the same treatment once ROTJ DeEd 2.x is closer.

bkev said:

source.  Anyone have any thoughts on this?  Likelihood of reality?

At this point, I'm guessing that keeping this rumor circulating is simply the most cost-effective way of keeping Star Wars relevant.  Just in time for a new film, what a coincidence!

EDIT: Either that, or it's just your standard everyday confusion over the term "original trilogy", where the original speaker means the special editions and everyone else hears what they want to hear, and passes along their misinterpretation.

NeverarGreat said:

CatBus said:

I guess I should add that while snicker used the RGB channel differences to reconstruct clipped highlights, I think in the Death Star hangar example he uncrushed the blacks by pulling usable detail out of the BTB data, and I'm not sure if you've been making use of what unseen detail is lurking in BTB and WTW.

There is definitely a great deal of data hiding in the superwhites or WTW in Star Wars, and it can be pulled out if you don't clip the detail through a colorspace conversion, but how would it be possible to pull useful data out of the superblacks, since most of the data is random noise within a point or two of RGB 0,0,0?

Well, I don't know the technical details behind snicker's methods, but there was clearly something usable there for that one shot.  Either it was specific to that shot, or maybe the channel separation trick provided some benefit there too, i.e. separating signal from noise.

I guess I should add that while snicker used the RGB channel differences to reconstruct clipped highlights, I think in the Death Star hangar example he uncrushed the blacks by pulling usable detail out of the BTB data, and I'm not sure if you've been making use of what unseen detail is lurking in BTB and WTW.

Not sure if this is applicable, and it's way before your time here, but there was a user named snicker who had an interesting idea about clipping (with actual good results!).  Basically because not all channels were boosted equally, not all channels clipped equally.  For example, on a lot of clipped colored lights, the red channel is clipped, or possibly the blue channel, but the green channel retains some detail, which could be used in restoring the shot.

Anyway, not sure if what he did was exactly scriptable, but he produced some impressive results, where previously clipped/crushed data seemed to be restored to bright red lights and I believe also the black "pit" in the death star hangar.  Anyway, you might find someone here with more technical detail, but I thought since you're messing with clipping anyway, it couldn't hurt to mention it...

DrDre said:

CatBus said:

DrDre said:

I believe I have solved the problem of crushed whites, and blacks for the CollorCorrect GUI v1.2.

I have to say, this might change everything for me.  Back when you were color correcting the Blu-ray exclusively, I was inclined to believe that contrast boosting on the Blu was destroying your highlight detail.  But then I saw the same thing when you corrected the GOUT and I thought something must be wrong with the method in general.  I didn't complain because frankly I felt you were catching quite enough flak already, and were still doing interesting work in spite of the problems.

Now... things look very promising indeed.  Keep up the good work, and I'd like to see more captures using this new method.

 Could you explain with an example?

The stormtrooper on the far right's chest:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/139124

Artifacts in the highlights on C-3PO's leg:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/140781

Lots of highlight detail lost here:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/142085

Seeing those shots redone with the new method would be very interesting to me.

DrDre said:

I believe I have solved the problem of crushed whites, and blacks for the CollorCorrect GUI v1.2.

I have to say, this might change everything for me.  Back when you were color correcting the Blu-ray exclusively, I was inclined to believe that contrast boosting on the Blu was destroying your highlight detail.  But then I saw the same thing when you corrected the GOUT and I thought something must be wrong with the method in general.  I didn't complain because frankly I felt you were catching quite enough flak already, and were still doing interesting work in spite of the problems.

Now... things look very promising indeed.  Keep up the good work, and I'd like to see more captures using this new method.