CatBus

I think you're going to run into a few problems here.

Even if you get agreement from a few people here, there's just no way to enforce consistency or get anyone to buy into these definitions.  People can't even agree about the name of that movie that came out in 1977 ("It's A New Hope!" "No, it's Star Wars"), let alone more arcane technical definitions.  Every definition here potentially overlaps multiple terms.

Even assuming we allow for great flexibility, these terms are hierarchical.  Some are subsets of others.  Some are distinct.  Some are partially overlapping and partially distinct.

Anyway, here are my personal definitions not based on anything authoritative other than lurking around here for a while and seeing the sort of things that go on here:

Fan Preservation can be used to describe ANY attempt to preserve a particular version of a film for posterity.  It can include unaltered preservations of a single rare release, it can be a remux of different releases, it can be a reconstruction of an original version from multiple sources... it could even be a reconstruction of a particular modified-for-television broadcast version of a film.  It could just be transferring an old VHS bootleg to DVD.

Fan Restoration is a subset of the above.  It's an attempt to restore a particular version of the film that is otherwise unavailable, in a way that involves a lot of processing to bring out qualities that weren't present in the unaltered source material.  Project Blu would qualify as a single-source fan restoration, the Despecialized Editions would be multi-source.

Fan Reconstruction is a subset of the above, and it's the multi-source version.

Fan Extended Edition is a subset of Fan Edits, where the primary goal of the project is to add material to the film.

Fan Remux is a subset of Fan Edits that overlaps Fan Preservation (if the goal of the remux is to preserve a particular version), but can also include making unique new versions.

Fan Edit overlaps Fan Preservations and Fan Restorations, and is a superset of Fan Reconstructions, Fan Extended Editions, and Fan Remuxes.  Basically it only means the fan did some editing to the sources.  It does not imply what the purpose of that editing was.  It could have been to make a home video release like the theatrical version, it could be made to shorten or lengthen the film, it may have been only audio editing, but it wasn't a simple VHS-to-DVD transfer, for example.

Workprints and Bootlegs should be separated out.  Workprints are film elements from the official process that produced the film that didn't make it into the film itself, while bootlegs are unofficial audio or video recordings of a particular "performance" of the film.  In-theatre tape recordings, VHS tapes of TV broadcasts, etc.

Fair enough, you can feel nostalgia for anything.  For me, though, these screencaps almost bring back the nostalgia of watching VHS tapes on an old CRT, with the glaring exception of the compression.  For others, they may successfully bring back the nostalgia of a different viewing experience, such as you described.

Having seen the VHS transfers more often than any other transfers of these films, I think I understand the aesthetic you're shooting for here, and I think you've mostly hit the target.  However, I think the one thing that's "off" is the compression.  Everything about these screencaps exudes nostalgia for those happier times when the SE's didn't even exist... except the giant blocky compression artifacts that are straight from the glory days of YouTube videos of cats falling off television sets.

Both aesthetics are extremely cruddy, I grant you, but they are from two very different cruddy video eras, and combining the two is a little anachronistic (the screenshot in the preceding post is the worst offender).  NTSC VHS, for all its many faults, had zero compression artifacts.  If needed, a softening effect can be created using a blur filter instead.

droidekas said:

Hi,

is there a german audio track available for this release?

 

Thanks!

Of course! We're not savages here ;)

Beebboob said:

Is there any other way to get the Project Threepio subtitles for Harmy's despecialized versions than getting them from Myspleen or Usenet?

I really can't access either one, but would like to get the Finnish subtitles for at least Empire and Jedi. Any help would be truly appreciated.

PM sent.  For any questions, Project Threepio has its own thread (follow the image link in my signature).

An odd addition to the list would be Do the Right Thing, which is in a way the polar opposite of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It's actually supposed to have a strong golden-yellow cast, but when they made the Blu-ray, they removed it, so the Blu-ray has much more natural colors than it did theatrically.

Just a reminder that color revisionism can work in all directions, not just making things look more unnatural.

EDIT: I'd also add that with Raiders, there's not very much teal shift at all, the big color shift is almost all in the direction of gold.

Apparently the overall bleediness is present on all transfers so is probably just the way it was (see last page or so).  The edge-bleed is probably caused by the loose framing (the same thing that causes the rounded corners), but the fact that it suddenly disappears seems odd to me, like it was painted out.  Then again, some extra Star Destroyer engines suddenly disappear too and that was theatrical, so maybe this is all normal.  Hard to tell though, because I'm not sure any previous transfer was framed quite this wide, so there might not be any way to check.

Looking at the crawl again, it looks like there's some light bleeding in from the edge of the frame in the lower-right corner, and that abruptly disappears around frame 2696 or so (not exact, that was my reaction time for hitting pause).

Ah, no, I'm into alternate mixes, but my interest trails off when it's that incomplete. Thanks for the offer, though.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

BTW, I sent Mavimao the 8mm audio files too.

So the 8mm mono is slightly different than the 16mm then?  Any sync plans for this?

Mavimao said:

Funny you mentioned 32 bit... I read somewhere that FCP handles audio at "32 floating bit point" and yet when I export the audio as a WAV file the info says 24 bits. I then transcoded the audio with Max into FLAC. There must be a weird correlation that I'm not understanding. 

Maybe the problem's on my end.  Audition said it was 32 bits, but maybe it was wrong.  Or maybe it's a deal where it's 32 defined bits in the spec but only 24 are actually used, who knows... either way it's too many bits IMO ;)

File size could be reduced considerably FWIW.  Mavimao's sources are 32-bit two-channel mono.  Reducing that to 16-bit single-channel mono would cut down on the size quite a bit, and I did this with my encodes.  That said, whether to encode mono as one or two channels is open to debate.  Technically speaking, single-channel is better, more space-efficient, comes out of the proper center speaker, etc.  But on the other hand, some receivers don't know how to upmix single-channel mono to surround, and two-channel mono works better for them.  Pick your poison.

The synced audio is somewhere, but access is being handled via PM's.

I plan to normalize it and encode it to DTS-MA and AC3, and those versions should find their way to Harmy if he wants them.

So, from what's been posted elsewhere, I've read that in addition to the 16mm mono mix, there's an 8mm mono mix which is also slightly different.  And then there was theatrical 35mm w/ mono release of Empire as well.  Is this correct? Any idea if the 16mm mix could possibly match the theatrical one?

I'd want it, and in FLAC preferably.

Kingherb said:

I see what you mean about the crawl, it seems like there is some ghosting going on with the text, strange that this is on the official blu-ray.

Well, knowing that this is from the Blu-ray, and pretty sure they wouldn't produce an effect like that if they re-made the crawl in '97, I think either 1) that's just how it was, or 2) it's a black level thing and originally was an invisible effect that got boosted somehow for the SE's, maybe when they added a purple tinge everywhere for no apparent reason.  Or some combination of the two.

Harmy said:

It's straight from the BluRay.

Mind blown.

I guess it just looks odd compared to the SW crawl, and I attributed the oddness to SD.  What's the source?  Puggo?  Either way it stands out--the sharply-defined Star Wars logo and the considerably less-defined crawl just don't seem to go together IMO.

I'm assuming re-rendering the crawl and credits is not part of the 2.0 timeline, but is part of the later plan?  They're easily the most noticeable SD elements in 1.0 as far as I'm concerned.

Wexter said:

One thing I would consider plausible would be some subplot involving Darth Maul to give him at least a hint of personality.

Hint of personality? Phantom Menace? Plausible?

Head asplode.

cain spaans said:

does anyone know where I can find the audio for the Japanese dubs so I can sync it in with the movie 

Japanese dubs are available on Usenet--both the original theatrical dub (where applicable) and the later home video dub.

The next best thing is wait for 2.5, which I believe should have the home video dubs (could be wrong about that).

Mavimao is working on syncing the 16mm mono track, which also has alternate dialogue. I'm not sure anyone has a copy of the 8mm track to work with.

PM sent!

2.x is a huge improvement (along with more thorough despecialization, there's greatly improved theatrical color fidelity and much less compression).  And that's just on the video side.

Whether you can wait or not is up to you.  If you wait for the whole trilogy to reach 2.x, you'll be waiting a long time.

EDIT: If it helps you decide, watching 1.x merely makes you feel like you're watching something better than the best official home video version of Star Wars ever made.  Watching 2.x makes you feel like you're in the theatre on opening day in 1977.  It's that good.