CatBus

OMEN!-_-! said:

I haven't seen all those sources so i can't make a judgement on that but even if the starfield was that bright and numerous, the fact remains that a continuety problem is created which is very noticable in the clip. If Harmy were to brighten the stars in the background when the Tantive IV passes to match the stars in the scroll background, there would be no problem whatsoever and everything would be seemless. As it is, the difference in star brightness between the two backgrounds is very noticable and IMHO very distracting.

I see what you're talking about but I'm not sure if it's within the realm of acceptable variation (judgement call), based on variation in the film source (fidelity), or just an oversight.  Certainly worth pointing out, it can't hurt.

It's certainly possible the stars become dimmer in the film as the bright planet comes into the frame.  If it happened in the theatre, I want it happening in the DE's too.  I also want unrealistic skin tones if they were unrealistic in the theatre too, so maybe it's just me ;)

EyeShotFirst said:

I just wonder what it will take to piss off the elite fans like the ones at TFN.

Just when is Lucas going to finally cross the line with them?

There is no line more egregious than the one crossed in 1997.  If you can handle those changes, you're quite likely good with Harrison Ford being digitally replaced by Howie Mandel, as long as it's still blessed as the Original Vision[TM].

From what I've seen of some 35mm film scans of ESB, the starfields in the film are both brighter and seem much more populated than what is apparent in the GOUT.  I imagine it's also the case with the other films.  Harmy often uses film scans and theatrical photos as references, which is why his versions often deviate from the GOUT.  Certainly there's also a lot of guesswork, but the goal is to re-create the theatrical version, not the GOUT.

Actually I don't know about the PAL GOUT.  It could be there and nobody's grabbed them.

I don't know of any, but I'm working on a project to make GOUT-timed subtitles in several languages.  The end result will include an English text template and set of instructions for putting subtitles into some of the more popular fan edits here.  Danish won't be one of the languages included in the set however, sorry--but it wouldn't be too much work for a native speaker to create them.  I hope to have this all ready in a few months--right now I'm waiting for translations/corrections on the first round of languages.

I believe he used a 35mm film scan.  It's not a recreation, it's the real thing.

Bumperdinger Glitch.

DominicCobb said:

Unless the song you are playing is Jedi Rocks...

The Jabba that played Jedi Rocks was just an overgrown slug that let Han Solo (a well-known and widely-ridiculed goodie-two-shoes who had a hard time shooting someone in cold blood even to save his own life) literally walk all over him for comic effect.  He didn't have the authority of the Jabba who played Lapti Nek.

I dunno, I think that genre classification seems pretty apt to me... and frankly, if I were a "vile gangster" with absolute power over a sizeable criminal network, and had my own palace and flying sail barge which appeared to have permanent free bar parties going on and a perpetual cadre of the most violent and nasty couch surfing villains/guests in the quadrant... I can't honestly think of a more appropriate genre.

EDIT: I mean, seriously.  If one of your freeloading groupies is Boba Fett fer crying out loud, you are officially and unequivocally The Man.  You can play whatever music you want.  Nobody will question your taste.

I just had an idea (maybe not new) about how to create GOUT-timed audio descriptive tracks from the SE-timed audio descriptive tracks.

You may be able to use a tool like Audio DiffMaker (or maybe even something more purpose-built) to take the SE-timed descriptive track and the SE-timed regular soundtrack and extract the differences (i.e. create a new track with just the descriptive narration and no soundtrack).

You could then slice and re-time this narration track to match GOUT timing, and then merge it into a GOUT-timed soundtrack, and you've got yourself a GOUT-timed audio descriptive track.

Assuming the whole diffmaker process actually works reasonably well, this could work really well for Empire, but there may be a large gap in Jedi during the Lapti Nek scene, depending in what's described there.

Anyway, I thought this might be worth at least pursuing. Now someone who's not me needs to volunteer ;)

That's fine.  Keep it in mind for later though.  As for "going that far", aren't you the same guy that added a vague rectangular block around the Greedo subs to simulate the compositing elements?  You've already gone that far and back again, I'm afraid ;)

In an attempt not to further pollute another thread, I'm referencing MySycamore's post here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/regrading-editing-original-trilogy-using-blu-rays-and-german-hdtv-streams-to-remove-bad-but-not-all-specialised-blu-ray-changes/post/553819/#TopicPost553819

Harmy, if a Laserdisc rip would be helpful to get more "out the window" detail than is available via other sources, PM me.  I may not have the best source available, but I've got something.

The entire film is touched, but I'm not sure how consistently.  But your eye can adjust for the green cast more easily in some scenes than others, and some scenes already may have had a different color cast originally that the green balanced out.  Luckily the other two films are not like this, unfortunately Fellowship is my favorite of them.  There's definitely not a single pixel of pure white in the entire Fellowship (unlike the other films, including Fellowship flashbacks), that's been shown elsewhere.

I'll just add before stepping out that Harmy is probably right on the blue/brown saturation issue.  My memory is probably hopelessly biased by years of VHS viewing, which I'm sure is less accurate than the GOUT.  Still, looks a little weird, even if correct.  I can't help feeling it.

You_Too said:

This is what came out when I took that shot into photoshop and let it auto-find the RGB mid-levels and adjusted it to that without changing the white or black balance.

Not sure what I think about the background (looks like a brighter/washed out version of Harmy's there), but I really like the way the foreground looks here.  Good work as always.

Harmy said:

Mine isn't so much cyan, as it is blue, just like most of the newly surfaced sources seem to indicate (including the GOUT, when you increase saturation).  I don't have the GOUT at hand but as I timed the whole film to  saturation boosted GOUT, I'm pretty sure that it is how it appeared there - both the blue and the brightness.

I didn't mean to hijack the thread about this, I just have a memory (yes, memory lies, I know) of the snow being closer to white and the mountains being closer to brown.  That seems to match what I'd consider the natural color balance.  I could very well be wrong, but that doesn't prevent by brain from thinking something's a little off.

Fair point about the highlights, I guess it's a matter of which details you think are important and how many of them can be lost before it's considered a problem.  I think a lot of the outdoor Hoth shots are all so close to the line to begin with that further brightening just makes a bad situation worse.

Generally speaking I prefer Harmy's version on the brightness front, except I think all of them are too cyan.

EDIT: I think part of the problem is that the Lowry job boosted contrast everywhere, which means more detail is pushed into the murky and bright borderline areas, subject to clipping if you manipulate them much.  If you were working from the actual film frames, you may be able to do more adjustments without losing so much detail.  Such is the nature of the beast.

I agree with Harmy's brightness assessment.  A good indicator that yours is too bright is simply that so much detail is lost in the blown out whites.  If the detailts were meant to be blown out, they wouldn't be on the film in the first place.  That's as close as we can get to a statement of intent from the cinematographer.

However, I'd say that BOTH screenshots are too cyan.  If you're color-adjusting this scene, I'd cut that back quite a bit.

OK.  I can see both sides of including/excluding it, but I lean slightly in favor of including it.  It would add the extra icing on the cake if someone shows the DE in an actual theatre (private showing, naturally).

Just a question, not a call to action...

Why is Jedi the only film in the DE's with the PG rating at the end of the credits?  Looking at the discussion about spacing variations in the 1977 Star Wars credits, I noticed the rating screen in some of those screens too.

Darth Tater said:

Yes. I just checked the 2006 SE DVD, and it's green in there, so I'm guessing that's one of the changes made along the way.

Well, you know, as long as you're in there blacking out all the detail in Vader's TIE fighter wing, you may as well make the fire green while you're at it.  It's hard work trashing a classic.

doubleofive said:

Strangest day of class ever.

Context is everything.  I had that exact lecture but it came off really well in my heathen class, there was cheering and goat blood smoothies and everything.  Maybe the professor recycles material from previous teaching positions?

PM sent.

BigP said:

I have tried moving the file from my pc to my 2TB hard drive but it keeps saying the file is too big. How can this be when the file is only approx. 8gb? How do I get it to play on my ps3???   :(

Some filesystems (i.e. FAT, used frequently for external media for compatibility purposes), have a maximum filesize they can accept.  Try reformatting the drive to anything other than FAT.

EDIT: yes, but that would probably break compatibility with the PS3.  Just burn it to DVD and be done with it.

I admit up-front that this is just a roundabout way of asking "are we there yet"?

h_h, do you have a rough changelog of what's going into the V2 audio for each of the movies?  i.e. "removed SE alien sounds from cantina scene", "slight rotj timing change for pal-based projects", etc.