CatBus

IMO it’s something even worse than simple personal loyalty to George, it’s an ideological deference the the expressed wishes of the perceived creator of any property. The reason that distinction is important is that once George dies (this is speaking in terms of an unavoidable timeline), personal loyalty evaporates – he’ll never know, right? – while the ideology of deference to the wishes of the creator will continue.

It’s a small niggle, but it’s why we won’t see the OOT in any official releases until the copyright expires and public-domain outfits (who are, let’s face it, in for a quick buck and have no delusions of artistry) can get a crack at it. And that’s why (sigh) projects like Legacy that take the longer view are still important. Lucasfilm might bury Legacy, but Laserlight will jump at it. In a century or so, Mike’s grandkids can seal the deal and my grandkids can watch it.

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That looks great. Is it really 1.85:1? The Japanese Blu-ray (what this is clearly based on) is 1.78:1. I noticed that the hospital scenes in particular had ragged/wobbly top/bottom edges, and trimming it to 1.85:1 would fix that.

Also, wasn’t there a mono mix from Laserdisc floating around?

PM’s sent.

So far, just screencaps. We also haven’t heard anything from poita for over a year, although he’s still around.

ChainsawAsh said:

Power windows are extremely common in almost every single modern restoration of any film that was photochemically graded. If the goal of this is to make the “official Blu that never was,” power windows would really just make it even more “accurate” to that goal. I don’t see an issue with them, frankly.

In general, yes, but there are some specific atrocious examples. I believe Harmy already dealt with a brightened Vader in a hallway shot on the Blu-ray. I imagine that any alteration that just plain looked bad would be worth fixing. Just like a wipes might not be redone in general, but a wipe would be worth redoing if it showed the SE version of Ben’s hut, for example. There’s a lot of judgment calls, and Harmy’s standards are always more stringent than my own, so I’m good with whatever he does.

Oh, Harmy, you’ve got to snag 44rh1n’s FOTR regrade, it’s excellent!

Quoted for truth.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Harmy said:

I am now in contact with oohteedee and we’re talking about collaborating on v3.0 using his D+xy versions as a basis and despecializing them further.

the focus of Despecialized can shift to being what a modern transfer of the movie

That said, will original opening logos still be preserved? I know some (not all) studios use newer logos on restorations of classic films, but I think for the despecialized crowd original logos are important.

I think it’s more along the line of: Harmy used to walk a fine line between making the Blu-ray release that never was, and preserving the theatrical experience. Now with the existence of 4Kxx, he doesn’t have to do that anymore.

I don’t recall the logos were ever a judgment call, but there were plenty of others. Harmy wrestled with adding burn marks to Tantive 4, ultimately landing on the “Blu-ray” side and not adding them. He once added a hair to a shot that’s in all the prints*, which is on the “Theatrical” side. He cropped rounded corners onto Empire Strikes Back, which again was for a theatrical feel. And so on.

What we get with the “Blu-ray release that never was” approach is not trying to make it look like a projection print when it’s not. You mostly won’t notice anything at all, except it will just seem crisp and clean (but not degrained, thankfully). I can’t see big things like the logo changing.

* I believe this addition was eventually dubbed the “space pube”, but I could be wrong.

Harmy said:

I am now in contact with oohteedee and we’re talking about collaborating on v3.0 using his D+xy versions as a basis and despecializing them further.

I have said before that now that we have 4K77 and 4K83 as 100% true theatrical preservstions (with 4K80 hopefully coming soon) the focus of Despecialized can shift to being what a modern transfer of the movie, if the SE never existed, could be. This is why I don’t think power-windows, not 100% theatrically accurate grading or redone wipes and such are really a problem.

Which one’s first up? You’d mentioned Star Wars was your new focus at some point, is that still true? Very glad to see it coming together.

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SilverWook said:

And they took it out for the next version anyway, how do the Flannelheads™ rationalize that reversion?

I suspect it’s because we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

SilverWook said:

I don’t even want to imagine the pro Maclunkey arguments now. 😉

I personally have a soft spot for the arguments supporting Luke’s scream in Cloud City. One of us! One of us!

Just in case Harmy doesn’t recognize 44rh1n from other parts of the forum, he knows his stuff. DrDre would be a good contact as well – he may already be well on his way to an already-color-corrected UHD source.

Well, my offer still stands on the UHD front. And I suppose I can mention, in relation to other ideas being circulated, that my offer definitely comes with no conditions. You can do whatever you like with them, I don’t care.

I can buy, and I have a “Libre” drive for ripping, but not nearly enough storage space, so I’d need to buy that too. But I’d need to know how to rip UHD properly so’s not to screw anything up. And I have no idea at all about HDR workflows.

So in a pinch, with coaching about the ripping process, I could mail a bunch of drives (along with the original discs, of course). I doubt I could find another way to transfer that much data that would work for me.

I’m hoping you get a better offer, but that’s what I can do!

So, in terms of color, I’d rank it:

1. 4K83 1.6
2. 97SE
3. Despecialized 2.5
4. Earlier non-DrDre 4K83 releases
5. GOUT
6. Other Special Editions

All Special Editions later than the 97SE have huge color shifts and aren’t close at all. Harmy’s only so high on the list because he did such a good job undoing the damage of the 2011SE, but the colors on the Blu-rays were trash and there’s only so much you can correct. The only benefits of the OCN for Harmy was that it gave Despecialized much more fine detail and better contrast than any print-based preservation could ever have – but that fine detail and contrast did come at a cost.

I personally still prefer DeEd due to the detail and contrast that gives it the look of a modern respectful HD home video release. But that’s not how it was in theatres. Boosted contrast and lost fine detail came with the optical duplication process that produced projection prints, and that’s just how it looked. 4K83 reproduces that look, if that’s what you’re after (although the contrast boost in 4K83 isn’t bad at all, due to the special unicorn print they found, and ROTJ likely had more boosted contrast theatrically).

Basing things on the OCN is great for home video, especially when people don’t muck up the colors as badly as they did with Star Wars, but it’s not faithful to that projection print look. IMO it’s better, but that’s a matter of taste.

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ShiftyEyes said:

DrDre, I see the images you have in your shot by shot color correction of 4K83 thread are much more colorful and vibrant than your reel by reel color correction. Just curious what the differences are and with regards to accuracy/methodology.

He talks about it briefly here:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/4K83-reel-by-reel-color-grading/id/73014/page/1#1327510

And I hope he never corrects his typo about people watching ROTJ “on the bog screen”, because it just cracks me up to imagine people watching it while sitting on the toilet.

My reactions at the time to Jedi were:

I didn’t mind Jabba’s palace in general – I didn’t really notice how bad some of the puppets were until I re-watched it later.

I didn’t mind the second Death Star. Not just because of the trap element, but again, I was ten, so I would tolerate a lot of recycled material (and phoned-in performances…).

The Leia-as-sister bit seemed more WTF than Vader-as-father, except without the equivalent emotional/character development payoff.

The Ewoks felt somewhere between stupid and pandering (and I was ten, so I wasn’t picky).

But mostly I was sad that Star Wars was over after only three movies. It didn’t really occur to me at the time how badly things could go if they kept making more of them. I was certain George Lucas could have still made more great Star Wars movies after Jedi, so they way it ended the saga so decisively was probably the biggest blow. Again, not-cynical-enough ten year old.

PM sent.

Yes, we do have European Portuguese subtitles, and I’ll send you the link in a PM.

And here’s the “best news” I referred to earlier – we now have a complete set of Catalan dubs.

So what’s so special about this? Isn’t it just another dub? No, not in my opinion. Not at all.

I don’t often wax poetical about dubs – I’m a subtitle guy myself – but I’ve found they fall into certain categories, at least in terms of audio quality. There’s your high quality dubs from Laserdisc or DVD of the unaltered trilogy. German, French, Japanese, and so on. Great sound quality, no Special Edition nonsense, the way Star Wars dubs ought to be. But there are only a certain number of these, and the list never grows. Then there’s your variable-quality captures of TV dubs – at best, never nearly as good as your high quality dubs, and at worst, pretty bad. Then there’s your Despecialized dubs from DVD and Blu-ray, which can have good audio quality, but you get the Special Edition material, which puts them dead last in my estimation.

And then there’s the Catalan dubs. Star Wars and Empire are made-for-TV dubs, Jedi is a theatrical dub, but all three were TV broadcasts, and that’s how we have them. In terms of translation quality, I have no idea how they rate. But in terms of overall audio quality, these equal the Laserdisc tier in my opinion. Mono, but top-notch mono. And no, they don’t use the mono mix, they’re just a mono fold-down of stereo mixes.

They’re not perfect, of course. There is some tape damage at the beginning of the first reel of Jedi that I was sadly unable to correct. The lip sync comes and goes but is usually pretty solid. And there’s some crazy made-for-TV business – I don’t know all of the sound effects that Lucasfilm made for these films and rejected, or only included in certain releases, but I have the distinct impression that some sound effects were added by the dubbing studio or TV station. And they are occasionally quite weird. In Star Wars, in the shootout immediately following Obi-Wan’s death, there’s… I dunno… EXTRA laser blasts. But not really extra Star Wars laser blasts, extra laser blasts made by some guys whacking a metal cable to achieve something one cut above yelling “pew! pew!”. And in the mission briefing, there’s extra robot noises. Are they from the robot next to R2? Or from the projection screen? I have no idea. But whatever they are supposed to be, they are now preserved in very high quality, and these strange moments are the rare exceptions to an overall excellent presentation.

So, if you or someone you know speaks Catalan, this is great news, because Catalan just jumped the queue to become a top-tier language for the whole trilogy. If you’re curious about some of these unusual dubs we’ve been collecting, but are put off by that lo-fi VHS sound, this is the one you want to try. Either way, you can PM me for links to the dubs or download them from the usual places.

And to top it off, Laozi has offered to produce full Catalan subtitles, which will be included in the next version of Project Threepio. These subtitles are still a work in progress, as he’s taking extra time to ensure the best translation from the English.