CatBus

All the versions are 720p – please report people selling them.

Oh my God, think of the possibilities! It could be like buying the naming rights to a stadium.

This UHD Star Wars release was brought to you by AFLAC.

I should point out that Star Wars won an Academy Award for editing (due in no small part to the work of Marcia Lucas), so being in awe of its original editing is not unwarranted.

I should also point out that in the very first post-theatrical edit to Star Wars (in which the crawl was revised in 1981 to give Star Wars an episode number and title), the editors fucked up so badly that you have to watch an entire planet miss its audio cue by several seconds at the beginning of every single home video release of Star Wars except the GOUT.

And that pretty much set the bar for all future edits to the OT. Regardless of who’s to blame, Star Wars editing has been an unqualified shitshow since the revisions started.

I’d say 4K77 and 4K83 are your best way to re-create what it would have looked like in the theatre, aside from color issues. 4K77 is a bit of a rough ride, but 4K83 looks very good.

Despecialized is more like what a respectful official Blu-ray release would have looked like. Because it’s based on scans of negatives rather than projection prints, it’s a little cleaner, has better contrast, and has a lot more fine detail (yes, the 720p DeEd has more fine detail than a 4K print scan – it’s all due to the sources). It also has much better colors IMO, although that could change as more color adjustments to 4Kxx come out. The downside is that DeEd is based on multiple sources, including special editions. However, I’d be hard-pressed to identify any “seams” in ROTJ DeEd, I’d have to look very carefully to see them in ESB, and Star Wars is, well, simply not as good as the other two.

I still personally prefer DeEd for all three films, mostly because what I’m looking for is something like a Blu-ray that I’d buy in a store, not what I’d see sitting in a movie theatre in the 80’s.

I’d categorize all the rest as “special interest”. I love me some Puggo, but I can’t say I’d recommend it very broadly without reservations.

Thank you very much for the detailed response. Yes, my room acoustics are definitely the biggest unaddressed problem, and it’s likely to stay that way (bad corners, smallish nook in a weird-shaped medium room, large hard reflective parallel surfaces, you name it). The most likely way out of that hole, for me, is to build a new room designed for movie playback from the start – and that’s honestly not very likely.

It’s good to hear that subwoofer calibration seems to be a perennial problem for everyone. It was a little annoying to fix one thing only to discover another, but it was also a learning experience, and now I know a little more about how these things work.

Yes, I do always listen at lower-than-reference, and that’s really the source of lots of problems, from the Fletcher-Munson curve to dialogue intelligibility. My receiver does have a night mode, but it only works for certain types of audio tracks (DTS, I think), and I find it compresses the dynamics a little too much for my tastes (it’s probably designed for listening at much quieter levels, and is only on/off, not adjustable), so I never went too far down that road. I’m not sure about dynamic EQ, so that’s definitely something for me to look into longer term.

So far the 1.5dB boost to the center has been going okay – a little less riding the volume button (not gone though), without any noticeable ill effects. Certainly it depends on the mix, though, and I’m trying to keep the amount of the boost well under 3dB to avoid surprises (centered loud SFX, etc). It will probably take many tests before I’m certain I’m comfortable with it. And if it all goes to hell, I’ll knock it back down to even with the other channels and ride the remote some more.

And thanks for the scene lists. I haven’t had the chance to listen to any of these in 5.1, and I’ll definitely pay attention. I just kinda wanted to iron out all of the major gremlins first before I did that. Although I didn’t come right out and say it, your audio mixes have become the definitive Star Wars audio experience for me, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. So thank you very much for that as well.

I’m gonna leave before people start pointing out problems with Ghost Dad.

PM sent.

ray_afraid said:

Many people hate the addition of Hayden because if, like me, you only watch the OT, Hayden comes out of nowhere, while we just met Sebastian as Anikin moments ago.
And it makes sense that he would return in the form he was redeemed in and, more importantly,
as someone Luke would recognize.

The Blu-rays fixed that. Now instead of appearing out of nowhere, his disembodied voice yells at Vader as Vader throws the Emperor down the chasm. Then, a few scenes later, you see him hanging out with Obi-Wan and Yoda. So it’s… wait, no, it’s actually even more incongruous, even if you recognize the yelling voice as that guy from Shattered Glass who somehow ended up on the Death Star and thinks it’s a good idea to scream at a pissed off Darth Vader, although I’ll admit he is smart enough to stay offscreen while he’s yelling.

But back on-topic, the Emperor change sucks too. But it only makes the scene worse, it doesn’t make the scene utterly incomprehensible.

Mike O said:

I don’t mean to be crude, but it sounds like good, bad, or indifferent, we won’t get them while Lucas is still alive.

Longer than that. Much longer. When someone is recognized as the creator of an already-wildly-successful property, publishers give their wishes enormous deference. Take the example of C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. The publishers to this day insist on releasing the series in the wrong order. Why? No contract requires that they do this. C.S. Lewis died over 50 years ago. And he also never actually requested that this change be made. However, he did once humor a young fan about the idea or reordering the books, and that exchange was recorded in writing, and someone unearthed it and took it to be the gospel of Lewis. Now, fans are stuck with deference to wishes that someone imagined the creator once had. (Not quite such a bad situation as Star Wars, because you can re-order the books yourself, or use fifty-year-old copies which are every bit as good as the current releases in terms of quality)

Compare that to Lucas. Possibly no contractual requirement here either. But still very much alive, and clearly on the record many times explicitly requesting that the originals be buried and replaced with his special editions. Also probably he and Star Wars are more of a household name than C.S. Lewis or Narnia. No, IMO Disney will let the OOT die merely because Lucas wished it, no contract required.

So the date Star Wars fans are waiting for is the copyright expiration date – when someone other than Disney can release the films as they ought to be. If I thought there was any chance at all this would happen in my lifetime, I’d never have become involved in Star Wars preservation.

We’d need more details on the disc – Despecialized doesn’t originally come in a disc format with menus, so you’re dealing with someone’s repackaging of DeEd. Any ideas about the origin of the disc, i.e. name of the torrent or something?

PM sent.

Also, FWIW, both the fullscreen and a widescreen releases used the same bonus disc, which was always non-anamorphic widescreen. In other words, in the fullscreen release, only the Special Edition disc was fullscreen.

PM sent.

While it’s pretty commonplace for films to be re-edited before home video release these days, few have had edits so substantial that they change the character and quality of the entire film as dramatically as the Star Wars original trilogy.

The closest I can think of is the Director’s Cut of Cinema Paradiso, which adds 49 minutes of material to a classic Award-winning bittersweet nostalgia film to turn it into a fairly cringeworthy stalker fantasy film. Not quite as ugly a transition as the Special Editions, but pretty darn close. Also, the original cut of Cinema Paradiso is not suppressed, which means the only problem is the market confusion of having two very different films being marketed under the same name.

Thank you for your help/validation, and it sounds like I’ve got things pretty well dialed in. I am using an 80Hz sub crossover in the receiver, so the sub is taking more than just LFE. I did a sweep tone and discovered a phase issue with the sub, and now everything’s sounding good – very even response comparing the sub to the fronts, no crazy boominess like you said. Part of the problem with the room, aside from acoustics, is the seating. It’s all over the place, and there’s probably no seat actually within the sweet spot – this is part of why I’m excited to finally have a center channel.

I am looking to boost the center though. After trying it a bit absolutely flat (same response as fronts), it turns out I would not describe the issue so much as dialogue clarity, so much as that I always watch movies with the volume lower than reference levels. That means that the loud score and effects are at my upper volume limits for what I’d like, but still lower than it was “intended for”, while dialog is often simply too quiet. So I ride the volume button, up, down, up, down, through the film – doable, but a drag. At the moment I’m testing boosting the center 1.5dB to see if that helps get the dialog up to good levels without unduly distorting anything else that’s coming through the center. It may be I can’t get one without the other, and I’ll just ride that volume button some more.

I’m mostly looking for OT moments to try out the surround setup, particularly hairy_hen’s mixes. Venturing outside the OT, I’m waiting to give Master and Commander a listen, because I hear glowing things about that.

PM sent.

Creox said:

CatBus said:

Creox said:

Does anyone know WHY Lucas stubbornly clings to his decision? Is he embarrassed about the original release or is he just being that controlling of his creation? or is it something else?

I find his decision to date quite puzzling on the surface of it.

I honestly believe he likes the latest SE revisions better, and it does more closely align with his original vision (in a general sense, clearly not the specifics). Keep in mind that Star Wars and Empire at least were heavily collaborative efforts, and Lucas was not anywhere near the final authority on Star Wars. He was involved, but he didn’t direct Empire and it showed. Other people could talk him out of his dumber ideas, and he was unsure enough of himself that he’d listen.

Now, it’s all Lucas, unfiltered. And yeah, that sucks.

SW is definitely his baby but one that was ran through a lot of other people’s filters before we ever saw it. Yep.

In a lot of ways, Lucas’s filters came off for Jedi, but he was still a bit constrained by characters and storylines that had been established during the collaborative period of the first two films. When he was able to ditch that and work with more of a blank slate, what he got was the prequels. And just as I’m sure the Special Editions better reflect what he wanted to create, I’m equally certain he likes the prequels better than the originals (all Lucasvision, no compromises from the very start) – otherwise he wouldn’t continue clumsily trying to remind the world that they exist (Maclunkey!)

Creox said:

Does anyone know WHY Lucas stubbornly clings to his decision? Is he embarrassed about the original release or is he just being that controlling of his creation? or is it something else?

I find his decision to date quite puzzling on the surface of it.

I honestly believe he likes the latest SE revisions better, and it does more closely align with his original vision (in a general sense, clearly not the specifics). Keep in mind that Star Wars and Empire at least were heavily collaborative efforts, and Lucas was not anywhere near the final authority on Star Wars. He was involved, but he didn’t direct Empire and it showed. Other people could talk him out of his dumber ideas, and he was unsure enough of himself that he’d listen.

Now, it’s all Lucas, unfiltered. And yeah, that sucks.

PM’s sent.

I wouldn’t call it “defeatist”. We’re just at the “Acceptance” stage of grief. There are ways to accept something without being defeatist, described below.

CatBus said:

captainsolo said:

From 2005-2008 I gave up Star Wars entirely. For someone who as a child had been an incessant fan, (My childhood was comprised entirely of Film, Literature, James Bond, Star Wars and Batman) this was really hard to do but I just found I didn’t care anymore.

It occurred to me that since I went through this stage too, our whole collective experience may fit the Kübler-Ross “stages of grief” model. So here we go:

Denial: “No way will Lucasfilm pass up a chance to cash in on re-releasing the unaltered trilogy. They’d never let that goldmine go to waste!” Uh-huh, sure.

Anger: We may not all say George Lucas did something nasty with our childhood, but everyone has a little generalfrevious buried deep down somewhere.

Bargaining: cough Petition cough

Depression: The phase described by captainsolo above.

Acceptance: “Don’t want to preserve Star Wars, Mr. Lucas? Fine, I accept that. Now we’ll just have to save the damn thing ourselves!” A little more defiant in tone than you’d expect from something called “Acceptance”, but I think it works.

PM sent.

Thanks, now I’m looking in the right place for these. Also, it’s exciting that they forgot to re-apply a few of the special edition fixes, so that we have some 4K original(ish) footage to use. Hoping we see more of those!

DuracellEnergizer said:

CatBus said:

Hal 9000 said:

All them discs and no OOT?

Angry Yoda sounds

Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Drink that salty brine — DRINK IT!!!

Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Ms Warwick.

PM sent!

Hal 9000 said:

All them discs and no OOT?

Angry Yoda sounds

Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.