IMO 4K77 at 4K has less fine detail than DeEd at 720p, so 1080p should be a fine option. I’m sure this will start an argument though. I don’t know much about 4K77 alternate encodes, so I can’t say much else on the subject.
Next DeEd’s are all planned to be 1080p.
I have a couple of questions:
I tried to watched 4K77 and found it was very choppy on my laptop or on my flash drive which holds 128gb and is supposed to be good for movies - it was playing on my Panasonic 820 4K player. Thoughts on the issue?
I watched the Despecialized 2.7 Star Wars 720p last night and was very impressed! The only issue I saw was the whites seemed a bit clipped at times - specular highlights in particular. Is there a version which alleviates this?
Thanks.
Not sure about #1, but if you try playing the file over the network on your Panny 820, you could rule out disk/interface bottleneck issues. You could also try demuxing the movie and remuxing it with just the audio you want, etc, and see if that helps.
For #2, no. Clipping is an issue on the Blu-ray source (most visible to me in red lights, actually, not whites) and IIRC Harmy has never really addressed that. I expect the nest version WILL address this better due to the availability of good-quality print scans, which wasn’t an option for previous despecializations.
FWIW, I just re-compared ROTJ DeEd vs 4K83 (Sanjuro’s regrade) and still felt DeEd compared favorably. Even in the Rancor scene, in the scenes where the monster’s color looks better in 4K83, Luke looks better in the same shots in DeEd. I guess different strokes, and so on.
No one else has experienced crushed blacks and blown-out whites with 4K77?
Depends what you mean. The optical duplication process effectively boosts contrast at every step, so a projection print (4K77) should look contrast-boosted compared with a negative or IP (DeEd). That’s part of what I personally don’t like about the look of print-based preservations in general (and why I prefer the look of well-done Blu-rays – 4K and otherwise – to 35mm prints). That said, 4K83 keeps it pretty under control somehow, possibly because the source was just better. To be honest, I’d probably prefer 4K83 if it came out first, but both it and the DeEd are so far beyond close enough to perfect for my tastes, I go with DeEd simply because I’ve already got one Holy Grail and have no use for a second one.
I actually prefer DeEd for all films, even though Star Wars is definitely the ugliest of the DeEds.
I’ve found people’s preference largely depends on what they’re looking for. If you’re looking for a true recreation of what the cinema experience in 1977 was, 4K77 is the only way to go. If you’re looking for what a respectful modern Blu-ray transfer would have looked like, then Despecialized still fits the bill better IMO. I’m a purist to the degree that Greedo doesn’t shoot. But I’m happy to get rid of reel change marks and the film damage on Tantive IV.
Jedi is an easier choice for me. Jedi DeEd doesn’t have any of the warts of Star Wars DeEd, and it’s very hard to beat if you’re looking for something equivalent to a modern respectful Blu-ray treatment. 4K83 is clean as hell (amazingly so), but it’s still an old theatrical print, and looks like it (which could be good or bad, depending on what you want).
All DeEd’s are encoded and sized to fit on a BD25 if you want to burn them.
The files for comparison aren’t all in the project (yet). I’ll make a separate link for these works-in-progress.
I’m more likely to do a GOUT sync of the 4K83 video and solve lots of compatibility problems simultaneously, but ATM I don’t have much free time at all (and my priority is the next Project Threepio).
I only have the later home video dubs for the trilogy, but I’ll send what I have. They are all GOUT-synced, not 4K83, but depending on the dub, that may be good enough.
Yeah, I got confused by this as well – Puggo’s 8mm digest ESB project includes the same video differences as the 70mm version, so I just assumed the audio differences in that version were similar if not the same as the 70mm. But that’s not the case – in-theatre recordings confirm the 70mm audio was extremely close to the 35mm audio, in spite of the different video. Go figure.
EDIT: Also, if you haven’t heard it, the 8mm digest audio has even more differences from the 35mm audio than the 16mm audio. Give it a listen, it has lots of “what the hell?” moments, and features alternate Leia dialogue where her lip movements actually match what’s said, rather than the 35mm version, where they definitely don’t (“I know where Luke is.”)
PM sent. BTW, if you’re willing to help compare two different Japanese translations, I’d love some help on that front. I have a feeling the translation we use right now is the original theatrical one, which may have been rushed, and the other translation is from the home video releases, which had a little more time for better translations.
Yup, I did a GOUT sync. I can provide links to the lossy and lossless encodes of this (I’ll need to upload them first), and also encode the FLAC track into DTS-HD, if you send it to me again.
Argh, sorry, I overpromised. I thought I still had the original 4K83 sync around, but all I have is the GOUT sync.
PM sent.
Do you want 4K83 or NTSC-GOUT (DeEd) sync? DTS-MA or Dolby Digital (ac3)?
PM sent.
PM sent. Yes, those are the latest versions for the DeEd. The fixed Castilian audio is for Star Wars only, the dubs for Empire and Jedi are unchanged from the latest DeEd release.
Burmese is frustratingly missing a translation for the ROTJ crawl at the moment (volunteers welcome! small translation job! must know burmese! and english!), but that may just have to be good enough.
Just found Burmese subs for the ROTJ crawl! They’re hardsubbed onto video (ugh), but for such a relatively small amount of text, I can manually transcribe it (Operation Eyestrain Redux). I think it may have been worth holding out these last six months after all.
I dunno, if Harmy’s gonna Easter Egg us with modified scenes, I’d want it to be his “Vader Shot First” scene from ESB, or his “Vader Got Drunk and Fell Over and Now I Gotta Take His Mask Off” from ROTJ.
I’ve decided that I’d like to do a summer release of this project in its current state even if I haven’t got all of my outstanding translations received yet. Probably June or July. There’s just a lot of good new stuff in here, and I hate to be holding onto it much longer.
PM sent.
PM sent.
PM sent.
I don’t need the whole film, but I would love screenshots of each subtitled line in the Greedo/Jabba scenes. Also, I would prefer to have shots from the original 16/35mm elements instead of the reconstruction, if that’s possible.
You could ask in our technical howto section, or start your own thread, but generally we don’t directly link things here. PM links seem to be fine.
On another subject, let me know if you know of any sources for the original Spanish 1977 and 1983 Greedo/Jabba subtitles (from the 35mm sources). These translations were often rushed and occasionally terrible, but I think they’d be worth preserving. They tended to be replaced by better translations in a different style for VHS/home video releases. But sometimes 16mm reductions are floating around, etc.
Yes, that’s right, I want the bad ones 😉
Obvious troll is 22 years late for the party.
Yes, this is a known issue. Harmy animated the Blu-ray footage to approximate the movement of the original footage, while maintaining the higher quality image, and it’s got issues.
In fact, Star Wars has the most-visible “warts” of all three Despecialized films, and Harmy has indicated it’s now his next priority for an updated release (when that will be is another question). It’s not just this issue… there are more to find once you go looking for them.
Presumably for the next version he’d be able to use 35mm footage for that scene, but that was not an option at the time he most recently despecialized it.