ChainsawAsh

Oh, I totally agree that they add character development - they're not bad scenes by any stretch of the imagination.  They just kill the pacing of the film.  Badly.  They just don't work in the larger context of the film as a whole.

I'm all for seeing the scenes properly restored, but I don't think inserting them into the film itself in any form would improve it at all.

I also feel the Biggs scene on Yavin IV doesn't belong, especially in its SE-truncated form, but not for the same reason.  It just doesn't work very well with the other Biggs scenes removed - it doesn't hurt the pacing of the film too badly, but without the proper context of the Anchorhead scenes, it just feels out of place.

I disagree about the vinyl release.  The original vinyls sound absolutely fantastic, and if you must have a "remastered" vinyl, the MFSL releases are pretty awesome as well (though I prefer the originals).  These were meant to replace the God-awful 1987 CDs, and based on what I've heard so far, they've succeeded.

I would like a 96/24 release in some format (DVD-A, SACD, or Blu-Ray), but for now these are pretty Goddamned fantastic.

They were cut in 1977 for a reason - we all know how adding the Jabba scene back into the film turned out ...

"Because" from Abbey Road was the first song to finish downloading from the full torrent, so I compared it to my Dr. Ebbetts "Blue Box" disc.  (I initially thought I was comparing it to the Toshiba "Black Triangle" CD, which is superior to the Ebbetts disc, but I apparently don't have that on my computer - it's only on a burned CD.  I'll have to compare those later.)

So how does the 2009 remaster stack up (remember, I'm only comparing one song at this point)?

Holy fucking Christ is it amazing.  Everything is much clearer - the tape hiss that's plagued every version of Abbey Road I've ever heard, from vinyl to CD, is gone, but I can't find any indication that the removal of the hiss got rid of anything else.  The bass has more oomph than the Ebbetts disc, and the highs aren't as harsh and grating.  In fact, pretty much every aspect of it is better.

My only complaint is that it's clear that some volume compression has been performed.  Not much - it doesn't clip nearly as badly as some other recent remasters - but there is some dynamic range lost.  It's my understanding that the stereo versions all had some volume compression performed, but the mono versions had none - since those will be what I listen to, I'm fine with that.  I just wish they would have released a version of the Abbey Road remaster that didn't have the compression.  But it's not a deal-breaker by any means.

Based on what I've heard so far (the one song, again), these remasters may just be everything we've been waiting all these years for.  I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Ziz said:

That's weird.  The story I heard with the '87 releases was that the first two albums were originally produced mono only.  They couldn't find all the stereo tapes for the next two, so those were made mono just to keep the songs consistent with one another.  Everything beyond that was stereo, period, so I figured this was the same pattern, just re-mastered with current equipment to clean up the clarity more.

Never heard that story, and at any rate it isn't true - there were stereo and mono versions of every album up until Abbey Road (there was a mono version of Yellow Submarine, but it was just a fold-down of the stereo mixes, even though mono mixes *were* made, and are included in the Mono Masters disc in the mono remaster box set).

The first four albums were only released in mono on CD in 87 because the stereo mixes had all the vocals hard-panned to either the right or left.  Because the tracks weren't individually separated, these albums could not be remixed, so the mono versions were used.

The next two albums had vocals hard-panned as well (Help! and Rubber Soul), but since those were recorded mutli-track, they were able to be remixed from the original master stems.  George Martin himself remixed them so the vocals were more centered.

Revolver onward had better stereo mixes (no more hard-panning of the vocals), so they were untouched and released in stereo.

The original stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul, with all the hard-panning intact, will be included with the mono versions of those albums in the mono box set - the stereo set and individual releases will use the remixes.

FanFiltration said:

I would have liked a mostly "mono" version of the "Past Masters" singles compilations, or at least a remastered re-release of the singles and E.P. box sets.

The Beatles had a habit of not including single cuts and b-sides on their British albums, and all their singles up to April 1969 are in mono.

All the singles (up to, but not including "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Old Brown Shoe", "Something", "Come Together, "Let It Be") had originally been released in mono-only mixes on the 45s.  Most of the stereo versions of these singles and B-sides were only mixed to stereo when these cuts were needed to be included on later stereo compilation albums, or international releases such as the butchered U.S.A. Capitol Records catalog of albums. The "Past Masters" set included mostly the afterthought stereo versions, and only a few mono versions for early songs (and one late era B-side) that had never been re-mixed into true stereo.  As a fan of the mono versions, I would like to have the remastered mono versions of these singles and B-sides.

There is a "mono Past Masters" now - it's called Mono Masters and is included in the mono box set.  It won't be available individually, but none of the mono mixes will be, anyway.

The cool thing about Mono Masters is that it will include the never-before-released mono mixes of the four Yellow Submarine songs.  They were prepared for a Magical Mystery Tour-style double EP that would basically just drop George Martin's score from the album, and use the mono version of "Yellow Submarine" from Revolver.  The EP was cancelled, but the mixes still exist.  I'm excited about those, myself.

Nanner Split said:

Did anybody check out the mono edition of Pink Floyd's "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" that came out for its 30th anniversary a while back? That one was strikingly different from the stereo as well (Interstellar Overdrive in particular. There was a lot missing from the stereo version!)

I have this as well - the mix is fantastic and far superior to the stereo mix.  Unfortunately, the CD is volume compressed, which makes it kinda hard to listen to.  It's nowhere near as bad as, oh, say, any of The Who's mid-nineties remasters (which are basically unlistenable IMO), but it's frustrating nonetheless.

The mono mixes from Please Please Me until The Beatles (White album) were the "official" mixes.  The Beatles themselves spent an incredible amount of time on the mono mixes, then handed everything off to the engineers (George Martin himself from Revolver on) to do the stereo versions.

Martin never liked the stereo versions of Help! and Rubber Soul, so those were remixed in 1987 by him personally.  The 1987 remixes of those two (remastered, obviously) will be the versions sold individually and in the stereo set - the original stereo mixes will be included on the mono discs (the same way the mono and stereo were both included on the Capitol Albums boxed sets).

The original 1987 CDs used the mono versions of Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale - the new ones will be the first time they've been released in stereo since their original vinyl releases.

Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let it Be were not released in a separate mono mix - they were the only three albums that were always meant for stereo.  However, the mono box set will include (in Mono Masters, the mono box's equivalent of Past Masters) the never-before-released-in-any-form mono mixes of the Yellow Submarine songs (first half of the album), which is pretty awesome.

So to make a long story short:

MIXED BY THE BEATLES FOR MONO SPECIFICALLY, STEREO VERSIONS AN AFTERTHOUGHT:

Please Please Me
With the Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
Beatles for Sale
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Paul McCartney has publicly stated that if you haven't heard Sgt. Pepper in mono, you've never really heard it)
Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles

MIXED BY THE BEATLES FOR STEREO SPECIFICALLY:

Yellow Submarine*
Abbey Road**
Let it Be**

* = not included in its entirety on mono box set
** = not included at all in mono box set

The mono mixes of Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and the White album are quite different from the stereo versions - I prefer them myself (especially Pepper - the added vocal distortion on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" improves the song tremendously), and I'm quite disappointed that the stereo versions are now the "official" versions, since they aren't the ones the Beatles put all their effort in.

Bottom line: At least listen to the mono Pepper - it's vastly superior to the stereo version.  If you like it, try listening to the other mono versions.

The stereo box set also includes Past Masters, but many of those songs were never mixed in stereo, and the ones that have mono mixes are included in the Mono Masters disc - I wonder if they're using new stereo mixes, or if the mono mixes will just be duplicated on both box sets ...

I've never noticed a problem with the robo-hand.  What is it about it that looks fake to everyone?

You wouldn't by any chance be originally from Northwest Indiana, currently living in Colorado, would you?  (I ask because I know someone who spells his name the same way you do ... )

So it would appear that the individual (stereo) albums from the new 2009 remasters have been popping up in various Wal-Marts and Targets since Tuesday. 

I was wondering if anyone has heard the new remasters, and what your opinion is of the sound as compared to the 1987 CD releases or Dr. Ebbets' vinyl transfers (which are what I've been listening to for years now)?  I haven't heard them yet.

So, what do you guys think?  They'd have to sound pretty fantastic to top the Ebbetts discs, in my opinion, and I'm very skeptical of modern remasters after what happened with The Who's discography in the nineties.

Stereo box set:

Mono box set:

That's actually not a bad idea ...

Yeah, but the Making Of didn't have Jefferson Starship playing a song in the middle of it.  They probably got the rights to broadcast it, but never got the rights for other types of distribution - that's why so many TV-DVD releases today have the music replaced with generic, royalty-free music, and why many haven't been released at all.  Look at any DVD release of That '70s Show, season 1 of Scrubs, and older shows like Mission: Impossible or WKRP in Cincinnati.  They even had to replace the theme song for one season of Married ... with Children, for Christ's sake.

So when you have something that's played live during the program, the studio might very well think it's not worth it to pay the royalties for home video distribution (which, for Jefferson Starship, would probably be fairly high) if they don't think they'll make their money back.

Of course, I don't think that's why the Holiday Special hasn't been released - I just think George hates it and never wants it to see the light of day.  Once he's dead, and he isn't personally responsible for these decisions, we'll probably get awesome Blu-Ray releases of the 1977, 1980, 1981, 1983, and 1997 versions of all the films, and a very nice DVD of the Holiday Special.  But that might be a while ...

Don't recall that one myself.

Oh no.  Novelty accounts here?  The slow decline is beginning ...

EyeShotFirst said:

fuck the prequels editions.

I never thought of these edits in quite that way, but now I might have to use that as the name of the project - it's just too perfect!

Well, 70mm only has two options, 2.20:1 (2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia), or (with a special anamorphic lens) 2.76:1 (Ben-Hur).  I do agree that IMAX's 1.44:1 is far too close to 'Academy' ratio (1.33:1).  I've never been a huge fan of anything between 1.33:1 and 1.85:1 - 2:1 or higher is my personal preference, though 2.76:1 is pushing it a bit ...

I wonder what an anamorphic IMAX aspect ratio would be, or if that's even possible ... I doubt such lenses currently exist at all.

Are you going shot-by-shot, scene-by-scene, or just doing one pass over the whole movie?  I'd recommend at least going scene-by-scene, though you'll get the best results by going shot-by-shot, obviously (though it's much more work).

The reason I ask is that the Dagobah shots look pretty awesome, but the rest are far too heavily red-shifted, so it seems to me that you're just averaging out the whole movie and applying the same CC to the whole thing.  I could easily be wrong, though.  But I think you're on the right track.

IIRC, the AR for this is closer to 2.75:1 than the 2.39:1 we're used to.  (For comparison, Ben-Hur is 2.76:1.)

That's actually pretty interesting.  Parts of it (I feel) are quite an improvement, but other parts clearly suffer from a lack of additional footage that wasn't included in the movie - there are a lot of jump cuts.  For what the guy had to work with, though, it's very well done.

No, the Jabba scene will NOT be in this edit.  It's redundant unless I re-edit the Greedo scene with the original script dialogue (not impossible, but I won't be doing it), and the CG Jabba, in either form, is far too bad.

I'd also like to let everyone know that I haven't abandoned this project, it's still going on - I've just been trying to work out a few particularly troublesome details.  I know I mentioned an August release date, but since tomorrow's the last day of August, this won't be possible.

At this point (I hate to do this), I'm gonna have to go with an Adywan-style release schedule: probably before the end of 2009, but it'll be done when it's done.  I'm not going to release something that's 99% perfect, but 1% of it is sub-par and takes me out of it when I see it.

I'm also going back to school on Saturday, which sounds like it means I'll have less time to work on this, but I only have class 3 days a week, and no job (for most of the semester, anyway).  But the good part of it is that I go to film school, and many of my friends there are Star Wars nuts just as much as anyone else here - I'm sure I can find a couple people to help out with some of the problems I'm having.  And one person I know has very good mixing headphones, which will be invaluable in mixing the audio changes (specifically in the Battle of Yavin) compared to doing so on MacBook Pro speakers.

Don't worry folks, this project will be released - just not as soon as I'd hoped.

Um ... it's still there.  It's paired with the gradient tool, if I'm not mistaken.

I disagree about IMAX, but only if the film is *shot* in IMAX.  Blowing up 35mm (or worse, digital) film to IMAX (which is 70mm turned on its side) is completely pointless.  But I guarantee if you compare something that was shot on 70mm/IMAX to anything shot on 35mm, it completely blows it out of the water.  If it weren't so damned expensive, I'd prefer that everything were shot on 70mm.

Underwhelmed by the trailer.

Don't care about 3D in any way - talk to me when we have *real* 3D, as in holograms, preferably ones you can physically interact with.

Lags with quatro CPUs

I have a dual-core, so this isn't an issue for me.

Windows are in tabs.

That's one of the things I thought was a radical improvement - tabs all the way!

Windows overlap other windows and tool boxes.

I'll give you that one.  It's slightly irritating, but not a deal-breaker by any means.

Repositioned almost all the adjustment and other tools (or whatever call them)

This happens every few versions, and it's not like it's that hard to get used to the new locations.

OpenGL features (apart the rotated canvas ) suck.

This I just plain don't understand - what's OpenGL, and what features are these that (apparently) suck?

I'm still shocked that you hate CS4 so much, Vaderios - in my experience it's been nothing but a vast improvement in every way over CS3.  Yes, that includes Photoshop.

Do you have that in higher resolution?  I've never seen that poster before, it's quite interesting ...