ChainsawAsh

There I can't help you, unfortunately.  I've never worked with 5.1 audio before.

I honestly was sure there would be a topic on this here, but I can't find one, so my apologies if I missed it.

I had a very interesting discussion with some friends of mine about this, and I wanted to hear of some of your guys' experiences.

What was your first "Star Wars" experience?  As in, how did you "find" the films, which one did you first watch, etc?

For me, I was around 4 or 5 so this must have been in 1993 or 1994 - I was walking into the kitchen after bedtime, to get a glass of water.  I looked at my parents in the living room, and they were watching something on TV.  I looked to see what it was, and a monstrous, ugly, horrific creature was being crushed by a huge metal gate, and a bunch of equally strange-looking creatures were shocked at this.

I asked my parents what this was, and they said "Star Wars."  I wanted to watch it with them, but they said it was too late and it was partway through.  I asked if we owned them, and they said no, but my grandma did.

So the next time I was at my grandma's house, I asked her if she had "Star Wars," and if we could watch it.  It was a pan & scan, early-90s VHS (the one right before the "Faces" set came out).  We watched it.

The only thing I can remember about my first time seeing "Star Wars," other than how enthralled and amazed by it I was, was how cheated I felt that no giant greature was crushed by a gate in it.  I was furious that my parents had lied to me.

My grandma explained to me that they had been watching the third movie.

The third movie?  There were more than one?  Yes, she said, there were three.  I instantly wanted to watch the rest, right then.

Some weeks later, we watched "Empire."  I liked it, but it terrified me, and the ending made me feel sick.  I asked her if the next one was as scary, and she said "yes and no ... it's like a mix of the first two."

We watched that one later, and I honestly can say that when I was a kid I loved every aspect of that movie.  The dark parts were awesome but not scary like ESB, there was a space battle like in the first one, AND there was a ground fight like in ESB!  Granted, both were smaller, but hey, you get BOTH!  AND a lightsaber fight!  All at once!  And it was funny, too!

Today, I realize how I loved it then for the very reasons I don't like it now.

Then I saw the SEs in theaters in 1997, when I was 8, and thought everything that was NEW! about them was AWESOME just because it was new.  Plus, I got to see it on a giant screen!

And the SE VHS tapes introduced me to the concept of widescreen movies (that and "Titanic").

When Episode I came out on 1999, I was 10, and I saw it on opening day.  I remember feeling weird afterwards, but hey, Jar Jar was kinda funny, and Darth Maul was a badass!  But I was confused about why Jedi were suddenly so violent about everything, and what flashy fighters they were.

Similar story to Episode II.  The love story bothered me a lot, but I liked the war!  I was irritated that Yoda was CG now - the beginning of my distaste for CGI.

Episode III, I was 16, and I disliked everything about it, except the scenes of the extermination of the Jedi (though I was upset that that had been done so quickly in one montage).

Well, that's me.  You don't have to mention all 6 movies if you don't want to, I just kinda got carried away.

RoccondilRinon said:

For me, there will be two versions of each film: the OUT and the Revisited films. I'll never watch the SEs again, but I have to say the originals have a special place in my heart — even though the first version I saw was the '97 SE in the cinemas at age 9. My parents insisted that my first experience of seeing SW be in the cinema and didn't let me watch our videotapes of the sequels until I'd seen them at the theatre first. Those were the longest four weeks of my young life. :p

Every word you wrote is 100% true for me as well (except that the first time I saw the films was the 90s VHS sets, just before the "Faces" sets came out ... probably 1993, 1994).

That depends.  What was the frame rate/sample rate of your original project?

Without knowing anything, I'd say:

23.976 fps if you're working in NTSC; 25 fps if you're working in PAL

48kHz sample rate for the audio

And use a lossless codec of some sort for your master file (huffYUV as an example).  It will be freaking huge, mind you, but you won't lose any quality.

Adywan = Adrian Sayce, according to the ANH:Revisited credits.

No idea about the others.

You can do 5.1 in a 700MB file, the problem there is you don't want to have the audio eat up too much of the bitrate.  But of course you already know that, which is why we're having this conversation anyway.

I'd suggest doing it first as a 5.1, and if it ends up looking shite, you can always re-do it as a 2.0 (or 2.1, but at that point the bass channel would be kind of unnecessary in my opinion).

Get Handbrake (free, Windows/Mac/Linux) and load the full-size version in - it'll let you set a file size limit and everything.  I think you can render out an AVI, but I'm not 100% sure (I always use h.264 MP4 files, much better quality in smaller sizes).

FF, since this is your project after all, do you have any suggestions or requests in regards to the cover?  A different text block on the back maybe?  (I made mine up mostly from scratch, and I'm not sure if I'm happy with it)

And thank you for that scan, tmpfan - it'll work beautifully.

I was actually planning on using those VHS-style covers as a base, but I will be changing the backs around substantially, and possibly adding a border saying "THE STAR WARS TRILOGY" on top or something like that.

But covers for this project are a long way off at this stage.

I usually use Photobucket, but that kinda sucks for large images - you could put it in a ZIP or RAR archive and upload it to Rapidshare or something of the like.

If you can't figure something out, PM me.

darthmunky said:

Aaaaw. Are there any theatrical versions that are actually good quality with the correct color that are available on dvd? Or do you if there is any way to convert this to DVD format?

Well, these aren't theatrical versions anyway - ESB is a 1080p restoration of the 1997 SE, while ANH is basically the 2004 SE with Han shooting first (both color corrected, naturally).

If you're looking for the 1977, 1980, 1983 theatrical versions, the 2006 DVD release (which we call "GOUT" here) is passable, though it's non-anamorphic from a laserdisc master.  That's probably the best quality of those versions available, and it's not terribly difficult to make anamorphic versions.  The color is a bit washed-out, but it's better than the 2004 DVDs - the biggest problems with those are the high level of grain and bad digital noise reduction that tends to smear the image in some scenes.

If you're looking for the 1997 versions, this would be the best available for ESB, and there are DVD sets that use the laserdisc transfers of the 1997 SEs, but none of those are particularly great (though someone on this forum is working on a "Super Set" that combines the best available sources), and those wouldn't have particularly great color, either.

No.  You need a Blu-Ray player or a PlayStation 3.

The legs on the ESB one are also substantially taller.  They're the same basic shape, but the ROTJ legs are substantially shorter.

I believe it was because the original model partially melted after being left under bright, hot studio lights during ESB's shoot, so the parts that were melted were re-done from scratch for ROTJ.  It's possible that that's a load of dingo's kidneys, but it seems plausible enough to me.

I use a Mac, but I don't like automated templates.  I'd much rather do it myself in After Effects - I have more control that way.

You're right about the "rivers" - the text was auto-formatted in Photoshop.  For my next pass, I'm going to be re-typing the text completely for three reasons:

1. To change the color to match the GOUT Star Wars crawl (mainly so I don't have to recreate it)
2. To remove said "rivers"
3. To make the text block the right size - I had to stretch and resize it to match the SW GOUT's text block in After Effects after I'd made the Photoshop text file.

There's another problem with the opening logo - for some reason, as it recedes it "rainbows" a bit, for lack of a better description.  This will hopefully be fixed with the new logo I'm working on.

I've finished a test of Empire's opening crawl.  It's synchronized to the GOUT version of the "Star Wars" crawl, with "Empire's" starfield, opening logos, and first shot.

It's still a little rough around the edges - there's a couple parts toward the end of the crawl where you can see me "putting on the brakes" when my crawl was moving faster than the original.  These issues will be fixed for the final version.

Also, while I've been trying to fix the logos so the line thicknesses are the same, I'm having trouble with it, so the logo used in this test is the same one I used in the first post of the thread.

Here's the YouTube link to the new crawl (remember, it's a WIP!) - you can also find the link in the first post:

--CLIP REMOVED - WILL BE REPOSTED--

If you can't see it yet, it's still being processed - give it 10/15 minutes or so.

The 360 doesn't support h.264/AC3?  Really?  That's kinda stupid of them ...

I think it looks fantastic, especially in motion.

He's mis-remembering.  The portion of his "script" where Chewie shoots the probe droid A) comes right after the probe droid crashes and B) apparently doesn't include Han, so I'd put my money on his memory being a little off.  And I doubt he ever actually sends it to Lucas ... though that would be hilarious.

Just finished watching it - it was an average episode, but the ESB references were hilarious and strangely poingant.

"Face it, dude.  Ewoks sucked."

doubleofive said:

Last night's episode (titled "Some Like It Hoth") was strangly on topic for these boards.  Hurley in 1977 trying to write Empire Strikes Back from memory, making it a little better, and avoiding Return of the Jedi especially the Ewoks?  Awesome.

... holy shit.  Why did I not watch that last night?

Off to ABC's website to watch it in HD ......

Yeah, all the AVCHD ESB is is a restored 1997 theatrical SE made from a 1080p broadcast of the 2004 SE, but color-corrected like ESB: Revisited will be.

If you want to make a DVD of it, it would be more or less pointless unless you want the 1997 SE on DVD.  Though it's probably not 100% exactly like the 1997 SE - I believe there were some minor effects tweaks for the 2004 SE that weren't noticed or replaced by Adywan, but that's more or less negligible.  Even then, the 1997 SE had its own color issues that wouldn't be preserved since this is Adywan's personal color-correction, but that's really an improvement.

There are ways to convert it to DVD format, but I don't know how specifically.  By the same token, you should also be able to convert it to a 1080p video file that can be played in an Xbox 360, but again, I don't know how.

Haha, yeah that's true.

I finished watching it, and, despite all my preconceptions ... I loved it.  It's definitely an entirely different beast than BSG ... but I like it a lot.

I just hope the series lasts long enough so we see the Cylons coming into common use and being treated as slaves, and then the revolt at the end (we don't need to see the war, especially in this show - if they must, leave that to another show entirely).  And the revolt needs to be "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" Director's Cut times ten.

Josh said:

Wicked, Someone get this man some lotion, or some for me! Because this is Pure eye candy! I thought it was wednesday today, hmmm, Is it because I live in the US?

Yep.  It's still Wednesday for me too here in Chicago, but it's Thursday in the UK, where Ady is.

adywan said:

OK well it's Thursday here again so heres this weeks new pic......

Credit to Vaderios for the section of his matte i used for this shot

Wow.  Just .... wow.  I can't WAIT to have the DVD-9 on my TV, basking in the glory of the Hoth battle!

The DVD-5 is around 4 and a half gigabytes.  The DVD-9 is around eight and a half gigabytes.  Then there's the DVD-5 "Purist Edition," which is also around 4.5 gigabytes, and there's a 1.5 gigabyte AVI and I think a 700 megabyte AVI.

The DVD-5 and DVD-9 are meant to be burned to disc and played on a standalone DVD player, while the AVIs are just video files meant to be watched on your computer.  They're also rough-drafts, basically, IIRC.