DrDre

The site makingstarwars.net posted a rumor about the release of the OOT for the 40th anniverary:

http://makingstarwars.net/2017/02/rumor-unaltered-original-star-wars-trilogy-re-released-year/

They state: “Several sources have let us know it was coming and it appears to actually be on the way this time.”

Considering makingstarwars.net has a track record for generally posting reliable rumors, should we be hopeful?

Dreamaster said:

Gamma levels are PERFECT Dr Dre! I pulled 4% from the mid green channel to see if that made Beru’s hair and Ben’s beard more natural:

Looks great, but the technicolor prints are green shifted, so more natural may be a bit out of the scope of this project 😉.

Here are a few more examples of close ups (top GOUT, bottom regrade):

If I get some accurate color reference frames it shouldn’t take to long. I would say weeks…

^…^ said:

Any plans about TESB and ROTJ?

Time schedule?

No push, just curiosity! 😃

I haven’t really thought about it to be honest, but maybe it’s worth taking a look…

Thanks everyone for your kind comments! I’m planning to release both a LUT, and a full download version, assuming someone here can assist me in putting the latter on the spleen… 😃

litemakr said:

JayArgonaut said:

Wazzles said:

JayArgonaut said:

CED was superior to VHS (which was never that difficult) but inferior to LD.

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html#onetwelve

Only in terms of quality, since the discs could only be used so many times before they were useless.

RCA gave the discs a life expectancy for optimum performance of 500 plays. Most VHS tapes would be in pretty poor shape by that stage. 😄

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/cedfaq.html#threetwelve

alexp120 said:

…and the majority of the films are presented in full screen/pan and scan.

Edit:
As a previous collectior of the CED format, I can testify that this edition of Raiders was in pan and scan.

As were 99% of home video releases across all formats during that era. The only films I remember watching at home in widescreen during the 80s were the TV broadcasts of Manhattan (because of Allen’s insistence) and 2001.

Out of curiosity, was Raiders ever shown in 2.35:1 by pay movie channels in the US during the 80s/90s?

Edit: interesting article from 1990 on Spielberg’s fight to get his films shown in their OAR on home video.

http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/spielberg-turns-letterboxing-into-crusade-with-new-tape

That was the only transfer of Raiders available until the 1992 WS LD. Does anyone have the first edition laserdisc? It might be worth preserving that version in the highest resolution available and LD would be better than the VHS. In fact a good preservation of the WS LD is a good idea. I have it, but not a good way to capture it.

I don’t remember Raiders ever being shown in WS on television until the 2003 DVD transfer. They used the pan and scan of the 1992 transfer.

I have the 1984 LD version. I’m still planning to have it digitized, but haven’t gotten around to it.

I’m working on it, but I will post a few more example frames to wet the appetite…😉

I’ve updated the regrade to better reflect the look of a technicolor print:

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

No, I thought about it, but it indeed was too time consuming.

Mavimao said:

DrDre said:

Mavimao said:

Williarob said:

Mavimao said:

If I’m not mistaken, if the Bluray were GOUT synced, one could apply these colors easily, right?

No, it’s not a matter of being sync’d. The GOUT appears to have had a single color correction applied to it, which allows us to apply a single LUT to correct the whole film. For example, if the GOUT is 10 points too red, it is 10 points too red on every frame, therefore we can apply a universal correction to reduce the red by 10 points and the whole film will look better.

On the blu-ray, the colors are all over the place, so this sort of universal correction will only improve some of the shots, while making others look worse. While the whole blu-ray can be greatly improved with a single LUT (as JawsTDS proves here http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1042832, it would not be possible to match the colors of all the shots in a single pass).

No, I get that. What I’m saying is that I thought that Dr Dre was going to do a one pass LUT with the GOUT and THEN export a shot by shot LUT. With this shot by shot LUT, you can take any GOUT synced video file and have it come out like the technicolor.

Yes, that would certainly be possible, but you would also have to contend with many of the color issues (missing gradients, and is some cases missing colors), that NeverarGreat has tackled for his bluray regrade.

Right, gotcha. So your shot by shot LUT would work best on neutral scans so to speak?

As they say: garbage in is garbage out. The bluray is a big challenge due to the many issues with the bluray color grading. It’s no wonder NeverarGreat’s regrade is many years in the making. I suspect he would have been finished with it much earlier, if he didn’t have to fight an uphill battle.

Mavimao said:

Williarob said:

Mavimao said:

If I’m not mistaken, if the Bluray were GOUT synced, one could apply these colors easily, right?

No, it’s not a matter of being sync’d. The GOUT appears to have had a single color correction applied to it, which allows us to apply a single LUT to correct the whole film. For example, if the GOUT is 10 points too red, it is 10 points too red on every frame, therefore we can apply a universal correction to reduce the red by 10 points and the whole film will look better.

On the blu-ray, the colors are all over the place, so this sort of universal correction will only improve some of the shots, while making others look worse. While the whole blu-ray can be greatly improved with a single LUT (as JawsTDS proves here http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1042832, it would not be possible to match the colors of all the shots in a single pass).

No, I get that. What I’m saying is that I thought that Dr Dre was going to do a one pass LUT with the GOUT and THEN export a shot by shot LUT. With this shot by shot LUT, you can take any GOUT synced video file and have it come out like the technicolor.

Yes, that would certainly be possible, but you would also have to contend with many of the color issues (missing gradients, and is some cases missing colors), that NeverarGreat has tackled for his bluray regrade.

UnitéD2 said:

There are differents “interpretations” of the technicolor look with Neverar’s correction and regrades based on Dr Dre’s previous samples of the corrected GOUT (in your last posts, the grading is intended to be more natural, right ?) : http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/199660/picture:0

It’s not so much a matter of being more natural. Despite using very different approaches, both NeverarGreat and I are more or less working towards the same end, namely to approximate the look and feel of a technicolor print. For myself an ulterior motive is to determine which colors are “correct”. For example, there have been debates on whether the Leia/R2-D2 hallway should be green. My GOUT regrade again points to the fact that it should be green (at least for the technicolor print), although it’s not as “offensive” as some feared, it would be. It looks quite natural to me, to be honest. In fact looking at this regrade, my conclusion is, that the panels in the front are just a different color from the ones in the back, namely green. In any case, like NeverarGreat I use multiple sources to do my correction, but I do not use the technicolor references provided by Mike Verta, as I feel the scan (delibirately) does not reflect the proper color relations between scenes, because the settings for the scan were altered, possibly on a scene by scene basis, to maximize detail retrieval. As a consequence, I do not believe the Tatooine scenes should be as yellow or desaturated as the Mike Verta scans make them out to be, which I argued as early as my automated correction of the -1 LPP. This is another aspect of the color timing, that the GOUT regrade “confirms”, assuming my hypothesis is accurate.

Stotchy said:

Dre, is there anyway to quickly/easily apply these colours to the Bluray? Maybe using your color matching tool? OR does the bluray require shot-by-shot?

Sadly, the bluray would require a shot by shot correction. The master for the bluray is based on a scan of the negative, which has no color information information about the original color timing, whereas the master for the GOUT was based on the original color timed interpositive, which I postulate has all the original color relations, such that the original color timing (or a very close approximation to it) can be retrieved.

A video sample for reel 1 of Star Wars is in preperation. Here’s a few examples of how it will look:

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

Swazzy said:

If you were to do a gamma correction from Verta’s grading of that shot to your own, could you then technically get essentially a perfect match of Legacy’s color treatment? (Or at least, whatever revision of it there was at the time of that screenshot)

Well, I don’t believe it’s coincidence, that by matching the Leia shot I got such a close color match for the Mos Eisley shot (and it’s not the only one). Mike V based his color grading on color accurate photos he took of a projected technicolor print among other things. Since I think the GOUT contains the original color relationships of the color graded interpositive, I believe this regrade will be a very good approximation of Legacy’s color treatment at the time.

Having seen the regrade in motion, I’m not satisfied with it. There are issues with the saturation, and the colors look washed out. As such, I decided to correct my regrade with Mike V’s well known Leia shot:

Mike V:

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

Rather than post a bunch of images, I will go straight to video sample, as it always looks different in motion compared to stills. One thing I did notice, that with the Mike V correction we have the return of Luke’s blue lightsaber:

Also, in keeping with the hypothesis, that the GOUT correctly represents the color relations, the regrade is an almost exact match with MIke V’s color grade for one of the Mos Eisley shots again using a single LUT:

Mike V:

GOUT:

GOUT regarded:

To be continued…

hairy_hen said:

Hmm . . . the sunset scene still doesn’t look like the prints. I didn’t think it would; apparently too much blue/purple has been added for a single correction to get it back. The only other problem shot I see is the first shot of Artoo in the canyon being excessively red, but it’s like that in the GOUT already. The rest of the movie looks fantastic with the adjustments.

Well, we actually don’t know exactly what it looks like for a projected print, but it’s really close to the the Senator print photo, which is a bit brighter and more saturated, but also purple:

The R2-D2 canyon scene actually is excessively red for the technicolor print scans we have, and the -1 LPP as well.

I’ve tweaked the color grading somewhat, and for me it’s now perfect. Here are four sets of sample frames, including the binary sunset:

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

It’s just a matter of saturation. The saturation levels are not final. I will increase the saturation somewhat to get more pop as you call it. They do look a little washed out now.

Here´s a full set of sample frames for the entire film (not final, contrast and saturation may be adjusted):

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

Here’s another set of frames from different scenes:

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

jedimasterobiwan said:

It looks good but are the color supposed to be this dull if so really great job. 😃 Also the trash compactor scene is it just me or is that black crush?

The contrast is somewhat higher, but the contrast for the GOUT is very low, because it was meant for laserdisc, which generally have less contrast than modern day transfers.

Ps. The GOUT is also oversaturated, particulary the red.

Intruder said:

While very possibly technically accurate, the regrade doesn’t look enjoyable to me with that much green.
Although I guess that this topic is more about accuracy than aesthetics…

Once we have what I believe is an accurate representation of the technicolor colors for the entire film, it should be relatively straightforward to balance out the green, and obtain a good approximation to the 1977 theatrical colors without the typical technicolor green shift. I will create a second GOUT regrade for this purpose.

So, in the end this project should yield two GOUT based color references next to NerverarGreat’s bluray regrade (which is also based on technicolor references), that can all be used to perform shot by shot color corrections for future HD releases or faded prints.

By adding an additional technicolor reference, I’ve been able to further improve the accuracy of the regrade (I’ve also further optimized the saturation levels):

GOUT:

GOUT regraded:

I’m also preparing a sample video, which should hopefully be available soon…