Dreamaster

Towne…

Burned 2.6 to blu ray when I got home from work. I put it in the PS3 intending to do a spot check it on my 50 inch plasma, but as soon as I saw the colors on the Tantive I was enthralled and before I knew it the end credits were rolling!

GREAT JOB recoloring this!!! This is the Star Wars I remember but at an insanely higher quality than I’ve ever seen it… and I’m not sure why but it’s 100 times better than your first version. So awesome!

dlvh said:

Here is a version that I customized myself, but it doesn’t have any hint of Blue Sky that I can see:

dlvh

Good skin tones in that one for sure! It does kind of make one want to click on the white with a “fill bucket” in photoshop for everyframe or something though!

Darth Lucas said:

Not just that. It’s done it EVERY TIME I’ve even attempted to just go on the spleen to browse the torrents. Something’s been up with their server the past couple weeks. Very aggravating.

It’s called “Silver Screen Edition gone public”… I had at least 4 or 5 friends email me a copy of the story online (on different websites at that), simply because they knew I was a Star Wars fan and they read it on their favorite tech sites and thought I’d be interested. That means a LOT of people saw it. I know spleen is “private” but I bet it’s really opened up recently.

dlvh said:

Here is Adywan’s version of how that particular shot looked:

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/e6u37Ws.png" alt>

dlvh

Eh…Can someone show me a link on how to post pictures on this board?

OMG! Use that! Your version 2 added a blue tint to the mountains, which this shot doesn’t have.

DrDre said:

To add to the confusion, here’s what it looks like on the JSC laserdisc:

That one has the most color difference between his face, his robe, and the mountains, in addition to having a really pleasant sky. I compared these to the SSE and this shot is better than it too. Can you ask your algorithm to try and grade it to that?

DrDre said:

Another difficult one to pull off, but I think it worked out nicely. Here’s the first Obi-Wan shot.

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

My money says THAT shot is the entire reason the blu ray went “blue”. That sky doesn’t seem to match the other sky shots because it’s so white… “Well make it blue for the new master!”, George said. “OK”… but the technician didn’t realize he was applying the hue shift to the entire film instead of the one scene! 😃

DrDre said:

The problem is that none of the production photos I’ve seen seem to reflect a pronounced green shift. The JSC is pretty inconsistent in this respect, and so are the print scans. So, although it certainly off-white, if there is a green color, it’s a creme color with the slightest hint of mint.

THAT’S THE COLORS… match to that please! PEACH… look at the PEACH in the faces!

(By the way, I think you ARE matching really close to that looking over your regraded shots. In GIMP I took one of them and by eye moved the middle level of the red channel from 1.00 to 1.07 and that to me was perfect… was a very subtle shift away from the mildly green hue in the background and added a touch of warmth to the face)

1997, I was in college and I was ESTATIC about the Special Editions. I NEVER imagined that Lucas actually had filmed a scene with Jabba the Hut, in 1977, BEFORE JEDI!! And now I was going to get to see him in this new version of Star Wars ON THE BIG SCREEN!! Over the next 3 years I watched the whole trilogy with my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and it was like being a kid all over again.

But… in '97 I don’t think the thought ever occurred to me that the original would quite literally get “thrown away”. Might not have mattered so much anyway.

If you remember, Lucas took a LONG time getting the OT to DVD, and I was once again pumped, but by this time the prequels had come and gone. I bought the DVD box set and when Hayden’s ghost appeared at the end my jaw just dropped. “THAT MAKES NO SENSE!!?? HOW WOULD LUKE EVEN HAVE A &*(&( CLUE WHO THAT IS?”

When they came out on Blu Ray… I did a quick check on youtube to see if he had come to his senses and reverted that change. When I found a list of changes for the blu ray not only didn’t revert, but had the Return of the Sith “Vader NOOOOO” when he kills the Emporer… I nearly vomited and made a vow to never buy the blu rays.

But then I found Harmy and TeamNegative1’s restorations, and realized that I needed to go buy them to be “legal-ish” and try to keep you guys out of jail, LOL! So now I have them in these really cool steel boxes, but I doubt I will ever lay eyes on their content. Why would I?

towne32 said:

Darth Mallwalker said:

Stinky-Dinkins said:

The -1 release is very much like watching an actual projected 35mm presentation (complete with the occasional pops, specks, flecks, and stuff you’d see inherent to older celluloid) but it is very much an absolutely “pure” presentation of the original film (and the aforementioned “flaws” add to authentic filmic feel of the presentation), complete with one original theatrical stereo English track.

It certainly looks authentic filmic; however, the sound is GOUT.
Lazy team, was lazy . . . or rushed, as the case may be.

Cue Towne to scold my bad attitude, but I couldn’t resist using that meme

I can’t decide whether to scold you for that or for using a circa 2008 internet speak. Or for calling it a meme.

http://memegenerator.net/instance2/4373762

towne32 said:
But you might want to skip the early years of the thread, since it’s mostly just forum members being a dick towards him. Work your way backwards instead. 😃

/Dreamaster shakes his head in disbelief and slowly sighs and facepalms himself

edit: yes, his vimeo channel is great.

And Harmy’s color was based on raw scans of the Tech from Mike. And IIRC, Mike speaks favorably of Harmy’s color scheme, overall. Even if it could use a few tweaks, he seems to like it better than the alternatives.

😃 OK, so I’m not presenting anything “new and shocking” to anyone… but I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that 10 minute Technicolor preview, and just wanted to doubly make sure these resources were looked at. If I had to describe it… it has a “natural warm glow”… so if the blu ray heavliy pushes blue, and Harmy’s original edition pushes green, the silver screen edition pushes red… I would describe the Technicolor print as “pushing peach”. Leia’s face is a great example… I may be making things up I kind of think in the blu-ray edition they may have manually changed the color of her lipstick to be that really brilliant dark red, whereas in reality it was more of a lighter pink/orange (which matches better with what my grandma used to wear 40 years ago, LOL!)

I’m currently working on several outside programming projects already so I don’t have the free time to really contribute to this the way I’m wanting too. I’m very excited though to see what happens over the next year or two. Such huge strides were made in only the last 4 years alone!

OMG!!! Mike has a vimeo page
https://vimeo.com/channels/starwarslegacy/page:1
There’s quite a few “sanity” checks in those videos. Quite a few scenes are looked at. 😃

towne32 said:

Harmy has seen SSE I am sure. His goal is to represent the technicolor version, while SSE is a color corrected version of essentially an Eastman print with fairly minimal fade.

While some sequences in the SSE look stunning, color wise, others could use a ton of work. But the release itself can’t be used as a pure color reference.

Ideally, we may get to see mike verta’s corrected frames some day, which would make for a lovely reference.

Just to clear something up, the bottom photo is the Silver Screen/Eastman edition. You can definitely tell it’s “not quite right” and has that rosy/sunburn appearance to it. However, TeamNegative1 is now working on a new Technicolor source and they just released a 10 minute demo from that scan recently on spleen. The top photo is from that 10 minute scene. As you can see it’s a completely different level than the silver screen version on the bottom. Go check it out it’s going to be killer when they are done with it! But I think Harmy’s edition is very important because it still will have more detail in the shots since the blu-ray was sourced from the negatives.

I haven’t read the whole story yet on Mike Verta’s work, I think that might be the next place I school myself on! 😃

I kind of hope Harmy sees this…
Top one is the new TeamNegative1’s Technicolor scan screenshot…
Second one is a shot from Harmy’s recolorized
Last one is TeamNegative1’s SilverScreen edition.

Check out the light colors… they are indeed too green…
All I’m saying is… this new resource that TeamNegative1 got a hold of wipes the floor colorwise even with their first big release. Going forward I hope Harmy checks against it some before he releases 3.0.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s6qftn3w1w80gpk/obiwancompare.jpg?dl=0

I’ve basically read 5 years worth of posts on these forums in last 2 days. Simply amazing all the resources that have been pulled together to bring these back. Much love to EVERYONE involved!!

OHHHH… so ready to download this…

towne32 said:

Thanks Dreamaster. I’ve actually started another thread about it. I actually like the neutral tones in 1.0, but it’s still a bit dark. More like an Eastman/GOUT look. But if I were to attempt to get 2.5 looking like that, it would turn into a Frankenbeast for sure. And the 1.0 picture quality is too poor (especially after a re-encode) to use for a base. Plus, I like the Technicolor look for the most part. I will be very interested if Harmy does indeed do multiple color timing schemes for 3.0.

You just keep doing what you’re doing… all of your screenshots of the adjustments your making give me goosebumps, in my opinion you are on the right path.

towne32 said:

astromags said:

GroovyLord said:

Just watched Despecialized for the first time (2.5), gotta say thanks! Loved it, a joy to see the movie in HD clarity. Which other than seeing the 97 version in theaters, I’ve only even seen on VHS or laserdisc version.

For some critique, I feel some shots the color isn’t quite 100% spot on. It looks like yellow is a bit overpowering in a lot of the movie, with stuff like Han Solo’s shirt popping, or skin leaning more yellow when it should lean more on the red side I think.

Here’s a comparison of Luke in Despecialized and an old laserdisc rip: http://imgur.com/a/tZV7t

Sometimes skin and hair etc to me looks a bit like a colorized movie in this version, if that makes sense. Maybe at times oversaturated, and maybe not quite the right hue. Also maybe more blue should be in the mix at times. That said, definitely better than the color choices of the official blu-ray, and this wasn’t in every shot or anything, just at times.

That’s my only constructive criticism though, really really impressive stuff. I didn’t notice any quality drops, all the effects shots looked great, terrific stuff all around, thanks again. And great sound too, I went with the 85 track. Much thanks!

I agree with what you’re saying about the “colorized look” These were my exact thoughts when I first viewed the despecialized version. Not as distacting as bad CGI everywhere but I wish the color was a little more natural looking. maybe in V3.0?

That said my thanks to Harmy and all those that put in the effort to make these editions happen. I felt like I was 12 Years old in 1977 all over again.

Darth Lucas and I are both (independently) working on color adjusted versions of De 2.5. I think/hope we’ve made it clear to Harmy that it’s not intended to be disrespectful. He himself has clarified that he didn’t know that the reference scan was not yet corrected to the print, and Poita has pointed out the problems with the UK lab producing what was essentially one of the very last Technicolor prints made in the west.

The main thing that mine uses is Harmy’s 97SE, which is a refined version of his take on the Technicolor print (minus his 97 changes). Here are some comparisons: http://imgur.com/a/CPcka Note that I darkened the Sandpeople/Ben scene in those images and have since reverted them to the full 97 Respecialized contrast. Some changes are slight, some are big.

I also edited many of the strongly yellow/green shots by hand: http://imgur.com/a/adIa1 Note in this case that the shots preparing for the battle of Yavin are off (Luke is blue in the first, and the next two are kind of red) as these are old sample images. I have fixed it to be more neutral.

I don’t think I’ll make my own thread about it, because I think it will inevitably get some flack for being seen as a criticism of Harmy. But I can keep it out of this thread too if he wants. He did an amazing job correcting to the scans he had. I can’t really fathom how did it so well in some cases. My version isn’t supposed to be accurate to one specific source, it’s just a less jarring (to me) version for me to watch until 3.0 comes out. It is definitely not an attempt to remove his Technicolor based timing. Walls are still bright, faces are rosy. Just the green/yellow/brown shots I wanted to have a go at.

That’s AWESOME!! I was so distracted by the green push in 2.5 I was going to to download the 1.0 version but noticed Harmy removed the links… so I actually wound up making my own encode with a slight hue shift. It makes a couple of shots more rosy than they should be but I prefer that to the green sand. I was going to try and make the argument that since the colors in ROTJ look so natural, I’m pretty sure the ones in ANH shouldn’t be quite so “stylized” either. It’s cool to see that not only are other people seeing what I’m seeing, they are so passionate as to correct it on their own. Towne32, I can’t wait to get a copy of your version someday soon! And Harmy, thank you so much for making these available for all of us!