Dunedain

PaulisDead2221: Any updates on this very cool project? :) Can't wait to see it. :)

PaulisDead2221: You mean you have almost all of A New Hope de-SE'd and it's nearly ready for release? :) Has the duel between Obi-Wan and Vader in the 2004 SE been replaced with the unaltered footage (original unaltered lightsabers) from either the GOUT or video captured from the 97 SE laserdisk of A New Hope? :)

Actually, if I recall correctly, 2k is 2048x1536, so that is well beyond the mere 1080 vertical res of HD. And the higher the source detail/res, the better the quality when you down res it for home video. And the movie should look the best it can at theaters, that's the ultimate way to watch any Star Wars movie and I certainly look forward to seeing them again at some point in theaters. :)

Also, if one day we have 2k-capable televisions, The Phantom Menace could easily deliver that level of resolution, whereas Episodes II and III would be stuck with HD and you'd have to up-sample them. Sort of like trying to up-sample a DVD while watching it on a HD t.v., sure, you can do it, but it's not the same as having actual HD res on the disk. :)

And there are other image quality losses you get hit with (not just resolution) when using a digital camera as opposed to real 35mm film. Again, zombie could go into details if he posts, as he knows a lot about that kind of stuff. :)

Yeah, Lucas was crazy to use a digital camera instead of real 35mm film for Episodes II and III. In doing so, he cut the resolution of those two prequels to around 1/4 of what The Phantom Menace has (that's a massive loss), plus there are other image quality deficiencies with an HD camera compared to a 35mm film camera.

Sometimes I think Lucas does things like this just to be on the "cutting edge", even if it gives inferior results. The problem is that newer is not always better, in this case, it's definitely not better.

Other than someone who is making a small budget independent movie where he just can't afford to use 35mm, everyone should be using film. And even if the guy can't afford 35mm, apparently it would be better to use 16mm film than go down to a digital camera. Zombie could offer more details, he's knows all about that stuff. :)

I'm not sure what res they did the CGI special effects stuff at for Episodes II and III, but the most important thing is that the movie itself is only 1k. Since The Phantom Menace was scanned in at 2k, they may well have done the CGI part of the special effects at that res, or they may have done it at 4k. Because when a Star Wars movie is shown at theaters you want as much detail as you can get in the special effects to match up with the inherent detail you get with real film in the movie.

LordVader: haha :) Yeah, Lucas did go overboard with the CGI stuff in Episodes II and III.

Actually, The Phantom Menace has far more resolution than Episodes II and III. The Phantom Menace was shot on real film, which has enough detail to easily support a 4k scan, even tough they only scanned it in at 2k at the time. The other two prequels were shot on a HD camera with it's fixed resolution of only 1920x1080 (you can think of this as sort of the rough equivalent of what we might call a 1k scan), so they are stuck with that. You can try to upsample that, of course, but you can't add in resolution that wasn't filmed.

On the other hand, Lucas can go back any time and scan in The Phantom Menace master prints at 4k and double the res and detail of their scanned copy, which then is down-sampled for use on VHS, laserdisk, DVD, HD, etc. for home video. But Episodes II and III will always be stuck with the fact that they only have 1920x1080 worth of resolution in their source picture. This was a really dumb thing to do, but that's what Lucas decided to try. So, ironically, it's the first Star Wars prequel that will always look better than the latest two prequels. :)

Wow, those are incredibly weird.  Who would think those look anything like Star Wars movie posters??  :)

Thanks to those who helped with finding these great Star Wars poster pictures. :)

PaulisDead2221: Yeah, go for the highest quality you can on the master files you are working with. Then once everything has been restored to a pre-SE state, it can be converted to the proper format for playing on set top DVD players hooked up to t.v.'s.

You only want to do one encode after all the work is done, to avoid any unnecessary compression artifacts. The less re-encodes the better. :)

I checked it and you're right. I'm surprised that this was overlooked. Do you guys know of any other places in the original trilogy or the prequels where there are any German subtitles that were accidentally left in the Wookiegroomer set?

That part in The Phantom Menace from this set will have to be replaced in order to have it be correct. So either Wookiegroomer or another fan with access to the highest quality recording available of the SKY HD broadcast will have to replace the video where the German subtitles are present with the proper English video, while blending in seamlessly with the German broadcast video that comes before and after. It's only a few seconds, so it shouldn't be that hard.

MoBiUs: Umm, I thought wookiegroomer replaced all the scenes from the German HD broadcast that had German subtitles in them with the HD broadcast from England (where there would be only English subtitles when aliens speak, and no subtitles at any other time)?

It might be very difficult to try and restore the accurate lightsabers while still using the 2004 DVD footage for the scene without it looking like it's been altered in some way. Probably better to just replace the entire duel (from the time the lightsabers are first activated by Vader and Obi-Wan to the end when the blast doors close in front of Vader), either with the GOUT footage or perhaps use the 97 SE video for the entire scene.

This is just like the situation with Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi, where the entire SE-changed scene needs to be completely replaced with the correct GOUT footage in order to restore the scene to the way it should be.

If the lightsaber appearance in the duel in the 97 SE is accurate to the GOUT, then the 97 SE video will do very nicely. :) Max_Rebo is currently working on putting together the highest quality 97 SE DVD set he can. He has very high quality 97 SE video that is even above NTSC DVD resolution, the TB video capture quality is great. This video is in PAL format, but after it's been adjusted to the correct NTSC video frame rate and the aspect ratio has been adjusted to match the 2004 DVD (which I think Max_Rebo may have already done by now), it should drop in perfectly and match up exactly with the 2004 DVD video from before and after the duel. Perhaps Max_Rebo can supply the video you need for the duel (as well as others scenes for Star Wars and the rest of the trilogy you are working on). You can read about his project in the thread below. :)

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Max-Rebos-97-SE-superset-preservation/topic/9031/

PaulisDead2221: Obi-Wan's lightsaber has always been of a lightish cool blue color, with a natural flowing quality to it that looks great. Look at the picture of Obi-Wan by my name, that's the true appearance of his lightsaber. In the SE they changed it to give it a darker blue color and in the 2004 SE it looks more like that solid form you see in the prequels, giving it an artificial appearance. They did something similar to Vader's lightsaber in the SE. Also, if I recall correctly, the color isn't even as red as it should be in the 2004 DVD set, that's on top of the prequel-like changes they made to it.

zombie84 knows a good bit about this, perhaps he can describe it in more detail. But Lucas definitely messed with them in the 2004 even-more-SE set.

So hopefully this will be replaced with the correct footage from the GOUT in the Star Wars Vintage Edit, since this is a restoration of Star Wars from before the SE. :)

Exactly, the donations were to help cover the expenses involved in the restoration itself (buying and shipping hard drives around, for example), not in compensation for the work done.

Maybe Zion is preparing a surprise update with some screen shots showing the latest work? :) In any case, I hope Laserman is feeling better. :)

I disagree with your technical assessment. While the Vintage Editions do indeed look cool, the problem is (and always has been for Star Wars fans) where will he get the needed unaltered Star Wars video to replace the stupid SE scenes that need to be removed?

Right now, the best source we have is the official 2006 Star Wars unaltered trilogy DVD set (GOUT), but the pictures from X0 Project clearly show the level of detail in the X0 captured scenes is superior to the GOUT. So if the X0 Project is completed, not only would it provide the highest quality unaltered set of the Star Wars trilogy yet seen on home video, it would also provide efforts like the Vintage Edition with higher quality video to replace the SE scenes with. So the X0 project is very important, indeed! :)

PaulisDead2221: Among the many SE scenes in the 2004 DVD set that are being replaced with the unaltered 2006 GOUT DVD scenes, is the duel between Obi-Wan and Vader on the Death Star, where Lucas messed with the appearance of the lightsabers to be like the prequels in the 2004 SE, on that list to be replaced with the original unaltered scene? :)

Max_Rebo: Any updates on this great project? :)

If you try to write a post message and break it up into separate paragraphs, when you hit preview you will see that all the separate paragraphs have been run together into one big paragraph (no line breaks, skipped empty lines between paragraphs). And the message will be posted with no empty lines if you don't try to correct it. Sometimes going back and forth and re-editing the message text to put the empty lines back in between the paragraphs while switching javascript on and off between each edit attempt will fix it. If you could fix this issue so that all line breaks (empty lines) in the message text body are accurately kept in the preview and posting of the messages, that would help greatly. Thanks. :)

P.S. This worked fine up until a few weeks ago, when the new forum software was first up and running, there was no such line break problem. If first started happening maybe 5 weeks or so ago. Not sure of the exact date, but knowing the general time frame might help to pin down the cause of the problem.

I just got the 13GB version of the original trilogy (thanks, Wideload! :) ), and I've had the chance to watch a few seconds of Star Wars so far to see if the file works, and it looks incredible! :) I've never watched Star Wars in HD before, just amazing picture quality, so sharp and detailed! :) Thanks to Wookie Groomer for putting together such a great set! :)

I have a question about the set. I noticed the res of the video is 1920x820, is that the res it was originally broadcast in in Germany? Also, is the .WMV format the video is in the format it was originally recorded on by the DVR in Germany, or did it need to be converted to .WMV, and if so, why? If it was converted to .WMV for whatever reason, how was the bit-rate of the video conversion decided on so as to not lose any of the quality of the original file from the DVR? Thanks for any info. :)