Dunedain

Welcome back, Poita. :) I'm glad it went well and hope that you're feeling better soon. I have remembered you in my prayers.

For an automated tool that works that fast, that is impressive. Well done. :)

Criss has a point, if it was just the money, Lucas would have taken the free offer for a restoration. I remember that offer being made, it was one or more professional restoration guys were willing to do it for little or no money, they just wanted to preserve and restore the Star Wars trilogy and then give it back to Lucasfilm (similar to what Mike ended up doing, except they would have had full access to the best materials to work with).

This is mainly about his ego, which apparently has grown to gigantic proportions over the years. He thinks his changes in the SE, the even more SE (2004) and now the yet *more* SE (2011) are just brilliant. And he's quite annoyed that so many Star Wars fans strongly disagree with him on that, and find at least some of the changes very intrusive, incongruent, silly and in just plain bad taste. So he walked off in a huff and didn't want to play nice any more. But since he didn't have much interest in making more Star Wars movies (likely because the prequels got a rather, shall we say, cool reception among Star Wars fans... plus the general irritation among fans over a lack of the unaltered original trilogy in high quality), he decided to sell the whole thing to Disney. And now that it's no longer his direct responsibility what Disney does, he can distance himself, artistically and creatively speaking, from whatever Disney does in terms of releasing the unaltered original trilogy or whatever garbage they stick in these new movies (and he has a point there...).

That's fantastic news, if it's true. :) And one would think that George (through Landis) would know...

And "releasing" better = full scale (big budget, all the time they need) restoration, not some quick 1, 2, 3 job like last time (2004 SE), only now with just a bit more resolution. *rolls eyes* But rather a proper Lawrence of Arabia level restoration done by the best pros in that field. *cue telephone call to Mike to hire him on as a special consultant* :)

Looking very very nice... exciting times. =)

That shot of the Rebel trooper might just be the best I have seen so far (at least off the top of my head), that weird orangey/carroty/redness is gone and he just looks a lot more natural and real. Now, being that this is matched to the IB print, everything might not be exactly the tone that would be in an actual 35mm print, but it's still way better than he usually looks in most any uncorrected source. And I guess it goes to show that as bad as the Blu-ray set is, with some careful color correction, it can be made to look far better / more accurate than it is at default on the disk.

Well, to be more precise, this would be the second blu-ray version, I thought it might have been V3 overall if the first one was DVD res. Anyhow this is in regards to the new improved (V2) TESB and RotJ blu-ray 720p versions, the Star Wars one having already been released a few months back. :)

Well, if I recall correctly, they took a bit of a breather while they worked on some other movie projects after Star Wars was finished, then they were going to come back and finish up V3 of TESB and RotJ. And now that it's been several months since then, I was wondering about the status of the next two parts of the trilogy.

The question is, will they spend the money for a truly first-class restoration: using all the best sources available, bring in the top restoration experts, blank check, take all the time they need to do it perfectly, etc.?

That's what *should* be done, and even with the expense, it makes sense to protect and restore these films to the nth degree. It would be utterly foolish not to do so. They just spent a fortune to buy Lucasfilm, and to not protect the most valuable thing Lucasfilm has as well as it can possibly be done, would be a huge loss even from just a business perspective. But that doesn't mean they *will* do it...

Cool stuff, I really like that kind of well-crafted dedicated hardware. :)

Any word on the V3 ESB Blu-ray? I hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July! :)

Hope you're feeling well soon, you're in my prayers. :)

This looks great, excellent detail and natural filmic look. I think the single best thing about it is the lack of artificiality, like you get in an overprocessed dvd, for example. Nice work! :)

If there a superior print to this that the actual full restoration will be derived from, then I can only imagine how good that will look. :)

Wow, excellent detail, looking great. :) Thanks for doing this, the expense and effort involved must be substantial, but I'm sure the fans here will step up to help out. Great job! :)

Mike makes magic happen. 8O)

This is really cool! :) I think everyone understands that this is an early preview, so definitely not final quality and I'm sure the best possible compression methods will be used later, and it's so great seeing this from real 35mm film. :) A huge thanks to the team and everyone who helped get things to this point!

I remember when the original thread for this idea was started. There was a lot of enthusiasm from all the Star Wars fans, and intense back and forth discussion of the practical realities of actually doing this, but it looked like it was going to be awfully hard to make it happen. Well guess what, they actually pulled this off, haha! Way to go, guys! :) There's certainly a lot left to do, but this is getting close for real now. I think I can speak on behalf of all even semi-serious Star Wars fans when I say that we owe you guys for going to such effort to get us here. :)

Talk about detail...

8O)

Congratulations and thanks to the team and everyone who helped out on reaching this milestone. :)

While the blu-ray may technically have more detail, this restored 35mm version will blow the doors off it in every other way (natural filmic appearance, infinitely superior rich accurate colors, absence of needless digital artifacting, etc.) to such an extent that any advantage the blu-ray might have in that one area will be irrelevant.

Have fun. :)

Hopefully the right balance can be found to have the proper inky blackness of space, the deep rich darkness of Vader's robes and so on, and yet retain good shadow detail, the texture of the cloth and such. Though if, due to limitations of the sources currently available, a choice had to be made between more apparent detail in darker areas, but then the black levels being less than they should be and washed out; I'd say having true black levels where they should be and a bit less shadow detail is less harmful to the overall appearance. Hopefully we can have both. :)

That's the affect authentic legitimate Star Wars has on people, and it's great to hear about a new fan getting to experience the true Star Wars for the first time. :)

Wow, so nice. Obi-Wan looks great already, and once the flesh tones are fully corrected to get rid of the reddish tint, it's going to be super nice. :) Excellent work to the team, thanks! :)

A very nice improvement in detail with this method. :)

That is quite an increase in fine detail and clarity. It's always surprising how much detail and good color there is in the 2006 DVD set. The trick is bringing it out without introducing (or exaggerating) other problems in the process. Well done. :)