Dunedain

Whoa, wait a second, I'm not insinuating anything; as Mother pointed out, maybe DTS HD encoding does something to the sound that no one was even aware of. I'm certainly no tech expert on any of this, I was just wondering if the DTS HD encoding might have done something since you said it sounded less loud.

I'm sure you didn't delibrately alter the 5.1 soundtrack in any way, I just figured if the DTS HD encoding automatically did something to the soundtrack (that neither you nor anyone else was aware of), that hairy_hen could probably firgure out what it was easier than anyone else, since he spent so much time fine tuning the soundtrack restorations and so on. I was just curious what the cause might be, but it's no big deal. :)

hairy_hen: Perhaps you can listen to the Star Wars DTS HD 5.1 soundtrack and see if everything is still at the correct volumes for that authentic full-range soundtrack Star Wars movie theater experience. :)

dark_jedi: Do you mean hairy_hen's purist DD 5.1 soundtracks were altered for the encode to DTS HD 5.1, or that when the lossless master 5.1 audio files were encoded at such a high bit-rate for DTS HD that it somehow makes them seem not as loud when you listen to them?

Because I would think that they would sound just as loud as the DD 5.1, but have more fine detail and fullness to them, since every ounce of detail would have been preserved by such a high bit-rate encode from the master files.

Any news on how this is going? :)

zombie84 said:

Dunedain said:

zombie84: Did you see those screen shots harmy posted on page 97 comparing the v3 DVD set to the new Blu-ray set? It seems like the v3 image looks a little too greenish, whereas the Blu-ray shot looked like the colors were more accurate, more neutral. What do you think?

Like I said, my monitor right now is not very accurate, so it could be just me. If the V3 actually looks green-biased whereas it appears neutral to me, then it makes sense that something that appears to me to be red-biased is actually neutral. I just noticed that there was a difference between them and was wondering if this was an intentional tweak or whatever.

zombie84: Did you see those screen shots harmy posted on page 97 comparing the v3 DVD set to the new Blu-ray set? It seems like the v3 image looks a little too greenish, whereas the Blu-ray shot looked like the colors were more accurate, more neutral. What do you think?

As to the technical ideas, I wonder if that is possible, to retain more of the original detail, but still smooth away any artifacts from the up-res? Would be cool, if it could be done.


dark_jedi: Personally, I'd say take the extra time and re-render them for the most perfect video quality you can get. I think it's worth the wait. And you're only making a Blu-ray set like this once, so you might as well go all out and make it the very best it can be. :) Because, after this, we'll have to wait for either access to a 35mm film scan of the trilogy or Lucas to decide to be reasonable and release a fully restored new transfer of the trilogy, if we want to see Star Wars without the stupid SE stuff in any better quality. =)

Happy 4th of July to everyone! :)

You said it, Radi0n. :) Harmy, those rank among the finest custom Star Wars DVD covers I've ever seen. Some really cool Star Wars posters on the front covers, great shots from space battles on the back covers, a nice clean colorful layout and design, very professional looking, just excellent. =)

I agree with what the others have said, thanks very much for making this set, dark_jedi, it's literally the best looking (and sounding (thanks hairy_hen! :) ) original unaltered Star Wars trilogy set ever on home video! :)

Well, the good news is that we can have the German soundtrack sync'ed up with dark_jedi's new restored Star Wars trilogy Blu-ray set, for maximum picture quality with the correct 24 fps original German theatrical soundtrack. That will be so cool. :)

Ah, that would be very convenient. As long as the end result is that the voices and overall soundtrack sounds exactly as it did in theaters in Germany, in terms of pitch and timing, and it sync's up perfectly with the NTSC GOUT video, then that's great. :)

I wonder if the German GOUT DVD set DD 2.0 soundtrack has been simply sped up, or pitch-corrected?

Also, even if a PAL soundtrack is pitch-corrected, it's still running at PAL speed, right? Meaning, the sound effects and voices are being spoken faster than the NTSC video would be playing, right?

If that's the case, that means the PAL soundtrack would still have to be slowed down to match the NTSC video frame rate. And if the soundtrack were pitch-corrected already at the studio, wouldn't slowing down the playing speed of the PAL soundtrack then mess up the pitch by making it too low?

Moth3r said:

I heard that there was a fixed GOUT disc available with corrected audio?

The German audio track was faulty on some discs. In chapter 13 of ANH when Luke, Han & Chewie wait for the elevator to the detention area, the announcements in the background are missing - as well as the lines "Ich kann in diesem Helm überhaupt nichts sehen (I can't see a thing in this helmet)", "Das wird nicht funktionieren (This is not gonna work)", "Warum hast du das nicht gleich gesagt? (Why didn't you say so before?)" and "Ich habe es gesagt (I did say so before)". A replacement disc with fixed German audio is available from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainmemt by emailing info@tcfhe.de.

R2D2 said:

If you reverse the PAL audio speed up you will get a slower (deeper) voice of everybody, which doesn't feature the original voice frequencies.

Surely the original dub was for the film's theatrical presentation, and so would be at film speed? The voices would therefore be sped up (higher pitched) for the PAL DVD; slowing down should restore the original pitch.

That looks so good, great job, dark_jedi! :)

In what ways does this new method improve the image quality?

It would be cool if a German Star Wars fan with the German GOUT DVD set would make the German Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack available, then the PAL audio speed up could be reversed and it could be synched to the U.S NTSC GOUT video.

That would be really interesting to watch, since the Empire is based on the German military. And the German Darth Vader is *awesome*, far superior voice. :)

A far as I know, his only concern is that Lucasfilm would make a fuss if he tried to share it. And he'd probably end up losing his job. It's not that he doesn't want to share it.

rmclain73: At the 20 second mark in the video clip, for example, Commander Daine Jir appears too reddish to me, I've seen pictures of him from variety of sources, and a more naturally pale tone I think would be more correct. Perhaps a small adjustment within that color range would help. Should also help with Leia.

My first reaction to seeing this when watching Return of the Jedi in the 2004 SE DVD box set was shock, just couldn't believe Lucas did that, followed immediately by disgust and anger. Just totally unacceptable. It was the final straw, there are so many changes in the 2004 even-more-SE version that I intensely dislike, but this... grr...

It made it an even easier decision that I didn't plan on watching the 2004 set again. Just can't stand it, the 1997 SE is bad enough in a few places, but the 2004 set is much worse with all these crazy changes. A shame, too, because the overall picture quality is so nice that it was hard to have to give that up. But to this day I still haven't watched the 2004 set again.

Yes, the flesh tones are too red. This is always the problem with a general adjustment of colors to bring the overall levels back up where they should be, the flesh tones turn out either too red, or too dark, not natural looking.

This is where the precise adjustment of specific colors within specific color intensity ranges, all adjusted individually, makes the difference. I think Mother may have given some examples in that thread above of some custom color adjustments in a script he was running that allowed more precise control of how the colors in a scene can be adjusted.

The goal being to boost the general colors in the scene to get them back to where they should be, but being able to adjust the skin tones (faces and hands) separately, because they need different color value corrections than the backgrounds do. So it would be one set of color adjustments for the scene in general, and another set of adjustments just for the faces.

This all being controlled in a script by only allowing the proper corrections to be applied on only the original colors in the GOUT that fall within certain value ranges in each picture frame (those original color values in the GOUT will be different for backgrounds and faces, allowing the corrections to be applied selectively).

From the film screening of the pre-SE print of The Empire Strikes Back (excellent pictures from which can be seen in that thread I gave a link to above), it can be seen that on Hoth that indeed Hoth has always had a icey bluish color to it. So that is the correct color it should be in any restoration of the colors in the GOUT.

Of course, in other scenes in the SE, it may be more blue that it's supposed to be. That's why those pictures from the real films in that thread here are so great, you can see the real correct colors in various scenes and what they should be in the GOUT. :)

There is one area that can be significantly improved upon, and that is color correction/restoration. The colors in the GOUT are much more washed out than the original colors in the films.

Fortunately, it seems much of this can be restored. But in order to get the colors close to their accurate levels, precise corrections would have to be made that boost and adjust various specific colors within specific color range values. So that only those things within a scene that need to be corrected by that amount are affected, while the other colors are adjusted separately. And this would require scene-by-scene color correction (because the degree of correction needed for various colors is different for different scenes).

So, if you want to make precise manual corrections to the GOUT DVD set, this is exactly where those efforts would be needed. In fact, there's no other way to do it. One correction applied to a whole movie will not deliver those properly saturated color levels without messing up the flesh tones in the movie. The goal being to restore the original strong lively colors that the Star Wars trilogy has, without altering the proper light and natural skin of the people in the movies. But only a precisely controlled scene-by-scene correction can do that.

Read this thread for lots of great pictures and discussion on how to get the original film colors back to their correct appearance. I hope it's of some help. :)

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/GOUT-Automated-Theatrical-Colouring-and-a-Reference-Guide/topic/12289/

dark_jedi said:

Dunedain said:

dark_jedi: Looks very impressive. :) About the DTS-HD Master Audio, was that newly encoded at 2098 kbps from the lossless master audio file of hairy_hen's restored Star Wars 70mm 5.1 "purist" soundtrack?

Thanks for any info. :)

Yes it is, and the "purist" versions are the only ones that will be on this set, some may notice a difference between the DTS-HD MA 5.1 compared to the Dolby Digital 5.1, some may not, but my oldest Son said it was pretty cool seeing the DTS-HD on his receiver LOL, either way it is on there and not going anywhere, it is what it is.

dark_jedi: Looks very impressive. :) About the DTS-HD Master Audio, was that newly encoded at 2098 kbps from the lossless master audio file of hairy_hen's restored Star Wars 70mm 5.1 "purist" soundtrack?

Thanks for any info. :)

I know what you mean, the 35mm film print is just *beautiful*, there is no substitute for real film! :)

The site that is easiest to download large files from is Megaupload. As long as each part of the file is under 1 gigabyte in size, anyone can download them for free. The download speeds are often very fast (over 1 megabyte per second is common), and you can download 1 file right after the other with no waiting in between (until you surpass the total download limit, which varies from day to day, but is often 3-5 gigabytes at one time, then you have to wait a few hours and can start downloading again).

So, for example, let's say you have a restored dual-layer DVD version of Star Wars that is 8.2 Gigabytes in size. That could be uploaded in a 9 part .rar file, Star Wars.part1.rar, Star Wars.part2.rar, etc. The first 8 parts would be 950 megabytes each (this size can be easily set in winrar when making a multi-part .rar archive) and the last 9th part of the file would be whatever size was left over, in this case, about 600 megabytes. The first 3-7 files could be downloaded one after the other at very high speeds (download limits vary day to day, probably based on how heavy the load on the servers is that day), then you'd get a message that you've download X amount and you need to wait roughly 2 or 3 hours. So, you just wait a few hours, then download the other files. If you have a fast connection, you could download the whole thing in not many hours at all, and it's all free even at those high speeds. :) It's much much faster than Rapidshare.

By the way, never put Star Wars or ANH in the file name, so the files won't be taken down, just use some non-obvious acronym. Like LTREP4V1.part1.rar (LeeThorogood's Restored Episode 4 Version 1). :)