Harmy

msycamore said:

There's no question about it in my mind that Raiders should be warm and that the DVD transfer is off but to me those beautiful LPP pics just reaffirms that there was a broader spectrum of colors in the film compared to what is present in the BD.

msycamore, did you actually compare the BD to those images? Well, I did and I can tell you that aside from the print pictures being even more yellow/green tinted, the BD sure shows a broader spectrum of colors than these pictures - and sure, they don't seem to be exactly professionally scanned, so the print itself could be better but you'd be pushing it pretty hard to be judging the BD to have narrower spectrum of colors than this print just from those pics.

CatBus said:

I've got a question about those commentaries.  I understand what you did with the Laserdisc commentary, but what did you do to the other commentaries to get them to sync?  Wouldn't they all at the very least have chopped off bits here and there due to the SE sections?  Just wondering... seems kinda miraculous.  And if it really is seamless, I'm wondering if the same method could be used to get an audio descriptive track for ESB and ROTJ.

It is fairly seamless at least for the 2004 DVD and 2011 BD commentaries. The 2004 web commentary I got from Adywan's AVHCD, which was 24fps, so I had some trouble synchronizing it, even though I slowed it down what should have been the appropriate amount - but most of the time, you can't really hear the movie's audio in that one, so it's not too much of a problem that it's slightly out of sync. The other two should be in pretty perfect sync, because I attached them to the BD video in Premiere and then I used the video rather than the audio for sync reference. I did have to cut some stuff out but 99% of the time, it's just someone talking about Special Edition stuff that's not there anyway, as is the case with the Jabba scene. Sometimes I had to use the short periods where no one was commenting to move some section out of sync to allow for some SE changes to be cut out without loosing the commentary running over them. So all in all, I'd say the commentaries are in sync 95% of the time (and when they're not, it usually isn't really an issue) and 98% of the material is there (and the missing material is about the SE). There's still lots of SE refferences, so sometimes it's kind of funny to watch the film with those commentaries but it usually kind of works, because they say stuff like "this shot was redone with CGI in 97," simply reminding you that you're actually watching the good version :-)

As to whether the SE commentary for the blind could be edited the same way, I'd say it could but it would require some more skilled audio editor than me to keep it in perfect sync, plus of course it would be the 97SE mix with some of the different sound effects.

Thanks Troy :-)

As to where people are from:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Where-are-you-from/topic/13569/

Why in 8 hours? Anyway, try updating JDownloader.

Actually, I don't remember how that was done.

@pittrek: Yes, the tracks from v2.0 should sync perfectly.

@michaelkirschner: Use JDownloader to download the links and while downloading, rightclick the first link and put "harmy" as the archieve password and it will extract automatically.

@imgqtr: There won't be an MKV version. There will be a BD version that can be remuxed to MKV if one wishes to do so. And it will be quite a bit higher bitrate but from past experience, in most scenes the quality difference is pretty negligible.

v2.1 AVCHD is out!!!

If the veteran users couldn't find it, it would be a bit of a paradox ;-) The new users can use this link.

Technical Specifications:
________________________

FORMAT: AVCHD DISC (ISO)

SIZE: 7.9GB (DVD9)

VIDEO: 1280x720p H264 23.976 fps


AUDIO: (all Dolby Digital) Special thanks to hairy_hen and Belbucus

TRACK 1) 5.1 1977 70mm six track mix @ 640Kbps

TRACK 2) 2.0 1977 stereo mix @ 256Kbps

TRACK 3) 1.0 1977 mono mix @ 128Kbps

TRACK 4) 2.0 Isolated score @ 192Kbps (music only)

TRACK 5) 2.0 1993 LD Audio Commentary @ 192Kbps (silence filled with 1993 LD 2.0)

TRACK 6) 2.0 2004 DVD Audio Commentary @ 192Kbps

TRACK 7) 2.0 2004 starwars.com Audio Commentary @ 192Kbps

TRACK 8) 2.0 2011 BD Archival Interviews Audio Commentary @ 192Kbps


Subtitles: (Project Threepio) Special thanks to CatBus

English (en)
Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn)
Spanish (es)
French (fr)
German (de)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ISO image can be burned to a DVD-DL and should work in most Blu-Ray players.

To burn, you can use image burn following these instructions: http://onlineitpro.com/?p=181

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A single layer Blu-Ray version of this project with higher bitrate video and lossless audio options is going to come out as well. It may take some time to author the BD however, because it will contain various extras and animated menu, which are not finished yet.

For more information, follow this thread.

guiser said:

guiser said:

Just watched the 2.0 again and I noticed something during the opening crawl.  It seems as though the stars disappear early and reappear late as the scroll passes over them.  Almost as if the text has some kind of opaque black border.

Is this correct?  I've never noticed it before in any other version but I'm not all that observant most of the time :)

Bump, anyone?

Sorry, must have missed that. I saw a high def scan of the original crawl and the black outline is very much there.

I don't know anything about that, no. Sorry.

Yeah, I think often people got used to the DVD, VHS and LD color timing over the years, when in fact it was wrong for various reasons. You only need to look at Star Wars to know that true. So it's quite possible that the color timing of Alien BD could be correct, or it may not but you can't categorically state that it's wrong until you have a proof other than older home video releases and your memory.

Well, this LPP print seems to show that the BD colors of Raiders are very much accurate:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190808893255

Also, a question - when muxing an AVCHD with TS Muxer, which options should I choose when I want to ensure best compatibility and ease of playback? I always kept the default settings for everything, but now, I figure, maybe that's not the best option, especially since when playing in MPC, tracking through the film doesn't seem to work in the first and last two minutes or so and it was the same with the v2.0.

I was thinking, maybe you could just send me a script to use and I could encode the DVD myself from the lossless source files. I don't suppose it would take too long to render at that low a bit rate (unless mpeg2 takes much longer to encode than h264).

That's strange - I've used the exact same settings for the AVCHD as for v2.0 and it came out quite a bit smaller (by like 600MB). This on one hand means, that I'll be able to add a few extra audio or subtitle tracks but it's a bit worrying.

Sad story, bro.

Yeah, I've seen that - I think the second image isn't really sourced from the BD at all, or at least its colors. That's what I'm always talking about that you can't quite get the BD to look the same as the IB print. But every time I feel frustrated that I can't get the colors quite right, I compare what I'd done to the BD and that relieves the pain :-D

SpilkaBilka said:

 

One thing I noticed though- in a couple frames of 2.1, it looks like small amounts of the left and right side of the screen are cut off.  Maybe this is due to different framing/resizing you've done, or maybe it's something unique to how you captured the frames for the comparison.

I noticed this in frames 1-42-20-10 and 1-42-28-22.  When you switch between 2.0 and 2.1 you can see a black stripe appear on the right side of the screen, cutting off edges of the X-Wings.  On the left side of the screen, a black stripe cuts through some stars in 1-42-20-10, and Yavin in 1-42-28-22.

Yeah, I did that in more shots - it is to cover up some artifacts that appear on the sides - you'd likely never notice it without a direct comparison like this and it is something that quite commonly appears even in professional transfers.

Eps II and III were shot on 1080p cameras and then cropped to 2.35:1, so the pan and scan versions are definitely upscaled. The original trilogy was scanned in at 1080p as well, so pan and scan versions would also have to be upscaled. Same goes for the old master of TPM used in these old HDTV broadcast and the BD master afaik is sourced from DI tapes, which were probably 2K, so even that would have to be upscaled for pan and scan.

mindofone said:

And so Han Solo still has his purple pants at the end? I thought Verta pretty well corrected that, and showed how he did it, no?

 

I don't know where Mike "fixed" that and what it has to do with this version but, no, he doesn't - he has navy blue pants, actually quite a bit less purple than on the IB print, now that I'm looking at it.

Mavimao said:

The changes look great, although I also noticed that the shots of luke during his conversation with Leia in the rebel hanger ("Oh I thought he'd change his mind...") were much softer in 2.1.

Those are the shots Laserswert was talking about (see my answer above).

I also wanted to ask what made you change your mind with the color timing? 2.0 was supposedly based off the technicolor prints, and you were very adament about the overall greeness to the film and the brightness in the scene where obi wan appears. Why the change of heart? Was the technicolor not that reliable of a source?

The greenness is still very much there, it was just dialed down in a few places where I took it too far before. As to the Obi-Wan scene, I changed my mind, because I got a chance to see another low fade print, where it looked more like in v2.1, so it does seem that the Tech prints aren't the be-all-end-all color reference, so in v2.1 I cut myself some slack - it's still very acurate to the Tech print - in some cases even more so (like the lightsabre scenes for example) but I did pull back on religiously sticking to the print a tiny little bit.

Laserschwert said:

The comparison looks great, except for two bits:

1-40-30/1-40-32 - that one looks more detailed in the 2.0 version (look at Luke's hair, for example).

That's on purpose to make the transition to the GOUT shot less jarring and in movement it really works pretty well. In v2.0 I tried graining those shots up instead but that didn't really work.

1-25-26/1-25-42 - is there a reason why the second shot doesn't use the cleaner and more detailed matte painting of the first shot?

msycamore said:

I would guess he wanted to make a really faithful recreation, even if the same matte painting was used for both shots, the results were not the same, one of them didn't come out looking that well in the original film.

Exactly.

Holy shit Harmy, that's some mighty impressive work! Beautiful job on the colors, didn't think it was even possible to repair them that well, incredible.

Thanks :-)

I don't want to give you more work but one tiny, tiny observation; there was two wires that was eliminated against the sky in the SE, above the left stormtroopers head in pic 0-53-09-06. I don't think anyone will miss them but I just thought I would mention it just in case you didn't know about it and want to work your magic on it in the future.

If I ever do another version, I'll look into it :-)

Fireproof710 said:

How did you do the dust removal? Manually or did you use something like PFClean?

No, manually, frame by frame, spot by spot - I missed some here and there but it really improves the over-all look of those shots.

chyron8472 said:

Which of these two looks better?

The bottom one's a bit better, I think. But I'm sorry to say I don't think this looks at all official, which as you say was your goal. I don't mean to be mean, just my opinion. But the important thing is that you like it after all :-)

Well, I kinda nostalgically like TPM - deal with it and stop telling me what I should and shouldn't waste my talents on :-P ;-D

But really, while I don't really consider it a part of the same story as the OT, I have a soft spot for TPM as a standalone film. It's inarguably a pretty bad film but it has some good parts and then also, Plan 9 From Outer Space is a bad film and it's still fun to watch :-) And Creepy Puppet Yoda is a part of TPM's B-movie charm :-)

As per covers, there will be an all new cover to go with the BD release of Star Wars. It will most definitely not have IV A New Hope on it, just like TESB and ROTJ will only have The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on them, exactly the way it always was before all this mess started with the prequels - ESB and ROTJ did have the episode numbers in the crawl but they were never marketed as such until the prequels came out. Even the 97SE only had Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on the posters and home video covers.

And since I personally consider the prequels to be a separate set of movies, I wouldn't want the official covers for my edits to acknowledge them as a part of the same story. But that's just me personally - I have no problem with other people making covers for themselves that have the episode number and stuff on them. I wouldn't care if someone made themselves a cover that says Wars of Hemorrhoids Episode Bambillion and one on it and I don't see why anyone else should.

But I strongly disagree with the statement that "both IV and purist versions of the same cover should be available, so people can choose between consistency and correctness when they print their own set." If someone wants to make a cover with IV on it, they're perfectly welcome to it but I don't see why a person "should" make both when they personally only like one. To be honest, I wouldn't even be too happy knowing that people were altering my covers in this way but I wouldn't go as far as to forbid it (even if I could, which I obviously can't. :-D )

And now you'll all be interested to see that under this link you can find a complete comparison gallery of all the changes made to v2.1.
Now, there's no comments, just pictures but in most cases it should be pretty clear what has changed (in like 80% of cases it's just colors). It should show all the changes with the exception that when a whole scene was recolored, only some of the shots from the scene are shown as examples but enough to get a good idea about the coloring of the whole scene. Also, where there's a frame that has specs of dirt cleaned up from it, it obviously means that the whole shot's been similarly cleaned up, not just that frame.

If you have any questions about some of the changes, you can use the name (number) of the picture.

I should be uploading the AVCHD tomorrow :-)

yoda-sama said:

But seriously, would that mean putting puppet Yoda back in, or something more invasive like doing an HD Phantom Edit?

It would mean doing the same thing as for the other DeEds - that is restoring the original theatrical version in HD (the DVD version had a lot of stuff added and two or three shots replaced). It shouldn't be too difficult to do and shouldn't delay the other projects by any considerable amount of time, if I decided to do it.

Not really. If I do it, than I'll be doing it at the same time as ESB.

Yeah, there will be some kind of v2.0 vs v2.1 comparison for sure.

Oh and yeah, v2.1's gonna knock your socks off. The improvement's pretty awesome.