Harmy

3.0 and up.

Actually, what people could do to help, is donate to Poita’s project, which would be such a better source that it would make my work a lot easier.

Here’s a comparison album, showing why in the video I posted yesterday v2.5 is an improvement over v2.0.
In the Special Edition, many of the shots in this sequence have been recomposited. In Despecialized v2.0 those recomped shots were either left in or partially replaced with the GOUT - in v2.5, they were all replaced with the Grindhouse version, cleaned up and color corrected - the colors on the Grindhouse version are pretty bad, so there’s only so much that can be done to retrieve them (actually, I think I deserve some kind of award just for how much I’ve been able to pull out of the Grindhouse) and the cleanup was also very labor-intensive but it is now much much closer to the original version than v2.0, with a lot more clarity in the shots that used the GOUT in v2.0 and even in some that used the BD, because many shots in the BD version are actually quite fuzzy.
https://goo.gl/photos/YZCYhjphd7BSJijTA

Wazzles said:

Harmy said:

Here’s some work in progress v2.5 Hoth battle footage compared to other versions:
https://youtu.be/zdI4svni-WQ
Make sure to watch in 4K, even if you don’t have a 4K screen, because the compression is much better.

IsS this cleaned up Grindhouse or is there some Blu Ray in there too?

In true Despecialized fashion, it is a mix of the two.
It is work in progress but I’ll only do a few more little tweaks here and there, because I don’t want to put too much work into it, as I’m hoping to get Poita’s new scans for the next version, so I’ll have to be starting from scratch there.

They’re there in the GOUT. On the BD, they were erased in the Luke shot, even though the shot has not been recomped (as many other shots were) but they’re there in the Hobbie shot.

Here’s some work in progress v2.5 Hoth battle footage compared to other versions:
https://youtu.be/zdI4svni-WQ
Make sure to watch in 4K, even if you don’t have a 4K screen, because the compression is much better.

Pretty sure that the red blue and green are on the film in layers, so I guess if you scratch through the red and blue layers, all there’s left is green.

All that’d be needed as proof are a couple of comparison screenshots - not only because of the obvious difference in image detail, which could be dissmissed (by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about) as the result of image enhancement, but also because the GOUT is far more cropped, so unless Poita magicked the edges of the frame into existence, it can’t possibly be the GOUT.

The idea that this is the GOUT is utterly riddiculous! I’ve worked a lot with the GOUT and especially ESB is simply awful and no one could ever possibly make it look anything like this.

Lasz said:

Seriously, of all the restoration projects out there, this is probably the one I’m looking forward to the most at the moment.

that last picture (albeit a quick grade) looks stunning!

Quoted for truth!

If you mean the COMING SOON thing, that’s been there for years. I was thinking though, that if the presentation has indeed happened and the Disney execs agreed, they’d probably want to announce it on their own terms, so Mike may have had to sign a nondisclosure agreement and may be throwing misdirects at us now 😃

Yeah.

Yeah, I had to put sparks back in in many places too.
What I do is I go through the cleaned scene and the original layered in difference mode, which shows the parts they have in common as black and highlights the differences, so I can see everything that’s been erased and shouldn’t have been.
After this, I’ll need to give it a manual cleaning pass as well, because a lot of the dirt is still there.

Yeah, also, I noticed the automated cleanup I used on the Grindhouse erased some of the laser bolts, so I’ve been going through the whole sequence frame by frame, putting them back in. Lowry did not do that - there are lasers missing in some shots and if you know to look for them, you can see artifacts where they used to be.

To be fair, it only goes this blurry for a couple of frames. But it’s still pretty awful.

Well, this is a new low for the official Blu-Ray:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/190175

joefavs said:

As long as we get the OUT, I’m fine with and even curious about potential new iterations of the SE.

Same here. It’s important to point out though, that even though the '97SE didn’t come out on DVD, it did get a wide theatrical release and my generation did grow up with it on VHS, so there is definitely some nostalgia for it and nostalgia is very much the wave Disney is surfing right now.

That’s the '97SE on home video, not necessarily the prints. And if they were actually starting from the negative, they’d have to do a whole new color grading anyway.

Yes, v2.5 will replace the majority (if not all) the recomposited shots with the Grindhouse. And since a big section of the Hoth battle suffers from blurriness (similar to the Endor arrival in the ROTJ BD, though not as bad) in future versions, if I get a better 35mm source, the entire scene is likely to be replaced - it’s just right now, the Grindhouse isn’t enough of an improvement to warrant putting in the work of cleaning the whole scene.

I’m not so sure about that - in the original timing, in every version I’ve seen, the interior of the pod has been blue in the shots of R2 entering it, and I don’t see any reason for them to paint that door blue if it wasn’t intentional - you don’t paint a prop a certain distinct color by mistake.

If this even is an issue, it would probably be easier to fix in ROTJ where you only see a bit of the back of his head and it’s nearly stationary, dark and out of focus.

That Leia shot is just spot on perfect IMO!

I did make some progress in the last couple of weeks but there’s still a lot to do.

No, you’re wrong in saying that - I (and I’m sure many others) want the Falcon with it’s rear end chopped off, because it’s a beautiful illustration of the limitations of the VFX techniques used in the '70s.

And no, we don’t have to have that - the Special Edition doesn’t have that, you may have noticed. But a version that doesn’t have that is not a preservation/restoration.

That’d be Special Edition stuff that has no place in a restoration.